Note 102 — REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE. (continued 3)

"Who, having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own. And yet this act, to varnish o'er the shame Of sacrilege, must bear Devotion's name. No crime so bold, but would be understood A real, or at least a seeming good. Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name, And free from conscience, is a slave to fame. Thus he the Church at once protects and spoils: But princes' swords are sharper than their styles. And thus to th' ages past he makes amends, Their charity destroys, their faith defends. Then did Religion in a lazy cell, In empty, airy contemplations, dwell; And like the block, unmovèd lay: but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours. Is there no temperate region can be known Betwixt their frigid and our torrid zone? Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no care, But to be cast into a calenture? Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance, And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than, led by a false guide, to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand What barbarous invader sack'd the land? But when he hears no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king, When nothing but the name of zeal appears 'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs, What does he think our sacrilege would spare, When such th' effects of our devotions are?" Cooper's Hill, by Sir JOHN DENHAM.