If any distant worlds (which
_may_ be the case) are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical
resources as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we do
on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we ever treat them? St.
Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps
the Himalayas? Oh, no! my friend; suggest something better; these are
baubles to _them_; they see in other worlds, in their own, far
better toys of the same kind. These, take my word for it, are nothing.
Do you give it up? The finest thing, then, we have to show them is a
scaffold on the morning of execution. I assure you there is a strong
muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any such morning, of those
who happen to find themselves occupying the right hemisphere for a peep
at _us_. How, then, if it be announced in some such telescopic
world by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at our
newspapers, whose language they have long since deciphered, that the
poor victim in the morning's sacrifice is a woman? How, if it be
published in that distant world that the sufferer wears upon her head,
in the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom? How, if it should be
some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen, coming forward on the
scaffold, and presenting to the morning air her head, turned gray by
sorrow--daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the
guillotine, as one that worships death? How, if it were the noble
Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, that with the loveliest
of persons, that with homage waiting upon her smiles wherever she
turned her face to scatter them--homage that followed those smiles as
surely as the carols of birds, after showers in spring, follow the
reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams over the hills--yet thought
all these things cheaper than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison
of deliverance from hell for her dear suffering France! Ah! these were
spectacles indeed for those sympathising people in distant worlds; and
some, perhaps, would suffer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because
they could not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the
strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned within them at
such scenes, could not gather into golden urns some of that glorious
dust which rested in the catacombs of earth.
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