205. _Le Rhin_, 1845.

216. _Napoléon le Petit_, 1852. _Châtiments_, 1853. _Histoire
d'un Crime_, 1877. In this place I must take occasion to
relieve my conscience from a sense of duty unfulfilled so
long as I for one have not uttered my own poor private
protest--worthless and weightless though it may seem, if
cast as a grain into the scale of public opinion--against
a projected insult at once to contemporary France and to
the present only less than to past generations of
Englishmen.

_On the proposed desecration of Westminster Abbey
by the erection of a monument to
the son of Napoleon III_

"Let us go hence." From the inmost shrine of grace
Where England holds the elect of all her dead
There comes a word like one of old time said
By gods of old cast out. Here is no place
At once for these and one of poisonous race.
Let each rise up from his dishallowed bed
And pass forth silent. Each divine veiled head
Shall speak in silence with averted face.
"Scorn everlasting and eternal shame
Eat out the rotting record of his name
Who had the glory of all these graves in trust
And turned it to a hissing. His offence
Makes havoc of their desecrated dust
Whose place is here no more. Let us go hence."