Libanus vie with the Mendip and the Quantock Hills? The view
surveyed by Monmouth from St. Mary's Tower on the Eve of Sedgemoor
transcended all the panoramas which the Holy Land or Asia Minor
could present! But his more serious orations were worthy of his
higher fame. In the panic of 1858, when the address of the French
colonels to the Emperor, beseeching to be led against England, had
created serious alarm on this side the Channel, he went down to
Bridgewater to enlighten the West of England. "Why," he asked, "do
we fear invasion? The population of France is peaceful, the
'turnip-soup Jacques Bonhomme' is peaceful, the soldiers of the
line are peaceful. Why are we anxious? Because there sits in his
chamber at the Tuileries a solitary moody man. He is deeply
interested in the science and the art of war; he told me once that
he was contemplating a history of all the great battles ever
fought. He holds absolute control over vast resources both in men
and money; he has shown that he can attack successfully at a few
weeks' notice the greatest European military power: gout or
indigestion may at any moment convert him into an enemy of
ourselves. Until France returns to parliamentary government this
danger is imminent and continual. Our safety lies in our fleet,
and in that alone. If for twenty-four hours only the Channel were
denuded of our ships in time of war with France, they would hurl
upon our shores a force we could not meet. Such denudation must be
made impossible; our fleet so augmented and strengthened as to
provide impregnably at all times for home defence no less than for
foreign necessities. Our danger, I repeat, lies in no hostility on
the part of the French army, in no ferocity on the part of the
French people, in no PRESENT unfriendliness on the part of the
French Emperor: it arises from the fact that a revolutionary
government exists in France, which has armed one man, under the