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That the songs are for the most part exquisite, that they were worthily set to music and adequately rendered; that the measures, the dance of the revellers in their half-brutish disguises, the antimasque of country folk, and the final or main dance of the wanderers, were effective; that the whole was graceful, complete and polished, is either self-evident to-day, or may with reason be inferred.
History shows no more despicable personality than that of Collot d'Herbois, one of the most hideous products of that utopian Revolution, whose grandly conceived theories of a universal levelling of mankind only succeeded in dragging into prominence a number of half-brutish creatures who, revelling in their own abasement, would otherwise have remained content in inglorious obscurity.
Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast! On the one side, half-brutish, half-timid questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. They are made to stand with Pilate, and Gesler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their speech and action! and what a void their silence!
Hearts beat in their breasts, blood of a sort still flowed through their veins, and so the magic of this marvellous vision instantly awoke the long-slumbering elementary instincts of a bygone age. A low murmur ran through the vast throng, a murmur half-human, half-brutish, which swiftly rose to a hoarse screaming roar. "Look out, my Lord! Quick! Shut the door, they're coming!
If this same class of missionaries used dogs to convert the Waldenses in Italy, there is a greater reason for using them among the half-brutish Indians of California. With such a race, moral suasion has no force; and to adduce arguments to convince a man whose only rule of action is the gratification of his sensual appetites, would be labor thrown away.
Richard of England, styled by hero-worshippers "The Lion-hearted," might be re-christened "The Wolf-hearted," and the famous Du Guesclin might seem to us a half-brutish vagabond. But Charles of Burgundy, dubbed by this prone world "The Bold" and "The Rash," would take the greatest fall. Of him and his fair daughter I shall speak in this history.
If need were, any one of them could drive pigs to market. Chaucer's characters are individual enough, their idiosyncrasies are sharply enough defined, but they are to some extent literal and prosaic; they are of the "earth, earthy;" out of his imagination no Ariel ever sprang, no half-human, half-brutish Caliban ever crept.
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