Minstrelsy of the Scottish border - National Library of Scotland

472 MINSTItELSY OF
NOTE
THE WAK-SOx\G.
O ! had they mark'd the avenging call
Their hrclhrcns murder gave.—P. 470. v. 2.
The allusion is to the massacre of the Swiss guards, on the
fatal 10th August, 1792. It is painful, but not useless, tore-
mark, that the passive temper with which the Swiss regarded
the death of their bravest countrymen, mercilessly slaughter-
ed in discharge of their duty, encouraged and authorized the
progiessive injustice, by which the Alps, once the scat of the
most virtuous and free people upon the continent, have, at
length, been converted into the citadel of a foreign and raih-
lary despot.* A state degraded is half enslaved.
Edition 1812.