Page:Maid Marian - Peacock (1822).djvu/134

volve the restitution of the estates to the rightful owner, it was obvious that it could never be expected from that most legitimate and most christian king, Richard the First of England, the arch-crusader and anti-jacobin by excellence, the very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror of all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth, excepting that he seasoned his superstition and love of conquest with a certain condiment of romantic generosity and chivalrous self-devotion, with which his imitators in all other points have found it convenient to dispense. To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from another, was generosity of which he was very capable; but to restore what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it, was something that wore too much of the cool physiognomy of justice to be easily reconcilable to his kingly feelings. He had