22 Europe, and the Horse- Guards' Cabinet. [\JuLYj 



new illusion has been prepared for her. The vision of political perfecti- 

 bility has been summoned up from the depths where it has lain for almost 

 half a century, to delude, dazzle, and madden France. Politics, not 

 war ; constitution, not conquest ; the equal freedom of all creeds, not 

 atheism by law ; the utmost discountenancing of all the adventitious di- 

 stinctions of birth, office, and title, yet not the abolition of ranks, nor re- 

 publican licence, are now the principles of the French patriots ; yet they 

 are dreams, and in France, of all countries on the globe, they are least 

 capable of being realized. They were the dreams of France in 1789, of 

 the States-General, of the National Assembly, of Lally Tolendal, of 

 Neckar, and even of the unfortunate Louis XVI. Then the dreamers 

 were roused from their sleep, like the dreamers in a storm ; and, for the 

 festive faces and brilliant lights of their fantastic banquet, they saw round 

 them the elements let loose, the royal ship tossed on a sea of darkness, 

 the thunders roaring above, the wave of blood rolling beneath, the 

 vessel loosening under their tread ; until the last struggle came, and all 

 went down. 



The philosophy, the religion, the politics, and the public opinion, of 

 France, have, at this moment, the strongest resemblance to those of the 

 age of Voltaire. The mummeries of the popish worship are as much 

 scoffed at ; the affectation of superiority to " all that the priest and that 

 the nurse have taught," is still as much a matter of pride ; the corruption 

 of manners among the higher orders is not more restrained ; and the only 

 difference seems to be, that the absurdity of politics has superseded the 

 absurdity of " philosophy ;" that the clergy, impoverished and degraded 

 by being made pensioners of the state, are still less fitted to resist the 

 torrent of scepticism ; that the nobility, broken by emigration and the 

 loss of their hereditary privileges and revenues, are still less fitted to stand 

 as a barrier against popular encroachment ; that the professions, deprived 

 of their offices and ancient connexion with the court, now universally look 

 to the popular interest for support ; and that the popular interest, formed 

 of an immense body of actual proprietors of land, distributed among them, 

 by the revolutionary, has been strengthened tenfold by its actual wealth 

 and independence, and fiftyfold by the relative extinction of all the great 

 bodies, the princely, noble, and ecclesiastical interests, that once formed 

 the outworks of the throne. 



The future can alone decide the new shape which those materials of 

 national evil will take ; but we may be fully assured, that, the Horse- 

 Guards' Cabinet will be impotent during the whole progress of the trans- 

 action ; that it will remonstrate and be laughed at, and suffer itself to be 

 laughed at ; and that it will console itself for the contempt in thc ! cer- 

 tainty that, let the world roll as it will, quarter-day will come round. 



Russia is contemptuous, cool, and indefatigably alive to her own ag- 

 grandisement. Having commenced the Turkish war in defiance of 

 England, she has concluded it in scorn of Europe. She has gained still 

 more by treaty than she could have gained by arms ; and now having 

 secured the head of the Euxine, and planted her garrisons in Armenia, 

 she has only to mature her strength, and be successively mistress of the 

 Euxine, the Dardanelles, and the Mediterranean. Her Asiatic prospects 

 are unlimited. The whole of'Tartary, up to the wall of China, is either 

 in her grasp, or in her influence. With two great provinces of Northern 

 Persia in her possession, she has the whole Persian empire at her mercy. 

 The first popular tumult, or disputed succession, will give her an excuse 



