504 England and Europe in October 1830. [Nov. 



The bank is drawing in its discounts : and while night after night some 

 levy of the mob threatens to throw the whole government into the Seine, 

 and the National Guard are compelled to be under arms by 50,000 at a 

 time, no man can tell at what moment there may not be an explosion 

 which will wrap France in ruin. 



Belgium has accomplished its separation from Holland : another 

 triumph of the populace. Prince Frederic of Orange has been beaten 

 at the head of an army, by waiters at taverns, hair-dressers, fiddlers, and 

 tailors ; and to make the matter worse, all of them Flemings besides. 

 Neither the Dutch cannon nor the Dutch eloquence, could make the 

 Burghers of Brussels give them any thing in return, but potsherds, 

 pikes, quick lime, and showers of oil of vitriol from windows, roofs, and 

 chimney-tops. The Dutch, after three days of this salutation, measured 

 back their steps, and now the Prince of Orange is walking about the 

 streets of Antwerp, " guarded only by the love of the citizens," who 

 will, in all probability, soon send him back to his royal father, as an 

 encumbrance to liberty. 



Prussia is in terror. A squabble between four tailors, a week or two 

 since, brought out the whole garrison of Berlin. The princes rode at 

 the head of the troops through the streets, and the turbulent tailors were 

 ordered to keep their hands from public quarrel in future. But the 

 tailors will quarrel again ; and before they have done, may provide the 

 military monarch with a costume of the French republican pattern. 



Austria is in terror. She is sending jailers to Italy by the hundred 

 thousand. All her Italian fortresses, prisons, palaces, and galleys, every 

 spot which can keep out an enemy, or keep in a subject, are undergoing 

 a thorough repair. Her time will come. We shall see the Archdukes 

 in arms, and the black eagle with fifty heads instead of two. 



Russia is in terror. The Czar never sets foot in St. Petersburg!!, 

 without recollecting his adventures in Moscow ; rebellion is (t scotched 

 but not killed." Poland's memory is not extinguished yet. (( Kosciusko" 

 is still a watchword. But unless the Czar be grasped by his own 

 courtiers as his father was, or be overwhelmed by a general rising of 

 the troops, as his brother Alexander had so nearly been, he may be 

 safer from immediate disturbance than any continental king. But he 

 will have no objection to see the dogs of war let slip in Europe. Turkey 

 is still before him : a fortnight's march would seat him in Constantinople. 

 He would now find no messenger of Metternich to check his Cossacks ; 

 no brother of that patient Scot, Lord Aberdeen, to say to his cuirassiers, 

 thus far shall ye go and no farther ; no Frenchman to grimace him out 

 of his conquest, and deprive the new Attila of the plunder, living and 

 dead, of the Seraglio. These are stirring times. At this hour there is 

 not a Sovereign of Europe, from the solemn Emperor of Austria, to the 

 expatriated Duke of Brunswick, who is not in hourly dread of some 

 formidable change in his diadem. One exception alone there is, and we 

 say it in no flattery the King of England ! William the Fourth has 

 done more to make the people interested about him than any King of 

 Europe ! From the day on which he ascended the throne, he had 

 shewn so good-natured, and unsophisticated a wish to do every thing 

 to please the nation, that he has perfectly succeeded ; and let whatever 

 change come, he is secure. His Queen is conducting herself like an 

 English gentlewoman of the highest order j and both the royal persons 

 may rely upon it, that they have taken the true way at once to do their 

 duty, and to establish their throne ! 



