51)4 England at the Close of IS31. [Dec. 



settled ; plots and counterplots still distract the pillow of King Leo- 

 pold the lazy ; his army is still learning its exercise, his generals are 

 still Frenchmen, and he is still threatened with another safeguard in 

 the menacing shape of a French wife. The King of Holland is still 

 talking of war, still proud of the triumphs of a week's campaign against 

 the peasants and shopkeepers of Belgium, and still giving medals and 

 orders, d la Napoleon, for the burning of a few Belgian farm-houses. 

 By one of the absurdities which sometimes make diplomacy ridiculous, 

 this king, whom the fifty-five protocols exclude from all authority in 

 Belgium, is yet sanctioned in liis retaining the title of King of the 

 Netherlands ; on the same wise principle in which Napoleon, when 

 stripped of his throne, and sent to Elba, was suffered to call himself 

 Emperor — a sufferance which he soon exalted into a claim, and a claim 

 which cost a hundred thousand lives, and a hundred millions of money. 

 We may not suspect the icy blood of the Dutchman of this impetuosity, 

 but what are we to say for the brains of the diplomatists who encourage 

 an ambition so senseless, for an object so recently acquired as the Nether- 

 land's sovereignty ? so foolishly mismanaged, and so ridiculously thrown 

 away. 



Poland is vibrating between the chances of being nominally and really 

 a Russian province. The Czai-'s first decree alludes to it as a " king- 

 dom," but the few and meagre accounts which are suffered to reach 

 the European ear, describe Poland as a serf, more than ever reduced to 

 vassalage ; the nobles flying in all directions through the world, Siberia 

 the destination or the fear of every man who had taken a part in the 

 late struggles, and the Russian army not merely the lords of the soil, 

 but almost the only inhabitants of Cracow and Warsaw. 



France, having abolished the hereditary peerage, has proceeded to 

 make a whole crowd of new peers. The German states are undisturbed, 

 but by apprehensions of what France may do in the first effervescence 

 of her volatile spirit. Italy still murmurs, but it is too idle, too monk- 

 ish, and too operatic, for any serious effort. The old definition of the 

 Roman popidar mind. Nee totani servilutem jjati possiuit, nee fotam liber- 

 tateni, is true of the modern Italians, to the letter. They must always 

 have the picture of freedom before them, to amuse their eyes, and per- 

 suade them against all conviction that they are capable of pubhc virtue. 

 But then — while the hero is buckling on his sword, the actor rehearsing 

 his speech, and the poet concluding his first stanza on the glories of the 

 young Republic — the bill of the night's opera, laid upon his table, puts 

 posterity and its pomps to flight ; he throws by all sublunary things, to 

 hear three hours of fiddling, cavatinas and choruses, for the fiftieth 

 time in the season ; is an Italian to all intents and purposes for that 

 night, and will be, fc^r every night to come — imtil the doctor or the 

 dungeon tells him that the world has closed upon him, and that he has 

 seen his last opera. 



Portugal still flourishes, defying King Pedro and all his works, 

 keeping Spain as a rear-guard, holding France in half-pay, and England 

 at arm's length. We have no love for Don IMiguel, but we are just as 

 little enamoured of Don Pedro. The marriage of the little Donna 

 Maria de Dolores with her own uncle, is not so much to our English 

 taste, as to make us regret that she is deprived of the match ; and 

 whether Teneriffe or Terceira constitute her empire, tlie only question 

 which concerns us is, whether this mighty war will raise or diminish 

 the price of white wine ! 



