1840-42. ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE. 285 



like me. Government there has all the university patronage 

 in its hands, and young men of promise seldom fail to get on. 

 Did not I_meet a young fellow a little older than myself, who 

 was Professor in the Prague University, and had, in addition, 

 money and two years allowed him to travel where he listed ? 

 It would little vex me that there was censorship on the press, 

 unless it should go the length of the Eussian one, which pre- 

 vented a traveller bringing into the country a work entitled 

 ' Eevolutions of the Heavenly Bodies.' The inspector took 

 alarm at the first word, and objected to any revolutionary work 

 being admitted. In vain did the traveller assure him that it 

 . was only an astronomical treatise. It did not matter, they did 

 not approve of revolutions of any sort. The fatherland has 

 many charms for me, which are likely delusive enough ; but 

 my motherland has charms too, and I believe I shall live and 

 die in her much-loved arms. Now I have had my grumble out, 

 and am a great deal the better for it. It's like a ' good cry' to a 

 young lady. 



" I have been reading the two concluding volumes of Alison's 

 ' History of Europe.' He proves to demonstration that it's de- 

 mocracy is doing us all the mischief ; and can name the very 

 hour when we began to decline. All which I neither believe 

 nor disbelieve, knowing nothing about the matter. I am a sort 

 of aristocratical democrat, and abuse no abstract party, seeing 

 plenty of knaves in all of them, a slender sprinkling of men 

 with heads on their shoulders, and the great mass selfish rogues, 

 who strive to be as little dishonest as they can. 



"As a literary performance Alison excited my unbounded 

 contempt. A more wretched style, alternating between the 

 flattest monotony and the most outrageous bombast, no histo- 

 rian ever got hold of. In my literary circle he has caused us 

 the greatest diversion by his 'havers.' He is a very honest, 

 impartial writer, and deserving all praise for the pains he has 

 taken. Twenty- eight years were spent upon it, fourteen in 

 travel and study, and fourteen in composition. His battle de- 

 scriptions are, I suppose, excelled by those of no civilian, and 

 I read many of them, for example the Moscow campaign, with 

 pleasure. But when he comes to moralize or generalize, he 



