Pitt yet clung to the hope of an impossible peace; already Lord Gower, the English Ambassador at Paris, had been recalled; Chauvelin and his clever secretary Talleyrand, were in London, but not as yet in any official capacity. Chauvelin was about to present his credentials in the name of the French Republic, when the condemnation and death of Louis XVI. abruptly terminated the relations which still existed between revolutionary France and monarchical countries. On the day following (January 21st, 1793), almost all England went into mourning, and Chauvelin received his passports. An order of recall had already been sent him from Paris. On the 1st of February the Convention declared war against Holland. The terrible burden of the defence of Europe against the advance of the arms and doctrines of the French Revolution was to fall principally upon England, and the sagacious minister who directed her policy. The reverses which his country was to experience, and the obstacles which she was to overcome, saddened the latter part of the life of Mr. Pitt, and partly obscured his glory. {365} The principles which he advocated were nevertheless true and eternal, and the services that he rendered to preserve the peace and equilibrium of Europe were incomparable. He succumbed beneath the weight of a struggle, the obstinacy of which was not foreseen by Lord Chatham during his triumphs in 1760; by his courageous persistence he prepared the way for the victories of Wellington. His name, but recently reviled by so many tongues upon the continent, and even in his own country, has remained the foremost among those who have sustained the cause of independence and of the liberty of nations in Europe. He has alone had the signal honor to maintain England within the bounds of constitutional order during the midst of revolutionary tempests, and the still greater glory of leaving her free.