"What then?" quickly demanded Sheridan. "What is it to me if others have the nightmare, while I feel my eyes open? Burke, in his dreams, may dread the example of France; but I as little dread it as I should a fire at the Pole. He thinks that Englishmen have such a passion for foreign importations, that if the pestilence were raging on the other side of the Channel, we should send for specimens. My proposition is, that the example of France is more likely to make slaves of us than republicans." "Is it," asked W----, "to make us 'Fly from minor tyrants to the throne?'" "I laugh at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion, disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. If there is any peril to us, it is only from our meddling. The lunatic never revenges himself but on his keeper. I should leave the patient to the native doctors, or to those best of all doctors for mad nations, suffering, shame, and time. Chain, taunt, or torment the lunatic, and he rewards you by knocking out your brains." "Those are not exactly the opinions of our friend Charles," observed the prince with peculiar emphasis. "No," was the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and candle. But, as I do not like throwing away my trouble, I should let him alone." "The doctrine of confiscation is startling to all property," remarked the prince. "I wish Charles would remember, that his strength lies in the aristocracy." "No man knows it better," observed W----. "But I strongly doubt whether his consciousness of his own extraordinary talents is not at this moment tempting him to try a new source of hazard. The people, nay, the populace, are a new element to him, and to all. I can conceive a man of pre-eminent ability, as much delighted with difficulty as inferior men are delighted with ease. Fox has managed the aristocracy so long, and has bridled them with so much the hand of a master, that what he might have once considered as an achievement, he now regards as child's play. If Alexander's taming Bucephalus was a triumph for a noble boy, I scarcely think that, after passing the Granicus, he would have been proud of his fame as a horse-breaker. Fox sees, as all men see, that great changes, for either good or ill, are coming on the world. Next to that of a great king, perhaps the most tempting rank to ambition would be that of a great demagogue."