I have seen England twice in my life: the first time in 1822. It was the period when the Holy Alliance, recently victorious and proud of its victories over the spirit of conquest of Napoleon, struggled against the newly-born liberalism, and was only occupied in every where restoring ancient regimes and ancient ideas. The government of England, held at that time by the intelligent heirs of a great man (Mr. Pitt), was a veritable contradiction to the true nature of the country of liberty; it had taken up the cause of absolute sovereigns against the nations; it made of the free and proud citizens of England the support and soldier of the Holy Alliance; it blindly combated the revolution, with its spirit and institutions, at home and every where else. England, by no means comfortable under such a government, hardly recognized herself. She felt by instinct that she was made to play the part of the _seide_ of despotism and of the church, in place of the part of champion of independent nationalities, and of the regulated liberty of thought which Mr. Pitt had conceived for her. Thus her tribunes, her public papers, her popular meetings, her very streets and public places rang with indignation against her government and her aristocracy. The ground trembled in London under the steps of the multitudes who assembled at the slightest appeal or opportunity; the language of the people breathed anger, their physiognomies hatred of class to class; hideous poverty hung up its tatters before the doors of the most sumptuous quarters; women in a state of emaciation, hectic children, and ghastly men were to be seen wandering with a threatening carelessness about shops and warehouses laden with riches; the constables and the troops were insufficient, after the scandalous prosecution of the queen, to bridle that perpetual sedition of discontent and of hunger. The painful consciousness of a tempest hanging over Great Britain was felt in the air. A cabinet, the author and victim of that false position, sank under the effort. A statesman sought in despair a refuge against the difficulties which he saw accumulating on his country, and which he could no longer dominate but by force. I avow that I myself, at that time young and a foreigner, and not yet knowing either the solidity or the elasticity of the institutions and the manners of England, was deceived, like every body else, by these sinister symptoms of a fall, and that I prognosticated, as every body else also did, the approaching decline and fall of that great and mysterious country. The ministry of Mr. Canning placed me happily in the wrong.