These circumstances (nor must the charm of novelty be excluded) united in favour of the king, and won every head and every heart. He appeared--he was received with acclamations of love and gladness, which resounded until he entered the palace of his forefathers. No counter revolution ever effected the change of a royal dynasty, under such favourable auspices. The French nation felt jaded by civil dissensions, by misfortune--even their victories had weaned them. They longed for the happiness of repose. Memorable were the words of the king's brother; "let us forget the past, let us look only towards the future, let us all unite in the good work of labouring to heal the wounds of our common country;" and these honoured precepts had become implanted in every mind. They formed the canon of all our feelings and all our duties. As long as the machinery of the new government did not begin to work, this loyal harmony subsisted, and no longer. For when it became necessary to settle the organization of the army, the ministry, and the magistracy, then self-love gained an easy victory over patriotism, and the bad passions, pride, ambition, and party-hatred, roused themselves from their slumber. During a quarter of a century, our emigrants had sojourned in a strange country. Useless and troublesome guests to the strangers by whom they were fed, their lives had been droned away in shameless and cowardly idleness. They could not cheat themselves into a belief that they possessed the talents and experience of the sons of the revolution. But they imagined that nobility, as in the old time, might pass for worth; and that their patents and pedigrees still gave them a right to monopolize all power and all honour. The citizens, the soldiers, the nation, relied on the lawfulness of their rights no less than on the promises of the king. The members of the old privileged caste, instead of exciting suspicion, were only the objects of harmless mirth. The people laughed at the grotesque appearance of some, and at the decrepit sottishness of others. They never dreamed that these pretended warriors, whose bloodless swords had rusted in their scabbards, would attempt to snatch the staff of command from the veteran generals of France; and that nobles who had grown old in sloth and ignorance would aspire to the direction of public affairs. But though merit and valour were denied to them, they stood upon a vantage ground, which gave them a direful and incalculable preponderance in the state. They surrounded the throne. Soon did their insolence announce that they had craftily availed themselves of the advantages which they possessed; and we foresaw with affliction that inveterate prejudice, malignant prepossessions, and old habits of familiarity, would, sooner or later, crush the principles of justice and equity, however solemnly proclaimed.