possibly alter[4] at the revision which is to take place next year, those particularly which limit the entrance to the Chamber of Deputies to men of forty, and which give the initiation of laws to the King. But on the whole it is a good sign that they should alter so little, and looks like extreme caution and a dislike to rapid and violent changes. [4] They are altered. The first translation of the Charter which I read was incorrect. [Page Head: POLIGNAC.] In the meantime we hear nothing of the old King, who marches slowly on with his family. It has been reported in London that Polignac is here, and also that he is taken. Nobody knows the truth. I have heard of his behaviour, however, which was worthy of his former imbecility. He remained in the same presumptuous confidence up to the last moment, telling those who implored him to retract while it was still time that they did not know France, that he did, that it was essentially Royalist, and all resistance would be over in a day or two, till the whole ruin burst on him at once, when he became like a man awakened from a dream, utterly confounded with the magnitude of the calamity and as pusillanimous and miserable as he had before been blind and confident. It must be owned that their end has been worthy of the rest, for not one of them has evinced good feeling, or magnanimity, or courage in their fall, nor excited the least sympathy or commiseration. The Duke of Fitzjames made a good speech in the Chamber of Peers, and Chateaubriand a very fine one a few days before, full of eloquence in support of the claim of the Duke of Bordeaux against that of Louis Philippe I. In the meantime our elections here are still going against Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery. It is astonishing the interest the people generally take in the slavery question, which is the work of the Methodists, and shows the enormous influence they have in the country. The Duke (for I have not seen him) is said to be very easy about the next Parliament, whereas, as far as one can judge, it promises to be quite as unmanageable as the last, and is besides very ill composed--full of boys and all sorts of strange men. August 20th, 1830 {p.029}