he is confident.' Instead of feeling that he is specially bound to guard his language with the most scrupulous care, and to abstain religiously from every offensive expression, he mounts into regions of scurrility and abuse inaccessible to all other men, and he riots in invective and insult with a scornful and ostentatious exhibition of his invulnerability, which renders him an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and the feelings of honour. November 29th, 1835 {p.321} There are gloomy letters from George Villiers at Madrid; he attributes the Spanish difficulties more to the conduct of Louis Philippe than anything else, who, he says, is playing false diabolically. Mendizabal is very able, but ill surrounded; no other public man of any merit. Parties are violent and individuals foolish, mischievous, and corrupt; the country poor, depopulated, ignorant--out of such elements what good can come? His letters (to his mother and brothers) are very interesting, very well written, clever, lively; he seems a little carried away by the vanity and the excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the _positive_ state of society and the moral and political condition of the nation. December 4th, 1835 {p.322}