It's well enough agin a king To dror resolves and triggers, But libbaty 's a kind 'o thing That don't agree with niggers." On his arrival in London he has the happiness of meeting his old friend General Morris of Morrisania, and his wife. Gouverneur is presently over there, to see his brother; and in the intervals of dancing attendance at the opera on titled ladies--among them Lady Dunmore, whose husband desolated the Virginia coast,--he gets Paine's confidences.* Poor Paine was an easy victim of any show of personal kindness, especially when it seemed like the magnanimity of a political opponent. The historic sense may recognize a picturesque incident in the selection by Lafayette of Thomas Paine to convey the Key of the Bastille to Washington. In the series of intellectual and moral movements which culminated in the French Revolution, the Bastille was especially the prison of Paine's forerunners, the writers, and the place where their books were burned. "The gates of the Bastille," says Rocquain, "were opened wide for Abbés, savants, brilliant intellects, professors of the University and doctors of the Sorbonne, all accused of writing or reciting verses against the King, casting reflections on the Government, or publishing books in favor of Deism, and contrary to good morals. Diderot was one of the first arrested, and it was during his detention that he conceived the plan of his 'Encyclopedia.'" ** * "Diary," etc., i., pp. 339, 341. ** "L'Esprit revolutionaire avant la Revolution." A good service has just been done by Miss Hunting in translating and condensing the admirable historical treatise of M. Felix Rocquain on "The Revolutionary Spirit Preceding the Revolution," for which Professor Huxley has written a preface. The coming Key was announced to Washington with the following letters: "London, May 1, 1790.--Sir,--Our very good friend the Marquis de la Fayette has entrusted to my care the Key of the Bastille, and a drawing, handsomely framed, representing the demolition of that detestable prison, as a present to your Excellency, of which his letter will more particularly inform. I feel myself happy in being the person thro' whom the Marquis has conveyed this early trophy of the Spoils of despotism, and the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe, to his great master and patron. When he mentioned to me the present he intended you, my heart leaped with joy. It is something so truly in character that no remarks can illustrate it, and is more happily expressive of his remembrance of his American friends than any letters can convey. That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted, and therefore the Key comes to the right place.