I feel the gales that from ye blow, . . . . . . My weary soul they seem to soothe, And redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring. Say, Father Thames,... . . . . . . What idle progeny succeed To chase the rolling circle's speed Or urge the flying ball? Alas! regardless of their doom The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day[344]. Who has not experienced the feelings and regrets here expressed with all the sweetness of the muse? Who has not softened at the recollection of the games, the studies, the loves of his early years? But can they be revived? The pleasures of youth reproduced by the memory are ruins seen by torchlight. * Separated from the Continent by a long war, the English at the end of the last century preserved their national manners and character. There was still but one people, in whose name the sovereign power was wielded by an aristocratic government; only two great friendly classes existed, bound by a common interest: the patrons and the dependents. That jealous class called the bourgeoisie in France, which is beginning to arise in England, was then not known: nothing came between the rich land-owners and the men occupied with their trades. Everything had not yet become machinery in the manufacturing professions, folly in the privileged classes. Along the same pavements where one now sees dirty faces and men in surtouts, passed little girls in white cloaks, with straw-hats fastened under the chin with a ribbon, a basket on their arm, containing fruit or a book; all kept their eyes lowered, all blushed when one looked at them: "Britain," says Shakespeare, is "in a great pool, a swan's nest[345]." Surtouts without coats beneath were so little worn in London in 1793 that a woman who was weeping bitterly over the death of Louis XVI. said to me: "But, my dear sir, is it true that the poor King was dressed in a surtout when they cut off his head?" The "gentlemen farmers" had not yet sold their patrimony in order to come and live in London; in the House of Commons they still formed the independent fraction which, acting in opposition to the Ministry, kept up ideas of liberty, order and property. They hunted the fox or shot pheasants in autumn, ate fat geese at Christmas, shouted "Hurrah" for roast beef, grumbled at the present, praised the past, cursed Pitt and the war, which sent up the price of port, and went to bed drunk to begin the same life over again next day. They were firmly convinced that the glory of Great Britain would never fade so long as they sang _God save the King_, maintained the rotten boroughs, kept the game laws in vigour, and sent hares and partridges to market by stealth under the name of "lions" and "ostriches."