The Anglican clergy was learned, hospitable, and generous; it had received the French clergy with true Christian charity. The University of Oxford printed at its own cost and distributed gratis among the curés a New Testament, according to the Latin Vulgate, with the imprint, "_In usum cleri Gallicani in Anglia exulantis._" As to the life of the English upper classes, I, a poor exile, saw nothing of it but the outside. On the occasion of receptions at Court or at the Princess of Wales's[346], ladies went by seated sideways in Sedan chairs; their great hoop-petticoats protruded through the door of the chair like altar-hangings. They themselves, on those altars of their waists, resembled madonnas or pagodas. Those fine ladies were the daughters whose mothers the Duc de Guiche and the Duc de Lauzun had adored; those daughters are, in 1822, the mothers and grandmothers of the little girls who now come to my house to dance in short frocks to the sound of Collinet's clarinet, swift generations of flowers. [Illustration: William Pitt.] [Sidenote: English statesmen.] The England of 1688 was, at the end of the last century, at the apogee of its glory. As a poor emigrant in London, from 1793 to 1800, I heard Pitt, Fox[347], Sheridan[348], Wilberforce[349], Grenville[350], Whitbread[351], Lauderdale[352], Erskine[353]; as a magnificent ambassador in London to-day, in 1822, I could not say how far I am impressed when, instead of the great orators whom I used to admire, I see those get up who were their seconds at the time of my first visit, the pupils in the place of the masters. General ideas have penetrated into that particular society. But the enlightened aristocracy placed at the head of this country since one hundred and forty years will have shown to the world one of the finest and greatest societies that have done honour to mankind since the Roman patricians. Perhaps some old family, seated in the depths of its county, will recognise the society which I have depicted and regret the time whose loss I here deplore. In 1792[354] Mr. Burke parted from Mr. Fox. The question at issue was the French Revolution, which Mr. Burke attacked and Mr. Fox defended. Never had the two orators, who till then had been friends, displayed such eloquence. The whole House was moved, and Mr. Fox's eyes were filled with tears when Mr. Burke concluded his speech with these words: