e forcibly shows the little reflection with which even men of
sense read poetry. The cliff cannot be more than 400 feet high; and yet,
'how truly,' exclaims the historian of Dover, 'has Shakespeare described
the precipice!' How much better would the historian have done, had he
given us its actual elevation![86]

[86] _Memoirs_, ii. 116.

52. _Of Affairs on the Continent_, 1828.

LETTER TO A NEPHEW.

Rydal Mount, Nov. 27. 1828.

MY DEAR C----,

It gives me much pleasure to learn that your residence in France has
answered so well. As I had recommended the step, I felt more especially
anxious to be informed of the result. I have only to regret that you did
not tell me whether the interests of a foreign country and a brilliant
metropolis had encroached more upon the time due to academical studies
than was proper.

As to the revolution which Mr. D---- calculates upon, I agree with him
that a great change must take place, but not altogether, or even mainly,
from the causes which he looks to, if I be right in conjecturing that he
expects that the religionists who have at present such influence over
the king's mind will be predominant. The extremes to which they wish to
carry things are not sufficiently in the spirit of the age to suit their
purpose. The French monarchy must undergo a great change, or it will
fall altogether. A constitution of government so disproportioned cannot
endure. A monarchy, without a powerful aristocracy or nobility
graduating into a gentry, and so downwards, cannot long subsist. This is
wanting in France, and must continue to be wanting till the restrictions
imposed on the disposal of property by will, through the Code Napoleon,
are done away with: and it may be observed, by the by, that there is a
bareness, some would call it a simplicity, in that code which unfits it
for a complex state of society like that of France, so that evasions
and stretchings of its provisions are already found necessary, to a
degree which will ere long convince the French people of the necessity
of disencumbering themselves of it. But to return. My apprehension is,
that for the cause assigned, the French monarchy may fall before an
aristocracy can be raised to give it necessary support. The great
monarchies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, having not yet been subject
to popular revolutions, are still able to maintain themselves, through
the old feudal _forces_ and qualities, with something, not