nic good-fellowship, I could not help asking myself whether
Lavater was not quack and physiognomy a folly? Could this be the
dashing Revolutionist? No plodder over the desk ever wore a more
broadcloth countenance; an occasional smile was the only indication of
his interest in what was passing around him. He evidently avoided
taking a share in the discussion of his Transatlantic career, probably
from delicacy to his English auditor. But when the conversation turned
upon France, the man came forth, and he vindicated his conduct with a
spirit and fulness that told me what he might have been when the blood
of youth was added to the glow of the imagination. He was now
evidently exhausted by toil, and dispirited by disappointment. No man
could be more thoroughly ruined; baffled in theory, undone in
practice--an exile from his country, a fugitive from his
troops--overwhelmed by the hopelessness of giving a constitution to
France, and with nothing but the dungeon before him, and the crash of
the guillotine behind.

"What was to be done?" said Lafayette. "France was bankrupt--the
treasury was empty--the profligate reign of Louis XV. had at once
wasted the wealth, dried up the revenues, and corrupted the energies
of France. Ministers wrung their hands, the king sent for his
confessor, the queen wept--but the nation groaned. There was but one
expedient, to call on the people. In 1787 the Assembly of the Notables
was summoned. It was the first time since the reign of Henry IV.
France had been a direct and formal despotism for almost two hundred
years. She had seen England spread from an island into an empire; she
had seen America spread from a colony into an empire. What had been
the worker of the miracle?--Liberty. While all the despotisms remained
within the boundaries fixed centuries ago, like vast dungeons, never
extending, and never opening to the light and air, except through the
dilapidations of time, I saw England and America expanding like
fertile fields, open to every breath of heaven and every beam of day,
expanding from year to year by the cheerful labour of man, and every
year covered with new productiveness for the use of universal mankind.
I own that there may have been rashness in urging the great
experiment--there may have been a dangerous disregard of the actual
circumstances of the people, the time, and the world--the daring hand
of the philosopher may have drawn down the lightning too suddenly to
be safe; the p