tion. I shall still keep
your affairs in my eye, and continue to address myself to you. Indulging
myself in the freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg leave to throw
out my thoughts and express my feelings just as they arise in my mind,
with very little attention to formal method. I set out with the
proceedings of the Revolution Society; but I shall not confine myself to
them. Is it possible I should? It looks to me as if I were in a great
crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps
of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French
Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the
world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by
means the most absurd and ridiculous, in the most ridiculous modes, and
apparently by the most contemptible instruments. Everything seems out of
nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of
crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this
monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily
succeed and sometimes mix with each other in the mind: alternate
contempt and indignation, alternate laughter and tears, alternate scorn
and horror.

It cannot, however, be denied that to some this strange scene appeared
in quite another point of view. Into them it inspired no other
sentiments than those of exultation and rapture. They saw nothing in
what has been done in France but a firm and temperate exertion of
freedom,--so consistent, on the whole, with morals and with piety as to
make it deserving not only of the secular applause of dashing
Machiavelian politicians, but to render it a fit theme for all the
devout effusions of sacred eloquence.

* * * * *

On the forenoon of the fourth of November last, Doctor Richard Price, a
Non-Conforming minister of eminence, preached at the Dissenting
meeting-house of the Old Jewry, to his club or society, a very
extraordinary miscellaneous sermon, in which there are some good moral
and religious sentiments, and not ill expressed, mixed up with a sort of
porridge of various political opinions and reflections: but the
Revolution in France is the grand ingredient in the caldron. I consider
the address transmitted by the Revolution Society to the National
Assembly, through Earl Stanhope, as originating in the principles of
the sermon, and as a corollary from them. It was moved by the preach