nomy, in classes where those useful virtues are so necessary, and yet so generally neglected, while he seemed chiefly intent on exciting a smile. On subjects of general politics and political economy he certainly entertained some erroneous opinions. His constitution of Pennsylvania was such as he must, upon mature deliberation, have disapproved of; it was of the sort to which men of some talents but of mean ambition are always partial, inasmuch as it renders their assistance at all times necessary, and their supremacy unayoidable; and his ideas on luxury, on commerce, and on agriculture, as the only source of national prosperity, will but serve, perhaps, to mislead some modern statesman, who, without his integrity, his good sense, and his practical experience, may, for our sins, be placed for a time at the head of the nation; such a one, and perhaps he is already in being, may fancy himself a philosopher too, and may be for ascertaining under what circumstances the people of America can exist, and upon how little, and how long; and may be trying experiments upon us as upon animals in an air pump: there is another subject upon which it would have been highly interesting to have learned the opinion of Dr. Franklin. It would have been highly interesting to know what he thought, when arrived at the maturity of reason and experience, of the ultimate effect of the revolution upon the happiness of those, whose fate had been involved in that great event. He could not, I think, but have rejoiced, that the noble stand made by the people of America, had tended to preserve the liberties even of those against whom their exertions were directed, and who certainly have not declined in any one circumstance of national prosperity. I am here a witness, even upon this hostile shore, of the admiration which their fearless perseverance, and their unshaken public spirit can create, for never was their power more irresistible at sea, and never were their triumphs more splendid. On our side, without any great addition to individual happiness, there has certainly been a very great increase of all which bespeaks national prosperity, and we have been saved, perhaps, from that degrading state of ignorance, of gross enjoyment, and lazy luxury, which Barrow and Percival describe in the wealthy planter of Ceylon and southern Africa. The mind of the American has now a scope which it could never, but for the revolution, have attained. Numbers have made laws, have administered justice, have drawn up forms of government, and have concluded treaties, who, but for the revolution, would have been toiling at the humblest avocations of the bar, or of commerce, or, perhaps have been following the plough. General Washington would have been known but as the most industrious, the most silent, and the best drest man of his neighbourhood, and all the active merit of general Greene

would have remained obscured under the modest garb and demeanor of a quaker. It might have been better, perhaps, if while we resolutely adhered to the practice of our ancestors in matters of jurisprudence, those who formed the federal constitution had retained a little more of what Mr. Burke calls the drapery of life; if the first magistrate, being removed by forms and ceremonies somewhat further from society, had retained some honours and distinctions at his disposal; if a degree of permanency had been given to the public esteem by attaching somewhat of an hereditary nature to personal dignity, and an order of men had thus gradually arisen, in whom the pride of ancestry and the example of noble deeds might have opposed a barrier against that alldevouring desire of amassing wealth, by which foreigners pretend to say our nation is characterised, a desire which, however laudable in many instances, is yet certainly very frequently at variance with the laws of honour and propriety: such an order might, upon other occasions, have rendered still more important services: their patronage would have cherished the arts, and promoted the sciences, and like the barons of Runnemede or the nobility and gentry of England in 1688, they might have found the best defence of liberty, in the proper acceptation of a word, which has been so much abused of late years.

The only calamitous effect of our revolution arises, I think, from the fermentation it has occasioned in Europe, and even we of the United States and our descendants may have reason to regret, that the successful termination of it should have proved how easily oaths of allegiance can be dispensed with; how easily the most salutary prejudices, the most deeply rooted principles may be dissolved, and the props of society removed: a charm has been destroyed, which, operating powerfully upon the human mind, was necessary to good government, and adventurers of desperate fortune will find it easier to promote their views by any expedient which avarice and ambition, disguised under all that eloquence has invented in favour of liberty can dictate. Individual states too, who may think themselves aggrieved, and may wish to separate from the general government, will find arguments ready made for the purpose, and will not hesitate to exercise that privilege against the union which was so successfully exercised against Great Britain.

But I am ashamed to have deviated so far from my narration. We passed the river at Sevre where the manufactory is carried on, which produces the beautiful porcelaine, commonly called Seve china. It is equal to all that has been said of it, and after declining, as every other great national establishment did, during the revolution, now flourishes again under the peculiar patronage of the emperor. He makes pre

sents hence to such of the sovereigns of Europe as he condescends to be civil to, and has two vases that form the principal ornament of his gallery at St. Cloud, which were made here, and which are valued at four thousand pounds sterling each. The clay made use of is brought at a great expense from a distant part of France, and affords an instance of how much the value of the raw material may be increased by the ingenuity of a skilful artist; this is the case, we know, with flax, made into lace, of which I have seen a yard valued at eighty louisdors, and of iron, one penny worth of which, being converted into steel, and made up into watch springs, acquires ultimately a value of thirty thousand pounds sterling.

In the war of the succession to the crown of Spain, the power of France was so broken, that a partisan of the imperial army carried off one of the attendants of the dauphin, supposing him to be the dauphin himself, from the bridge of Sevre.

We arrived at the palace through the town of Versailles, which, from a village, had become a city of eighty thousand inhabitants, but is now reduced to thirty thousand. The proper road, as affording the most magnificent approach, is through a noble avenue of ancient trees. At the distance of about a quarter of a mile from the palace are the stables, which seem almost preposterously magnificent for the purpose intended: from the stables you pass along to a first and to a second court, at the bottom of which stands the principal building, which appears on this side as Louis XIII left it, but with very handsome appendages in the nature of wings and in a superior style of architecture. It was in this last court, that the mob of Paris, which Mr. Burke has so well described, was for a moment awed into respect by the appearance of the queen in the centre balcony with the dauphin in her arms. Every lover of architecture must regret, that Louis XIV, who was not apt to calculate the value of money, should have been here seized with a fit of economy, and left the old palace, which had served as a hunting seat to his father, just as he found it, rather than pull it down: it is on the garden side that the magnificence of Versailles appears; the palace is here spread out to an extent of eighteen hundred feet, and adorned with all that the art of sculpture could bring to the aid of architecture; in the centre is a portico six hundred feet in length, supported by marble pillars of the handsomest workmanship. The terrace, which extends the full breadth of the palace, projects between five and six hundred feet towards the country: it is, in fact, an artificial hill of no mean extent, being partly raised upon arches and partly consist-, ing of a mass of earth brought here for the purpose. It must have cost a considerable part of the millions lavished upon Versailles: hence at.

an elevation of about twenty or thirty feet from the original level, the view wanders over no very extensive prospects, but over objects, which, like St. Cyr, which is seen among the trees at a distance, carry back the mind, and generally with a sigh, to the recollection of former times. The gardens are kept in good order; they have an air of insipid formality, but I can conceive their inspiring a very different sensation, when the ornaments of a brilliant and numerous court were moving along the principal walks, amidst a number of marble fountains, a profusion of water, an endless variety of statues, and various handsome buildings erected for the temporary accommodation of the royal family and their attendants. It was in these that Lewis XIV gave those entertainments which attracted the admiration of all Europe, and of which he had frequently the good sense to make a piece of Moliere's the principal amusement. It was customary with him upon these occasions, to have refreshments of every sort prepared for the court with all the display of plenty that you read of at Comachio's wedding in Don Quixotte; but instead of the wall of bread, and the goodly rampart of cheese, and the kettles of poultry which captivated Sancho, there used to be a sort of mountain, the grottoes of which contained every dish that could solicit the appetite, and the seeming facade of a handsome building, that was all cake and confectionary, and pyramids of sweetmeats, and hillocs of sugar plums, and ornamental vases containing liquors of every sort, and a little grove of trees bending with the weight of preserved fruits of various kinds, while a column of water rising from the midst of this to the height of thirty feet, and received, as it feel, in a circular marble basin, gave an additional charm to the beauty and variety of the

scene.

One of the favourite amusements of this great king was to see people eat, and those (says St. Simons) who wished to pay their court, were sure to affect a good appetite and great spirits. The great canal, which is now dry, must have added considerably to the prospect, while the vessels of singular forms, in all the gaudiness of flags and streamers, gave to the whole an air of oriental magnificence. It was nearly a mile in length and upwards of two hundred feet broad, and was connected at the upper extremity with a branch which led to Trianon, a favourite place of residence of Louis XV, who vainly supposed that he could banish from it all the constraint and formality of a court. The late queen had improved upon the idea and constructed a little Trianon where she amused herself with a cottage and a mill and with the appendages of a farm, and something like the appearance of rural life, and soothed her imagination with privacy, and happy would it have been for her, had she never returned from such scenes to politics, which she knew nothing of, and to court intrigues, of which she was

made the victim. It was not in the nature of the king to differ from a wife he adored, and her opinion was too frequently founded upon the interest, or, perhaps, mischievous suggestions of some accidental counsellor. Her own experience could be of no avail; she was young, handsome, and a queen, and had never bestowed a moment's attention upon any thing more serious or instructive than a novel; her conversation was gay, unconnected, and trifling, made up frequently of the scandal of the day; any thing relative to business made her look grave, and from gravity to ennui the transition was rapid and apparent: she was, with all this, unfortunately fond of power, and thought herself capable of governing a kingdom. The baron de Besonval, from whose memoirs I have extracted the above character of this unfortunate queen, concludes by saying, that it was her fate to go wrong with the best intentions, and to displease by those very qualities which might, in private life, have secured the love and admiration of all around her: too familiar at times in some private circle, and thinking only of being amiable, when she should have inspired a very different sentiment, and again compelled on some public occasion, to reassume the dignity of her station, she lost, by a change of behaviour, which was inevitable, the regard of those whom she had made her equals, and was accused, without reason, of being frivolous and inconstant.

The expensive water works, which supplied the different fountains, have been very properly neglected, but the garden is, in other respects, well attended to, and the orangerie is in great perfection; the trees are sheltered in vaults under the terrace in winter, but are brought out in summer, and must add considerably to the beauty of the view. Some of them are as old as the time of Francis I.

After walking about for some time, we entered the palace by the great marble staircase and passed through a suite of rooms, which were formerly appropriated to the guards on duty, into the great gallery, which is one of the finest in the world. I well remember the sensation which I experienced on entering it many years ago, when numbers were waiting with an eagerness, which had more of affection than of curiosity to see the royal family and particularly the queen, who was then, as Mr. Burke describes her, just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she was beginning to move in—a sad change has taken place; the pomp of royalty is fled, and all is solitary and silent; it reminded me of Mr. Gibbon's description of the palace of Constantinople, when Sultan Mahomet entered it after taking the city by storm; melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness, says the historian, forced itself upon the conqueror's mind as he entered the august and desolate mansion, and he was heard to repeat to himself the very applicable distich of a Persian poet, who, in describD d

VOL. II.