LXVII.
About this period I read for the first time the speeches of Fox and Pitt. I thought Fox declamatory, though prosaic; one of those cavilling minds, born to gainsay, rather than to say,—lawyers without gowns, with mere lip-conscience, who plead above all for their own popularity. I saw in Pitt a statesman whose words were deeds, and who in the crash of Europe maintained his country, almost alone, on the foundation of his good sense, and the consistency of his character. Pitt was Mirabeau, with less impulse and more integrity. Mirabeau and Pitt became, and have ever continued to be, my favorite statesmen of modern days. Compared to them, I saw in Montesquieu only erudite, ingenious, and systematical dissertations; Fénelon seemed to me divine, but chimerical; Rousseau, more impassioned than inspired, greater by instinct than by truth; while Bossuet, with his golden eloquence and fawning soul, united, in his conduct and his language before Louis XIV., doctoral despotism with the complaisance of a courtier. From these studies of history and oratory I naturally passed on to politics. The remembrance of the imperial yoke which had just been shaken off, and my abhorrence of the military rule to which we had been subjected, impelled me towards liberty. On the other hand, family recollections; the influence of daily associations; the touching situation of a royal family, passing from a throne to a scaffold or to exile, and brought back from exile to a throne; the orphan princess in the palace of her fathers; those old men, crowned by misfortune as much as by their ancestry; those young princes, schooled by stern adversity, from whom so much might be expected,—all made me hope that new-born liberty might be made to accord with the ancient monarchy of our forefathers. The government would thus have possessed the two most potent spells in all human affairs,—antiquity and novelty; memory and hope. It was a fair dream, and most natural at my age. Each succeeding day, however, dispelled a portion of that dream. I perceived with grief that old forms but ill contain new ideas; that monarchy and liberty would never hold together in one bond without a perpetual struggle; that in that struggle the strength of the state would be exhausted, that monarchy would be constantly suspected, liberty constantly betrayed.