found it necessary to imagine myself in the act of addressing indulgent friends. This is the secret of the Epistolary form of the Work.

I

The reader will perceive I did not carry back with me from Great Britain the Anglomania, which has been objected against the respectable counsellor of the Cour Royale. have endeavoured to see everything without prejudice, and not to put entire faith in those Cicérones, who uniformly persuade foreigners that any given monument under actual inspection, is one of the seven wonders of the world. It has been my desire more especially, to judge for myself, and not to rely upon hearsay, except supported by demonstration. I am not sanguine enough to suppose that I have by so doing in all cases avoided being deceived; but I can affirm that my errors are never errors of bad faith; and I shall always be willing, on proper explanation, to retract my statements. I feel myself also called upon to state, that as to what regards the moral physiognomy of English Society, such as I have attempted to sketch it, my remarks apply to the period of my visit, which was paid to Great Britain under the Viziership of Lord Castlereagh, whose fatal influence pro

longed its duration for some time under the administration of Mr. Canning. There was at that period, a marked contrast between the general politics of England, and the principles of morality, liberalism, and dignity, paraded by its Oligarchy. I certainly feel no inclination to pronounce Mr. Canning a man of exclusive genius; but it will be seen that as early as the period of my seeing him at Liverpool, I described him as the man of talent and tact whom England wanted, in order to extricate her from the false position in which his predecessor had succeeded in plunging her. If Mr. Canning continues as he has done, to make prudent concessions to the new interests of the people of Europe, created by twentyfive years of revolution, there cannot be a doubt that the national character of England will be raised by it, and that British prosperity will be the result of his system. As far as concerned the immediate interest of the monarch, was it not the fact, that the anti-liberal ministry of Castlereagh daily imparted new fuel and new energy to the inevitable re-action of radicalism, while a few simple promises and acts of Mr. Canning have brought back to the foot of the throne, a multitude of

whigs, who were on the point of extending their hands to the partizans of revolutionary reform? Under these considerations, it is painful for a Frenchman to revert to his own country, where a minister of narrow and egotistical views, is compromising the interests of the throne by an insidious course of policy, and gradually degrading the national character by a system of corruption and jobbing, worthy at once of Sir R.Walpole and the Abbé Terray. I may, perhaps, be told in this place, that politics ought to be banished from a work announced to be of a literary character. The wish to exclude politics from literature, is a manœuvre of ministerial chicanery. How can literature be the reflection of the social image, if prohibited from referring to associations which are naturally obtruded on all reflecting minds? We should not be surprised at the French ministry patronizing in fine phraseology, the system pretendingly called classical, but which ought to be called ministerial; a system which tends to deprive France of her popular literature, by condemning authors to the continual invocation of the divinities and heroes of Rome and Athens, or to the disfigurement of national

subjects, by forms exclusively appertaining to antiquity. The less we attend to our national history, the less watchful we shall be of the existing government. It was not so with our Greek and Roman models. Epopee, tragedy,' comedy, ode, satire, everything with them had a political object. In conformity with this system, even under the empire, the muse of Claudian took upon herself to exonerate the Gods, when Rufinus had exhausted their long indurance.

The French ministry would, no doubt, prefer having no other association with literature, than such as is furnished by subscriptions and dedications. Unfortunately for them, our literature daily assumes a character of more decided independence. The flower of French talent is in the ranks of the opposition, and the unpopular ministers have the daily mortification of seeing it beat out of the field whatever intellectual eminence may have lent them a transitory assistance.

As to myself (for the reader naturally wishes to know something of the opinions of a traveller, who relating what he has seen and heard, in conformity with his personal prepossessions, is necessarily obliged to occupy

the reader, in some small degree, with his personal affairs): as to myself, I say, I am afraid I have been occasionally too frank in revealing my impressions, and that I have to accuse myself of having displayed too marked an independence of opinion, at the hazard of offending all parties at the same time:

"The consequence of being of no party,

I shall offend all parties: never mind."

BYRON.

It is lucky that the independence of an obscure author is of little consequence. I am inclined to think, that I shall not even enjoy the honour of extorting a frown from the powers that be, on account of the few malcontent allusions, scattered here and there through my letters. Brought up, as I have been, in monarchical sentiments, my royalist friends are alone entitled to complain of the too numerous concessions I make to liberal opinion. But what royalist is not liberal now-a-days? Some few individuals, indeed, may still wish to disguise the circumstance from themselves, by investing their greater or less degree of hostility to power with new phrases. No one escapes the influence of his