tenated, as a necessary consequence, with their antecedents, and that an individual is obliged to submit to all the exaggerations of any given opinion, on pain of being disavowed by the party holding it. It will be found, therefore, that I defend the catholic religion against anglicanism, without feeling a greater preference for the jesuits; if indeed jesuits. can be said to exist in France. I am animated with enthusiasm by old traditions, the prowess of the chivalrous ages, the ruins of feudal towers; but it is not because I survey them through the prism of poetry, that I retain undiminished attachment to the results of the revolution, which I regard as a real indemnity to myself, and all such Frenchmen as have not emigrated. In short, I love liberty, without adopting all its dogmas. I love it as I love Shakspeare, with reference to all which it comprehends of sublime and beautiful.

Literature is now distinguished, like politics, by its parties and shades of opinion. The ensuing work will shew what are my opinions on standing literary questions. I may recapitulate them by anticipation in saying that, as concerns the arts as well as politics, whatever is arbitrary disgusts me; but that

I rather pity than dislike the race of exclusive systematists. Indeed, I sometimes seek and study them, like original genera.

The travellers who, up to this time, have published their observations on Great Britain, have devoted themselves in a more especial manner to the consideration of its constitution, its laws, its industry, its commerce, the aspect of the country, &c. than with its poets, its artists, and its authors generally. It has appeared to me, that English literature deserves to be made known, as contributing to the explanation of an epoch, remarkable for its singular union of the most animated enthusiasm for poetical idealities, with a not less vehement ardour for the calculations and the labours which depend on the application of the physical sciences. It is an hypothesis, indeed, which might be advantageously maintained, that there is as much of the elements of poetry to be detected in the latter physical discoveries and improvements of England, as in the poetry of Byron, and the novels of Walter Scott. The energy of association is, like the lever of Archimedes, capable of changing the position of the globe. It is this energy which has developed the genius

of James Watt, and that of Rennie. Had they not possessed the means of execution, the theories of those great men would have passed for unsubstantial dreams.

I cannot, indeed, pronounce which view, during my tour, attracted most of my admiration; the vast and splendid chateau-such as that of the Earl of Lonsdale, where ancient hospitality is found connected with modern luxury-or the enormous London brewhouses, the stables of which contain hundreds of horses, worthy of ranking, on the score of size, with those of the King of Brobdignag, and the colossal steam machinery of which supersedes the united power of a thousand workmen.* One is legitimately astonished to see matter, thus endowed with an almighty energy, performing labours which fabulous antiquity would have shrunk from ascribing to the vigour of the god of strength himself. The exaggeration of eastern fairy tale is surpassed by the actual prodigy of mountains levelled into roads; of canals which multiply the communications between cities and sea coasts; of rivers suspended by aërial

It has been calculated, that the steam-engines of England are equal to the force of two millions of men.

aqueducts over the most impracticable eminences; of bridges which protract their airy forms into the sea in order to supply means of prompt disembarkation to the approaching ship. In short, the tranquil lakes of old Scotland already behold their hitherto undisturbed expanse traversed from shore to shore by those clacking steam-boats, the first of which would have been classed, by the superstitions of a preceding age, among the monsters of Caledonian mythology.

When industry accelerates the march of civilization by miracles such as these, poetry may console herself for the loss of her illusions, since these new manifestations of human genius promise her a series of new images, not less sublime than those which preceded them. Happy they, who, like M. Charles Dupin, successfully devote their talents to describing the progress of the useful arts. It has been my lot, in conformity with a plan marked out for me, to neglect them for the inspirations of the British muse, In the annexed work, I present the public with the results of my communications with some of the most distinguished critics and poets of Great Britain. Although my letters on

poetry are dated from London, they were, for the most part, written in Scotland, or the English counties bordering on that kingdom. At London, my days were almost exclusively devoted to visiting the hospitals, and my evenings to the theatre, or the dinners, which in English houses are notoriously of 'late duration.

Some of my letters, in which there were private or personal details, have been abridged, and others interrupted. The ordinary formulas of the epistolary style have been dispensed with, for the sake of the Reader.