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ton has acted publicly with the most perfect neutrality, as to the king, and has given positive orders against any insults of the tri-coloured flag. An intimate acquaintance of mine, who was sent in advance by General Lord Hill to communicate with the mayors of the towns during the progress of the allies, was asked by them what flag they were to hoist, and gave them for answer, "Which they chose; but, if "they did not wish to be plundered by the fol "lowers of Louis, they should unfurl the white "standard." Riding beyond the barriers, I was accosted by an Englishman in red regimentals, who recognized me, and told me he was in the service of Louis XVIII. I remarked he had a white cockade in his hat, and was told that he intended to take it out when he entered the city, knowing that the duke had given posi tive orders against that signal being worn by British officers. He seemed surprised that the king had not been invited to the capital, and at the little inclination, so different from all he had before heard, of the people in his favour. He added, "however, he shall come in; we will "force him down their throats." The mission of this gentleman was to procure arms for some of the volunteers of the north, who accompanied the king; and this service I saw shortly afterwards

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performing by the concealment of musquets in a straw cart, at one of the barriers, by several individuals of the national guard, who walked out quietly through our sentries; deposited their guns in the cart, and returned without arms. I saw, likewise, three or four of the guard without hats or arms, running across the fields towards St. Denis to join the king. Now, when I put together the address of the government, the firmness of the chambers, the moderation of Lord Wellington, and the opinion of the ma jority of the people, so decidedly pronounced, that, although the town has been surrendered four days, and Louis is at St. Denis, he does not dare to enter the capital, I cannot help indulging some little hope that a better use will be made of our victory than to place on the throne the chief of a dynasty, to second whose claims, founded on legitimacy, and the accla mations of an interested minority, Europe has, for five-and-twenty years, been deluged with blood; and to maintain whom she may still be subject to constant convulsions.

My expectations would, I own, be more sanguine, had I not met Lord Castlereagh entering the barrier of Clichy, escorted by half a

VOL. II.

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dozen dragoons, not as a prisoner, but as a master, the arbiter of nations. His lordship must be a little surprised to see in a city, whose inhabitants he so often represented as detained from the embrace of their lawful sovereign by the menace of bayonets, the standard of treason triumphant, and the busts and portraits of Napoleon every where displayed, at a moment when a division of English troops is encamped in the Elysian fields, when not a French soldier, excepting the loyal national guard, is to be seen in arms, and when the head of the imperial dynasty is a dethroned fugitive, uncertain of his fortunes and of his life.

If Lord Castlereagh were one of those men who can determine upon an action merely because it is good, without any reference to their former policy, and who dare to forget the shame of contrition in the utility of reform, he might yet be the benefactor of Europe. The countenances of statesmen, like the ways of Providence, are inscrutable; and though I longed to anticipate, from the short view which I caught of his lordship in his Berlin, the probable result of his arrival, a skill in physiognomy much greater than mine would have failed in guessing

at those

"News from all nations lumbering at his back,”

the complexion of which, either of joy or of grief, seemed not at all to have communicated itself to their bearer: Cowper says of his lettercarrier,

“To him indifferent, whether grief or joy."

LETTER XXXV.

Saturday, July 8.

So entirely was I wrapt up in the persuasion, that the truth of the present state of feeling in France need only be seen to carry to any mind the conviction of the injustice and impolicy of bearing back the Bourbons in triumph, over the trampled necks of Frenchmen, that I was bold enough to suppose a representation of facts, however faintly and imperfectly drawn, might not be totally lost even upon Lord Castlereagh, and might arrest his attention sufficiently to make him wait for better authority before he proceeded to decide. The contemplation of some such effort, desperate as you will think it when directed against the statesman who, three weeks before Louis decamped from his dominions, wondered at his majesty's surprising progress in popularity, had, however, entered into my head, and I was employed in the act of softening down the ridicule of an individual imploring mercy for eight and twenty millions, and praying for reprieve, if not for pardon, when

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