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.




LXVIII.


From these general studies I turned to another that perhaps engrossed
my mind the more from the very aridity and dryness of its nature, so
far removed from the intoxication of love and fancy in which I lived. I
mean political economy, or the science of the Wealth of Nations.

V---- had applied his mind to it with more curiosity than ardor. All