in the same way." He is convinced that "the hour of the hereditary
peerage and eldest sonship and immense properties has struck"; he thinks
that a five years' continuance of these institutions is "long enough,
certainly, for patience, already at death's door, to have to die in." He
pities (in a sonnet) "the armies of the homeless and unfed." But all the
time he resents the "hot, dizzy trash which people are talking" about
the Revolution. He sees a torrent of American vulgarity and "_laideur_"
threatening to overflow Europe. He thinks England, as it is, "not
liveable-in," but is convinced that a Government of Chartists would not
mend matters; and, after telling a Republican friend that "God knows it,
I am with you," he thus qualifies his sympathy--

Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud--
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.

In fine, he is critical of his own country, critical of all foreign
nations, critical of existing institutions, critical of well-meant but
uninstructed attempts to set them right. And, as he was in the
beginning, so he continued throughout his life and to its close. It is
impossible to conceive of him as an enthusiastic and unqualified
partisan of any cause, creed, party, society, or system. Admiration he
had, for worthy objects, in abundant store; high appreciation for what
was excellent; sympathy with all sincere and upward-tending endeavour.
But few indeed were the objects which he found wholly admirable, and
keen was his eye for the flaws and foibles which war against absolute
perfection. On the last day of his life he said in a note to the present
writer: "S---- has written a letter full of shriekings and cursings
about my innocent article; the Americans will get their notion of it