never will do. Mrs. Abraham Plymley, my sister, will be led away
captive by an amorous Gaul; and Joel Plymley your firstborn, will be
a French drummer.

Out of sight, out of mind, seems to be a proverb which applies to
enemies as well as friends. Because the French army was no longer
seen from the cliffs of Dover; because the sound of cannon was no
longer heard by the debauched London bathers on the Sussex coast;
because the Morning Post no longer fixed the invasion sometimes for
Monday, sometimes for Tuesday, sometimes (positively for the last
time of invading) on Saturday; because all these causes of terror
were suspended, you conceived the power of Bonaparte to be at an
end, and were setting off for Paris with Lord Hawkesbury the
conqueror. This is precisely the method in which the English have
acted during the whole of the revolutionary war. If Austria or
Prussia armed, doctors of divinity immediately printed those
passages out of Habakkuk, in which the destruction of the Usurper by
General Mack, and the Duke of Brunswick, are so clearly predicted.
If Bonaparte halted, there was a mutiny or a dysentery. If any one
of his generals were eaten up by the light troops of Russia, and
picked (as their manner is) to the bone, the sanguine spirit of this
country displayed itself in all its glory. What scenes of infamy
did the Society for the Suppression of Vice lay open to our
astonished eyes! tradesmen's daughters dancing, pots of beer carried
out between the first and second lesson, and dark and distant
rumours of indecent prints. Clouds of Mr. Canning's cousins arrived
by the waggon; all the contractors left their cards with Mr. Rose;
and every plunderer of the public crawled out of his hole, like
slugs, and grubs, and worms after a shower of rain.