ouder than thrice as many Englishmen could have done in any
circumstances. At length, however, their resolution seemed taken:
curiously enough, their lugger bore the name of _"Charles X.;"_ and one
of them, laying hold of a large lump of chalk, repaired to the vessel's
stern, and by covering over the white-lead letters with the chalk,
effaced the royal name. Charles was virtually declared by the little bit
of France that sailed in the lugger, to be no longer king; and the
incident struck me, trivial as it may seem, as significantly
illustrative of the extreme slightness of that hold which the rulers of
modern France possess on the affections of their people. I returned to
my home as the evening darkened, more moved by this unexpected
revolution than by any other political event of my time--brimful of hope
for the cause of freedom all over the civilized world, and, in
especial--misled by a sort of _analogical experience_--sanguine in my
expectations for France. It had had, like our own country, its first
stormy revolution, in which its monarch had lost his head; and then its
Cromwell, and then its Restoration, and its easy, luxurious king, who,
like Charles II., had died in possession of the throne, and who had been
succeeded by a weak bigot brother, the very counterpart of James VII.
And now, after a comparatively orderly revolution like that of 1688, the
bigot had been dethroned, and the head of another branch of the royal
family called in to enact the part of William III. The historical
parallel seemed complete; and could I doubt that what would next follow
would be a long period of progressive improvement, in which the French
people would come to enjoy, as entirely as those of Britain, a
well-regulated freedom, under which revolutions would be unnecessary,
mayhap impossible? Was it not evident, too, that the success of the
French in their noble struggle would immediately act with beneficial
effect on the popular cause in our own country and everywhere else, and
greatly quicken the progress of reform?

And so I continued to watch with interest the course of the Reform
Bill, and was delighted to see it, after a passage singularly stormy and
precarious, at length safely moored in port. In some of the measures,
too, to which it subsequently led, I greatly delighted, especially in
the emancipation of our negro slaves in the colonies. Nor could I join
many of my personal friends in their denunciation of that appropriation