as lucky that Burke took the
royal side in the Revolution, for his violence would certainly have
got him hanged if he had happened to take the other side.

It was in the early summer of 1792 that Miss Burney again met Burke
at Mrs. Crewe's villa at Hampstead. He entered into an animated
conversation on Lord Macartney and the Chinese expedition, reviving
all the old enthusiasm of his companion by his allusions and
anecdotes, his brilliant fancies and wide information. When politics
were introduced, he spoke with an eagerness and a vehemence that
instantly banished the graces, though it redoubled the energies of his
discourse. "How I wish," Miss Burney writes, "that you could meet this
wonderful man when he is easy, happy, and with people he cordially
likes! But politics, even on his own side, must always be excluded;
his irritability is so terrible on that theme, that it gives
immediately to his face _the expression of a man who is going to
defend himself from murderers_."

Burke still remained without a following, but the ranks of his old
allies gradually began to show signs of wavering. His panic about the
Jacobins within the gates slowly spread. His old faith, about which he
had once talked so much, in the ancient rustic, manly, home-bred sense
of the English people, he dismissed as if it had been some idle dream
that had come to him through the ivory gate. His fine comparison of
the nation to a majestic herd, browsing in peace amid the importunate
chirrupings of a thousand crickets, became so little appropriate, that
he was now beside himself with apprehension that the crickets were
about to rend the oxen in pieces. Even then, the herd stood tranquilly
in their pastures, only occasionally turning a dull eye, now to
France, and now to Burke. In the autumn of 1791 Burke dined with
Pitt and Lord Grenville, and he found them resolute for an honest
neutrality in the affairs of France, and "quite out of all
apprehensions of any effect from the French Revolution in this
kingdom, either at present or any time to come." Francis and Sheridan,
it is true, spoke as if they almost wished for a domestic convulsion;
and cool observers who saw him daily, even accused Sheridan of wishing
to stir up the lower ranks of the people by the hope of plundering
their betters. But men who afterwards became alarmists, are found,
so late as the spring of 1792, declaring in their most confidential
correspondence that the party of confusion mad