at joy, in as far as it concerned
him personally; but a joy considerably tempered by doubt and
jealousy, as regarded their junction with a country sufficiently
large to counterbalance Holland, oppose interests to interests,
and people to people. National pride and oversanguine expectations
prevented a calm judgment on the existing state of Europe, and on
the impossibility of Holland, in its ancient limits, maintaining
the influence which it was hoped it would acquire.

In Belgium the formation of the new monarchy excited the most
lively sensation. The clergy and the nobility were considerably
agitated and not slightly alarmed; the latter fearing the resentment
of the king for their avowed predilection in favor of Austria,
and perceiving the destruction of every hope of aristocratical
domination. The more elevated of the middle clases also saw an
end to their exclusive occupation of magisterial and municipal
employments. The manufacturers, great and small, saw the ruin of
monopoly staring them in the face. The whole people took fright
at the weight of the Dutch debt, which was considerably greater
than that of Belgium. No one seemed to look beyond the present
moment. The advantage of colonial possessions seemed remote and
questionable to those who possessed no maritime commerce; and
the pride of national independence was foreign to the feelings
of those who had never yet tasted its blessings.

It was in this state of public feeling that intelligence was
received in March, 1815, of the reappearance in France of the
emperor Napoleon. At the head of three hundred men he had taken
the resolution, without parallel even among the grandest of his
own powerful conceptions, of invading a country containing thirty
millions of people, girded by the protecting armies of coalesced
Europe, and imbued, beyond all doubt, with an almost general
objection to the former despot who now put his foot on its shores,
with imperial pretensions only founded on the memory of his bygone
glory. His march to Paris was a miracle; and the vigor of his
subsequent measures redeems the ambitious imbecility with which
he had hurried on the catastrophe of his previous fall.

The flight of Louis XVIII. from Paris was the sure signal to
the kingdom of the Netherlands, in which he took refuge, that it
was about to become the scene of another contest for the life or
death of despotism. Had the invasion of Belgium, which now took
place, been led on by one o