hands which none believed capable of
a stain.

But the characters of those three ministers were striking in a still
higher point of view. Their qualities seem to have been expressly
constructed to meet the peculiar exigency of their times.
Perceval--acute, strict, and with strong religious conceptions--to
meet a period, when religious laxity in the cabinet had already
enfeebled the defence of the national religion. Castlereagh--stately,
bold, and high-toned--to meet a period, when the fate of Europe was to
be removed from cabinets to the field, and when he was to carry the
will of England among assembled monarchs. Liverpool--calm, rational,
and practical; the man of conscience and common sense--for the period,
when the great questions of religion had been quieted, the great
questions of the war had died with the war, and when the supreme
difficulty of government was, to reconcile the pressure of financial
exigency with the progress of the people--to invigorate the public
frame without inflaming it by dangerous innovation--and to reconstruct
the whole commercial constitution, without infringing on those
principles which had founded the prosperity of the empire.

At length the consummation came: the French empire fell on the field
by the hand of England. All the sovereigns of Europe rushed in to
strip the corpse, and each carried back a portion of the spoils. But
the conqueror was content with the triumph, and asked no more of glory
than the liberation of mankind.

While all was public exultation for this crowning event, fortune had
not neglected to reward the gentler virtues of one worthy of its
noblest gifts. In my first campaign with the Prussian troops in
France, I had intrusted to the care of the old domestic whom I found
in the Chateau de Montauban, an escritoire and a picture, belonging to
the family of Clotilde. The old man had disappeared; and I took it for
granted that he had been plundered, or had died.

But one day, after my return from one of those splendid entertainments
with which the Regent welcomed the Allied sovereigns, I found Clotilde
deeply agitated. The picture of her relative was before her, and she
was gazing at its singularly expressive and lovely countenance with
intense interest.

She flew into my arms. "I have longed for your coming," said she, with
glowing lips and tearful eyes, "to offer at least one proof of
gratitude for years of the truest protection, and the most generous
love. Mi