What I already
know of that country leads me to think that of all your reminiscences it
will afford the most novelty and interest.
I do not think that your visit to Paris will be a very valuable addition
to your journals. If I may judge by the letters which I receive thence,
society there has never been flatter, nor more insipid, nor more entirely
without any dominant idea. I need not tell you that your opinion of our
statesmen is the same as that which prevails in Paris, but it is of such
an ancient date, and is so obvious, that it cannot give rise to
interesting discussions.
A-propos of statesmen, we cannot understand how a man who made, _inter
pocula_, the speech of ---- on his travels can remain in a government. I
think that even ours, though so long-suffering towards its agents, could
not tolerate anything similar even if it should secretly approve.
Absolute power has its limits. The Prince de Ligne, in a discourse which
you have doubtless read, seems to me to have described it in one word by
saying that it was the speech of a _gamin_.
I am, however, ungrateful to criticise it, for I own that it amused me
extremely, and that I thought that Morny especially was drawn from life;
but I think that if I had the honour of being Her Britannic Majesty's
Prime Minister, I should not have laughed so heartily.
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