Till now, Europe has had to deal only with a Chinese government--the most
wretched of governments. Now you will find opposed to you a people; and a
people, however miserable and corrupt, is invincible on its own
territory, if it be supported and impelled by common and violent
passions.
Yet I should be sorry to die before I have seen China open to the eyes as
well as to the arms of Europe.
Do you believe in a dissolution? If so, when?
A thousand regards to Mrs. Grote, to the great historian, to the Reeves,
and generally to all who are kind enough to remember my existence.
I delight in the prospect of meeting you in Paris; yet I fear that you
will find it dull. All that I hear from the great town shows me that
never, at least during the last two hundred years, has intellectual life
been less active.
If there be talent in the official circles, it is not the talent of
conversation, and among those who formerly possessed that talent, there
is so much torpidity, such want of interest on public affairs, such
ignorance as to what is passing, and so little wish to hear about it,
that no one, I am told, knows what to talk about or to take interest in.
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