George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[16] acted badly upon each other, exciting each other to violent corresponding changes. The influence of France on England since 1830 has been very bad. The affair of July, 1830, is called a revolution: it was no such thing; it was a lucky rebellion, which changed those at the head of the government, nothing else. But when Louis Philippe said, at the famous arrangement of the Hotel de Ville, “La Charte deviendra une verite,” he uttered a falsehood,—il dit un mensonge; there existed no Charter at the moment when he spoke, for that of 1814 was destroyed, and what might become the Charter afterwards he knew as little as anybody in such a moment of uncertainty. The elements of things in France are very bad; there is a great deal of soi-disant republicanism, which some of them think they have taken from your country, but which is nothing like yours. And there is a good deal of our German idealism and theorizing which is entirely at war with the French character, which is very practical and very selfish. And there is a great deal of talk about a constitutional government like the English, which they can comprehend as little as they can our German theories or your practical democracy. Altogether it is a bad melange. I think I see it as it is. J'ai beaucoup de calme, je ne mets de passion à rien. J'aime la verite, et je la cherche. Je hais le mensonge.

I do not like my business,—Je n'aime pas mon metier. If I liked it, I should not be able to preserve the quietness of spirit— le calme—necessary to it. Besides this, the present state of Europe disgusts me; I am tired of it. When I was five-and-twenty years old, I foresaw nothing but change and trouble in my time; and I sometimes thought then that I would leave Europe and go to America, or somewhere else, out of the reach of it. But my place was here. I belonged, as it were, to an entail,—à un majorat,—and I could not remove. Even my private fortune was fastened to the soil, and would not have been permitted to follow me. And so I have gone on, and have been here at the head of affairs since 1809.

I did not make the peace of 1809, for I did not choose to make it. When a minister begins, under such circumstances as I began under then, he must have a clear ground,—un terrain net,—or he will not be able to move at all. But since I have been here I have always been the same,—j'ai éte toujours le mene. Je n'ai trompe personne, et c'est par cette raison que je n'ai pas un ennemi personnel au monde. I have had many colleagues, I have been obliged to remove many of them,--j'ai éte oblige d'en frapper beaucoup,—but I never deceived them, and not one of them is now my personal enemy, pas un