would here cite the bitter passages against Lafayette contained in this work, were they not on one side too spiteful, and on the other connected with a defence of the Republic which is not suitable to this journal. I therefore refer the reader to the pamphlet itself, and especially to a chapter in it entitled "The Republic." One may there see how even the noblest men may be led astray by evil fortune.
I will not here find fault with the brilliant delusion of the possibility of a republic in France. A royalist by inborn inclination, I have become more so in France from conviction. For I am convinced that the French could never tolerate any republic, neither (according to) the constitution of Athens nor of Sparta, and least of all that of North America. The Athenians were the student-youths of mankind; their constitution was a kind of academic freedom, and it would be mere folly to seek to introduce it in this our matured age, to again revive it in our grey-haired Europe. And how could we put up with that of Sparta, that great and tiresome manufactory of patriotism, that soldiers' barrack of republican virtue, that sublimely bad kitchen of equality, in which black broth was so vilely cooked that Attic wits declared it made men despise life and defy death in battle? How could such a constitution flourish in the very foyer or focus of
