" He is convinced that "the hour of the hereditary
peerage and eldest sonship and immense properties has struck"; he thinks
that a five years' continuance of these institutions is "long enough,
certainly, for patience, already at death's door, to have to die in." He
pities (in a sonnet) "the armies of the homeless and unfed." But all the
time he resents the "hot, dizzy trash which people are talking" about
the Revolution. He sees a torrent of American vulgarity and "_laideur_"
threatening to overflow Europe. He thinks England, as it is, "not
liveable-in," but is convinced that a Government of Chartists would not
mend matters; and, after telling a Republican friend that "God knows it,
I am with you," he thus qualifies his sympathy--
Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud--
France, famed in all great arts, in none supreme.
In fine, he is critical of his own country, critical of all foreign
nations, critical of existing institutions, critical of well-meant but
uninstructed attempts to set them right.
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