After a brief approval of the reforms in France he passed rapidly to doubt, disgust, and horror at the "new birth of time" there.

"You will allow me to be a tolerable historian," he wrote to his step-mother, "yet on a fair review of ancient and modern times I can find none that bear any affinity to the present." The last social evolution was beyond his power of classification.

The mingled bewilderment and anger with which he looks out from Lausanne on the revolutionary welter, form an almost amusing contrast to his usual apathy on political matters.

He is full of alarm lest England should catch the revolutionary fever.

He is delighted with Burke's _Reflections_.