In America he was more republican than the Republicans.  He toiled, traveled, and bled, with an indefatigable zeal for the independence of the colonists; his zeal was a passion, his love of liberty a romance, his hostility to the dominion of England an universal scorn of established power.  But if fantastic, he was bold; and if too hot for the frigidity of America, he was but preparing to touch France with kindred fire.  He refused rank in the French army coupled with the condition of leaving the service of the Republic; and it was only on the French alliance in 1788 that he returned to Paris, to be received with feigned displeasure by the King, and even put under arrest by the minister, but to be welcomed by the praises of the true sovereign, the Queen, feted by the court, the sovereign of that sovereign, and huzzaed by the mob of Paris, already the sovereign of them all; from his military prison he emerged, colonel of the King’s regiment of dragoons.

While this narrative was going on, mingled with bumpers, and bursts of Slavonic good-fellowship, I could not help asking myself whether Lavater was not quack and physiognomy a folly?  Could this be the dashing Revolutionist?  No plodder over the desk ever wore a more broadcloth countenance; an occasional smile was the only indication of his interest in what was passing around him.  He evidently avoided taking a share in the discussion of his Transatlantic career, probably from delicacy to his English auditor.  But when the conversation turned upon France, the man came forth, and he vindicated his conduct with a spirit and fulness that told me what he might have been when the blood of youth was added to the glow of the imagination.  He was now evidently exhausted by toil, and dispirited by disappointment.  No man could be more thoroughly ruined; baffled in theory, undone in practice—­an exile from his country, a fugitive from his troops—­overwhelmed by the hopelessness of giving a constitution to France, and with nothing but the dungeon before him, and the crash of the guillotine behind.

“What was to be done?” said Lafayette.  “France was bankrupt—­the treasury was empty—­the profligate reign of Louis XV. had at once wasted the wealth, dried up the revenues, and corrupted the energies of France.  Ministers wrung their hands, the king sent for his confessor, the queen wept—­but the nation groaned.  There was but one expedient, to call on the people.  In 1787 the Assembly of the Notables was summoned.  It was the first time since the reign of Henry IV.  France had been a direct and formal despotism for almost two hundred years.  She had seen England spread from an island into an empire; she had seen America spread from a colony into an empire.  What had been the worker of the miracle?—­Liberty.  While all the despotisms remained within the boundaries fixed centuries ago, like vast dungeons, never extending, and never opening to the light and air, except through the dilapidations of time, I saw England and America