"How I wish," Miss Burney writes, "that you could meet this wonderful man when he is easy, happy, and with people he cordially likes! But politics, even on his own side, must always be excluded; his irritability is so terrible on that theme, that it gives immediately to his face _the expression of a man who is going to defend himself from murderers_." Burke still remained without a following, but the ranks of his old allies gradually began to show signs of wavering.

His panic about the Jacobins within the gates slowly spread.

His old faith, about which he had once talked so much, in the ancient rustic, manly, home-bred sense of the English people, he dismissed as if it had been some idle dream that had come to him through the ivory gate.

His fine comparison of the nation to a majestic herd, browsing in peace amid the importunate chirrupings of a thousand crickets, became so little appropriate, that he was now beside himself with apprehension that the crickets were about to rend the oxen in pieces.

Even then, the herd stood tranquilly in their pastures, only occasionally turning a dull eye, now to France, and now to Burke.