England, one is astonished to see, has its royal-republican ways of doing; something Roman in it, from Peerage down to Plebs; strange and curious to the eye of M.de Voltaire.

Sciences flourishing; Newton still alive, white with fourscore years, the venerable hoary man; Locke's Gospel of Common Sense in full vogue, or even done into verse, by incomparable Mr.Pope, for the cultivated upper classes.

In science, in religion, in politics, what a surprising 'liberty' allowed or taken! Never was a freer turn of thinking.

And (what to M.de Voltaire is a pleasant feature) it is Freethinking with ruffles to its shirt and rings on its fingers;--never yet, the least, dreaming of the shirtless or SANSCULOTTIC state that lies ahead for it! That is the palmy condition of English Liberty, when M.de Voltaire arrives there.
"In a man just out of the Bastille on those terms, there is a mind driven by hard suffering into seriousness, and provoked by indignant comparisons and remembrances.

As if you had elaborately ploughed and pulverized the mind of this Voltaire to receive with its utmost avidity, and strength of fertility, whatever seed England may have for it.