VII
Such was the state of foreign affairs when Mr. Canning and his friends refused to connect themselves with a feeble and self-mistrusting administration. But the year following things were strangely altered. The retreat from Russia had taken place; the battle of Leipsic had been fought. Russians, Austrians, Saxons, Swedes, Bavarians, Spaniards, Portuguese, the people of those various nations, who had formerly to defend their own territory, were now pouring into France.
The first gleams of victory shone over the gloomy struggle of twenty years. An accident yet unexplained—the burning of a city on the farthest confines of the civilized world—had changed the whole face of European affairs. “The mighty deluge,” to use Mr. Canning’s poetical language, “by which the Continent had been so long overwhelmed, began to subside. The limits of nations were again visible, and the spires and turrets of ancient establishments began to re-appear from beneath the subsiding wave.”118
From this moment Mr. Canning began to show confidence in a ministry which he had hitherto more or less despised. The desire of sustaining it in this crisis of the terrible conflict in which we were engaged, had no doubt some influence over his conduct; but I venture to add that there are natures which, without being instigated by low and vulgar motives, have a propensity to harmonize with success. Mr. Canning’s nature was of this description. It loved the light to shine on its glittering surface; and he began to feel a sympathy for the Government, bright with the rays of anticipated fortune, which in darker moments he had shrunk from with antipathy and mistrust.