History of a Six Weeks' Tour is part of a liberal reaction to recent history: its trajectory begins with a survey of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars and ends by celebrating the sublime in nature. William Wordsworth's 1850 The Prelude and the third canto of Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage follow a similar course. As Moskal explains, "nature is troped as the repository of a sublimity, once incarnated in Napoleon, that will re-emerge in politics". The book is therefore not only a liberal political statement but also a Romantic celebration of nature.
