the muster with famine and a constitutional theory of defective verbs going on all other excitement is conceivable a universal shaking and sifting of french existence this is in the course of which for one thing what a multitude of low lying figures are sifted to the top and set busily to work there dogleech marat now for seen as simon stylites we already know him and others raised aloft the mere sample these of what is coming of what continues coming upwards from the realm of night chaumette by and by anaxagoras chaumette one already descries mellifluous in street groups not now a sea boy on the high and giddy mast a mellifluous tribune of the common people with long curling locks on bourne stone of the thoroughfares able sub editor too who shall riseto the very gallows clerk tallien he also is become sub editor shall become able editor and more bibliopolic momoro typographic pruhomme see new trades opening collot d herbois tearing a passion to rags pauses on the thespian boards listens with that black bushy head to the sound of the world s drama shall the mimetic become real did ye hiss him o men of lyons p 90 better had ye clapped happy now indeed for all manner of mimetic half original men tumid blustering with more or less of sincerity which need not be entirely sincere yet the sincerer the better is like to go far shall we say the revolution element works itself rarer and rarer so that only lighter and lighter bodies will float in it till at last the mere blown bladder is your only swimmer limitation of mind then vehemence promptitude audacity shall all be available to which add only these two cunning and good lungs good fortune must be presupposed accordingly of all classes the rising one we observe is now the attorney class witness bazires carriers fouquier tinvilles bazoche captain bourdons more than enough such figures shall night from her wonder bearing bosom emit swarm after swarm of another deeper and deepest swarm not yet dawned on the astonished eye of pilfering candle snuffers thief valets disfrocked capuchins and so many heberts henriots ronsins rossignols let us as long as possible forbear speaking thus over france all stirs that has what the physiologists call irritability in it how much more all wherein irritability has perfected itself into vitality into actual vision and force that can will all stirs and if not in paris flocks thither great and greater waxes president danton in his cordeliers section his rhetorical tropes are all gigantic energy flashes from his black brows menaces in his athletic figure rolls in the sound of his voice reverberating from the domes this man also like mirabeau has a natural eye and begins to see whither constitutionalism is tending though with a wish in it different from mirabeau s remark on the other hand how general dumouriez has quitted normandy and the cherbourg breakwater to comewhither we may guess it is his second or even third trial at paris since this new era began but now it is in right earnest for he has quitted all else wiry elastic unwearied man whose life was but a battle and a march no not a creature of choiseul s the creature of god and of my sword he fiercely answered in old days overfalling corsican batteries in the deadly fire hail wriggling invincible from under his horse at closterkamp of the netherlands though tethered with crushed stirrup iron and nineteen wounds tough minatory standing at bay as forlorn hope on the skirts of poland intriguing battling in cabinet and field roaming far out obscure as king s spial or sitting sealed up enchanted in bastille fencing pamphleteering scheming and struggling from the very birth of him the man has come thus far how repressed how irrepressible like some incarnate spirit in prison which indeed he was hewing on granite walls for deliverance striking fire flashes from them and now has the general earthquake rent his cavern too twenty years younger what might he not have done but his hair has a shade of gray his way of thought is all fixed military he can grow no further and the new world is in such growth we will name him on the whole one of heaven s swiss without faith wanting above all things work work on any side work also is appointed him and he will do it not from over france only are the unrestful flocking towards paris but from all sides of europe where the carcase is thither will the eagles gather think how many a spanish guzman martinico fournier named fournier l americain engineer miranda from the very andes were flocking or had flocked walloon pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage him they say prince kaunitz the diplomatist heedlessly dropped like ostrich egg to be hatched of chanceinto an ostrich eater jewish or german freys do business in the great cesspool of agio which cesspool this assignat fiat has quickened into a mother of dead dogs swiss claviere could found no socinian genevese colony in ireland but he paused years ago prophetic before the minister s hotel at paris and said it was borne on his mind that he one day was to be minister and laughed swiss pachc on the other hand sits sleekheaded frugal the wonder of his own alley and even of neighbouring ones for humility of mind and a thought deeper than most men s sit there tartuffe till wanted ye italian dufournys flemish prolys flit hither all ye bipeds of prey come whosesoever head is hot thou of mind ungoverned be it chaos as of undevelopment or chaos as of ruin the man who cannot get known the man who is too well known if thou have any vendible faculty nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity come they come with hot unutterabilities in their heart as pilgrims towards a miraculous shrine nay how many come as vacant strollers aimless of whom europe is full merely towards something for benighted fowls when you beat their bushes rush towards any light thus frederick baron trenck too is here mazed purblind from the cells of magdeburg minotauric cells and his ariadne lost singular to say trenck in these years sells wine not indeed in bottle but in wood nor is our england without her missionaries she has her live saving needham to whom was solemnly presented a civic sword long since rusted into nothingness her paine rebellious staymaker unkempt who feels that he a single needleman did by his common sense pamphlet free america that he can and will free all this world perhaps even the other price stanhope constitutional association sends over to congratulate welcomed by national assembly though they are but a london club whom burke and toryism eye askance on thee too for country s sake o chevalier john paul be a word spent or misspent in faded naval uniform paul jones lingers visible here like a wine skin from which the wine is all drawn like the ghost of himself low is his once loud bruit scarcely audible save with extreme tedium in ministerial ante chambers in this or the other charitable dining room mindful of the past what changes culminatings and declinings not now poor paul thou lookest wistful over the solway brine by the foot of native criffel into blue mountainous cumberland into blue infinitude environed with thrift with humble friendliness thyself young fool longing to be aloft from it or even to be away from it yes beyond that sapphire promontory which men name st bees which is not sapphire either but dull sandstone when one gets close to it there is a world which world thou too shalt taste of from yonder white haven rise his smoke clouds ominous though ineffectual proud forth quakes at his bellying sails had not the wind suddenly shifted flamborough reapers homegoing pause on the hill side for what sulphur cloud is that that defaces the sleek sea sulphur cloud spitting streaks of fire a sea cockfight it is and of the hottest where british serapis and french american bon homme richard do lash and throttle each other in their fashion and lo the desperate valour has suffocated the deliberate and paul jones too is of the kings of the sea the euxine the meotian waters felt thee next and long skirted turks o paul and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand contradictions to no purpose for in far lands with scarlet nassau siegens with sinful imperial catherines is not the heart broken even as at home with the mean poor paul hunger and dispiritment track thy sinking footsteps once or at most twice in this revolution tumult the figure of thee emerges mute ghost like as with stars dim twinkling through and then when the light is gone quite out a national legislature grants ceremonial funeral as good had been the natural presbyterian kirk bell and six feet of scottish earth among the dust of thy loved ones such world lay beyond the promontory of st bees such is the life of sinful mankind here below but of all strangers far the notablest for us is baron jean baptiste de clootz or dropping baptisms and feudalisms world citizen anacharsis clootz from cleves him mark judicious reader thou hast known his uncle sharp sighted thorough going cornelius de pauw who mercilessly cuts down cherished illusions and of the finest antique spartans will make mere modern cutthroat mainots the like stuff is in anacharsis hot metal full of scoriae which should and could have been smelted out but which will not he has wandered over this terraqueous planet seeking one may say the paradise we lost long ago he has seen english burke has been seen of the portugal inquisition has roamed and fought and written is writing among other things evidences of the mahometan religion but now like his scythian adoptive godfather he finds himself in the paris athens surely at last the haven of his soul a dashing man beloved at patriotic dinner tables with gaiety nay with humour headlong trenchant of free purse in suitable costume though what mortal ever more despised costumes under all costumes anacharsis seeks the man not stylites marat will more freely trample costumes if they hold no man this is the faith of anacharsis that there is a paradise discoverable that all costumes ought to hold men o anacharsis it is a headlong swift going faith mounted thereon meseems thou art bound hastily for the city of nowhere and wilt arrive at best we may say arrive in good riding attitude which indeed is something so many new persons and new things have come to occupy this france her old speech and thought and activity which springs from those are all changing fermenting towards unknown issues to the dullest peasant as he sits sluggish overtoiled by his evening hearth one idea has come that of chateaus burnt of chateaus combustible how altered all coffeehouses in province or capital the antre de procope has now other questions than the three stagyrite unities to settle not theatre controversies but a world controversy there in the ancient pigtail mode or with modern brutus heads do well frizzed logicians hold hubbub and chaos umpire sits the ever enduring melody of paris saloons has got a new ground tone ever enduring which has been heard and by the listening heaven too since julian the apostate s time and earlier mad now as formerly ex censor suard ex censor for we have freedom of the press he may be seen there impartial even neutral tyrant grimm rolls large eyes over a questionable coming time atheist naigeon beloved disciple of diderot crows in his small difficult way heralding glad dawn sur la liberte des opinions but on the other hand how many morellets marmontels who had sat all their life hatching philosophe eggs cackle now in a state bordering on distraction at the brood they have brought out it was so delightful to have one s philosophe theorem demonstrated crowned in the saloons and now an infatuated people will not continue speculative but have practice there also observe preceptress genlis or sillery or sillery genlis for our husband is both count and marquis and we have more than one title pretentious frothy a puritan yet creedless darkening counsel by words without wisdom for it is in that thin element of the sentimentalist and distinguished female that sillery genlis works she would gladly be sincere yet can grow no sincerer than sincere cant sincere cant of many forms ending in the devotional form for the present on a neck still of moderate whiteness she wears as jewel a miniature bastille cut on mere sandstone but then actual bastille sandstone m le marquis is one of d orleans s errandmen in national assembly and elsewhere madame for her part trains up a youthful d orleans generation in what superfinest morality one can gives meanwhile rather enigmatic account of fair mademoiselle pamela the daughter whom she has adopted thus she in palais royal saloon whither we remark d orleans himself spite of lafayette has returned from that english mission of his surely no pleasant mission for the english would not speak to him and saint hannah more of england so unlike saint sillery genlis of france saw him shunned in vauxhall gardens like one pest struck and his red blue impassive visage waxing hardly a shade bluer 