f, and lay deeply
to heart with an eye to strenuous valiant practice and effort, what
the meaning of this universal revolt of the European Populations, which
calls itself Democracy, and decides to continue permanent, may be.

Certainly it is a drama full of action, event fast following event; in
which curiosity finds endless scope, and there are interests at stake,
enough to rivet the attention of all men, simple and wise. Whereat the
idle multitude lift up their voices, gratulating, celebrating sky-high;
in rhyme and prose announcement, more than plentiful, that _now_ the
New Era, and long-expected Year One of Perfect Human Felicity has
come. Glorious and immortal people, sublime French citizens, heroic
barricades; triumph of civil and religious liberty--O Heaven! one of the
inevitablest private miseries, to an earnest man in such circumstances,
is this multitudinous efflux of oratory and psalmody, from the universal
foolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever,
except the sorrowful one that you are fallen in an evil, heavy-laden,
long-eared age, and must resignedly bear your part in the same. The
front wall of your wretched old crazy dwelling, long denounced by you
to no purpose, having at last fairly folded itself over, and fallen
prostrate into the street, the floors, as may happen, will still hang
on by the mere beam-ends, and coherency of old carpentry, though in a
sloping direction, and depend there till certain poor rusty nails
and worm-eaten dovetailings give way:--but is it cheering, in such
circumstances, that the whole household burst forth into celebrating
the new joys of light and ventilation, liberty and picturesqueness of
position, and thank God that now they have got a house to their mind? My
dear household, cease singing and psalmodying; lay aside your fiddles,
take out your work-implements, if you have any; for I can say with
confidence the laws of gravitation are still active, and rusty nails,
worm-eaten dovetailings, and secret coherency of old carpentry, are not
the best basis for a household!--In the lanes of Irish cities, I
have heard say, the wretched people are sometimes found living, and
perilously boiling their potatoes, on such swing-floors and inclined
planes hanging on by the joist-ends; but I did not hear that they sang
very much in celebration of such lodging. No, they slid gently about,
sat near the back wall, and perilously boiled their potatoes, in silence
f