n that last hell-day, thou must
"tremble", though only with cold--"_de froid_." Speculation is not
practice: to be weak is not so miserable, but to be weaker than our
task. Woe the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on
that wild Hippogriff of a Democracy, which, spurning the firm earth,
nay, lashing at the very _stars_, no yet known Astolpho could have
ridden!

In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters;
374 Lawyers, and at least one Clergyman, the Abbe Sieyes. Him also
Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light, thin man; cold,
but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless, or
with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can be
called a passion, which in its independent concentrated greatness,
seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a
kind of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man,
and wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be
System-builder, Constitution-builder General, and build Constitutions
(as many as wanted) sky-high,--which shall all unfortunately fall
before he get the scaffolding away. "_La Politique_", said he to
Dumont, "polity is a science I think I have completed (_achevee_)."
What things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see!
But were it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he
is said to be still alive) looks out on all that Constitution masonry,
through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with
the old irrefragable transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased
the gods, the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (_victa Catoni_).

Thus, however, amid sky-rending _vivats_, and blessings from every
heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.

Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom
it might be asked What they specially have come for. Specially, little
as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of
thunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where
whosoever is not working is begging or stealing? Woe, woe to
themselves and to all, if they can only answer; Collecting tithes,
Preserving game! Remark, meanwhile, how D'Orleans affects to step
before his own Order and mingle with the Commons. For him are
_vivats_; few for the rest, though all wave in plumed "hats of a
feudal cut," and have sword on thigh; though among them