festivity has been discontinued.

Do you not laugh, O Pharos of Bungay, at the continuance of a humbug
such as this?--at the humbugging anniversary of a humbug? The King
of the Barricades is, next to the Emperor Nicholas, the most absolute
Sovereign in Europe; yet there is not in the whole of this fair kingdom
of France a single man who cares sixpence about him, or his dynasty:
except, mayhap, a few hangers-on at the Chateau, who eat his dinners,
and put their hands in his purse. The feeling of loyalty is as dead as
old Charles the Tenth; the Chambers have been laughed at, the country
has been laughed at, all the successive ministries have been laughed
at (and you know who is the wag that has amused himself with them all);
and, behold, here come three days at the end of July, and cannons
think it necessary to fire off, squibs and crackers to blaze and fizz,
fountains to run wine, kings to make speeches, and subjects to crawl
up greasy mats-de-cocagne in token of gratitude and rejouissance
publique!--My dear sir, in their aptitude to swallow, to utter, to enact
humbugs, these French people, from Majesty downwards, beat all the other
nations of this earth. In looking at these men, their manners, dresses,
opinions, politics, actions, history, it is impossible to preserve a
grave countenance; instead of having Carlyle to write a History of the
French Revolution, I often think it should be handed over to Dickens
or Theodore Hook: and oh! where is the Rabelais to be the faithful
historian of the last phase of the Revolution--the last glorious nine
years of which we are now commemorating the last glorious three days?

I had made a vow not to say a syllable on the subject, although I have
seen, with my neighbors, all the gingerbread stalls down the Champs
Elysees, and some of the "catafalques" erected to the memory of the
heroes of July, where the students and others, not connected personally
with the victims, and not having in the least profited by their deaths,
come and weep; but the grief shown on the first day is quite as absurd
and fictitious as the joy exhibited on the last. The subject is one
which admits of much wholesome reflection and food for mirth; and,
besides, is so richly treated by the French themselves, that it would
be a sin and a shame to pass it over. Allow me to have the honor
of translating, for your edification, an account of the first day's
proceedings--it is mighty amusing, to my thinking.

"CELEBRA