guilty?--One may hope, soon, that if a man shows decent
courage and energy in half a dozen emeutes, he will get promotion and a
premium.

I do not (although, perhaps, partial to the subject,) want to talk more
nonsense than the occasion warrants, and will pray you to cast your eyes
over the following anecdote, that is now going the round of the papers,
and respects the commutation of the punishment of that wretched,
fool-hardy Barbes, who, on his trial, seemed to invite the penalty which
has just been remitted to him. You recollect the braggart's speech:
"When the Indian falls into the power of the enemy, he knows the fate
that awaits him, and submits his head to the knife:--I am the Indian!"

"Well--"

"M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the sentence of the Court
of Peers, condemning Barbes to death, was published. The great poet
composed the following verses:--

'Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une colombe,
Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau,
Grace encore une fois! Grace au nom de la tombe!
Grace au nom du berceau!'*

"M. Victor Hugo wrote the lines out instantly on a sheet of paper, which
he folded, and simply despatched them to the King of the French by the
penny-post.

"That truly is a noble voice, which can at all hours thus speak to the
throne. Poetry, in old days, was called the language of the Gods--it is
better named now--it is the language of the Kings.

"But the clemency of the King had anticipated the letter of the Poet.
His Majesty had signed the commutation of Barbes, while the poet was
still writing.

"Louis Philippe replied to the author of 'Ruy Blas' most graciously,
that he had already subscribed to a wish so noble, and that the verses
had only confirmed his previous disposition to mercy."

* Translated for the benefit of country gentlemen:--

"By your angel flown away just like a dove,
By the royal infant, that frail and tender reed,
Pardon yet once more! Pardon in the name of the tomb!
Pardon in the name of the cradle!"

Now in countries where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
monstrous, palpable folly? In any country, save this, would a poet who
chose to write four crack-brained verses, comparing an angel to a dove,
and a little boy to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in
the name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her tomb, and
the little infant in his cradle, to spare a c