a
moment, seen of men; then tumbles, dismissed, washed away by the
Time-flood.

Also the fair Princess de Lamballe intrigues, bosom friend of her
Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did
she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit
in that piping of the black World-tornado? Which will whirl her, poor
fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and de Stael
intrigue visibly, apart or together: but who shall reckon how many
others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may
call an 'Austrian Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre
of an invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among
mysteries, stretches its threads to the ends of the Earth? Journalist
Carra has now the clearest certainty of it: to Brissotin Patriotism, and
France generally, it is growing more and more probable.

O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution? Rheumatic shooting
pains in its members; pressure of hydrocephale and hysteric vapours
on its Brain: a Constitution divided against itself; which will never
march, hardly even stagger? Why were not Drouet and Procureur Sausse in
their beds, that unblessed Varennes Night! Why did they not, in the
name of Heaven, let the Korff Berline go whither it listed! Nameless
incoherency, incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which the world still
shudders, had been spared.

But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the marching of this
French Constitution: besides the French People, and the French King,
there is thirdly--the assembled European world? it has become necessary
now to look at that also. Fair France is so luminous: and round and
round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night. Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim,
far-flown; overnetting Europe with intrigues. From Turin to Vienna;
to Berlin, and utmost Petersburg in the frozen North! Great Burke has
raised his great voice long ago; eloquently demonstrating that the end
of an Epoch is come, to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him
many answer: Camille Desmoulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the
rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gallic Vindicators in that country
and in this: but the great Burke remains unanswerable; 'The Age of
Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now produced the still
more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan
sort, changing to the Gobel-and-Talleyrand sort, are farin