that
crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild way, from
the extremity of French land, through unknown cities, toward an unknown
destiny; with a purpose that they know.

Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable trading City,
so many householders or hearth-holders do severally fling down their
crafts and industrial tools; gird themselves with weapons of war,
and set out on a journey of six hundred miles to 'strike down the
tyrant,'--you search in all Historical Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers,
for some light on it: unhappily without effect. Rumour and Terror
precede this march; which still echo on you; the march itself an unknown
thing. Weber, in the back-stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that
they were Forcats, Galley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese;
that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops;--also
that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc
Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forcats and danger of plunder. (See
Barbaroux, Memoires Note in p. 40, 41.) Forcats they were not;
neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, or of
the best-filled purse, they could hardly be; the one thing needful in
them was that they 'knew how to die.' Friend Dampmartin saw them, with
his own eyes, march 'gradually' through his quarters at Villefranche in
the Beaujolais: but saw in the vaguest manner; being indeed preoccupied,
and himself minded for matching just then--across the Rhine. Deep
was his astonishment to think of such a march, without appointment or
arrangement, station or ration: for the rest it was 'the same men he had
seen formerly' in the troubles of the South; 'perfectly civil;'
though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with them.
(Dampmartin, ubi supra.)

So vague are all these; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as good as
silent: garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you
most wish her to speak! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the
Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest
of Municipal procedures; and feel called to fish up what of the
Biographies, creditable or discreditable, of these Five Hundred and
Seventeen, the stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed?

As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguishable in
feature; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim fire, who wend there, in the
hot sultry wea