ll, rising, as Ark of their Covenant, the
grim Patibulary Fork 'forty feet high;' which also is now nigh rotted.
Add only that the French Nation distinguishes itself among Nations by
the characteristic of Excitability; with the good, but also with the
perilous evil, which belongs to that. Rebellion, explosion, of unknown
extent is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield wrote, 'all
the symptoms I have ever met with in History!'

Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what
it called 'extinguishing the abomination (ecraser 'l'infame)'? Wo rather
to those that made the Holy an abomination, and extinguishable; wo
at all men that live in such a time of world-abomination and
world-destruction! Nay, answer the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was
Necker, with their mad innovating; it was the Queen's want of etiquette;
it was he, it was she, it was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that
had lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been only eating
and misdoing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as Sovereign
Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne and earlier.
All this (for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is as seed sown out
to grow) has been storing itself for thousands of years; and now the
account-day has come. And rude will the settlement be: of wrath laid up
against the day of wrath. O my Brother, be not thou a Quack! Die rather,
if thou wilt take counsel; 'tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it
for ever. Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou knowest not how,
long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are all
consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,--through Eternity
itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God!

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is
but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable, and
touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation
through all its wild destinies. For we shall still find Hope shining, be
it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly
light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous
blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent
out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era
still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,--when there is
nothing left but Hope.

But if any one would know summarily what a Pan