Convention, have
taken care of that. Not a Parish Constable, in the furthest hamlet, who
has said De Par le Roi, and shewn loyalty, but must retire, making way
for a new improved Parish Constable who can say De par la Republique.

It is a change such as History must beg her readers to imagine,
undescribed. An instantaneous change of the whole body-politic, the
soul-politic being all changed; such a change as few bodies, politic
or other, can experience in this world. Say perhaps, such as poor Nymph
Semele's body did experience, when she would needs, with woman's humour,
see her Olympian Jove as very Jove;--and so stood, poor Nymph, this
moment Semele, next moment not Semele, but Flame and a Statue of red-hot
Ashes! France has looked upon Democracy; seen it face to face.--The
Cimmerian Invaders will rally, in humbler temper, with better or worse
luck: the wreck and dissolution must reshape itself into a social
Arrangement as it can and may. But as for this National Convention,
which is to settle every thing, if it do, as Deputy Paine and France
generally expects, get all finished 'in a few months,' we shall call it
a most deft Convention.

In truth, it is very singular to see how this mercurial French People
plunges suddenly from Vive le Roi to Vive la Republique; and goes
simmering and dancing; shaking off daily (so to speak), and trampling
into the dust, its old social garnitures, ways of thinking, rules of
existing; and cheerfully dances towards the Ruleless, Unknown, with such
hope in its heart, and nothing but Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood
in its mouth. Is it two centuries, or is it only two years, since all
France roared simultaneously to the welkin, bursting forth into sound
and smoke at its Feast of Pikes, "Live the Restorer of French Liberty?"
Three short years ago there was still Versailles and an Oeil-de-Boeuf:
now there is that watched Circuit of the Temple, girt with dragon-eyed
Municipals, where, as in its final limbo, Royalty lies extinct. In
the year 1789, Constituent Deputy Barrere 'wept,' in his Break-of-Day
Newspaper, at sight of a reconciled King Louis; and now in 1792,
Convention Deputy Barrere, perfectly tearless, may be considering,
whether the reconciled King Louis shall be guillotined or not.

Old garnitures and social vestures drop off (we say) so fast, being
indeed quite decayed, and are trodden under the National dance. And
the new vestures, where are they; the new modes and rules? Libe