e whole does not TIME
envelop this present National Convention; as it did those Brennuses, and
ancient August Senates in felt breeches? Time surely; and also Eternity.
Dim dusk of Time,--or noon which will be dusk; and then there is night,
and silence; and Time with all its sick noises is swallowed in the still
sea. Pity thy brother, O Son of Adam! The angriest frothy jargon that
he utters, is it not properly the whimpering of an infant which cannot
speak what ails it, but is in distress clearly, in the inwards of it;
and so must squall and whimper continually, till its Mother take it, and
it get--to sleep!

This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Meliboean
stanzas that shook down Royalty are still fresh in our ear, when there
bursts out a new diapason,--unhappily, of Discord, this time. For speech
has been made of a thing difficult to speak of well: the September
Massacres. How deal with these September Massacres; with the Paris
Commune that presided over them? A Paris Commune hateful-terrible;
before which the poor effete Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet.
And now if a young omnipotent Convention will not so quail and sit, what
steps shall it take? Have a Departmental Guard in its pay, answer
the Girondins, and Friends of Order! A Guard of National Volunteers,
missioned from all the Eighty-three or Eighty-five Departments, for that
express end; these will keep Septemberers, tumultuous Communes in a due
state of submissiveness, the Convention in a due state of sovereignty.
So have the Friends of Order answered, sitting in Committee, and
reporting; and even a Decree has been passed of the required tenour. Nay
certain Departments, as the Var or Marseilles, in mere expectation and
assurance of a Decree, have their contingent of Volunteers already on
march: brave Marseillese, foremost on the Tenth of August, will not be
hindmost here; 'fathers gave their sons a musket and twenty-five louis,'
says Barbaroux, 'and bade them march.'

Can any thing be properer? A Republic that will found itself on justice
must needs investigate September Massacres; a Convention calling itself
National, ought it not to be guarded by a National force?--Alas, Reader,
it seems so to the eye: and yet there is much to be said and argued.
Thou beholdest here the small beginning of a Controversy, which mere
logic will not settle. Two small well-springs, September, Departmental
Guard, or rather at bottom they are but one and the