at. How sad a reverse for Mentz! Brave
Foster, brave Lux planted Liberty-trees, amid ca-ira-ing music, in the
snow-slush of last winter, there: and made Jacobin Societies; and got
the Territory incorporated with France: they came hither to Paris, as
Deputies or Delegates, and have their eighteen francs a-day: but see,
before once the Liberty-Tree is got rightly in leaf, Mentz is changing
into an explosive crater; vomiting fire, bevomited with fire!

Neither of these men shall again see Mentz; they have come hither only
to die. Foster has been round the Globe; he saw Cook perish under Owyhee
clubs; but like this Paris he has yet seen or suffered nothing. Poverty
escorts him: from home there can nothing come, except Job's-news;
the eighteen daily francs, which we here as Deputy or Delegate with
difficulty 'touch,' are in paper assignats, and sink fast in value.
Poverty, disappointment, inaction, obloquy; the brave heart slowly
breaking! Such is Foster's lot. For the rest, Demoiselle Theroigne
smiles on you in the Soirees; 'a beautiful brownlocked face,' of an
exalted temper; and contrives to keep her carriage. Prussian Trenck, the
poor subterranean Baron, jargons and jangles in an unmelodious manner.
Thomas Paine's face is red-pustuled, 'but the eyes uncommonly bright.'
Convention Deputies ask you to dinner: very courteous; and 'we all play
at plumsack.' (Forster's Briefwechsel, ii. 514, 460, 631.) 'It is the
Explosion and New-creation of a World,' says Foster; 'and the actors
in it, such small mean objects, buzzing round one like a handful of
flies.'--

Likewise there is war with Spain. Spain will advance through the gorges
of the Pyrenees; rustling with Bourbon banners; jingling with artillery
and menace. And England has donned the red coat; and marches, with Royal
Highness of York,--whom some once spake of inviting to be our King.
Changed that humour now: and ever more changing; till no hatefuller
thing walk this Earth than a denizen of that tyrannous Island; and Pitt
be declared and decreed, with effervescence, 'L'ennemi du genre humain,
The enemy of mankind;' and, very singular to say, you make an order
that no Soldier of Liberty give quarter to an Englishman. Which order
however, the Soldier of Liberty does but partially obey. We will take
no Prisoners then, say the Soldiers of Liberty; they shall all be
'Deserters' that we take. (See Dampmartin, Evenemens, ii. 213-30.) It
is a frantic order; and attended with inco