; stands where a Tyrant Louis Quinze once stood. 'Three thousand
birds' are let loose, into the whole world, with labels round their
neck, We are free; imitate us. Holocaust of Royalist and ci-devant
trumpery, such as one could still gather, is burnt; pontifical eloquence
must be uttered, by handsome Herault, and Pagan orisons offered up.

And then forward across the River; where is new enormous Statuary;
enormous plaster Mountain; Hercules-Peuple, with uplifted all-conquering
club; 'many-headed Dragon of Girondin Federalism rising from fetid
marsh;'--needing new eloquence from Herault. To say nothing of
Champ-de-Mars, and Fatherland's Altar there; with urn of slain
Defenders, Carpenter's-level of the Law; and such exploding,
gesticulating and perorating, that Herault's lips must be growing white,
and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth. (Choix des Rapports,
xii. 432-42.)

Towards six-o'clock let the wearied President, let Paris Patriotism
generally sit down to what repast, and social repasts, can be had; and
with flowing tankard or light-mantling glass, usher in this New and
Newest Era. In fact, is not Romme's New Calendar getting ready? On all
housetops flicker little tricolor Flags, their flagstaff a Pike and
Liberty-Cap. On all house-walls, for no Patriot, not suspect, will
be behind another, there stand printed these words: Republic one and
indivisible, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.

As to the New Calendar, we may say here rather than elsewhere that
speculative men have long been struck with the inequalities and
incongruities of the Old Calendar; that a New one has long been as good
as determined on. Marechal the Atheist, almost ten years ago, proposed
a New Calendar, free at least from superstition: this the Paris
Municipality would now adopt, in defect of a better; at all events, let
us have either this of Marechal's or a better,--the New Era being come.
Petitions, more than once, have been sent to that effect; and indeed,
for a year past, all Public Bodies, Journalists, and Patriots in
general, have dated First Year of the Republic. It is a subject not
without difficulties. But the Convention has taken it up; and Romme,
as we say, has been meditating it; not Marechal's New Calendar, but
a better New one of Romme's and our own. Romme, aided by a Monge, a
Lagrange and others, furnishes mathematics; Fabre d'Eglantine furnishes
poetic nomenclature: and so, on the 5th of October 1793, after trou