ace;
acknowledge its sins and the Republic; nay, in Madrid, there will be joy
as for a victory, that even Peace is got.

Few things, we repeat, can be notabler than these Convention
Representatives, with their power more than kingly. Nay at bottom are
they not Kings, Ablemen, of a sort; chosen from the Seven Hundred and
Forty-nine French Kings; with this order, Do thy duty? Representative
Levasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere pacific Surgeon-Accoucheur,
has mutinies to quell; mad hosts (mad at the Doom of Custine) bellowing
far and wide; he alone amid them, the one small Representative,--small,
but as hard as flint, which also carries fire in it! So too, at
Hondschooten, far in the afternoon, he declares that the battle is
not lost; that it must be gained; and fights, himself, with his own
obstetric hand;--horse shot under him, or say on foot, 'up to the
haunches in tide-water;' cutting stoccado and passado there, in defiance
of Water, Earth, Air and Fire, the choleric little Representative
that he was! Whereby, as natural, Royal Highness of York had to
withdraw,--occasionally at full gallop; like to be swallowed by the
tide: and his Siege of Dunkirk became a dream, realising only much loss
of beautiful siege-artillery and of brave lives. (Levasseur, Memoires,
ii. c. 2-7.)

General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge, on this
Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him. A new
General Jourdan, late Serjeant Jourdan, commands in his stead: he,
in long-winded Battles of Watigny, 'murderous artillery-fire mingling
itself with sound of Revolutionary battle-hymns,' forces Austria behind
the Sambre again; has hopes of purging the soil of Liberty. With hard
wrestling, with artillerying and ca-ira-ing, it shall be done. In the
course of a new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered; Conde
beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria beleaguered and
bombarded: nay, by Convention Decree, we even summon them all 'either
to surrender in twenty-four hours, or else be put to the sword;'--a high
saying, which, though it remains unfulfilled, may shew what spirit one
is of.

Representative Drouet, as an Old-Dragoon, could fight by a kind of
second nature; but he was unlucky. Him, in a night-foray at Maubeuge,
the Austrians took alive, in October last. They stript him almost naked,
he says; making a shew of him, as King-taker of Varennes. They flung him
into carts; sent him fa