tand such horse-play; no Sectioner can
stand it; the Forty-thousand yield on all sides, scour towards covert.
'Some hundred or so of them gathered both Theatre de la Republique;
but,' says he, 'a few shells dislodged them. It was all finished at
six.'

The Ship is over the bar, then; free she bounds shoreward,--amid
shouting and vivats! Citoyen Buonaparte is 'named General of the
Interior, by acclamation;' quelled Sections have to disarm in such
humour as they may; sacred right of Insurrection is gone for ever!
The Sieyes Constitution can disembark itself, and begin marching. The
miraculous Convention Ship has got to land;--and is there, shall we
figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are wont, into a kind of
Sea Nymph, never to sail more; to roam the waste Azure, a Miracle in
History!

'It is false,' says Napoleon, 'that we fired first with blank charge;
it had been a waste of life to do that.' Most false: the firing was with
sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport;
the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch Church show splintered by it, to
this hour.--Singular: in old Broglie's time, six years ago, this Whiff
of Grapeshot was promised; but it could not be given then, could not
have profited then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the
man; and behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call French
Revolution is blown into space by it, and become a thing that was!--

Homer's Epos, it is remarked, is like a Bas-relief sculpture: it does
not conclude, but merely ceases. Such, indeed, is the Epos of Universal
History itself. Directorates, Consulates, Emperorships, Restorations,
Citizen-Kingships succeed this Business in due series, in due genesis
one out of the other. Nevertheless the First-parent of all these may be
said to have gone to air in the way we see. A Baboeuf Insurrection,
next year, will die in the birth; stifled by the Soldiery. A Senate, if
tinged with Royalism, can be purged by the Soldiery; and an Eighteenth
of Fructidor transacted by the mere shew of bayonets. (Moniteur, du 5
Septembre 1797.) Nay Soldiers' bayonets can be used a posteriori on a
Senate, and make it leap out of window,--still bloodless; and produce
an Eighteenth of Brumaire. (9th November 1799, Choix des Rapports, xvii.
1-96.) Such changes must happen: but they are managed by intriguings,
caballings, and then by orderly word of command; almost like mere
changes of Ministry. Not in general by s