atires,
in Republican didactic Almanacks. (Actes des Apotres (by Peltier and
others); Almanach du Pere Gerard (by Collot d'Herbois) &c. &c.) As
for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it,
candidly think of this Parlementary work,--"I think," answered he, "that
there are a good many scoundrels among us." so walks Father Gerard;
solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.

And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time?
If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye
of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late.
Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric
destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal
from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the
ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiene be
a present aid: but, greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal
Code;' and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which
shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's
endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product
popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as
if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I
whisk off your head (vous fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you
have no pain;"--whereat they all laugh. (Moniteur Newspaper, of
December 1st, 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire).) Unfortunate Doctor!
For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall near nothing but
guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long
centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of
Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Caesar's.

See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of Astronomy
Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful
Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in
foul thick confusion--of Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic Officiality,
rabid Triviality, and the throat of everlasting Darkness! Far was it to
descend from the heavenly Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal
dung-heap, on that last hell-day, thou must 'tremble,' though only with
cold, 'de froid.' Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so
miserable; but to be weaker than our task. Wo the day when they mounted
thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippo