, marcher,--had it once legs to stand on. Quick, then, ye
Patriots, bestir yourselves, and make it; shape legs for it! In the
Archeveche, or Archbishop's Palace, his Grace himself having fled; and
afterwards in the Riding-hall, named Manege, close on the Tuileries:
there does a National Assembly apply itself to the miraculous work.
Successfully, had there been any heaven-scaling Prometheus among them;
not successfully since there was none! There, in noisy debate, for the
sessions are occasionally 'scandalous,' and as many as three speakers
have been seen in the Tribune at once,--let us continue to fancy it
wearing the slow months.

Tough, dogmatic, long of wind is Abbe Maury; Ciceronian pathetic is
Cazales. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young Barnave;
abhorrent of sophistry; sheering, like keen Damascus sabre, all
sophistry asunder,--reckless what else he sheer with it. Simple seemest
thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving
in that tone of thine, livelier polemical Rabaut. With ineffable
serenity sniffs great Sieyes, aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may
babble over, ye may mar, but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a
science he has exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible,
with their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund
their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly be
wounded in duels. A Marquis Toulongeon, whose Pen we yet thank, sits
there; in stoical meditative humour, oftenest silent, accepts what
destiny will send. Thouret and Parlementary Duport produce mountains of
Reformed Law; liberal, Anglomaniac, available and unavailable.
Mortals rise and fall. Shall goose Gobel, for example,--or Go(with an
umlaut)bel, for he is of Strasburg German breed, be a Constitutional
Archbishop?

Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither
all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal
seems to be getting cool. In that famed Pentecost-Night of the Fourth
of August, when new Faith rose suddenly into miraculous fire, and old
Feudality was burnt up, men remarked that Mirabeau took no hand in it;
that, in fact, he luckily happened to be absent. But did he not defend
the Veto, nay Veto Absolu; and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred
irresponsible senators would make of all tyrannies the insupportablest?
Again, how anxious was he that the King's Ministers should have seat and
vo