ready will of
theirs, with that extemporaneous adroitness. It is a true brethren's
work; all distinctions confounded, abolished; as it was in the
beginning, when Adam himself delved. Longfrocked tonsured Monks,
with short-skirted Water-carriers, with swallow-tailed well-frizzled
Incroyables of a Patriot turn; dark Charcoalmen, meal-white
Peruke-makers; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate and Judge are there, and
all Heads of Districts: sober Nuns sisterlike with flaunting Nymphs of
the Opera, and females in common circumstances named unfortunate: the
patriot Rag-picker, and perfumed dweller in palaces; for Patriotism
like New-birth, and also like Death, levels all. The Printers have
come marching, Prudhomme's all in Paper-caps with Revolutions de Paris
printed on them; as Camille notes; wishing that in these great days
there should be a Pacte des Ecrivains too, or Federation of Able
Editors. (See Newspapers, &c. (in Hist. Parl. vi. 381-406).) Beautiful
to see! The snowy linen and delicate pantaloon alternates with the
soiled check-shirt and bushel-breeches; for both have cast their coats,
and under both are four limbs and a set of Patriot muscles. There
do they pick and shovel; or bend forward, yoked in long strings to
box-barrow or overloaded tumbril; joyous, with one mind. Abbe Sieyes is
seen pulling, wiry, vehement, if too light for draught; by the side of
Beauharnais, who shall get Kings though he be none. Abbe Maury did not
pull; but the Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised like him, so he had
to pull in effigy. Let no august Senator disdain the work: Mayor Bailly,
Generalissimo Lafayette are there;--and, alas, shall be there again
another day! The King himself comes to see: sky-rending Vive-le-Roi;
'and suddenly with shouldered spades they form a guard of honour round
him.' Whosoever can come comes, to work, or to look, and bless the work.

Whole families have come. One whole family we see clearly, of three
generations: the father picking, the mother shovelling, the young ones
wheeling assiduous; old grandfather, hoary with ninety-three years,
holds in his arms the youngest of all: (Mercier. ii. 76, &c.) frisky,
not helpful this one; who nevertheless may tell it to his grandchildren;
and how the Future and the Past alike looked on, and with failing or
with half-formed voice, faltered their ca-ira. A vintner has wheeled in,
on Patriot truck, beverage of wine: "Drink not, my brothers, if ye are
not dry; that your cask ma