Heathen Mythology, one sees not for whom. Two hundred thousand
Patriotic Men; and, twice as good, one hundred thousand Patriotic
Women, all decked and glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in this
Champ-de-Mars.

What a picture: that circle of bright-eyed Life, spread up there, on
its thirty-seated Slope; leaning, one would say, on the thick umbrage of
those Avenue-Trees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height; and
all beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth, with the gleams of waters,
or white sparklings of stone-edifices: little circular enamel-picture in
the centre of such a vase--of emerald! A vase not empty: the Invalides
Cupolas want not their population, nor the distant Windmills of
Montmartre; on remotest steeple and invisible village belfry, stand
men with spy-glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured
undulating groups; round and far on, over all the circling heights that
embosom Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the
eye grows dim with measuring. Nay heights, as was before hinted, have
cannon; and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine. When eye
fails, ear shall serve; and all France properly is but one Amphitheatre:
for in paved town and unpaved hamlet, men walk listening; till the
muffled thunder sound audible on their horizon, that they too may begin
swearing and firing! (Deux Amis, v. 168.) But now, to streams of
music, come Federates enough,--for they have assembled on the Boulevard
Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come marching through the City, with their
Eighty-three Department Banners, and blessings not loud but deep; comes
National Assembly, and takes seat under its Canopy; comes Royalty, and
takes seat on a throne beside it. And Lafayette, on white charger, is
here, and all the civic Functionaries; and the Federates form dances,
till their strictly military evolutions and manoeuvres can begin.

Evolutions and manoeuvres? Task not the pen of mortal to describe them:
truant imagination droops;--declares that it is not worth while. There
is wheeling and sweeping, to slow, to quick, and double quick-time:
Sieur Motier, or Generalissimo Lafayette, for they are one and the same,
and he is General of France, in the King's stead, for four-and-twenty
hours; Sieur Motier must step forth, with that sublime chivalrous gait
of his; solemnly ascend the steps of the Fatherland's Altar, in sight
of Heaven and of the scarcely breathing Earth; and, under the creak o