In the Salle de Manege.

To believing Patriots, however, it is now clear, that the Constitution will march, 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 voice in the National Assembly;—­doubtless with an eye to being Minister himself!  Whereupon the National Assembly decides, what is very momentous, that no Deputy shall be Minister; he, in his haughty stormful manner, advising us to make it, ‘no Deputy called Mirabeau.’ (Moniteur, Nos. 65, 86 (29th September, 7th November, 1789).) A man of perhaps inveterate Feudalisms; of stratagems; too