These Friends of the Constitution have met mainly, as their name may foreshadow, to look after Elections when an Election comes, and procure fit men; but likewise to consult generally that the Commonweal take no damage; one as yet sees not how.  For indeed let two or three gather together any where, if it be not in Church, where all are bound to the passive state; no mortal can say accurately, themselves as little as any, for what they are gathered.  How often has the broached barrel proved not to be for joy and heart effusion, but for duel and head-breakage; and the promised feast become a Feast of the Lapithae!  This Jacobins Club, which at first shone resplendent, and was thought to be a new celestial Sun for enlightening the Nations, had, as things all have, to work through its appointed phases:  it burned unfortunately more and more lurid, more sulphurous, distracted;—­and swam at last, through the astonished Heaven, like a Tartarean Portent, and lurid-burning Prison of Spirits in Pain.

Its style of eloquence?  Rejoice, Reader, that thou knowest it not, that thou canst never perfectly know.  The Jacobins published a Journal of Debates, where they that have the heart may examine:  Impassioned, full-droning Patriotic-eloquence; implacable, unfertile—­save for Destruction, which was indeed its work:  most wearisome, though most deadly.  Be thankful that Oblivion covers so much; that all carrion is by and by buried in the green Earth’s bosom, and even makes her grow the greener.  The Jacobins are buried; but their work is not; it continues ‘making the tour of the world,’ as it can.  It might be seen lately, for instance, with bared bosom and death-defiant eye, as far on as Greek Missolonghi; and, strange enough, old slumbering Hellas was resuscitated, into somnambulism which will become clear wakefulness, by a voice from the Rue St. Honore!  All dies, as we often say; except the spirit of man, of what man does.  Thus has not the very House of the Jacobins vanished; scarcely lingering in a few old men’s memories?  The St. Honore Market has brushed it away, and now where dull-droning eloquence, like a Trump of Doom, once shook the world, there is pacific chaffering for poultry and greens.  The sacred National Assembly Hall itself has become common ground; President’s platform permeable to wain and dustcart; for the Rue de Rivoli runs there.  Verily, at Cockcrow (of this Cock or the other), all Apparitions do melt and dissolve in space.

The Paris Jacobins became ‘the Mother-Society, Societe-Mere;’ and had as many as ‘three hundred’ shrill-tongued daughters in ’direct correspondence’ with her.  Of indirectly corresponding, what we may call grand-daughters and minute progeny, she counted ’forty-four thousand!’—­But for the present we note only two things:  the first of them a mere anecdote.  One night, a couple of brother Jacobins are doorkeepers; for the members take this post of duty and honour in rotation, and admit none that have not tickets:  one doorkeeper was the worthy Sieur Lais, a patriotic Opera-singer, stricken in years, whose windpipe is long since closed without result; the other, young, and named Louis Philippe, d’Orleans’s firstborn, has in this latter time, after unheard-of destinies, become Citizen-King, and struggles to rule for a season.  All-flesh is grass; higher reedgrass or creeping herb.