Surely, except to a very hoping People, there was not much here to build upon.  Yet what did they not build!  The fact that the King has spoken, that he has voluntarily come to speak, how inexpressibly encouraging!  Did not the glance of his royal countenance, like concentrated sunbeams, kindle all hearts in an august Assembly; nay thereby in an inflammable enthusiastic France?  To move ‘Deputation of thanks’ can be the happy lot of but one man; to go in such Deputation the lot of not many.  The Deputed have gone, and returned with what highest-flown compliment they could; whom also the Queen met, Dauphin in hand.  And still do not our hearts burn with insatiable gratitude; and to one other man a still higher blessedness suggests itself:  To move that we all renew the National Oath.

Happiest honourable Member, with his word so in season as word seldom was; magic Fugleman of a whole National Assembly, which sat there bursting to do somewhat; Fugleman of a whole onlooking France!  The President swears; declares that every one shall swear, in distinct je le jure.  Nay the very Gallery sends him down a written slip signed, with their Oath on it; and as the Assembly now casts an eye that way, the Gallery all stands up and swears again.  And then out of doors, consider at the Hotel-de-Ville how Bailly, the great Tennis-Court swearer, again swears, towards nightful, with all the Municipals, and Heads of Districts assembled there.  And ’M.  Danton suggests that the public would like to partake:’  whereupon Bailly, with escort of Twelve, steps forth to the great outer staircase; sways the ebullient multitude with stretched hand:  takes their oath, with a thunder of ‘rolling drums,’ with shouts that rend the welkin.  And on all streets the glad people, with moisture and fire in their eyes, ’spontaneously formed groups, and swore one another,’ (Newspapers in Hist.  Parl. iv. 445.)—­and the whole City was illuminated.  This was the Fourth of February 1790:  a day to be marked white in Constitutional annals.

Nor is the illumination for a night only, but partially or totally it lasts a series of nights.  For each District, the Electors of each District, will swear specially; and always as the District swears; it illuminates itself.  Behold them, District after District, in some open square, where the Non-Electing People can all see and join:  with their uplifted right hands, and je le jure:  with rolling drums, with embracings, and that infinite hurrah of the enfranchised,—­which any tyrant that there may be can consider!  Faithful to the King, to the Law, to the Constitution which the National Assembly shall make.