From dawn to dusk, as we said, it lasts; and truly a sight like few.  Flourishes of drums and trumpets are something:  but think of an ‘artificial Rock fifty feet high,’ all cut into crag-steps, not without the similitude of ‘shrubs!’ The interior cavity, for in sooth it is made of deal,—­stands solemn, a ‘Temple of Concord:’  on the outer summit rises ‘a Statue of Liberty,’ colossal, seen for miles, with her Pike and Phrygian Cap, and civic column; at her feet a Country’s Altar, ’Autel de la Patrie:’—­on all which neither deal-timber nor lath and plaster, with paint of various colours, have been spared.  But fancy then the banners all placed on the steps of the Rock; high-mass chaunted; and the civic oath of fifty thousand:  with what volcanic outburst of sound from iron and other throats, enough to frighten back the very Saone and Rhone; and how the brightest fireworks, and balls, and even repasts closed in that night of the gods! (Hist.  Parl. xii. 274.) And so the Lyons Federation vanishes too, swallowed of darkness;—­and yet not wholly, for our brave fair Roland was there; also she, though in the deepest privacy, writes her Narrative of it in Champagneux’s Courier de Lyons; a piece which ‘circulates to the extent of sixty thousand;’ which one would like now to read.

But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to devise; will only have to borrow and apply.  And then as to the day, what day of all the calendar is fit, if the Bastille Anniversary be not?  The particular spot too, it is easy to see, must be the Champ-de-Mars; where many a Julian the Apostate has been lifted on bucklers, to France’s or the world’s sovereignty; and iron Franks, loud-clanging, have responded to the voice of a Charlemagne; and from of old mere sublimities have been familiar.

Chapter 2.1.IX.

Symbolic.

How natural, in all decisive circumstances, is Symbolic Representation to all kinds of men!  Nay, what is man’s whole terrestrial Life but a Symbolic Representation, and making visible, of the Celestial invisible Force that is in him?  By act and world he strives to do it; with sincerity, if possible; failing that, with theatricality, which latter also may have its meaning.  An Almack’s Masquerade is not nothing; in more genial ages, your Christmas Guisings, Feasts of the Ass, Abbots of Unreason, were a considerable something:  since sport they were; as Almacks may still be sincere wish for sport.  But what, on the other hand, must not sincere earnest have been:  say, a Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles have been!  A whole Nation gathered, in the name of the Highest, under the eye of the Highest; imagination herself flagging under the reality; and all noblest Ceremony as yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, significant to the outmost fringe!  Neither, in modern private life, are theatrical scenes, of tearful women wetting whole ells of cambric in concert, of impassioned bushy-whiskered youth threatening suicide, and such like, to be so entirely detested:  drop thou a tear over them thyself rather.