Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched him.  Behold the new morning glittering down the eastern steeps; fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts of light; let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever.  It is Truth and Astraea Redux that (in the shape of Philosophism) henceforth reign.  For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be ‘happy’?  By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness enough now awaits him.  Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers Kings.  Let but Society be once rightly constituted,—­by victorious Analysis.  The stomach that is empty shall be filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with wine.  Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but joyous.  Wheatfields, one would think, cannot come to grow untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—­unless indeed machinery will do it?  Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how.  But if each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all, then surely—­no one will be uncared for.  Nay, who knows but, by sufficiently victorious Analysis, ’human life may be indefinitely lengthened,’ and men get rid of Death, as they have already done of the Devil?  We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the Devil.—­So preaches magniloquent Philosophism her Redeunt Saturnia regna.

The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough in the Versailles Oeil-de-Boeuf; and the Oeil-de-Boeuf, intent chiefly on nearer blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a polite “Why not?” Good old cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime Minister to dash the world’s joy.  Sufficient for the day be its own evil.  Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may please all persons.  The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of temper at times:  he, at length, determines on a little smithwork; and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is learning to make locks. (Campan, i. 125.) It appears further, he understood Geography; and could read English.  Unhappy young King, his childlike trust in that foolish old Maurepas deserved another return.  But friend and foe, destiny and himself have combined to do him hurt.

Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not with affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it.  Weber and Campan (Ib. i. 100-151.  Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance:  fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee!  Like Earth’s