But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of the Champs Elysees!  Thither, to these Fields well named Elysian, all feet tend.  It is radiant as day with festooned lamps; little oil-cups, like variegated fire-flies, daintily illumine the highest leaves:  trees there are all sheeted with variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer into the dubious wood.  There, under the free sky, do tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound sweethearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and tart humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the ambrosial night; and hearts were touched and fired; and seldom surely had our old Planet, in that huge conic Shadow of hers ’which goes beyond the Moon, and is named Night,’ curtained such a Ball-room.  O if, according to Seneca, the very gods look down on a good man struggling with adversity, and smile; what must they think of Five-and-twenty million indifferent ones victorious over it,—­for eight days and more?

In this way, and in such ways, however, has the Feast of Pikes danced itself off; gallant Federates wending homewards, towards every point of the compass, with feverish nerves, heart and head much heated; some of them, indeed, as Dampmartin’s elderly respectable friend, from Strasbourg, quite ‘burnt out with liquors,’ and flickering towards extinction. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 144-184.) The Feast of Pikes has danced itself off, and become defunct, and the ghost of a Feast;—­nothing of it now remaining but this vision in men’s memory; and the place that knew it (for the slope of that Champ-de-Mars is crumbled to half the original height (Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, viii. 25).) now knowing it no more.  Undoubtedly one of the memorablest National Hightides.  Never or hardly ever, as we said, was Oath sworn with such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure of joyance; and then it was broken irremediably within year and day.  Ah, why?  When the swearing of it was so heavenly-joyful, bosom clasped to bosom, and Five-and-twenty million hearts all burning together:  O ye inexorable Destinies, why?—­Partly because it was sworn with such over-joyance; but chiefly, indeed, for an older reason:  that Sin had come into the world and Misery by Sin!  These Five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it, have now henceforth, with that Phrygian Cap of theirs, no force over them, to bind and guide; neither in them, more than heretofore, is guiding force, or rule of just living:  how then, while they all go rushing at such a pace, on unknown ways, with no bridle, towards no aim, can hurlyburly unutterable fail?  For verily not Federation-rosepink is the colour of this Earth and her work:  not by outbursts of noble-sentiment, but with far other ammunition, shall a man front the world.