example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,—­what a thought:  that every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the middle of Eternities); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an immortal soul, in him!

Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness; their hearth cheerless, their diet thin.  For them, in this world, rises no Era of Hope; hardly now in the other,—­if it be not hope in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing.  Untaught, uncomforted, unfed!  A dumb generation; their voice only an inarticulate cry:  spokesman, in the King’s Council, in the world’s forum, they have none that finds credence.  At rare intervals (as now, in 1775), they will fling down their hoes and hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind, (Lacretelle, France pendant le 18me Siecle, ii. 455.  Biographie Universelle, para Turgot (by Durozoir).) flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of Versailles.  Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the absurdest Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even ‘factitious;’ an indubitable scarcity of bread.  And so, on the second day of May 1775, these waste multitudes do here, at Versailles Chateau, in wide-spread wretchedness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic writing, their Petition of Grievances.  The Chateau gates have to be shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to them.  They have seen the King’s face; their Petition of Grievances has been, if not read, looked at.  For answer, two of them are hanged, ’on a new gallows forty feet high;’ and the rest driven back to their dens,—­for a time.

Clearly a difficult ‘point’ for Government, that of dealing with these masses;—­if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of Government, and all other points mere accidental crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind!  For let Charter-Chests, Use and Wont, Law common and special say what they will, the masses count to so many millions of units; made, to all appearance, by God,—­whose Earth this is declared to be.  Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews and indignation.  Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau, the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years, from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d’Or:  ’The savages descending in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not to go out.  The Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the bagpipes can begin.  The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm persons, and other