Unhappy Royalty, unhappy Majesty, Hereditary (Representative), Representant Hereditaire, or however they can name him; of whom much is expected, to whom little is given!  Blue National Guards encircle that Tuileries; a Lafayette, thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water, turned to thin ice; whom no Queen’s heart can love.  National Assembly, its pavilion spread where we know, sits near by, keeping continual hubbub.  From without nothing but Nanci Revolts, sack of Castries Hotels, riots and seditions; riots, North and South, at Aix, at Douai, at Befort, Usez, Perpignan, at Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of the Pope’s:  a continual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole face of France;—­testifying how electric it grows.  Add only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives; that continual running-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone and basis of all other Discords!

The plan of Royalty, so far as it can be said to have any fixed plan, is still, as ever, that of flying towards the frontiers.  In very truth, the only plan of the smallest promise for it!  Fly to Bouille; bristle yourself round with cannon, served by your ’forty-thousand undebauched Germans:’  summon the National Assembly to follow you, summon what of it is Royalist, Constitutional, gainable by money; dissolve the rest, by grapeshot if need be.  Let Jacobinism and Revolt, with one wild wail, fly into Infinite Space; driven by grapeshot.  Thunder over France with the cannon’s mouth; commanding, not entreating, that this riot cease.  And then to rule afterwards with utmost possible Constitutionality; doing justice, loving mercy; being Shepherd of this indigent People, not Shearer merely, and Shepherd’s-similitude!  All this, if ye dare.  If ye dare not, then in Heaven’s name go to sleep:  other handsome alternative seems none.

Nay, it were perhaps possible; with a man to do it.  For if such inexpressible whirlpool of Babylonish confusions (which our Era is) cannot be stilled by man, but only by Time and men, a man may moderate its paroxysms, may balance and sway, and keep himself unswallowed on the top of it,—­as several men and Kings in these days do.  Much is possible for a man; men will obey a man that kens and cans, and name him reverently their Ken-ning or King.  Did not Charlemagne rule?  Consider too whether he had smooth times of it; hanging ’thirty-thousand Saxons over the Weser-Bridge,’ at one dread swoop!  So likewise, who knows but, in this same distracted fanatic France, the right man may verily exist?  An olive-complexioned taciturn man; for the present, Lieutenant in the Artillery-service, who once sat studying Mathematics at Brienne?  The same who walked in the morning to correct proof-sheets at Dole, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast with M. Joly?  Such a one is gone, whither also famed General Paoli his friend is gone, in these very days, to see old scenes in native Corsica, and what Democratic good can be done there.