Assemblage than this august Constituent, or with a stranger mission, perhaps never met there.  Seen from the distance, this also will be a miracle.  Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the Gospel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name of Twenty-five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to ‘make the Constitution:’  such sight, the acme and main product of the Eighteenth Century, our World can witness once only.  For Time is rich in wonders, in monstrosities most rich; and is observed never to repeat himself, or any of his Gospels:—­surely least of all, this Gospel according to Jean-Jacques.  Once it was right and indispensable, since such had become the Belief of men; but once also is enough.

They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Hundred Jean-Jacques Evangelists; not without result.  Near twenty-nine months they sat, with various fortune; in various capacity;—­always, we may say, in that capacity of carborne Caroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a Thing high and lifted up; whereon whosoever looked might hope healing.  They have seen much:  cannons levelled on them; then suddenly, by interposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back; and a war-god Broglie vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the dust and downrushing of a Bastille and Old Feudal France.  They have suffered somewhat:  Royal Session, with rain and Oath of the Tennis-Court; Nights of Pentecost; Insurrections of Women.  Also have they not done somewhat?  Made the Constitution, and managed all things the while; passed, in these twenty-nine months, ‘twenty-five hundred Decrees,’ which on the average is some three for each day, including Sundays!  Brevity, one finds, is possible, at times:  had not Moreau de St. Mery to give three thousand orders before rising from his seat?—­There was valour (or value) in these men; and a kind of faith,—­were it only faith in this, That cobwebs are not cloth; that a Constitution could be made.  Cobwebs and chimeras ought verily to disappear; for a Reality there is.  Let formulas, soul-killing, and now grown body-killing, insupportable, begone, in the name of Heaven and Earth!—­Time, as we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred; Eternity was before them, Eternity behind:  they worked, as we all do, in the confluence of Two Eternities; what work was given them.  Say not that it was nothing they did.  Consciously they did somewhat; unconsciously how much!  They had their giants and their dwarfs, they accomplished their good and their evil; they are gone, and return no more.  Shall they not go with our blessing, in these circumstances; with our mild farewell?