what with Days of Poniards, with plot after plot, the People are left to themselves; the People must needs choose Defenders of the People, such as can be had.  Choosing, as they also will ever do, ’if not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen!’ Fervour of character, decided Patriot-Constitutional feeling; these are qualities:  but free utterance, mastership in tongue-fence; this is the quality of qualities.  Accordingly one finds, with little astonishment, in this First Biennial, that as many as Four hundred Members are of the Advocate or Attorney species.  Men who can speak, if there be aught to speak:  nay here are men also who can think, and even act.  Candour will say of this ill-fated First French Parliament that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above the average.  Let average Parliaments, whom the world does not guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars!

France, as we say, has once more done what it could:  fervid men have come together from wide separation; for strange issues.  Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost South-East; fiery Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the utmost North-West.  No Mirabeau now sits here, who had swallowed formulas:  our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as yet out of doors; whom some call ’Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.’

Nevertheless we have our gifts,—­especially of speech and logic.  An eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most impetuous of public speakers; from the region named Gironde, of the Garonne:  a man unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming and perorating.  Sharp bustling Guadet; considerate grave Censonne; kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos; Valaze doomed to a sad end:  all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux region:  men of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick talent, irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the Reign of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods.  Round whom others of like temper will gather; known by and by as Girondins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world.  Of which sort note Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher; who has worked at much, at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as two-years Senator:  a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face, and fiery heart; ’volcano hid under snow;’ styled likewise, in irreverent language, ’mouton enrage,’ peaceablest of creatures bitten rabid!  Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him.  A biennial Senator he too; nay, for the present, the king of such.  Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot; who took to himself the style de Warville, heralds know not in the least why;—­unless it were that the father of him did, in an unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the Village of Ouarville?  A man of the windmill species, that grinds always, turning towards all winds; not in the steadiest manner.