a universal unconstitutional heat.  What to do with them?  They may be conscientious as well as contumacious:  gently they should be dealt with, and yet it must be speedily.  In unilluminated La Vendee the simple are like to be seduced by them; many a simple peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring meditative with his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head!  Two Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn; considerate Gensonne, not yet called to be a Senator; Gallois, an editorial man.  These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and worked, softly, with judgment; they have hushed down the irritation, and produced a soft Report,—­for the time.

The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace there; being an able man.  He passes these frosty months among the pleasant people of Niort, occupies ’tolerably handsome apartments in the Castle of Niort,’ and tempers the minds of men. (Dumouriez, ii. 129.) Why is there but one Dumouriez?  Elsewhere you find South or North, nothing but untempered obscure jarring; which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of riot.  Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torch light; with rushing and onslaught:  Northern Caen not less, by daylight; with Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places of Worship; Departmental compromise proving impossible; breaking into musketry and a Plot discovered! (Hist.  Parl. xii. 131, 141; xiii. 114, 417.) Add Hunger too:  for Bread, always dear, is getting dearer:  not so much as Sugar can be had; for good reasons.  Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated People.  What a trade this of Mayor, in these times!  Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long since; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead; and now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of Etampes,—­whom legal Constitutionalism will not forget.

With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call dechire, torn asunder this poor country:  France and all that is French.  For, over seas too come bad news.  In black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Glitter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it:  of molasses and ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries, plantations, furniture, cattle and men:  skyhigh; the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl of smoke and flame!

What a change here, in these two years; since that first ’Box of Tricolor Cockades’ got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles!  Levelling is comfortable, as we often say:  levelling, yet only down to oneself.  Your pale-white Creoles, have their grievances:—­and your yellow Quarteroons?  And your dark-yellow Mulattoes?  And your Slaves