Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France!  They are ignorant of much that they should know:  of themselves, of what is around them.  A Political Party that knows not when it is beaten, may become one of the fatallist of things, to itself, and to all.  Nothing will convince these men that they cannot scatter the French Revolution at the first blast of their war-trumpet; that the French Revolution is other than a blustering Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the flash of chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer.  But, alas, what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are round him;—­else where were the need of physical fighting at all?  Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it:  cleft asunder, it will be too late to believe.

One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally on France.  Could they have known, could they have understood!  In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them:  the Conflagration of their Chateaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out after the Fourth of August; and might have continued out, had they at all known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible.  They were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited Similitude of such:  they sat there, uniting King with Commonalty; transmitting and translating gradually, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the other; rendering command and obedience still possible.  Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over generations; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things.

But they were proud and high, these men; they were not wise to consider.  They spurned all from them; in disdainful hate, they drew the sword and flung away the scabbard.  France has not only no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience; its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France; calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who want but a pretext to do that.  Jealous Kings and Kaisers might have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and ashamed to interfere:  but now do not the King’s Brothers, and all French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King himself is not,—­passionately invite us, in the name of Right and of Might?  Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the cry:  On, on!  Yes, Messieurs, you shall on;—­and divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating.