And now if a whole Nation fall into that?  In such case, I answer, infallibly they will return out of it!  For life is no cunningly-devised deception or self-deception:  it is a great truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions, but on fact.  To fact, depend on it, we shall come back:  to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for.  The lowest, least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism:  That I can devour Thee.  What if such Primitive Fact were precisely the one we had (with our improved methods) to revert to, and begin anew from!

Chapter 1.2.VIII.

Printed Paper.

In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say what it will, discontents cannot be wanting:  your promised Reformation is so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin it—­with himself?  Discontent with what is around us, still more with what is above us, goes on increasing; seeking ever new vents.

Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered Despotism, we need not speak.  Nor of Manuscript Newspapers (Nouvelles a la main) do we speak.  Bachaumont and his journeymen and followers may close those ‘thirty volumes of scurrilous eaves-dropping,’ and quit that trade; for at length if not liberty of the Press, there is license.  Pamphlets can be surreptititiously vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to be ‘Printed at Pekin.’  We have a Courrier de l’Europe in those years, regularly published at London; by a De Morande, whom the guillotine has not yet devoured.  There too an unruly Linguet, still unguillotined, when his own country has become too hot for him, and his brother Advocates have cast him out, can emit his hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee (Bastille unveiled).  Loquacious Abbe Raynal, at length, has his wish; sees the Histoire Philosophique, with its ‘lubricity,’ unveracity, loose loud eleutheromaniac rant (contributed, they say, by Philosophedom at large, though in the Abbe’s name, and to his glory), burnt by the common hangman;—­and sets out on his travels as a martyr.  It was the edition of 1781; perhaps the last notable book that had such fire-beatitude,—­the hangman discovering now that it did not serve.

Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels, divorce-cases, wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence can be had, what indications!  The Parlements of Besancon and Aix ring, audible to all France, with the amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau.  He, under the nurture of a ‘Friend of Men,’ has, in State Prisons, in marching Regiments, Dutch Authors’ garrets, and quite other scenes, ’been for twenty years learning to resist ‘despotism:’  despotism of men, and alas also of gods.  How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence