He had been a wise Frenchman, who, looking, close at hand, on this waste aspect of a France all stirring and whirling, in ways new, untried, had been able to discern where the cardinal movement lay; which tendency it was that had the rule and primary direction of it then!  But at forty-four years’ distance, it is different.  To all men now, two cardinal movements or grand tendencies, in the September whirl, have become discernible enough:  that stormful effluence towards the Frontiers; that frantic crowding towards Townhouses and Council-halls in the interior.  Wild France dashes, in desperate death-defiance, towards the Frontiers, to defend itself from foreign Despots; crowds towards Townhalls and Election Committee-rooms, to defend itself from domestic Aristocrats.  Let the Reader conceive well these two cardinal movements; and what side-currents and endless vortexes might depend on these.  He shall judge too, whether, in such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of cardinal movements, half-frantic in themselves, could be of soft nature?  As in dry Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand!  The air itself (Travellers say) is a dim sand-air; and dim looming through it, the wonderfullest uncertain colonnades of Sand-Pillars rush whirling from this side and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a hundred feet in stature; and dance their huge Desert-waltz there!—­

Nevertheless in all human movements, were they but a day old, there is order, or the beginning of order.  Consider two things in this Sahara-waltz of the French Twenty-five millions; or rather one thing, and one hope of a thing:  the Commune (Municipality) of Paris, which is already here; the National Convention, which shall in few weeks be here.  The Insurrectionary Commune, which improvising itself on the eve of the Tenth of August, worked this ever-memorable Deliverance by explosion, must needs rule over it,—­till the Convention meet.  This Commune, which they may well call a spontaneous or ‘improvised’ Commune, is, for the present, sovereign of France.  The Legislative, deriving its authority from the Old, how can it now have authority when the Old is exploded by insurrection?  As a floating piece of wreck, certain things, persons and interests may still cleave to it:  volunteer defenders, riflemen or pikemen in green uniform, or red nightcap (of bonnet rouge), defile before it daily, just on the wing towards Brunswick; with the brandishing of arms; always with some touch of Leonidas-eloquence, often with a fire of daring that threatens to outherod Herod,—­the Galleries, ‘especially the Ladies, never done with applauding.’ (Moore’s Journal, i. 85.) Addresses of this or the like sort can be received and answered, in the hearing of all France:  the Salle de Manege is still useful as a place of proclamation.  For which use, indeed, it now chiefly serves.  Vergniaud delivers spirit-stirring orations; but always with