To make the Constitution, then, and return home joyfully in a few months:  this is the prophecy our National Convention gives of itself; by this scientific program shall its operations and events go on.  But from the best scientific program, in such a case, to the actual fulfilment, what a difference!  Every reunion of men, is it not, as we often say, a reunion of incalculable Influences; every unit of it a microcosm of Influences;—­of which how shall Science calculate or prophesy!  Science, which cannot, with all its calculuses, differential, integral, and of variations, calculate the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies, ought to hold her peace here, and say only:  In this National Convention there are Seven Hundred and Forty-nine very singular Bodies, that gravitate and do much else;—­who, probably in an amazing manner, will work the appointment of Heaven.

Of National Assemblages, Parliaments, Congresses, which have long sat; which are of saturnine temperament; above all, which are not ’dreadfully in earnest,’ something may be computed or conjectured:  yet even these are a kind of Mystery in progress,—­whereby we see the Journalist Reporter find livelihood:  even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time.  How much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence; urged on at such velocity; without routine, without rut, track or landmark; and dreadfully in earnest every man of them!  It is a Parliament literally such as there was never elsewhere in the world.  Themselves are new, unarranged; they are the Heart and presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest disarrangement.  From all cities, hamlets, from the utmost ends of this France with its Twenty-five million vehement souls, thick-streaming influences storm in on that same Heart, in the Salle de Manege, and storm out again:  such fiery venous-arterial circulation is the function of that Heart.  Seven Hundred and Forty-nine human individuals, we say, never sat together on Earth, under more original circumstances.  Common individuals most of them, or not far from common; yet in virtue of the position they occupied, so notable.  How, in this wild piping of the whirlwind of human passions, with death, victory, terror, valour, and all height and all depth pealing and piping, these men, left to their own guidance, will speak and act?

Readers know well that this French National Convention (quite contrary to its own Program) became the astonishment and horror of mankind; a kind of Apocalyptic Convention, or black Dream become real; concerning which History seldom speaks except in the way of interjection:  how it covered France with woe, delusion, and delirium; and from its bosom there went forth Death on the pale Horse.  To hate this poor National Convention is easy; to praise and love it has not been found impossible.  It is, as we say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances.  To us, in these pages, be it as a fuliginous fiery mystery, where Upper has met Nether,