and in such alternate glare and blackness of darkness poor bedazzled mortals know not which is Upper, which is Nether; but rage and plunge distractedly, as mortals, in that case, will do.  A Convention which has to consume itself, suicidally; and become dead ashes—­with its World!  Behoves us, not to enter exploratively its dim embroiled deeps; yet to stand with unwavering eyes, looking how it welters; what notable phases and occurrences it will successively throw up.

One general superficial circumstance we remark with praise:  the force of Politeness.  To such depth has the sense of civilisation penetrated man’s life; no Drouet, no Legendre, in the maddest tug of war, can altogether shake it off.  Debates of Senates dreadfully in earnest are seldom given frankly to the world; else perhaps they would surprise it.  Did not the Grand Monarque himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs?  But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent of life and death, one is struck rather with the degree of continence they manifest in speech; and how in such wild ebullition, there is still a kind of polite rule struggling for mastery, and the forms of social life never altogether disappear.  These men, though they menace with clenched right-hands, do not clench one another by the collar; they draw no daggers, except for oratorical purposes, and this not often:  profane swearing is almost unknown, though the Reports are frank enough; we find only one or two oaths, oaths by Marat, reported in all.

For the rest, that there is ‘effervescence’ who doubts?  Effervescence enough; Decrees passed by acclamation to-day, repealed by vociferation to-morrow; temper fitful, most rotatory changeful, always headlong!  The ‘voice of the orator is covered with rumours;’ a hundred ’honourable Members rush with menaces towards the Left side of the Hall;’ President has ’broken three bells in succession,’—­claps on his hat, as signal that the country is near ruined.  A fiercely effervescent Old-Gallic Assemblage!—­Ah, how the loud sick sounds of Debate, and of Life, which is a debate, sink silent one after another:  so loud now, and in a little while so low!  Brennus, and those antique Gael Captains, in their way to Rome, to Galatia, and such places, whither they were in the habit of marching in the most fiery manner, had Debates as effervescent, doubt it not; though no Moniteur has reported them.  They scolded in Celtic Welsh, those Brennuses; neither were they Sansculotte; nay rather breeches (braccae, say of felt or rough-leather) were the only thing they had; being, as Livy testifies, naked down to the haunches:—­and, see, it is the same sort of work and of men still, now when they have got coats, and speak nasally a kind of broken Latin!  But on the whole does not time envelop this present National Convention; as it did those Brennuses, and ancient August Senates in felt breeches?