dwell, nor Uncertainty, nor Anxiety; but it dwells here; haunting us, tracking us; running like an accursed ground-discord through all the music-tones of our Existence;—­making the Tense a mere Present one!  Just so is it with this of Louis.  Why smite the fallen? asks Magnanimity, out of danger now.  He is fallen so low this once-high man; no criminal nor traitor, how far from it; but the unhappiest of Human Solecisms:  whom if abstract Justice had to pronounce upon, she might well become concrete Pity, and pronounce only sobs and dismissal!

So argues retrospective Magnanimity:  but Pusillanimity, present, prospective?  Reader, thou hast never lived, for months, under the rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes; never wert thou portion of a National Sahara-waltz, Twenty-five millions running distracted to fight Brunswick!  Knights Errant themselves, when they conquered Giants, usually slew the Giants:  quarter was only for other Knights Errant, who knew courtesy and the laws of battle.  The French Nation, in simultaneous, desperate dead-pull, and as if by miracle of madness, has pulled down the most dread Goliath, huge with the growth of ten centuries; and cannot believe, though his giant bulk, covering acres, lies prostrate, bound with peg and packthread, that he will not rise again, man-devouring; that the victory is not partly a dream.  Terror has its scepticism; miraculous victory its rage of vengeance.  Then as to criminalty, is the prostrated Giant, who will devour us if he rise, an innocent Giant?  Curate Gregoire, who indeed is now Constitutional Bishop Gregoire, asserts, in the heat of eloquence, that Kingship by the very nature of it is a crime capital; that Kings’ Houses are as wild-beasts’ dens. (Moniteur, Seance du 21 Septembre, Annee 1er, 1792.) Lastly consider this:  that there is on record a Trial of Charles First!  This printed Trial of Charles First is sold and read every where at present:  (Moore’s Journal, ii. 165.)—­Quelle spectacle!  Thus did the English People judge their Tyrant, and become the first of Free Peoples:  which feat, by the grace of Destiny, may not France now rival?  Scepticism of terror, rage of miraculous victory, sublime spectacle to the universe,—­all things point one fatal way.

Such leading questions, and their endless incidental ones:  of September Anarchists and Departmental Guard; of Grain Riots, plaintiff Interior Ministers; of Armies, Hassenfratz dilapidations; and what is to be done with Louis,—­beleaguer and embroil this Convention; which would so gladly make the Constitution rather.  All which questions too, as we often urge of such things, are in growth; they grow in every French head; and can be seen growing also, very curiously, in this mighty welter of Parliamentary Debate, of Public Business which the Convention has to do.  A question emerges, so small at first; is put off, submerged; but always re-emerges bigger than before.  It is a curious, indeed an indescribable sort of growth which such things have.