as with lion-spring, on the sudden; wherefrom, were it once ours, the very heart of Toulon might be battered, the English Lines were, so to speak, turned inside out, and Hood and our Natural Enemies must next day either put to sea, or be burnt to ashes.  Commissioners arch their eyebrows, with negatory sniff:  who is this young gentleman with more wit than we all?  Brave veteran Dugommier, however, thinks the idea worth a word; questions the young gentleman; becomes convinced; and there is for issue, Try it.

On the taciturn bronze-countenance, therefore, things being now all ready, there sits a grimmer gravity than ever, compressing a hotter central-fire than ever.  Yonder, thou seest, is Fort l’Eguillette; a desperate lion-spring, yet a possible one; this day to be tried!—­Tried it is; and found good.  By stratagem and valour, stealing through ravines, plunging fiery through the fire-tempest, Fort l’Eguillette is clutched at, is carried; the smoke having cleared, wiser the Tricolor fly on it:  the bronze-complexioned young man was right.  Next morning, Hood, finding the interior of his lines exposed, his defences turned inside out, makes for his shipping.  Taking such Royalists as wished it on board with him, he weighs anchor:  on this 19th of December 1793, Toulon is once more the Republic’s!

Cannonading has ceased at Toulon; and now the guillotining and fusillading may begin.  Civil horrors, truly:  but at least that infamy of an English domination is purged away.  Let there be Civic Feast universally over France:  so reports Barrere, or Painter David; and the Convention assist in a body. (Moniteur, 1793, Nos. 101 (31 Decembre), 95, 96, 98, &c.) Nay, it is said, these infamous English (with an attention rather to their own interests than to ours) set fire to our store-houses, arsenals, warships in Toulon Harbour, before weighing; some score of brave warships, the only ones we now had!  However, it did not prosper, though the flame spread far and high; some two ships were burnt, not more; the very galley-slaves ran with buckets to quench.  These same proud Ships, Ships l’Orient and the rest, have to carry this same young Man to Egypt first:  not yet can they be changed to ashes, or to Sea-Nymphs; not yet to sky-rockets, O Ship l’Orient, nor became the prey of England,—­before their time!

And so, over France universally, there is Civic Feast and high-tide:  and Toulon sees fusillading, grape-shotting in mass, as Lyons saw; and ‘death is poured out in great floods, vomie a grands flots’ and Twelve thousand Masons are requisitioned from the neighbouring country, to raze Toulon from the face of the Earth.  For it is to be razed, so reports Barrere; all but the National Shipping Establishments; and to be called henceforth not Toulon, but Port of the Mountain.  There in black death-cloud we must leave it;—­hoping only that Toulon too is built of stone; that perhaps even Twelve thousand Masons cannot pull it down, till the fit pass.