Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in that Procession!  There is Cazales, the learned young soldier; who shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow of a name.  Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet; whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall soon leave stranded.  A Petion has left his gown and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin, being fond of music.  His hair is grizzled, though he is still young:  convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself.  A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France.  There are so many of them young.  Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a man to marry:  but how many men here under thirty; coming to produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such!  The old to heal up rents; the young to remove rubbish:—­which latter, is it not, indeed, the task here?

Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest the Deputies from Nantes?  To us mere clothes-screens, with slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier of doleances with this singular clause, and more such in it:  ’That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new gild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being more than sufficient!’ (Histoire Parlementaire, i. 335.) The Rennes people have elected Farmer Gerard, ‘a man of natural sense and rectitude, without any learning.’  He walks there, with solid step; unique, ‘in his rustic farmer-clothes;’ which he will wear always; careless of short-cloaks and costumes.  The name Gerard, or ‘Pere Gerard, Father Gerard,’ as they please to call him, will fly far; borne about in endless banter; in Royalist satires, in Republican didactic Almanacks. (Actes des Apotres (by Peltier and others); Almanach du Pere Gerard (by Collot d’Herbois) &c. &c.) As for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,—­“I think,” answered he, “that there are a good many scoundrels among us.” so walks Father Gerard; solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.

And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time?  If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of prophecy:  for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late.  Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner:  doomed by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of oblivion!  Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiene be a present aid:  but, greater far, he can produce his ’Report on the Penal Code;’ and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous.  This