Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.

Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom it might be asked, What they specially have come for?  Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder:  What are you doing in God’s fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or stealing?  Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only answer:  Collecting tithes, Preserving game!—­Remark, meanwhile, how D’Orleans affects to step before his own Order, and mingle with the Commons.  For him are vivats:  few for the rest, though all wave in plumed ‘hats of a feudal cut,’ and have sword on thigh; though among them is D’Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman,—­and indeed many a Peer more or less noteworthy.

There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes.  There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal Lameths.  Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world.  Many a ‘formula’ has this Lafayette too made away with; yet not all formulas.  He sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;—­and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still hanging.  Happy for him; be it glorious or not!  Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea.  Note further our old Parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d’Espremenil.  He is returned from the Mediterranean Islands, a redhot royalist, repentant to the finger-ends;—­unsettled-looking; whose light, dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the National Assembly will by and by, to save time, ‘regard as in a state of distraction.’  Note lastly that globular Younger Mirabeau; indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons:  it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong liquor he contains.

There then walks our French Noblesse.  All in the old pomp of chivalry:  and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there!  Once these Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are still named) did actually lead the world,—­were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay the world’s best wages then:  moreover, being the ablest Leaders going, they had their lion’s share, those Duces; which none could grudge them.  But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares, Steam-Engines and Bills of Exchange have been invented; and, for battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eighteen-pence a-day,—­what mean these goldmantled Chivalry Figures, walking there ‘in black-velvet cloaks,’ in high-plumed ’hats of a feudal cut’?  Reeds shaken in the wind!