“How the great Bastile clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner court there, at its ease, hour after hour, as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing!  It tolled one when the firing began; and is now pointing towards five, and still the firing slakes not.  Far down in their vaults the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely....

“For four long hours now has the world-bedlam roared:  call it the world-chimera, blowing fire!  The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets; they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing.  The very Swiss at the portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge, a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak.  See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man!  On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone ditch—­plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots—­he hovers perilous. Such a dove towards such an ark! Deftly thou shifty usher; one man already fell, and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry.  Usher Maillard falls not; deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm.  The Swiss holds a paper through his port-hole; the shifty usher snatches it, and returns.  Terms of surrender—­pardon, immunity to all.  Are they accepted? “Foi d’officier—­on the word of an officer,” answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, “they are!” Sinks the drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolting it when down—­rushes in the living deluge—­the Bastile is fallen! ‘Victoire!  La Bastile est prise!’”—­Vol. i. p. 233.

Such descriptions, we need hardly say, are not the sport of fancy, nor constructed by the agglomeration of eloquent phrases; they are formed by collecting together (and this constitutes their value) facts and intimations scattered through a number of authorities.  It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that there is no imagination, or little artistic talent, displayed in collecting the materials for such a description.  There may be genius in reading well quite as certainly as in writing well; nor is it any common or inferior ability that detects at a glance, amongst a multitude of facts, the one which has real significance, and which gives its character to the scene to be reviewed.  If any one wishes to convince himself how much a man of genius may see in the page which can hardly obtain the attention of an ordinary reader, the last work of Mr Carlyle, Past and Present, will afford him an opportunity of making the experiment.  He has but to turn, after reading in that work the account of Abbot Samson, to the Chronicle of Jocelin, from which it has been all faithfully extracted, and he will be surprised that our author could find so much life and truth in the antiquarian record.  Or the experiment would be still more perfect if he should read the chronicle first, and then turn to the extracted account in Past and Present.