Paris is a great intellectual centre, and there is a Chamber of Deputies to represent the people, very different from the poor, limited Assembly politically so called.  Their tribune is that of literature, and one needs not to beg tickets to mingle with the audience.  To the actually so-called Chamber of Deputies I was indebted for two pleasures.  First and greatest, a sight of the manuscripts of Rousseau treasured in their Library.  I saw them and touched them,—­those manuscripts just as he has celebrated them, written on the fine white paper, tied with ribbon.  Yellow and faded age has made them, yet at their touch I seemed to feel the fire of youth, immortally glowing, more and more expansive, with which his soul has pervaded this century.  He was the precursor of all we most prize.  True, his blood was mixed with madness, and the course of his actual life made some detours through villanous places, but his spirit was intimate with the fundamental truths of human nature, and fraught with prophecy.  There is none who has given birth to more life for this age; his gifts are yet untold; they are too present with us; but he who thinks really must often think with Rousseau, and learn of him even more and more:  such is the method of genius, to ripen fruit for the crowd of those rays of whose heat they complain.

The second pleasure was in the speech of M. Berryer, when the Chamber was discussing the Address to the King.  Those of Thiers and Guizot had been, so far, more interesting, as they stood for more that was important; but M. Berryer is the most eloquent speaker of the House.  His oratory is, indeed, very good; not logical, but plausible, full and rapid, with occasional bursts of flame and showers of sparks, though indeed no stone of size and weight enough to crush any man was thrown out of the crater.  Although the oratory of our country is very inferior to what might be expected from the perfect freedom and powerful motive for development of genius in this province, it presents several examples of persons superior in both force and scope, and equal in polish, to M. Berryer.

Nothing can be more pitiful than the manner in which the infamous affair of Cracow is treated on all hands.  There is not even the affectation of noble feeling about it.  La Mennais and his coadjutors published in La Reforme an honorable and manly protest, which the public rushed to devour the moment it was out of the press;—­and no wonder! for it was the only crumb of comfort offered to those who have the nobleness to hope that the confederation of nations may yet be conducted on the basis of divine justice and human right.  Most men who touched the subject apparently weary of feigning, appeared in their genuine colors of the calmest, most complacent selfishness.  As described by Koerner in the prayer of such a man:—­

  “O God, save me,
  My wife, child, and hearth,
  Then my harvest also;
  Then will I bless thee,
  Though thy lightning scorch to blackness
  All the rest of human kind.”