with each slightest movement of those who held them!  Up and down the Corso they twinkled, they swarmed, they streamed, while a surge of gay triumphant sound ebbed and flowed beneath that glittering surface.  Here and there danced men carrying aloft moccoli, and clanking chains, emblem of the tyrannic power now vanquished by the people;—­the people, sweet and noble, who, in the intoxication of their joy, were guilty of no rude or unkindly word or act, and who, no signal being given as usual for the termination of their diversion, closed, of their own accord and with one consent, singing the hymns for Pio, by nine o’clock, and retired peacefully to their homes, to dream of hopes they yet scarce understand.

This happened last week.  The news of the dethronement of Louis Philippe reached us just after the close of the Carnival.  It was just a year from my leaving Paris.  I did not think, as I looked with such disgust on the empire of sham he had established in France, and saw the soul of the people imprisoned and held fast as in an iron vice, that it would burst its chains so soon.  Whatever be the result, France has done gloriously; she has declared that she will not be satisfied with pretexts while there are facts in the world,—­that to stop her march is a vain attempt, though the onward path be dangerous and difficult.  It is vain to cry, Peace! peace! when there is no peace.  The news from France, in these days, sounds ominous, though still vague.  It would appear that the political is being merged in the social struggle:  it is well.  Whatever blood is to be shed, whatever altars cast down, those tremendous problems MUST be solved, whatever be the cost!  That cost cannot fail to break many a bank, many a heart, in Europe, before the good can bud again out of a mighty corruption.  To you, people of America, it may perhaps be given to look on and learn in time for a preventive wisdom.  You may learn the real meaning of the words FRATERNITY, EQUALITY:  you may, despite the apes of the past who strive to tutor you, learn the needs of a true democracy.  You may in time learn to reverence, learn to guard, the true aristocracy of a nation, the only really nobles,—­the LABORING CLASSES.

And Metternich, too, is crushed; the seed of the woman has had his foot on the serpent.  I have seen the Austrian arms dragged through the streets of Rome and burned in the Piazza del Popolo.  The Italians embraced one another, and cried, Miracolo!  Providenza! the modern Tribune Ciceronacchio fed the flame with faggots; Adam Mickiewicz, the great poet of Poland, long exiled from his country or the hopes of a country, looked on, while Polish women, exiled too, or who perhaps, like one nun who is here, had been daily scourged by the orders of a tyrant, brought little pieces that had been scattered in the street and threw them into the flames,—­an offering received by the Italians with loud plaudits.  It was a transport of the people, who found no way