How well we know him! With whose sorrows
are we so familiar? Whether in that pathetic
story-book shape over which our child's eyes
have filled and glistened, the legend of The
Peasant and the Prince, as told by the Lady of
Ambleside; or in that fierce scorching
handwriting on the wall, of Mr. Carlyle's; it has
all the same touching power. O for that
terrible night of Varennes, feverish, protracted,
never ending! How long did we wait beside the
hackney-coach, panting, fluttering, for the two
dark figures who had stolen by a back door
from the Tuileries, and, floundering through the
narrow streets, made us lose two precious hours!
How we rejoiced as we got them clear of the
city, when the huge mountain of a berline was
ready waiting, and saw that great lumbering
thing roll away! How we chafed and fumed
over its crawling progress, and the delays and
mistakes about the post-horses, and how we
lost our temper with that stupid round-faced
king, who would keep putting his head out of the
window and undoing all! How we panted
and trembled as the long day drew on, for that
poor crowded party packed closely inside, as
the sultry sun began to sink, and we began
to think that after all they might get clear,
O the miserable bungle about the dragoons!
Then the stupid mistake about the
posthouse, when every second was precious. No
matter, put the horses to any way! Forward!
Quick! Use whip and spur for Heaven's sake!
But that wretchedly suspicious postmaster,
whom we should have ridden down, or brained,
or felled to the earth, has sent for the banknote
with the king's picture, and here is the
archway where is the barricade, and here armed
men. All is over! King Lewis does not fight
for it, nor cut a passage through. But the heavy
old gentleman in the corner, making believe
to be an honest citizen in a dark wig, going on his
travels, says he supposes they had best go
back. Go back! We give him up from that
hour. With shame and burning cheeks, we turn
to the brave ladies. As to him, we never recover
the shock; through all those indignities of the
Temple, the insults, that bearding of him as
Louis Capet, and even that cruel last ending of
all, we never quite get over the long Varennes
night. If any reader is unacquainted with that
night, happy is such reader to have yet in
reserve Mr. Carlyle's wonderful picture of it.
There is no more masterly and comprehensive
piece of description in all history or fiction.

He was good, honest, kindly, and well meaning,
this penultimate of reigning Lewises. There
are a hundred little stories of his tenderness, of
his pastoral charities, of his lifting the latch of
the peasant's cottage in the disguise of a simple
squire, and of his climbing that Alp of six and
seven stories, a house in a squalid Parisian
street, up to the kennel in the roof, where the
sick workman lay. No wonder Apostle Paine
said of him that if he had been only born a
simple agriculturist, he would have been the
most honest man in his canton. Apostle Paine
only did him justice in his rough way. Poor King!
He thought to stop an express engine by standing
in the roadway and waving his arms. It ran
over him. It destroyed him. He turned a whole
menagerie loose, and then wished to whistle and
wheedle the creatures into their cages again.
They devoured him. The great Lewis saw the
old palace crumbling over his head, and breaking
into alarming fissures; but he merely got
his architects to shore it up. Then he said,
"It will last my time—after me, the deluge."
This foolish Lewis would have a thorough repair
and restoration, and the whole thing fell in
and crushed him. That long night in the
heavy berline was a compressed copy of his
life. There were other critical seasons besides
that one, when he would put his head out of the
window, when he must get down and walk up
the hill, and when he would inappropriately call
for meat and drink. Even when the tiger had got
him down and was standing over him with hot
reeking jaws, he must childishly play tricks with
the furious beast; and, promising to be very
good in future, and to be a liberal constitutional
master, is detected writing to foreign
armies, hurrying them on to come quick and cut
the tiger's throat. Is it wonderful that the
tiger snapped his head off?

Looking back to Paris society of that day, is
like looking down from the boxes at the flashes
and humours of a masked ball. Every human
being is theatrical, is painted, and has a party-
coloured domino on. It is a Babel, or Babylon,
of tumbling men and women: a jumble of
philosophers, mountebanks, harlequins, courtiers,
valets, queans, and felons. Never was there
such a fusion of ranks. There is a pure dead
level as to character, no one having too much
to spare; for the corpulent bonhomme, the
rubicund bourgeois citizen with the double chin
will have decency and correct manners (under a
domino at least), and has hunted the painted
ladies from court. There is a wild book, in
eight volumes, still to be found on book-stalls,
called A Picture of Paris, which is a perfect
looking-glass for those times. It reads like a
nightmare, and brings up the crowded streets,
and the operas, and the churches, and the
dinner parties of Pandemonium Paris, with a
startling vividness.

Genteel infidelity had spread universally,
and was more fashionable than the new
headdress or the jewelled canes. Gentlemen of nice
susceptibility were wounded by being taken for
deists instead of atheists. In the wake of
this unholy war, a huge sewer burst and
flooded the country with its unclean waters.
The landmarks of decent literature were carried
away, and Paris became one huge and frightful
Holywell-street. It makes our blood curdle to
read the frightful uses to which the innocent
type and papers were degraded. Not long since,
the writer of these notes purchased, at a book
sale, a little regiment of some forty French
pocket romances, neatly printed, and in a
uniform of gilt edges and mottled calf coats.
They were tempting; but the lying imprint
"London"—where they were never printed