Well, let it pass! That city churchyard, lying
Betwixt our homes, is but a type and sign
Of the waste in your heart, and of the eternal dying
Of all sweet hopes in mine!

THE EVE OF A REVOLUTION.

FOR a period so near to us as that of the
great French Revolution of seventeen hundred
and eighty-nine—upon which a few octogenarians
can even now, as it were, lay their
hand—it is surprising what a dim veil of
mystery, horror, and romance seems to overhang
the most awful convulsion of modern
times. While barely passing away, it had of
a sudden risen to those awful and majestic
dimensions which it takes less imposing
events centuries to acquire, and towered over
those within its shadow as an awful pyramid
of fire, blinding those who look. It requires
no lying by, or waiting on, posterity for its
proper comprehension. It may be read by
its own light, and by those who run; and is
about as intelligible at this hour as it is ever
likely to be. It is felt instinctively: and
those whose sense is slow, may have it
quickened by Mr. Carlyle's flaming torch—
flaring terribly through the night. He might
have been looking on in the crowd during
that wild night march to Versailles, or standing
at the inn door in the little French posting
town, as the sun went down, waiting wearily
for the heavy berline to come up. Marvellous
lurid torch that of his. Pen dipped in red
and fire, glowing like phosphoric writing.
His history of the French Revolution, the
most extraordinary book, to our thinking, in
its wonderful force, picturesqueness, and
condensation, ever written by mere man.
There is other subsidiary light, too, for such
as look back—light from tens of thousands
of pamphlets.broadsides, handbills—all honest,
racy of the time, writ by furious hearts, by
hands trembling with frensy and excitement
hands streaked with blood and dust of
the guillotine: read by mad wolfish eyes at
street corners on the step of the scaffold by
lamplight. Hawked about, too, by hoarse-
mouthed men and women, to such horrible
tune as Le Père Duchesue est terriblement
enragé aujourd'hui. An awful, repulsive
cloud, darkening the air for such as look
back at it. Vast shower of ribaldry, insane
songs, diatribe, declamation—all shot up
from that glowing crater. An inexhaustible
study!

In several numbers of this journal an
attempt has been made to throw a little light
upon the details of this eventful period, more
particularly upon the strangely quiet eve of
the convulsion, when the high nobility were
sleeping placidly in their gilt fauteuils looking
for anything rather than for so vulgar and
plebeian an exhibition as a revolution. That
state of unnatural calm, like enough to the
quiet in camp when the storming party are
gathering in the trenches—that insane
carelessness and complete sovereignty of the
Quem Deus vult perdere truth, have been
before spoken of in these pages, with more
especial reference to the social view of the
times. How this same cracked nobility
smirked, and fiddled, and played the gallant,
and dealt out their quips and cranks to the
virtuous court dames, and looked out from
the mansarde windows at the roll of fiery lava
that was coming down the mountains, never
dreaming it was to come their way. How
they made jokes on the fissures opening in
the earth around them, and passed about
witty bon mots on the queer noises and
earthquake rumblings: how they became as
Mr. William Hogarth's drunken fellow,
sawing away the signboard on which he is
astride. These things offer the strangest
problem. The most marvellous historical
nut for cracking to historical inquirer. Never
did ancient saw come truer than that one of
Quern Deus vult perdere, and the rest of it,
for this time at least!

What a curious thing to have had a peep
—just one peep—at that bright lustrous city,
before the eruption came, in that year of
seventeen hundred and eighty-nine, when all
the fiddling, and salaaming, and posturing
was going forward. When they were holding
their beds of justice and rank mummeries.
When there was for music distant roarings,
like the wind in the forest—ungrateful, no
doubt, to Corinthian ears. Though the period
is so near, still, as was said before, it seems to
be remote from us by ever so many long
years. Impossible to conceive that the
resplendent Paris of to-day was that same
Paris through which our octogenarian sire—
then for the first time on his travels—walked
admiringly, looking down the shining river
at the bright buildings all as yet undefaced,
at the purple velvet coats and powdered wigs
of the nobility, at their jewelled sword-hilts
and snuff-boxes, at their canes studded with
diamonds (as set out in a jeweller's list of the
day). Well might he look and wonder,
might wander up and see guard relieved at
the Bastille, or stop at the Tuileries gate
and admire the sturdy Swiss on duty there,
in red coats like the English at home. Then
see a great coach or berline roll by, that
would hold six conveniently inside—ladies'
hoops and all—with Royal family inside—
roll, to his exceeding wonder, without loyal
acclamation, such as greets Great George our
King at home: rather with a cry incomprehensible
to him, of L'Autre-Chieune shouted
not with 'bated breath. Perhaps he has
noted at the window of the great coach the
face of a handsome man, terribly worn; that
of a certain Irlandois, known as Le Beau
Dilon (so they spelt it there), or more likely
that of a certain Coigny, well-known and
gallant Count. If he turn to those scowling
fellows in blouses, muttering with one another,
they will help him to some of the precious
scandal of the day. Their lips will foam as