is own private behoof he has needed sixty
Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight too, with resolution, even with
manful principle: but in such an element, inward and outward; which he
could not rule, but only madden. Edacity, rapacity;--quite contrary to
the finer sensibilities of the heart! Fools, that expect your verdant
Millennium, and nothing but Love and Abundance, brooks running wine,
winds whispering music,--with the whole ground and basis of your
existence champed into a mud of Sensuality; which, daily growing deeper,
will soon have no bottom but the Abyss!

Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace.
Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo
Cagliostro; milliner Dame de Lamotte, 'with a face of some piquancy:'
the highest Church Dignitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis Dance, with
quack-prophets, pickpurses and public women;--a whole Satan's Invisible
World displayed; working there continually under the daylight visible
one; the smoke of its torment going up for ever! The Throne has been
brought into scandalous collision with the Treadmill. Astonished Europe
rings with the mystery for ten months; sees only lie unfold itself
from lie; corruption among the lofty and the low, gulosity, credulity,
imbecility, strength nowhere but in the hunger. Weep, fair Queen, thy
first tears of unmixed wretchedness! Thy fair name has been tarnished by
foul breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt thou be loved
and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has been born,
and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its sorrows.--The Epigrams
henceforth become, not sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious,
unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal
Grand-Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted by
hurrahing crowds: unloved he, and worthy of no love; but important
since the Court and Queen are his enemies. (Fils Adoptif, Memoires de
Mirabeau, iv. 325.)

How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed: and the whole sky growing bleak
with signs of hurricane and earthquake! It is a doomed world: gone all
'obedience that made men free;' fast going the obedience that made men
slaves,--at least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they
now are, and will be. Slaves of sin; inevitably also of sorrow. Behold
the mouldering mass of Sensuality and Falsehood; round which
plays foolishly, itself a corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of
Sentimentalism;--and over a