to serve the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has
commissioned sixty thousand stand of good arms out of Holland: would
to Heaven, for Fatherland's sake and his, they were come! Meanwhile
railings are torn up; hammered into pikes: chains themselves shall be
welded together, into pikes. The very coffins of the dead are raised;
for melting into balls. All Church-bells must down into the furnace to
make cannon; all Church-plate into the mint to make money. Also behold
the fair swan-bevies of Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches,
and sit there with swan-neck,--sewing tents and regimentals! Nor are
Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those that have aught left; nor stingily
given: the fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the
Rue St.-Martin, give 'a silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous
(sevenpence halfpenny),' with other similar effects; and offer, at least
the mother does, to mount guard. Men who have not even a thimble, give
a thimbleful,--were it but of invention. One Citoyen has wrought out the
scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall exclusively profit by,
in the first instance. It is to be made of staves, by the coopers;--of
almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength! Thus they:
hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and with
all their soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,--for tocsin
and other purposes.

But mark also, precisely while the Prussian batteries were playing their
briskest at Longwi in the North-East, and our dastardly Lavergne saw
nothing for it but surrender,--south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La
Vendee, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working,
is ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us! And so we have 'eight
thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre,' who will not be ballotted
for soldiers; will not have their Curates molested. To whom Bonchamps,
Laroche-jaquelins, and Seigneurs enough, of a Royalist turn, will
join themselves; with Stofflets and Charettes; with Heroes and Chouan
Smugglers; and the loyal warmth of a simple people, blown into flame
and fury by theological and seignorial bellows! So that there shall be
fighting from behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and
ravines of rivers; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to
refuge with their children on their back; seedfields fallow, whitened
with human bones;--'eighty thousand, of all ages, rank