ge and senility,--is now to die: and so, with
death-throes and birth-throes, a new one is to be born. What a work,
O Earth and Heavens, what a work! Battles and bloodshed, September
Massacres, Bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos,
Tenpound Franchises, Tarbarrels and Guillotines;--and from this present
date, if one might prophesy, some two centuries of it still to fight!
Two centuries; hardly less; before Democracy go through its due, most
baleful, stages of Quackocracy; and a pestilential World be burnt up,
and have begun to grow green and young again.

Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes; to you, from whom all
this is hid, and glorious end of it is visible. This day, sentence of
death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of resuscitation, were it but far
off, is pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with
a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie is unbelievable. Believe that, stand by that,
if more there be not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it
follow. 'Ye can no other; God be your help!' So spake a greater than any
of you; opening his Chapter of World-History.

Behold, however! The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide; and the
Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre-Dame! Shouts rend the
air; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed
a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of France, and then the Court of
France; they are marshalled and march there, all in prescribed place and
costume. Our Commons 'in plain black mantle and white cravat;' Noblesse,
in gold-worked, bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling
with laces, waving with plumes; the Clergy in rochet, alb, or other best
pontificalibus: lastly comes the King himself, and King's Household,
also in their brightest blaze of pomp,--their brightest and final one.
Some Fourteen Hundred Men blown together from all winds, on the deepest
errand.

Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies Futurity enough. No
symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear: yet with them too
is a Covenant; they too preside at a new Era in the History of Men. The
whole Future is there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it; in the hearts
and unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable.
Singular to think: they have it in them; yet not they, not mortal,
only the Eye above can read it,--as it shall unfold itself, in fire
and thunder, of siege, and field-artillery; in the rustling