of
battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the
shriek of strangled nations! Such things lie hidden, safe-wrapt in this
Fourth day of May;--say rather, had lain in some other unknown day,
of which this latter is the public fruit and outcome. As indeed what
wonders lie in every Day,--had we the sight, as happily we have not,
to decipher it: for is not every meanest Day 'the conflux of two
Eternities!'

Meanwhile, suppose we too, good Reader, should, as now without miracle
Muse Clio enables us--take our station also on some coign of vantage;
and glance momentarily over this Procession, and this Life-sea; with far
other eyes than the rest do, namely with prophetic? We can mount, and
stand there, without fear of falling.

As for the Life-sea, or onlooking unnumbered Multitude, it is
unfortunately all-too dim. Yet as we gaze fixedly, do not nameless
Figures not a few, which shall not always be nameless, disclose
themselves; visible or presumable there! Young Baroness de Stael--she
evidently looks from a window; among older honourable women. (Madame
de Stael, Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise (London, 1818), i.
114-191.) Her father is Minister, and one of the gala personages; to his
own eyes the chief one. Young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there;
nor thy loved Father's: 'as Malebranche saw all things in God, so M.
Necker sees all things in Necker,'--a theorem that will not hold.

But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted Demoiselle
Theroigne? Brown eloquent Beauty; who, with thy winged words and
glances, shalt thrill rough bosoms, whole steel battalions, and persuade
an Austrian Kaiser,--pike and helm lie provided for thee in due season;
and, alas, also strait-waistcoat and long lodging in the Salpetriere!
Better hadst thou staid in native Luxemburg, and been the mother of some
brave man's children: but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot.

Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of iron,
enumerate the notabilities! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his
quaker broadbrim; his Pythagorean Greek in Wapping, and the city of
Glasgow? (Founders of the French Republic (London, 1798), para Valadi.)
De Morande from his Courrier de l'Europe; Linguet from his Annales, they
looked eager through the London fog, and became Ex-Editors,--that they
might feed the guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (of Faublas)
stand a-tiptoe? And Brissot, hight