flowing matter, whether 'it is
pantheistic,' or is pot-theistic, only the greener mind, in these days,
need read. Busy Brissot was long ago of purpose to establish precisely
some such regenerative Social Circle: nay he had tried it, in
'Newman-street Oxford-street,' of the Fog Babylon; and failed,--as some
say, surreptitiously pocketing the cash. Fauchet, not Brissot, was
fated to be the happy man; whereat, however, generous Brissot will
with sincere heart sing a timber-toned Nunc Domine. (See Brissot,
Patriote-Francais Newspaper; Fauchet, Bouche-de-Fer, &c. (excerpted
in Hist. Parl. viii., ix., et seqq.).) But 'ten thousand persons of
respectability:' what a bulk have many things in proportion to their
magnitude! This Cercle Social, for which Brissot chants in sincere
timber-tones such Nunc Domine, what is it? Unfortunately wind and
shadow. The main reality one finds in it now, is perhaps this: that an
'Attorney-General of Truth' did once take shape of a body, as Son of
Adam, on our Earth, though but for months or moments; and ten thousand
persons of respectability attended, ere yet Chaos and Nox had reabsorbed
him.

Hundred and thirty-three Paris Journals; regenerative Social Circle;
oratory, in Mother and Daughter Societies, from the balconies of Inns,
by chimney-nook, at dinner-table,--polemical, ending many times in
duel! Add ever, like a constant growling accompaniment of bass Discord:
scarcity of work, scarcity of food. The winter is hard and cold; ragged
Bakers'-queues, like a black tattered flag-of-distress, wave out
ever and anon. It is the third of our Hunger-years this new year of
a glorious Revolution. The rich man when invited to dinner, in such
distress-seasons, feels bound in politeness to carry his own bread in
his pocket: how the poor dine? And your glorious Revolution has done it,
cries one. And our glorious Revolution is subtilety, by black traitors
worthy of the Lamp-iron, perverted to do it, cries another! Who
will paint the huge whirlpool wherein France, all shivered into wild
incoherence, whirls? The jarring that went on under every French roof,
in every French heart; the diseased things that were spoken, done, the
sum-total whereof is the French Revolution, tongue of man cannot tell.
Nor the laws of action that work unseen in the depths of that huge
blind Incoherence! With amazement, not with measurement, men look on the
Immeasurable; not knowing its laws; seeing, with all different degrees
of