z rode
from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_.'[181]

And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king will
beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in over
the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same night
Dumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan. Prussians
here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to Paris and
little hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and there--what to
advise? The generals advise retreating, and retreating till Paris be
sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent, dismisses
_them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent, thus, when needful,
yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor-quality, of a
rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to fastidious
ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne follows--the
cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris _this_ time, the
autumnal hours of fate pass on--_ca ira_--and on the 6th of November,
Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. 'Dumouriez wide-winged, they
wide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights fringed and maned
with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this wing and swept back
on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when he rushes up in
person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with clear tenor-pipe,
uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand tenor or bass pipes
joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for every heart leaps up at
the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody, they rally, they advance,
they rush death-defying, and like the fire whirlwind sweep all manner of
Austrians from the scene of action.' Thus, through the lips of
Dumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle,[182] 'Aux armes--marchons!'
Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe here beginning--in
what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that council chamber in
Sedan!

While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung, and
danced to in cometary cycle, by the French nation, here in our less
giddy island there rose, amidst hours of business in Scotland and of
idleness in England, three troubadours of quite different temper.
Different also themselves, but not opponent; forming a perfect chord,
and adverse all the three of them alike to the French musicians, in this
main point--that while the _Ca ira_ and Marseillaise were essentially
songs of blame and wr