f the troops; but be you ready (at Paris) to help the step!"

The demand was evaded by the king; the soldiery were largely increased
and concentrated; the arrests of the more revolutionary deputies,
including, of course, Mirabeau, were decided on; Necker was summarily
dismissed: but on the other side able and active emissaries roused Paris
by statements the most exciting, and taking all characters, with the
costumes of either sex, caressed, feted, and partially won over the
soldiery, and before the court could take one step toward its purposes,
Paris was in full insurrection, the troops corrupted or overpowered, the
Bastile taken, and under the plea of anarchical excuse, the whole
_bourgeoisie_ of Paris placed in a few hours under arms as National
Guards.

The king, taught that it was not revolt but revolution, preferred, as
every body foresaw, submission to civil war, recalled Necker, and
visited triumphant Paris, at once the hostage and conquest of a popular
triumph.

Mirabeau, more or less connected with the Orleanists, had speculated
with them on the chances of confusion; for to him it was a small thing,
provided he had bread, that it was baked in an oven warmed with the
conflagration of an empire. Looking forward with complacency to every
contingency of revolutionary crises, assured that a common danger,
flinging aside, as unimportant, questions of personal character, would
make power the prey of genius and audacity, he was correspondingly
annoyed by a re-arrangement that promised for a time a well-grounded
tranquillity.

The destruction of the Bastile securing that of "The Syllas of thought,"
he now transformed into a full political newspaper, his weekly "Letter
to his Constituents," under which title he had evaded, from the first
assembly of the States-General, the censorship on the press. Aware, from
a knowledge of Wilkes and his history, of the power of journalism to a
politician, and above all, to a demagogue in a free country, he was, in
the full sense of the term, the first newspaper editor of France, and
owed to the vigorous use of this novel agency, not only useful additions
to his pecuniary resources, but a great portion of that popular idolatry
that followed him to the grave.

The court which, in calling together the States, had no higher aim than
to regenerate the finances of the country, and, as one step, to obtain
the help of the people in stripping a numerous aristocracy of their
baneful exempt