aring.'

The extreme stillness of the calm by which this wide-roaring tempest
has been preceded, forms one of not the least extraordinary
circumstances which impart to it character and effect. In the _Vision
of Don Roderick_, the fated monarch is described as pausing for a time
amid the deep silence of a vast hall, pannelled and floored with black
marble, and sentinelled by two gigantic figures of rigid bronze that
stand moveless against the farther wall. The one, bearing a scythe and
sand-glass, is the old giant Time; the other, armed with an iron mace,
is the grim angel of Destiny. Not a sound or motion escapes them. In
that dim apartment nothing stirs save the sands in the glass, and the
inflexible look of the stern mace-bearing sentinel marks how they ebb.
The last grains are at length moving downwards--they sink, they
disappear; and now, raising his ponderous mace, he dashes into
fragments the marble wall: a scene of savage warfare gleams livid
through the opening, and the wide vault re-echoes to the hollow tread
of armies, the shrill notes of warlike trumpets, the rude clash of
arms, and the wild shouts of battle. And such, during the last few
years, has been the stillness of the preliminary pause, and such was
the abrupt opening, when the predestined hour at length arrived, of
those clamorous scenes of revolution and war which impart so
remarkable a character to the year gone by. A twelvemonth has not yet
passed since history seemed to want incident. Time and Destiny watched
as statue-like sentinels in a quiet hall, walled round by the old
rigid conventionalities, and human sagacity failed to see aught beyond
them; the present so resembled the past, that it seemed over-boldness
to anticipate a different complexion for the future. But, amid the
unbreathing stillness, the appointed hour arrived. The rigid marble
curtain of the old conventionalities was struck asunder by the iron
mace of Destiny; and the silence was straightway broken by a roar as
if of many waters, by the wrathful shouts of armed millions--the
thunderings of cannon, blent with the rattle of musketry--the wild
shrieks of dismay and suffering--the wailings of sorrow and
terror--the shouts of triumph and exultation--the despairing cry of
sinking dynasties, and the crash of falling thrones. And with what
strange rapidity the visions have since flitted along the opened
chasm!

A royal proclamation forbids in Paris a political banquet; four short
days