hands of God, who is above all second causes. And I know of no modern
movement to which the words of Carlyle, when he was an optimist, when he
wrote the most original and profound of his works, the "Sartor
Resartus," apply with more force: "When the Phoenix is fanning her
funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying? Alas! some millions of
men have been sucked into that high eddying flame, and like moths
consumed. In the burning of the world-Phoenix, destruction and creation
proceed together; and as the ashes of the old are blown about do new
forces mysteriously spin themselves, and melodious death-songs are
succeeded by more melodious birth-songs."

Yet all progress is slow, especially in government and morals. And how
forcibly are we impressed, in surveying the varied phases of the French
Revolution, that nothing but justice and right should guide men in their
reforms; that robbery and injustice in the name of liberty and progress
are still robbery and injustice, to be visited with righteous
retribution; and that those rulers and legislators who cannot make
passions and interests subservient to reason, are not fit for the work
assigned to them. It is miserable hypocrisy and cant to talk of a
revolutionary necessity for violating the first principles of human
society. Ah! it is Reason, Intelligence, and Duty, calm as the voices of
angels, soothing as the "music of the spheres," which alone should
guide nations, in all crises and difficulties, to the attainment of
those rights and privileges on which all true progress is based.

AUTHORITIES

Dumont's Recollections of Mirabeau; Carlyle's French Revolution;
Carlyle's article on Mirabeau in his Miscellanies; Von Sybel's French
Revolution; Thiers' French Revolution; Mignet's French Revolution;