end of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Since the destruction
of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Barbarians, I
have known nothing similar.

And so, then, there remained no King in Europe; no King except
the Public Haranguer, haranguing on barrel-head, in leading
article; or getting himself aggregated into a National Parliament
to harangue. And for about four months all France, and to a
great degree all Europe, rough-ridden by every species of
delirium, except happily the murderous for most part, was a
weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine, at the
Hotel-de-Ville; a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman,
whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet, priest and
heaven-sent evangelist, and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine
discerned to be properly "the first stump-orator in the world,
standing too on the highest stump,--for the time." A sorrowful
spectacle to men of reflection, during the time he lasted, that
poor M. de Lamartine; with nothing in him but melodious wind and
_soft sawder_, which he and others took for something divine and
not diabolic! Sad enough; the eloquent latest impersonation of
Chaos-come-again; able to talk for itself, and declare
persuasively that it is Cosmos! However, you have but to wait a
little, in such cases; all balloons do and must give up their gas
in the pressure of things, and are collapsed in a sufficiently
wretched manner before long.

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and
truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace
after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds;
and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive,