foolishest errand. The Chateau Polignac still frowns aloft, on its 'bold
and enormous' cubical rock, amid the blooming champaigns, amid the blue
girdling mountains of Auvergne: (Arthur Young, i. 165.) but no Duke
and Duchess Polignac look forth from it; they have fled, they have
'met Necker at Bale;' they shall not return. That France should see her
Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men,
was unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish
children? This was her peculiarity. They understood nothing; would
understand nothing. Does not, at this hour, a new Polignac, first-born
of these Two, sit reflective in the Castle of Ham; (A.D. 1835.) in an
astonishment he will never recover from; the most confused of existing
mortals?

King Louis has his new Ministry: mere Popularities; Old-President
Pompignan; Necker, coming back in triumph; and other such.
(Montgaillard, ii. 108.) But what will it avail him? As was said, the
sceptre, all but the wooden gilt sceptre, has departed elsewhither.
Volition, determination is not in this man: only innocence, indolence;
dependence on all persons but himself, on all circumstances but the
circumstances he were lord of. So troublous internally is our Versailles
and its work. Beautiful, if seen from afar, resplendent like a Sun; seen
near at hand, a mere Sun's-Atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment
of ruin!

But over France, there goes on the indisputablest 'destruction of
formulas;' transaction of realities that follow therefrom. So many
millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with formulas; whose
Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and hunger of it, was real
enough! Heaven has at length sent an abundant harvest; but what profits
it the poor man, when Earth with her formulas interposes? Industry, in