ordinance of Art merely; and remediable, reversible!

Or has the Reader forgotten that 'flood of savages,' which, in sight
of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d'Or?
Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high sabots; in woollen
jupes, with leather girdles studded with copper-nails! They rocked from
foot to foot, and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and
battle which was not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the
lank faces distorted into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were
darkened and hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and
tax-men; of 'clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.' It was the fixed
prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that 'such
Government by Blind-man's-buff, stumbling along too far, would end by
the General Overturn, the Culbute Generale!'

No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;--and Time and
Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man's-buff, stumbling
along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery,
driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been
driven--into a Communion of Drudges! For now, moreover, there have
come the strangest confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper
wings; or still more portentous, where no Journals are, (See Arthur
Young, i. 137, 150, &c.) by rumour and conjecture: Oppression not
inevitable; a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting
ready! Which Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can
it be but bread to eat?

The Traveller, 'walking up hill bridle in hand,' overtakes 'a poor
woman;' the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and scarcity;
'looking sixty years of age, though she is not yet twenty-eight.' They