Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year
defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Chateaus, black bodies of
gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and
saw, but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed,
whither one knows not;--breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there
tyrannous. National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose;
Soldiers are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may
quarrel, danger that they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots: a
Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the winds;
drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days, and Mayor
Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to desperation. (Arthur
Young, i. 141.--Dampmartin: Evenemens qui se sont passes sous mes yeux,
i. 105-127.)

Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his triumphant
transit, 'escorted,' through Befort for instance, 'by fifty National
Horsemen and all the military music of the place,'--M. Necker, returning
from Bale! Glorious as the meridian; though poor Necker himself partly
guesses whither it is leading. (Biographie Universelle, para Necker (by
Lally-Tollendal).) One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall;
with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss
his hand; with Besenval's pardon granted,--but indeed revoked before
sunset: one highest day, but then lower days, and ever lower, down even
to lowest! Such magic is in a name; and in the want of a name. Like some
enchanted Mambrino's Helmet, essential to victory, comes this 'Saviour
of France;' beshouted, becymballed by the world:--alas, so soon, to
be disenchanted, to be pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber's
Bason! Gibbon 'could wish to shew him' (in this ejected, Barber's-Bason
state) to any man of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt
out of him, and become a caput mortuum, by Ambition, unsuccessful or