little other than babblers and imbeciles, if not even knaves. Poor is
this man; squalid, and dwells in garrets; a man unlovely to the sense,
outward and inward; a man forbid;--and is becoming fanatical, possessed
with fixed-idea. Cruel lusus of Nature! Did Nature, O poor Marat, as
in cruel sport, knead thee out of her leavings, and miscellaneous
waste clay; and fling thee forth stepdamelike, a Distraction into this
distracted Eighteenth Century? Work is appointed thee there; which thou
shalt do. The Three Hundred have summoned and will again summon Marat:
but always he croaks forth answer sufficient; always he will defy them,
or elude them; and endure no gag.

Carra, 'Ex-secretary of a decapitated Hospodar,' and then of a
Necklace-Cardinal; likewise pamphleteer, Adventurer in many scenes and
lands,--draws nigh to Mercier, of the Tableau de Paris; and, with foam
on his lips, proposes an Annales Patriotiques. The Moniteur goes its
prosperous way; Barrere 'weeps,' on Paper as yet loyal; Rivarol, Royou
are not idle. Deep calls to deep: your Domine Salvum Fac Regem shall
awaken Pange Lingua; with an Ami-du-Peuple there is a King's-Friend
Newspaper, Ami-du-Roi. Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself
Procureur-General de la Lanterne, Attorney-General of the Lamp-iron; and
pleads, not with atrocity, under an atrocious title; editing weekly his
brilliant Revolutions of Paris and Brabant. Brilliant, we say: for if,
in that thick murk of Journalism, with its dull blustering, with
its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius greet thee, be sure it is
Camille's. The thing that Camille teaches he, with his light finger,
adorns: brightness plays, gentle, unexpected, amid horrible confusions;
often is the word of Camille worth reading, when no other's is.
Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen, rebellious, yet
still semi-celestial light; as is the star-light on the brow of Lucifer!
Son of the Morning, into what times and what lands, art thou fallen!