The Muster.
With famine and a Constitutional theory of defective verbs going
on, all other excitement is conceivable. A universal shaking and
sifting of French Existence this is: in the course of which, for
one thing, what a multitude of low-lying figures are sifted to
the top, and set busily to work there!
Dogleech Marat, now for-seen as Simon Stylites, we already know;
him and others, raised aloft. The mere sample, these, of what is
coming, of what continues coming, upwards from the realm of
Night!—Chaumette, by and by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already
descries: mellifluous in street-groups; not now a sea-boy on the
high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the common people,
with long curling locks, on _bourne_stone of the thoroughfares;
able sub-editor too; who shall rise—to the very gallows. Clerk
Tallien, he also is become sub-editor; shall become able editor;
and more. Bibliopolic Momoro, Typographic Pruhomme see new trades
opening. Collot d’Herbois, tearing a passion to rags, pauses on
the Thespian boards; listens, with that black bushy head, to the
sound of the world’s drama: shall the Mimetic become Real? Did ye
hiss him, O men of Lyons?[270] Better had ye clapped!
Happy now, indeed, for all manner of _mimetic_, half-original
men! Tumid blustering, with more or less of sincerity, which need
not be entirely sincere, yet the sincerer the better, is like to
go far. Shall we say, the Revolution-element works itself rarer
and rarer; so that only lighter and lighter bodies will float in
it; till at last the mere blown-bladder is your only swimmer?
Limitation of mind, then vehemence, promptitude, audacity, shall
all be available; to which add only these two: cunning and good
lungs. Good fortune must be presupposed. Accordingly, of all
classes the rising one, we observe, is now the Attorney class:
witness Bazires, Carriers, Fouquier-Tinvilles, Bazoche-Captain
Bourdons: more than enough. Such figures shall Night, from her
wonder-bearing bosom, emit; swarm after swarm. Of another deeper
and deepest swarm, not yet dawned on the astonished eye; of
pilfering Candle-snuffers, Thief-valets, disfrocked Capuchins,
and so many Héberts, Henriots, Ronsins, Rossignols, let us, as
long as possible, forbear speaking.
Thus, over France, all stirs that has what the Physiologists call
_irritability_ in it: how much more all wherein irritability has
perfected itself into vitality; into actual vision, and force
that can will! All stirs; and if not in Paris, flocks thither.
Great and greater waxes President Danton in his Cordeliers
Section; his rhetorical tropes are all “gigantic:” energy flashes
from his black brows, menaces in his athletic figure, rolls in
the sound of his voice “reverberating from the domes;” this man
also, like Mirabeau, has a natural _eye_, and begins to see
whither Constitutionalism is tending, though with a wish in it
different from Mirabeau’s.
Remark, on the other hand, how General Dumouriez has quitted
Normandy and the Cherbourg Breakwater, to come—whither we may
guess. It is his second or even third trial at Paris, since this
New Era began; but now it is in right earnest, for he has quitted
all else. Wiry, elastic unwearied man; whose life was but a
battle and a march! No, _not_ a creature of Choiseul’s; ‘the
creature of God and of my sword,’—he fiercely answered in old
days. Overfalling Corsican batteries, in the deadly fire-hail;
wriggling invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp of the
Netherlands, though tethered with “crushed stirrup-iron and
nineteen wounds;” tough, minatory, standing at bay, as forlorn
hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing, battling in cabinet
and field; roaming far out, obscure, as King’s spial, or sitting
sealed up, enchanted in Bastille; fencing, pamphleteering,
scheming and struggling from the very birth of him,[271]—the man
has come thus far. How repressed, how irrepressible! Like some
incarnate spirit in prison, which indeed he _was;_ hewing on
granite walls for deliverance; striking fire flashes from them.
And now has the general earthquake rent his cavern too? Twenty
years younger, what might he not have done! But his hair has a
shade of gray: his way of thought is all fixed, military. He can
_grow_ no further, and the new world is in such growth. We will
name him, on the whole, one of Heaven’s Swiss; without faith;
wanting above all things work, work on _any_ side. Work also is
appointed him; and he will do it.
Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards
Paris; but from all sides of Europe. Where the carcase is,
thither will the eagles gather. Think how many a Spanish Guzman,
Martinico Fournier named “Fournier _l’Américain_,” Engineer
Miranda from the very Andes, were flocking or had flocked!
Walloon Pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage: him, they
say, Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped;” like
ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance—into an ostrich-_eater!_
Jewish or German Freys do business in the great Cesspool of
_Agio;_ which Cesspool this _Assignat_-fiat has quickened, into a
Mother of dead dogs. Swiss Clavière could found no Socinian
Genevese Colony in Ireland; but he paused, years ago, prophetic
before the Minister’s Hôtel at Paris; and said, it was borne on
his mind that _he_ one day was to be Minister, and laughed.[272]
Swiss Pachc, on the other hand, sits sleekheaded, frugal; the
wonder of his own alley, and even of neighbouring ones, for
humility of mind, and a thought deeper than most men’s: sit
there, Tartuffe, till wanted! Ye Italian Dufournys, Flemish
Prolys, flit hither all ye bipeds of prey! Come whosesoever head
is hot; thou of mind _ungoverned_, be it chaos as of
undevelopment or chaos as of ruin; the man who cannot get known,
the man who is too well known; if thou have any vendible faculty,
nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity, come! They come; with
hot unutterabilities in their heart; as Pilgrims towards a
miraculous shrine. Nay how many come as vacant Strollers,
aimless, of whom Europe is full merely towards _something!_ For
benighted fowls, when you beat their bushes, rush towards any
light. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too is here; mazed, purblind,
from the cells of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells, and his Ariadne
lost! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells wine; not
indeed in bottle, but in wood.
Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her
live-saving Needham;[273] to whom was solemnly presented a “civic
sword,”—long since rusted into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious
Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needleman, did by
his “_Common-Sense_” Pamphlet, free America;—that he can and will
free all this World; perhaps even the other. Price-Stanhope
Constitutional Association sends over to congratulate;[274]
welcomed by National Assembly, though they are but a London Club;
whom Burke and Toryism eye askance.
On thee too, for country’s sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word
spent, or misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers
visible here; like a wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn.
Like the ghost of himself! Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely
audible, save, with extreme tedium in ministerial ante-chambers;
in this or the other charitable dining-room, mindful of the past.
What changes; culminatings and declinings! Not now, poor Paul,
thou lookest wistful over the Solway brine, by the foot of native
Criffel, into blue mountainous Cumberland, into blue Infinitude;
environed with thrift, with humble friendliness; thyself, young
fool, longing to be aloft from it, or even to be away from it.
Yes, beyond that sapphire Promontory, which men name St. Bees,
which is not sapphire either, but dull sandstone, when one gets
_close_ to it, there is a world. Which world thou too shalt taste
of!—From yonder White Haven rise his smoke-clouds; ominous though
ineffectual. Proud Forth quakes at his bellying sails; had not
the wind suddenly shifted. Flamborough reapers, homegoing, pause
on the hill-side: for what sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the
sleek sea; sulphur-cloud spitting streaks of fire? A sea
cockfight it is, and of the hottest; where British _Serapis_ and
French-American _Bon Homme Richard_ do lash and throttle each
other, in their fashion; and lo the desperate valour has
suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of the Kings of
the Sea!
The Euxine, the Méotian waters felt thee next, and long-skirted
Turks, O Paul; and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand
contradictions;—to no purpose. For, in far lands, with scarlet
Nassau-Siegens, with sinful Imperial Catherines, is not the
heart-broken, even as at home with the mean? Poor Paul! hunger
and dispiritment track thy sinking footsteps: once or at most
twice, in this Revolution-tumult the figure of thee emerges;
mute, ghost-like, as “with stars dim-twinkling through.” And
then, when the light is gone quite out, a National Legislature
grants “ceremonial funeral!” As good had been the natural
Presbyterian Kirk-bell, and six feet of Scottish earth, among the
dust of thy loved ones.—_Such_ world lay beyond the Promontory of
St. Bees. Such is the life of sinful mankind here below.
But of all strangers, far the notablest for us is Baron Jean
Baptiste de Clootz;—or, dropping baptisms and feudalisms,
World-Citizen Anacharsis Clootz, from Cleves. Him mark, judicious
Reader. Thou hast known his Uncle, sharp-sighted thorough-going
Cornelius de Pauw, who mercilessly cuts down cherished illusions;
and of the finest antique Spartans, will make mere modern
cutthroat Mainots.[275] The like stuff is in Anacharsis: hot
metal; full of scoriae, which should and could have been smelted
out, but which will not. He has wandered over this terraqueous
Planet; seeking, one may say, the Paradise we lost long ago. He
has seen English Burke; has been seen of the Portugal
Inquisition; has roamed, and fought, and written; is writing,
among other things, “Evidences of the _Mahometan_ Religion.” But
now, like his Scythian adoptive godfather, he finds himself in
the Paris Athens; surely, at last, the haven of his soul. A
dashing man, beloved at Patriotic dinner-tables; with gaiety, nay
with humour; headlong, trenchant, of free purse; in suitable
costume; though what mortal ever more despised costumes? Under
all costumes Anacharsis seeks the man; not Stylites Marat will
more freely trample costumes, if they hold no man. This is the
faith of Anacharsis: That there is a Paradise discoverable; that
all costumes ought to hold men. O Anacharsis, it is a headlong,
swift-going faith. Mounted thereon, meseems, thou art bound
hastily for the City of _Nowhere;_ and wilt _arrive!_ At best, we
may say, arrive _in good riding attitude;_ which indeed is
something.
So many new persons, and new things, have come to occupy this
France. Her old Speech and Thought, and Activity which springs
from those, are all changing; fermenting towards unknown issues.
To the dullest peasant, as he sits sluggish, overtoiled, by his
evening hearth, one idea has come: that of Châteaus burnt; of
Châteaus combustible. How altered all Coffeehouses, in Province
or Capital! The _Antre de Procope_ has now other questions than
the Three Stagyrite Unities to settle; not theatre-controversies,
but a world-controversy: there, in the ancient pigtail mode, or
with modern Brutus’ heads, do well-frizzed logicians hold hubbub,
and Chaos umpire sits. The ever-enduring Melody of Paris Saloons
has got a new ground-tone: ever-enduring; which has been heard,
and by the listening Heaven too, since Julian the Apostate’s time
and earlier; mad now as formerly.
Ex-Censor Suard, _Ex_-Censor, for we have freedom of the Press;
he may be seen there; impartial, even neutral. Tyrant Grimm rolls
large eyes, over a questionable coming Time. Atheist Naigeon,
beloved disciple of Diderot, crows, in his small difficult way,
heralding glad dawn.[276] But, on the other hand, how many
Morellets, Marmontels, who had sat all their life hatching
Philosophe eggs, cackle now, in a state bordering on distraction,
at the brood they have brought out![277] It was so delightful to
have one’s Philosophe Theorem demonstrated, crowned in the
saloons: and now an infatuated people will not continue
speculative, but have Practice?
There also observe Preceptress Genlis, or Sillery, or
Sillery-Genlis,—for our husband is both Count and Marquis, and we
have more than one title. Pretentious, frothy; a puritan yet
creedless; darkening counsel by words without wisdom! For, it is
in that thin element of the Sentimentalist and
Distinguished-Female that Sillery-Genlis works; she would gladly
be sincere, yet can grow no sincerer than sincere-cant:
sincere-cant of many forms, ending in the devotional form. For
the present, on a neck still of moderate whiteness, she wears as
jewel a miniature Bastille, cut on mere sandstone, but then
actual Bastille sandstone. M. le Marquis is one of d’Orléans’s
errandmen; in National Assembly, and elsewhere. Madame, for her
part, trains up a youthful d’Orléans generation in what
superfinest morality one can; gives meanwhile rather enigmatic
account of fair Mademoiselle Pamela, the Daughter whom she has
_adopted_. Thus she, in Palais Royal saloon;—whither, we remark,
d’Orléans himself, spite of Lafayette, has returned from that
English “mission” of his: surely no pleasant mission: for the
English would not speak to him; and Saint Hannah More of England,
so unlike Saint Sillery-Genlis of France, saw him shunned, in
Vauxhall Gardens, like one pest-struck,[278] and his red-blue
impassive visage waxing hardly a shade bluer.