Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/125

1790–91] after another ceases to meet reverence: in visible material combustion, château after château mounts up; in spiritual invisible combustion, one authority after another. With noise and glare, or noiselessly and unnoted, a whole Old System of things is vanishing piecemeal: the morrow thou shalt look, and it is not.

who will, cradled in hope and short vision, like Lafayette, who, 'always in the danger done sees the last danger that will threaten him,'—Time is not sleeping, nor Time's seed-field.

That sacred Herald's-College of a new Dynasty; we mean the Sixty and odd Billstickers with their leaden badges, are not sleeping. Daily they, with pastepot and cross-staff, new-clothe the walls of Paris in colours of the rainbow: authoritative-heraldic, as we say, or indeed almost magical-thaumaturgic; for no Placard-Journal that they paste but will convince some soul or souls of men. The Hawkers bawl; and the Balladsingers: great Journalism blows and blusters, through all its throats, forth from Paris towards all corners of France, like an Æolus' Cave; keeping alive all manner of fires.

Throats or Journals there are, as men count, to the number of some Hundred and thirty-three. Of various calibre; from your Cheniers, Gorsases, Camilles, down to your Marat, down now to your incipient Hebert of the Père Duchesne; these blow, with fierce weight of argument or quick light banter, for the Rights of Man: Durosoys, Royous, Peltiers, Sulleaus, equally with mixed tactics (inclusive, singular to say, of much profane Parody), are blowing for Altar and Throne. As for Marat the People's-Friend, his voice is as that of the bullfrog, or bittern by the solitary pools; he, unseen of men,