Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/28

12 skyward; blazing in literal fire, and in far worse metaphorical; beaconing the nightly main. Also of the shipping interest, and the landed interest, and all manner of interests, reduced to distress. Of Industry everywhere manacled, bewildered; and only Rebellion thriving. Of sub-officers, soldiers and sailors in mutiny by land and water. Of soldiers, at NanciNancy, xixth century spell [sic], as we shall see, needing to be cannonaded by a brave Bouillé. Of sailors, nay the very galley-slaves, at Brest, needing also to be cannonaded, but with no Bouillé to do it. For indeed, to say it in a word, in those days there was no King in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Such things has an august National Assembly to hear of, as it goes on regenerating France. Sad and stern: but what remedy? Get the Constitution ready; and all men will swear to it: for do not 'Addresses of adhesion' arrive by the cartload? In this manner, by Heaven's blessing, and a Constitution got ready, shall the bottomless fire-gulf be vaulted in, with rag-paper; and Order will wed Freedom, and live with her there,—till it grow too hot for them. O Côté Gauche, worthy are ye, as the adhesive Addresses generally say, to 'fix the regards of the Universe'; the regards of this one poor Planet, at lowest!—

Nay, it must be owned, the Côté Droit makes a still madder figure. An irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which will not learn. Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic steel: these were tolerably didactic lessons; but them they have not taught. There are still men, of whom it was of old written, Bray them in a mortar! Or, in milder language. They have wedded their delusions: fire nor steel, nor any sharpness of