Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/34

18 Revolution is done, thou thinkest? If so, it will be well with thee.

But now let no mortal say henceforth that an august National Assembly wants riot: all it ever wanted was riot enough to balance Court-plotting; all it now wants, of Heaven or of Earth, is to get its theory of defective verbs perfected.

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 far-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 seaboy on the high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the common people, with long curling locks, on bournestone 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 Prudhomme 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? Better had ye clapped!

Happy now, indeed, for all manner of mimetic, half-original