Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 03.djvu/37

1789–90] laughed. Swiss Pache, 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 life-saving Needham; 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; 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