How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing. It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not.-Far | down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely. A Blood flows; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtelde-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who was of one) can say with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town- Woe to thee, De Launay, with flag in the arched Gateway; and thy poor hundred Invalides ! stand, rolling their drum; but to Broglie is distant, and his ears no purpose. In such Crack of heavy: Besenval hears, but can Doom, De Launay cannot hear send no help. One poor troop of them, dare not believe them : they Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, return, with justified rage, the cautiously along the Quais, as far whew of lead still singing in their as the Pont Neuf. "We are come ears. What to do? The Firemen to join you," said the Captain; for are here, squirting with their fire- the crowd seems shoreless. pumps on the Invalides cannon, large-headed dwarfish individual, to wet the touchholes; they un- of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles fortunately cannot squirt so high; forward, opening his blue lips, for but produce only clouds of spray. there is sense in him; and croaks: Individuals of classical knowledge" Alight then, and give up your propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a 'mixture of phosphorus and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing-pumps:" O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Françaises have come real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands. arms!" The Hussar Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple! Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth : and yet this same day come four years-!-But let the curtains of the Future hang. What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done : what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within Time. He who can resist that, footing somewhere beyond De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between two; hopes in the middle of de| spair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish. arm's length of the Powder-Maga- | Time. And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul; | their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the groundtone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread Bread! Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which make up this World of For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the World - Chimæra, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white flag of napkins ; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge: a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone Ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,- he hovers perilous: such a Dove towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls not: deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his porthole; the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns. of surrender : Pardon, immunity Terms to all! Are they accepted ?— "Foi d'officier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, -or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it," they are!" Sinks the drawbridge,-Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes-in the living deluge: the Bastille is fallen! Victoire ! La Bastille est prise! Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officier should have been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised in white canvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise; their arms all piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstasy that the death-peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their necks ;" but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong had not the Gardes Françaises, in their cool military way, "wheeled round with arms levelled," it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch. : And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing uncontrollable, firing from windows -on itself; in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back, with a death-thrust. Let all Prisoners be marched to the Townhall, to be judged !—Alas, already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the Place de Grève, and hanged there. This same right hand, it is said, turned back De Launay from the PowderMagazine, and saved Paris. De Launay, "discovered in grey frock with poppy-coloured ribbon," is for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the Hôtel-de-Ville: Hulin, Maillard and others escorting him ; Elie marching foremost, "with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point. Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is hustled aside, felled down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall never enter the Hôtel-de-Ville: only his "bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand ;" that shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a pike. Rigorous De Launay has died; crying out, "O friends, kill me fast!" Merciful De Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him in this fearful hour, and will die for him; it avails not. Brothers, your wrath is cruel! Your Place de Grève is become a Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron; with difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes Françaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles, stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat, "to be judged at the Palais Royal:" -alas, to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, at the turning of the first street! O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed HussarOfficers ;-and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel-de-Ville! Babel Tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral Committee; points itself, in horrid radii, against this and the other accused breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and they, scarcely crediting it, have conquered: prodigy of prodigies; delirious, as it could not but be. Denunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror; all outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of madness! The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done; the Orangerie is silent except for nightbirds. Over in the Salle des Menus Vice-President Lafayette, with unsnuffed lights, "with some Hundred or so of Members, stretched on tables round him," sits erect; outwatching the Bear. This day, a second solemn Deputation went to his Majesty; a second, and then a third: with no effect. What will the end of these things be? In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of terror; though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women! His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of doublebarrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his constitutional way, the Job's-news. "Mais," said poor Louis, "c'est une révolte, Why, that is a revolt!"-" Sire," answered Liancourt, "it is not a revolt, it is a revolution." THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN. (Mignet's History of the French Revolution.) A.D. 1789. THE officers of the regiment of Flanders, endured very impatiently by the town of Versailles, were entertained at the Château, and admitted to the parties of the queen. The court was anxious to assure itself of their devotion. A fête was given them by the guards of the king; the officers of dragoons and chasseurs, who were at Versailles, those of the Swiss guards, of the Hundred Swiss, of the provost-marshal's guard, and the staff of the National guard, were invited to it. They chose as the banquetroom the grand saloon for the exhibition of plays and other entertainments, exclusively destined to the most solemn festivals of the court, and which, since the marriage of the second brother of the king, had been opened only for the Emperor Joseph II. The king's band of musicians was ordered to assist at this festival, the first which the guards had ever given. During the banquet, they drank with enthusiasm the health of the royal family; that of the nation was omitted or rejected. At the second service, the grenadiers of France, the Swiss and the dragoons, were introduced in order to witness this spectacle, and participate in the sentiments which animated the guests. Their transports increased every moment; suddenly the king was announced, he entered the hall of the banquet in a hunting-dress, followed by the queen, who held the dauphin in her arms. Acclamations of attachment and devotion rang through the saloon ; with naked swords in hand, they drank to the health of the royal family, and at the moment when Louis XVI. was retiring, the band struck up the air, O Richard, o mon roi, l'univers t'abandonne! The scene assumed then a character sufficiently significant. The jovial clamour and the profusion of wine banished all reserve. They sound the charge; staggering, they scale the boxes, as if they were advancing to an assault, white cockades are distributed, the tri-coloured cockade is trodden under foot, and this troop then spreads itself among the galleries of the château, |