frenzy cooled. Neither from the black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant in his sack to the Seine waters; plunging into Night: for Dame de Nesle now cares not for this world's gallantry, heeds not for this world's scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into Night. They are all gone; sunk,-down, down, with the tumult they made; and the rolling and the trampling of ever new generations passes over them; and they hear it not any more for ever.”

Still those ages the history of which must be so condensed and epitomized did, after all, produce something. They were not altogether barren.

SOME RESULTS OF THE OBSCURE AGES.

"And yet withal has there not been something realized? Consider (to go no further) these strong Stoneedifices, and what they hold! Mud-Town of the Borderers (Lutetia Parisorum or Barisorum) has paved itself, has spread over all the Seine Islands, and far and wide on each bank, and become City of Paris, sometimes boasting to be 'Athens of Europe,' and 'Capital of the Universe.' Stone towers frown aloft; long-lasting, grim with a thousand years. Cathedrals are there, and a Creed (or memory of a Creed) in them; Palaces, and a State, and Law. Thou seest the Smoke-vapor; unextinguished Breath, as of a thing living. Labor's thousand hammers ring on her anvils: also a more miraculous Labor works noiselessly, not with the Hand but with the Thought. How have cunning workmen in all crafts, with their cunning head and right-hand, tamed the Four Elements to be their ministers; yoking the Winds to their Sea-chariot, making the very Stars their Nautical

Timepiece; and written and collected a Bibliothèque du Roi; among whose Books is the Hebrew Book! A wondrous race of Creatures: these have been realized, and what of Skill is in these: call not the Past Time, with all its confused wretchedness, a lost one."

SYMBOLS AND IDEALS.

"Observe, however, that of man's whole Terrestrial possessions and attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with victorious assurance, in the lifebattle: what we call his Realized Ideals. Of which Realized Ideals, omitting the rest, consider only these two: his Church, or spiritual Guidance, his Kingship, or temporal one."

A CHURCH AND A CREED

"The Church: what a word was there; richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In the heart of the remotest mountains rises the white little Kirk; the Dead all slumbering around it, under the white memorialstones, 'in hope of a happy resurrection':-dull wert thou, Reader, if never in any hour (say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up in Darkness) it spoke to thee -things unspeakable, that went into thy soul's soul. Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church he stood thereby, though in the centre of Immensities, 'in the conflict of Eternities,' yet manlike toward God and Man; the vague shoreless Universe had become for him a fine city and dwelling which he knew, such virtue was in Belief; in these words, well-spoken: I believe. Well might men prize their Credo; and raise

stateliest Temples for it, and reverend Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it was worth living for and dying for."

THE KINGSHIP.

"Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men first raised their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and with clanging armor and hearts said solemnly: 'Be thou our Acknowledged Strongest!' In such Acknowledged Strongest (well-named King, Kỏnning, Can-ning, or Man that was Able), what a Symbol shone now for them-significant with the destinies of the world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving Obedience; properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol which might be called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what is better than we, an indestructible sacredness? On which ground, too, it was well said, there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a divine right; as surely there might be in the Strongest, whether Acknowledged or not,-considering Who it was that made him strong.

"And so, in the midst of confusions and unutterable incongruities (as all growth is confused), did this of Royalty, with Loyalty environing it, spring up; and grow mysteriously, subduing and assimilating (for a principle of Life was within it); till it also had grown world-great, and was among the main facts of our modern existence. Such a fact that a Louis Fourteenth, for example, could answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his 'L'État, c'est moi (The State? I am the State); and be replied to with silence and abashed looks.

"So far had accident and forethought; had your Louis Elevenths, with the leaden Virgin in their hat

band, and torture-wheels and conical oubliettes (maneating!) under their feet; your Henri Fourths, with their prophesied social millennium, 'when every peasant should have his fowl in the pot,' and, on the whole, the fertility of this most fertile Existence (named of Good and Evil), -brought it, in the matter of Kingship. Wondrous ! concerning which may we not again say, that in the huge mass of Evil, as it rolls and swells, there is ever some Good, working imprisoned; working toward deliverance and triumph?"

The "History of the French Revolution," as told by Carlyle, properly begins with the death of Louis XV. The king's disease was the small-pox, caught from one of his obscure mistresses; but this was further aggravated by certain other nameless disorders.

THE DEATH-BED OF LOUIS XV.

"Frightful to all men is Death; from of old named King of Terrors. Our little compact home of an Existence, where we dwelt complaining, yet as in a home, is passing, in dark agonies, into an Unknown of Separation, Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility. The Heathen Emperor asks of his soul: 'Into what place art thou now departing?' The Catholic King must answer: 'To the Judgment-bar of the Most High God!'-Yes, it is a summing up of life; a final settling, and giving-in the 'account of the deeds done in the body': they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and to bear their fruits, as long as Eternity shall last.

"Louis XV. had always the Kingliest abhorrence of Death. Unlike that Duke of Orleans, who honestly be

lieved that there was no Death, he, if the Court Newsmen can be believed, started up once on a time, glowing with sulphurous contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words, feu roi d'Espagne (the late King of Spain). 'Feu roi, Monsieur !' —' Monseigneur,' hastily answered the trembling but adroit man of business, 'C'est un titre qu'ils prennent ('tis a title they take).' Louis was not so happy; but he did what he could. He would not suffer Death to be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funeral monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich; who hard-hunted sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant of the same thing, and of more, would go: or stopping his court carriages, would send into the churchyards, and ask, 'how many new graves there were to-day,' though it gave his poor Pompadour the ugliest qualms.

"But figure his thought when Death is now clutching at his own heart-strings; unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckrams of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence was a Chimera and Scenic Show, at length becomest a Reality: sumptuous Versailles bursts asunder, like a Dream, into a void Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangor round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter naked, all unkinged, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull agony, what a thought is thine!