THE EVENING BEFORE THE DAY.

"O, as that evening Sun fell over the Champ de Mars, and tinted with fire the thick umbrageous boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, and struck direct on those Domes and two-and-forty windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all of burnished gold, -saw he on his wide zodiac road other such sight? A living garden spotted and dotted with such flowerage; all colors of the prism; the beautifulest blend friendly with the usefulest; all growing and working brotherlike there, under one warm feeling, were it but for days; once and no second time! But Night is sinking; these Nights, too, into Eternity. The hastiest traveler Versailles-ward has drawn bridle on the heights of Chaillot: and looks for moments over the River; reporting at Versailles what he saw, not without tears.”

But while the theatre is being thus prepared, the actors are assembling, not from Paris only, but from all quarters of France; for Paris is the heart of France, from which and to which the life-current surges back and forth :

THE THRONGING OF THE FEDERATES.

"Meanwhile, from all points of the compass, Federates are arriving: fervid children of the South, who 'glory in their Mirabeau;' considerate North-blooded Mountaineers of Jura; sharp Bretons, with their Gaelic suddenness; Normans not to be overreached in bargain: all now animated with one noblest fire of Patriotism. Whom the Paris brethren march forth to receive; with military solemnities, with fraternal embracing, and a hos

pitality worthy of the heroic ages. They assist at the Assembly's Debates, these Federates; the Galleries are reserved for them. They assist in the toils of the Champ de Mars; each new troop will put its hand to the spade; lift a hod of earth on the Altar of the Fatherland. But the flourishes of rhetoric, for it is a gesticulating People; the moral-sublime of those Addresses to an august Assembly, to a Patriot Restorer! One Breton Captain of Federates kneels even, in a fit of enthusiasm, and gives up his sword; he wet-eyed to a King wet-eyed. Poor Louis! These, as he said afterwards, were among the bright days of his life."

But on the evening before the great day it was bruited abroad that a misguided municipality proposed that admittance to the august ceremonial should be by tickets. Patriotism was naturally indignant, and gave free vent to its indignation.

TICKETS OR NO TICKETS.

666 "Was it by tickets that we were admitted to the work; and to what brought the work? Did we take the Bastile by tickets?' A misguided municipality sees the error; at late midnight rolling drums announce to Patriotism, starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to be ticketless. Pull down thy night-cap therefore; and with demi-articulate significance grumble, significant of many things, go to sleep again. To-morrow is Wednesday morning: unforgetable among the fasti of the world."

THE OVERTURE TO THE PLAY.

"The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festivity would make Greenland smile. Through every

inlet of that National Amphitheatre (for it is a league in circuit, cut through with openings at due intervals), floods in the living throng; covers, without tumult, space after space. The École Militaire has galleries and over-vaulting canopies, wherein Carpentry and Painting have vied, for the upper Authorities; triumphal arches, at the Gate by the River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant and orthodox. Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or Pans of Incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes,-unless for the Heathen Mythology one sees not for whom. Two hundred thousand Patriotic Men; and twice as good, one hundred thousand Patriotic Women, all decked and glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting on this Champ de Mars.

"What a picture: that circle of bright-eyed life, spread up there on its thirty-seated Slope; leaning, one would say, on the thick umbrage of those AvenueTrees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height; and all beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth, with the gleams of waters, or the white sparklings of stone-edifices: little circular enamel-picture in the centre of such a vase of emeralds! A vase not empty: the Invalides Cupolas want not their population, nor the distant Windmills of Montmartre; on the remotest steeple and invisible village belfry stand men with spy-glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-colored undulating groups; round and far-on, over all the circling heights that embosom Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the eye grows dim with measuring. Nay, heights, as was before hinted, have cannon; and a floating battery of cannon is on the Seine. When the eye fails, ear shall serve; and all France properly is but

one Amphitheatre; for in paved town and unpaved hamlet men walk listening; till the muffled thunder sound audible on their horizon, that they too may begin swearing and firing.

66 But now, to streams of music, come Federates enough, for they have assembled on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come marching through the City, with their eighty-three Department Banners, and blessings not loud but deep; comes National Assembly, and takes seat under its canopy; comes Royalty and takes seat on a throne beside it. And Lafayette, on white charger, is here, and all the civic Functionaries; and the Federates form dances till their strictly military evolutions and manœuvres can begin."

THE RISING OF THE CURTAIN.

"Evolutions and manoeuvres? Task not the pen of mortal to describe them: truant imagination droops:declares that it is not worth the while. There is wheeling and sweeping, to slow, to quick, and double-quick time. Sieur Motier, or Generalissimo Lafayette, for they are one and the same, and he is General of France, in the King's stead, for four-and-twenty hours; Sieur Motier must step forth, with that sublime chivalrous gait of his; solemnly ascend the steps of Fatherland's Altar, in sight of Heaven and the scarcely breathing Earth; and, under the creak of those swinging Cassolettes, 'pressing his sword's point firmly there,' pronounce the Oath, To King, to Law, and Nation, in his own name and that of France. Whereat there is waving of banners, and acclaim sufficient. The National Assembly must swear, standing in its place; the King himself audibly. The King swears; and now be the welkin split with vivats;

let the Citizens enfranchised embrace, each smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's; and armed Federates clang their arms above all, that floating battery speak! It has spoken, to the four corners of France. From eminence to eminence bursts the thunder: faint-heard, loudrepeated.

"What a stone cast into what a lake; in circles that do not grow fainter. From Arras to Avignon; from Metz to Bayonne! Over Orleans and Blois it rolls in cannon-recitative; Puy bellows of it amid his granite mountains; Pau, where is the shell-cradle of the Great Henri. At far Marseilles, one can think, the ruddy evening witnesses it; over the deep blue Mediterranean waters, the Castle of If, ruddy-tinted, darts forth from every cannon's mouth its tongue of fire; and all the people shout: Yes, France is free!' O glorious France, that has burst out so; into universal sound and smoke; and attained the Phrygian Cap of Liberty. In all towns Trees of Liberty may be planted; with or without advantage. It was the highest stretch attained by the Thespian Art on this planet, or perhaps attainable."

But the grand spectacular melodrama had soon assumed the aspect of a comedy, more or less genteel; for the national banners must be blessed; and who of all men living should do this but the limping unbeliever, Talleyrand-Périgord, Bishop of Autun ?

BISHOP TALLEYRAND'S BLESSING.

"A most proper operation; since surely without Heaven's blessing bestowed, say even audibly or inaudibly sought, no Earthly banner or contrivance can prove vic