Import their flow'rs of elocution From Gallic soil of Revolution; And make our Youth of all conditions And prove in politics as knowing As those who set their tongues a going? Who, they'll be sworn, usurp'd the helm In John Bull's cushion planted thorns, With revolutionary fits, Amidst his disaffected swarm He bellow'd treason at Chalk Farm! But to return from whence we started:Though knowledge by old books imparted In th' estimate is mouldy grown Of those who have too much o' their own: (Just as the sun's illustrious splendour's For each dark spot upon his face Old erudition's classic stores, Whose steps from fashion's heights decline With cobwebs fring'd, by worms half eat, Who brav'd the ruler of the sky, Th' observer sees, with half an eye, The fabling seers anticipate Philosophy of modern date, Who by profession's bound, and calling Whose giant-appetite devours By Gallic modes of desolation. * Houses and churches Were to him geese and turkies, &c. Dragon of Wantley. See Pills to Purge Melancholy. Let then Refinement's seminaries, From tales of cocks and bulls and fairies Revert to that abandon'd page, Whence arch-rebellion's pristine rage Our democratic youths enlightens, And bids them emulate the Titans: To sweep down all distinctions strove For Majesty, whom, while a child, Disdain'd, since he of age was grown, And had from thence transferr'd his state To ev'ry ragamuffin pate, *"Le plus Saint Devoir de l'homme est L'INSURRECTION." La Fayette. + "As soon as I began to divest myself of the prejudices with which my education had been infected, I felt the holy spirit of insurrection kindle in my heart." M. l'Abbé Sieyes to the Convention. Wherein, if any brains be found, He turn'd 'em round and round and round, Till, (as the legion-spirit stirr'd To ecstacy the infuriate herd,) He drove them headlong to the sea Of overwhelming anarchy. They swore it was a monstrous thing The thund'rer should be call'd Heav'n's King! They knew:-so bade him bold defiance; Vow'd his supremacy to level And with his gods to play the devil: + Intrinsic sov'reignty, they said, Exists but in the governed, * Imprescriptive Rights" Droits imprescriptibles," a favourite expression of French philosophers.Rights paramount to all the antiquated prejudices respecting equity, property, integrity, honour, charity, and religion. See Topsy Turvy, page 14. Such a latitude of audacity did these primæval Republicans allow themselves that they made no more ceremony of assaulting the great synod of the Gods than of anticipating the sentiments of the great enlighteners of mankind.-For Brissot, in one of his letters, declares; "We, the French, must set fire to the four corners of Europe." Camille |