Chapter XVII (6)

The next day, the memorable 14th of November, witnessed the defeat of the Swedes and the triumph of the Danish arms; and upon the day afterwards, the whole Swedish army, shut up in Nyeborg, surrendered to the victors. The Prince of Sulzbach and Count Steenbock had run the gauntlet through the Dutch fleet, and escaped to Corsor, where they met any thing but a flattering reception from King Charles Gustavus. Delivered from their merciless foe, and once more under Danish government, the inhabitants of Funen again raised their heads, and resumed their former habits and occupations. Gradually things fell into the old routine: vexatious losses were forgotten in the comforts and security of peace; fugitives returned home; friends and relatives, long severed, again met; news were received of many reported dead, and the fate of others, whom the demon of war had really devoured, was accurately ascertained. But of Martin Thy, the horse-dealer, not a word was heard. Since the day that he had rescued Hans Thorsen from the jaws of death, none of his relatives or neighbours had seen him; no intelligence, save faint and improbable rumours, had been obtained concerning him. Hans, when the enemy had quitted the country, (as he and every body else fondly believed for ever,) held himself absolved from his oath, and returned to his father's house at Vinding. There he undertook to persuade Christina that a promise forced from her, by the most cruel necessity, was not so binding that, under certain circumstances, it might not be broken; and, moreover, that it could not absolve her from her more ancient vows plighted to himself. But all the arguments of the impatient young lover, although supported by those of his father, who was desirous, before he died, to behold the happiness of his children, failed for some time to convince the maiden's sound sense and grateful heart. At last their persuasions and representations, powerfully aided by her love for Hans, induced her to fix a certain period, at the expiration of which, if Martin Thy did not in the interval appear to maintain his claim, she would become the wife of her younger suitor. Although vexed at the delay, Hans was compelled to consent to it; and for the satisfaction of Christina's conscience, two months were allowed to elapse. Then, the horse-dealer not appearing, the wedding was celebrated with the customary festivity and rejoicing.

At the marriage-feast the conversation naturally turned upon the events of the previous year, and, amongst other names and persons brought under discussion, Martin Thy was mentioned. Unobservant or regardless of the confusion manifest on the faces of both bride and bridegroom, half a score persons immediately exclaimed--"Ay, what has become of Thy, the punchy horse-dealer?" "Whither has the scamp betaken himself?" asked others. One of the company, an elderly man, whose words obtained deference and attention, replied to these questions to the following effect: Martin Thy, he said, was unquestionably one of the many spies employed by Charles Gustavus, and many of whom were intrusted by him with very considerable powers. For that king, reckoning on other means than the mere force of arms for the subjugation of the country, employed numerous agents, chosen from all ranks and classes, to ascertain the state of feeling amongst the people. Soldiers, pilots, pedlars, artisans, peasants, and students, took his wages for these dishonourable services. The horse-dealer, however,--so the speaker affirmed,--either conscience-stricken after taking the money of the Swedish government, or finding it agreeable and convenient to eat from two platters at one time, had also accepted from the Danish authorities a passport and secret instructions. On the occasion of the murder of a Swedish sergeant in the vicinity of Nyeborg, he had come in contact with officers of high rank, some of whom having reason, in spite of his cunning and plausibility, to mistrust his honesty, instituted investigations which resulted in his being sent handcuffed, with two other gentlemen of the same kidney, to Corsor, where, without further form of trial, they were all three hung. Other accounts said that Martin Thy had got off with the mere fright, having succeeded, by means of a small file, concealed in his bushy hair, in cutting his prison bars and making his escape. The guests, however, were unanimously of opinion that this was a mere postponement of his doom, and that to-morrow morning a tree in the Danish woods might serve as a gallows for Martin Thy. The conversation still ran upon this subject, when a young lad who waited at table whispered something in the ear of the bridegroom. The latter rose from table with an air of surprise and uneasiness, and slipped out of the house. The messenger conducted him to the wood-store, where a stranger, desirous of speaking with him, awaited his coming. Upon entering the ill-lighted shed, Hans Thorsen beheld a pale thin little man, clothed in squalid rags, and reclining, as if overcome with fatigue and exhaustion, upon a pile of chopped wood. The stranger arose, and with a limping step advanced to meet Hans. It was Martin Thy. But how changed within a few short weeks! His comfortable corpulence had disappeared, his cheeks were hollow and colourless, his long hair hung matted and uncombed about his ears, his doublet was travel-stained and tattered. It was scarce possible to recognise the once jovial well-conditioned horse-dealer. Hans Thorsen lifted up his hands in astonishment.

"Martin Thy!" he exclaimed in a tone of mingled vexation and compassion, "whence come you, in heaven's name, and what means this wretched plight?"

"You hardly know me again, Hans," said the horse-dealer, with somewhat of his former gaiety in his voice. "I am not surprised at it. I look just like an old horse who has been turned out to pass his winter in the woods. My paunch quite gone--left behind in yonder dry hole at Corsor," continued he with a smile, whilst with both hands he displayed his vest, which hung about him like a sack. "You want to know my business here?--never vex thyself about that, lad! I do not come to trespass on your manor. There are plenty here would drive me away, did I wish to stay. Tell your little wife (for I know this is your wedding-day) not to fret herself, for Martin Thy releases her. I know she will be glad to hear that. Of money I have plenty, ragged as I look; but I crave a service of you, for old acquaintance sake--'tis the last, perhaps. Lend me a horse, for I have not a leg to stand on. I will leave it in your uncle's care at Aastrup, near Faaborg: I myself shall not return. It matters little whether my fodder grows in Germany or Funen; and there are stables every where."

The good-natured heart of Hans Thorsen melted within him, as he contemplated the woful plight of the unlucky little man, and the constrained indifference and joviality of manner with which he endeavoured to carry off his misfortunes. His mind at ease about Christina, he thought only of comforting the man to whom he owed his life. He brought him beer and brandy, bread and beef, offered him a complete change of clothes, and pressed him earnestly to accept a pair of large silver buckles, which he took from his own shoes. But Martin Thy refused every thing, smiled in reply to the condolences of Hans, saddled the horse himself, cordially pressed the young man's hand, and galloped out of the court. Hans gazed after him till a turn of the road hid horse and rider from his view, and then returned into the house, to dissipate by a whisper the last shadow of doubt and anxiety that still clouded the happiness, and weighed upon the gentle heart, of Christina Thorsen.

From that day no word was heard in Funen of Martin Thy the horse-dealer.

* * * * *

Nearly a century and a half had elapsed since the incidents above narrated. It was the month of July in one of the last years of the eighteenth century. The day had been oppressively hot, but in the afternoon a storm and shower had cooled and lightened the air. The minister at Vinding had a stranger stopping with him. This was a young gentleman from Copenhagen, whose pale thoughtful countenance told of assiduous toil in the paths of learning, and of late vigils by the study-lamp. Notwithstanding the elegance of his attire, and the courtly arrangement of his hair--gathered together upon his nape into a tail, according to the fashion of the day--the thorough Danish cut of his features, and a certain homely plainness of mien, seemed to indicate plebeian descent, and to warrant a conjecture that his father's hand had been more familiar with the plough-handle than with general's baton or magistrate's wand. His speech also, notwithstanding the advantages of an excellent education, was tinged with the accent of the province in which he then found himself. He had journeyed from the capital to his native place, for the purpose of examining whatever relies of antiquity there existed, and of discovering, if possible, some hitherto unknown. Not a Runic stone, or moss-grown font, or battered chalice, cracked bell, or stained window, not a tombstone or altar-piece, could escape his searching eye and investigating finger. Besides these mute memorials of ancient days, he interested himself greatly in the old rhymes and legends still current in Funen. To aid him in the collection of these, and in his other antiquarian researches, he had applied to the right man. The venerable minister was in every way as enthusiastic an admirer as the student of the vestiges of old days; and having besides some knowledge of music, which his companion did not possess, he would sing with great unction, in a voice somewhat cracked but not disagreeable, strange wild ballads about Sivard, and Varland, and Vidrick, and of the good horse Skimming, and of King Waldemar and his queen Dagmar; whilst the young man stood by, his hand in his breast, and his eyes upon the ground, listening and musing.

"The rain is quite over," said the old clergyman, turning to the student; "let us go into the garden, for the sultry air is not yet out of the house. See here, how dry it is beneath these chestnut trees, notwithstanding the pelting shower we have had; and mark how the drops patter from leaf to leaf above our heads! A severe storm this has been. At one time, I thought our church was struck by lightning: I am sure the thunderbolt fell very near the steeple. But see yonder, what a splendid rainbow! It looks exactly as if it had one foot in my meadow. Let us sit here awhile, my dear young friend: the bench is quite dry. Ah! how fragrant smells the tobacco in the fresh open air! But you do not appreciate it. You prefer a Danish ditty to all the aromatic vapours of the noble Nicotian herb."

And to gratify his young guest, the minister struck up the beautiful Danish air--"_Jeg gik mig ud en Sommerdag at höre_"--beating the time with his long pipe-stick of Hungarian cherry. The eyes of the sensitive student were already dim with tears, when the plaintive song was interrupted by the clergyman's fair-haired daughter, who, came bounding down the garden.

"Father, John has come, and wants to speak to you."

"Which John?" asked the minister.

"John Thorsen," replied the young lady. "Shall I send him to you?"

"No, child, I will go to him. I know what he wants. It is about his son's christening. Excuse me for a moment, my friend."

In less than five minutes the clergyman returned.

"Are you disposed for a short walk?" he said: "I must visit one of my parishioners. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity to show you something more worthy your antiquarian attention than the legend of St Matthew and his fountain."[17]

[17] A mineral spring in the parish of Vinding, dedicated to St
Matthew by the monks of a neighbouring convent, which existed there
previously to the Reformation.

The two men took hat and stick and followed the peasant, who led them through the village to his little farm, across a garden and a small meadow, till he stopped before a knoll of ground, and turned to his companions.

"Your reverence must know," said he, "that here upon the hillock, and round about, an oak copse formerly grew, for which reason we still call the field 'Oak Meadow,' although no one now living remembers any oaks here save yonder old one, cloven by this day's lightning. It was quite hollow, but that could not be seen till now. If your reverence will take the trouble to come up the knoll--stay, give me your hand, I will help you."

"Thank you, my son," said the minister, "I can do without assistance."

And the worthy man gently ascended the little eminence. One half of the huge oak still stood erect, surmounted by rich green foliage--the other moiety had been riven away by the lightning's power--and the whole interior of the tree was exposed to view like an open cupboard. It was melancholy to behold this forest monarch thus rent and overthrown, his verdant crown defaced and trailing in the dust. But this reflection found no place in the minds of either clergyman or student--their attention was engrossed by a variety of objects that lay in a confused heap in the cavity of the oak. Upon near examination these proved to consist of the remains of a human skeleton, which, to judge from the position of the bones, must have stood upright in the tree, its arms extended upwards. A pair of large iron spurs, several nails and brass buckles, a long sword, nearly consumed by rust, pieces of iron and brass belonging to a dragoon's helmet, some coins of the reign of Charles Gustavus, and finally a broad gold finger-ring, were also discovered. Upon the last the initials J. S. were plainly legible; and on the hilt of the sword, as on some of the fragments of metal, were the letters F.R.F.D., standing for First Regiment Finland Dragoons.

Although it was at once evident that these relics had not the age requisite to give them value in antiquarian eyes, the student and his venerable friend did not the less examine them with strong interest. On their way to the oak, the minister and Johann Thorsen had told their companion the story of the Swedish sergeant, and his wonderful disappearance. The tradition was current amongst the peasantry, and some details of it were still in existence in an old vestry register. That day's storm had cleared up the marvel, and explained the mystery,--there could be no doubt that the skeleton discovered in the oak was that of poor Svartberg. The letters upon the sabre and buckles, and especially those upon the gold ring, sufficiently proved this; the latter unquestionably stood for Jon Svartberg. It was evident that the young Swede, pursued by those from whom he had little mercy to expect, and impeded in running by the weight of his accoutrements had climbed the oak for safety, and had slipped down into the hollow, between whose narrow sides he got closely wedged, and was thence unable to extricate himself. There he remained immured alive in a living sarcophagus; and there upon every one of seven-score succeeding springs, the deceitful oak (like Dead-Sea apples, all freshness without and rottenness within) had put forth, above his mouldering remains, a wreath of brilliant green.

Upon the same Sunday on which little Thor Hansen was christened in the church of Vinding, Svartberg's remains were consigned to consecrated ground. John Thorsen and the student stood beside his grave: the old minister threw earth upon his ashes and wished him good rest. Some sorry jesters in the village-tavern opined he would need it, after being, so long upon his legs.

SKETCHES IN PARIS.

So fleeting are the scenes of revolutionary history--so phantasmagoric are they in their character, as well from their quickly evanescent nature as from their wild and startling effect--so rapid are the changes that every day, and almost every hour, produce, that before they can be well sketched they have flitted away from before the eyes, to be replaced by others as strange and startling. Those that have been hastily transferred to the note-book are gone as soon as traced: those that follow upon the next leaf grow pale, however high and bold their colouring, by the side of the still more vivid picture that is placed in contrast the next day. The interest of the present swallows up that of the past: that of the future will shortly devour the interest of the present. In no country is the difficulty of seizing the revolutionary physiognomy before it changes, and stamping it in permanent daguerreotype, more sensible than among the easily excited, and consequently ever-changeful French--in no place on the earth more than in that fickle and capricious city, the capital of revolutionised France. There, more than elsewhere, the scenes of revolution have the attribute of dissolving views. They are before your eyes at one moment: as you still gaze, they change--they run into other colours and other forms,--they have given way to a complete transformation. Such scenes have all the effect of the flickering, uncertain, and varying phantom pictures of the _mirage_ of the desert: and this effect, so observable in the outward state of things,--in the aspect of the streets, in the tumult, or the sulky calm, in the rapidly rolling panorama of the day, changed in all its objects and its colours on the morrow,--is just as remarkable in moral influences, in the enthusiasm of one hour, which becomes execration in the next; in the hope, the fear, the confidence, and the despair. This is true, and perhaps even to a greater extent, in men, as well as things or deeds. Have we not seen so lately the hero, the idol, the demigod of one moment, become, by a sudden and almost unconnected transition, the object of hatred, suspicion, and mistrust, at another? On such occasions the dissolving views have scarcely time to dissolve.

Nothing, then, is a more difficult or a more thankless task, than to sketch scenes of a revolutionary time among such a rapidly self-revolutionising people. Scarcely is the scene sketched, but it is superseded by one of newer, and consequently more powerful interest; its effect has faded utterly away; it is old, _rococo_, unsatisfactory: the new one alone claims every eye, and the tribute of all emotions. With such fearful express-train hurry and dash does history rush along, that the history of yesterday seems already "ancient" history, and the tale of the last hour "a tale of other times," no longer fit to command a thought, or excite a sensation; or, at best, it may be said to belong only to those grubbing antiquaries in political considerations, who live out of the whirling movement of their age. On those who linger among such scenes, this feeling is so powerfully impressed that they seem to themselves to grow old with frightful rapidity, and to have lived ten years at least in as many days.

Thus, in opening a Parisian Sketch-book, in which many a scene has been traced during the last few months, the feeling that the sketches therein hastily made are already too old, too "flat, stale, and unprofitable," to please the novelty-craving public eye,--that even the latest, while being exhibited, may be thrown into the shade by newer and more vivid scenes, which would afford subjects for fresher pictures,--deters from their exhibition. But still there _may be_ some of those grubbing antiquaries in revolutionary history, who may not be sorry to have a specimen of "old times" in the shape of a vignette or two drawn upon the spot, although it was done yesterday, or even the day before, placed within his hands; and so the Sketch-book shall be opened, and turned over at hap-hazard, and a few sketches of revolutionary Paris offered to public gaze.

See! first of all we fall upon a rapid tracing or two of scenes from those wild abysses, in which have sunk industry, trade, confidence, and principle--the _ateliers nationaux_. The pencil of a moral Salvator Rosa is alone worthy to paint them! But great breadth of light and shade, and powerful colouring, must not be sought for in a scrap of a vignette. Perhaps we have not stumbled so utterly _malà propos_ upon these pictures; for since the _ateliers nationaux_ were so intimately connected with the pretexted causes, and the fearful organisation, of the bloody insurrection in the latter end of June, they may be supposed, as events go rattling on, to belong to the "middle ages" of the past French revolutionary history, and not to be so positively lost already in its "dark ages" as to have become utterly uninteresting.

The sketch is taken in the park of Monceaux, at the western extremity of the capital. The old trees stand there pretty nearly as they did, although some have been cut down or torn up, no one can well say why, unless it may have been from a spirit of devastation for devastation's sake; the old clumps, and the grass-plots, although sadly worn, are still there; but how different is the aspect of the spot from that which might have been sketched last year in the same sweet spring-tide! The calm and the make-believe rurality are gone. Where nurse-maids and children gambolled on the greensward, or a couple of lovers lingered so near the tumult of the capital, and yet so secluded and unobserved, or the dreamer lounged to dream at ease, although the roar of the great city still rang in his ears, is now a scene of confusion and disorder. A herd of miserable, or idle and reckless men, have been there got together; and the spot has been allotted as one of the newly constituted revolutionary national workshops. "Workshops!" what irony in the word! Work there is none for the wretched men to do; profit there is none, at the very best, to expect from it. The impoverished and harassed country is burdened with new taxes, to keep the dangerous and disorderly in a seeming state of quiet; the fears of a government, or even its treacherous designs, call for funds from all the country to pay this herd of men, who prefer eating the bread of idleness as their due--for have not they been told that they are the masters, and that the country must support them?--to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow, when they are enabled to do it: and all this sacrifice shall not hereafter avert the danger anticipated by those fears.

The first impression conveyed by the scene is that, some how or other, we have been suddenly transported into the "back woods" of a Transatlantic settlement. A few huts of wood are knocked up in different parts under the trees, for the use of those paid superintendents who have nothing to superintend, and who only aid in fostering the passions of the wild men whom they are vainly said to have under their command, and in organising into revolutionary bands, to work the will of a disappointed and frantic party, a host of half-savage beings, disorganised to every social tie. The hundreds of half-dressed men who are grouped hither and thither, with instruments of labour in their hands, might be supposed, were they really employed upon any exertion, to be the settlers, occupied in effecting a clearance. Some even might be taken, from their wild looks and wilder gestures, for a few of the last remnants of the aboriginal savages, who had just sold the heritage of their fathers for deep draughts of the "fire-water." But when we look more nearly to the details in the composition of the picture, we shall find component parts of it perfectly exceptional, and peculiarly belonging to the circumstances of the place and of the day. Some of the men in the groups, it is true, bear all the air of sturdy workmen, although they are demoralised by their position of real idleness, that "root of all evil," and disgusted with having their energies employed upon "make-believe" work. "Make-believe" indeed! for children could scarcely be seduced into the fantasy that they were really doing any labour of positive utility. Some again are strong men, capable of bearing exertion as settlers or forest clearers; but they are not the men of the "woods and wilds." Those hands plunged down into the deep pockets of their full trowsers, without the least show of willingness to work; those heads tossed back, that sharp cunning roll of the evil eye, that leer, that sardonic grin, that mouth carelessly pursed up to whistle, all betray the common city-thief, who knows not why he should not share in the bounty of the country to the idle and disorderly, particularly when his own trade thrives so ill in these days of the patrollings and marchings, and drummings about the streets, by night as well as day, of the national guards: among those faces, also, we may find the dark scowl of the branded felon and the murderer. But look at those pale puny men, with their lank hair and scanty beards! How out of place they seem in these "backwoods" of civilisation! How miserably they hang their heads, and look upon the earth! They are the poor weavers, and fabricators of jewellery, and makers of all kinds of articles of luxury, whose trade is closed to them by the ruin caused to all wealth and luxury by the revolution, and who are out of employ. They are real objects of charity: and they are true objects of pity also, as they thus stand, unable and unwilling to work at their useless trades, and brood over their misery, and think of their wives and babes, for whom they, who might have before earned a decent livelihood, must now beg, from a nation's reckless charity, a scanty subsistence. Poor woe-begone wretches! they have cursed the revolution in the bitterness of their hearts; although by a strange but not uncommon revulsion of feeling, they will throw themselves, perhaps, soon into the arms of their enemy, and espouse, in despair, its wildest, bloodiest doctrines, with the hope that any change, however desperate, may tend to relieve them from their utter misery, but to find out, at last, that they have plunged into a still more fearful abyss. Look! in that corner, beneath that further clump of trees, are some who have thrown themselves gloomily upon the ground, to dream of a gloomy future; or lean their backs against the stems, to raise their eyes despairingly to heaven; or see! perhaps they laugh wildly, to affect a gaiety far from their hearts. Poor fellows! The deity they have worshipped is thrown down from the high pedestal on which they had put her up aloft, or one is replaced by another, wearing a hideously coarse red cap of liberty; their fair dream, in which they lived, has flown, with its bright rainbow colours, and left before them nothing but a naked, rugged, hideous reality; the poetry, as well as the necessary materialism of their lives, have been cut off at once; the pleasant sward, on which they trod forward, "with daisies pied," has terminated on a sudden, upon an abyss formed by the unexpected convulsion of an earthquake. Their divinity was Art; she has fled with a sob before the advance of coarse democracy, that proclaims her a useless and foolish idol. Their dream was the worship in the temple of Art; the temple has fallen to the ground, and the rainbow coruscations of its altar have vanished. The path which was to lead on to fame and fortune has abruptly terminated. There is no hand to foster the neglected and degraded deity; the poor artists, who were just commencing their career, are now reduced to penury: for the most part, these poor orphan children of art are penniless--almost houseless; they have been forced to lay aside the brush for the spade or pick-axe--the brightly-coloured pallet for the dull earth; and now they brood here, in the _ateliers nationaux_, over their fantasies flown and their real misery--happy even that they can receive the national pittance to prevent them from starving. Look to those young men, sprinkled here and there in the groups--boys, they are almost sometimes--with their thin delicate mustaches, and their hair arranged with some coquetry of curl, even in the midst of their disorder, and in spite of the _blouse_ with which their attire is covered. Look at their hands! they are white and delicate--they are not used to handle the implements of labour. If they work, the drops of perspiration trickle over their pale faces like tears which _will_ find a passage, even if the eyes refuse to let them go. They have been evidently used, the weak boys, to a certain degree of luxury, and their harsh occupation is repugnant to their feelings. They are young lads from the many shops of the luxuries of manufacture of every kind in formerly flourishing Paris, which have now closed in consequence of the ruin and desolation that has fallen upon trade. Those who have not shut up entirely, have discharged the greater part of their former servitors, who now are turned adrift in hundreds upon the _pavé_ of Paris, and know not how or where to seek their bread. Those hands have been accustomed to handle the velvet, the satin, and the lace, and shrink back from the contact of the rough wood and cutting stone: but starve they cannot, and they add to the wild motley crew of the _ateliers nationaux_. Those discontented affected faces are those of young actors, and singers also, improvident to a proverb, who have been left exposed to the rude buffetings of the world by the failure of several of the theatres, which have not been able to meet the necessities of revolutionary times, when even Parisians--even theatrical Parisians--desert the theatres for the club-rooms, and which have closed their bankrupt doors. What a change, again, from the illusion of the glittering dress, and the lighted scene, and the heart-fluttering applause, to the stern realities of poverty and labour. Among such men as these are young rising authors also, who have thrown aside the uncertain resource of the pen for the scanty but sure return of public charity, with a pretence of labour. The _ateliers nationaux_ have become the only salvation, in the suspension of literature as well as art, of the poor poet or novelist who does not dip his pen in the black gall of ultra-republican democracy, and earn a scanty subsistence as journalist in one of the "thousand and one" new violent republican journals of the day--for such a one alone can find his reader and his profit. But such figures as these among the groups are the bright lights, sad as they may be, of the picture. The greatest mass of the herd of so-called workmen consists of those accustomed to labour and to hardship, or of those who have been inured to play all parts, and fill all situations, by long acquaintance with all the necessities of crime.

What a strange scene these pensioners of the republican government form!--stranger still when the nature of the supposed work upon which they are believed to be engaged is considered. It is not by any means the half of the assembled herd, however, that makes any show of working at all. See! several hundreds of men are moving backwards and forwards, with wheelbarrows, over the more vacant spaces of the now desolate-looking park; they move from a hole to a heap, from a heap to a hole. At the one, men are lazily making a pretext of digging up the earth--at the other, of shovelling it upon a mound. To what purpose? To none whatever. When the heap begins to grow too big not to be added to without exertion, it is again demolished; the earth is wheeled off elsewhere; another heap of earth is made upon another spot, or the hole that has been made is again filled. It is the endless task of the Danaïdes, condemned to fill a bottomless tun, on which they are engaged; or it is that of the web of Penelope, undone as soon as done: but it is without the advantage of the punishment of the one, or of the purpose of the other. But see, in the back-ground, a party have grown ashamed of the futile absurdity of the employment upon which they are vainly engaged. In order to give a faint and frivolous colouring to their acceptation of their wages of idleness, they have thrown down their misused implements, and, like a party of school-boys, they have put their so-called superintendents into their wheelbarrows, and are wheeling them up and down amidst shouts and cries, and yells of the hideous Ca Ira. This, however, is but poor sport in comparison with the recreation that many of the national workmen permit themselves, for the good of the nation.

For instance, those knots of men which stand here and there, in thick encircling masses, whence issues the sound of many voices of declamation, of shouts, or of murmurs--and where now and then heads may be seen of eager and wildly-gesticulating orators, who have mounted upon the bottoms of upturned wheel-barrows in order to spout--have formed themselves into _al fresco_ clubs, in which they, the masters and arbiters of the destinies of the country, as they have been taught to believe themselves, are settling the affairs of the nation according to their own views, or rather according to the frantic opinions instilled into them as a poisonous draught, rushing like fire through their veins, and disturbing and corrupting the whole system, by the violent demagogic orators of a furious disappointed party, whom they imitate second-hand, and naturally caricature, if possible, to a still greater excess of anarchist doctrine. Listen to them! under the hot-bed fostering influence of the _ateliers nationaux_, or rather of their instigators and supporters, they have got far beyond Louis Blanc, the high-priest of the one deity of the Republican trinity, _Egalité_, and his utopian talent-levelling theories for the organisation of labour. Listen to the declamations that come rolling forth from these crowds. They are illustrative of communistic doctrines to the utmost limits of communism. The declaration that all property in land is a spoliation of the people, and a crying iniquity--that the soil of the earth belongs to the community, to the nation at large; that it must all be confiscated, seized, and placed in the hands of the _Res publica_, to be administered for the public good; that the profits of its culture must be distributed equally amongst all--is but the A B C of the long alphabet of communistic principles, which they proclaim in the name of humanity, and to the advantage of themselves. It is needless to run through every letter. The omega--the great O--which is to prove the result of all their declamations, is, that if the National Assembly does not decree this general confiscation, they will take up arms against it; that they have once made the stones of the street rise at their command, and that they will make them rise again, when the time shall come, to do once more their bidding. And how have they kept their word? The blood-red standard of that fantastic vision of blood, the _République Sociale et Démocratique_, the Republic of spoliation and destruction, is raised aloft in the _ateliers nationaux_, to be planted hereafter upon the deadly barricades of June. And round these open conspiracies, under the sky of heaven, and in the face of men, see, there stand the brigadiers, and superintendents and masters put over them by the government, with their hands in their pockets; and they listen and applaud. Look, also, at the furious frown of the orator on the wheel-barrow, in the midst of his yelling companions of the national workshops. How he knits his brows, and rolls his eyes, with a tiger aspect! This is all "make-believe" again; for he thinks it necessary for an "only true and pure" republican to make a terrible face, to the alarm and terror of all supposed aristocrats. Republicans did it, and were painted so in former days; and, to be a real republican, he must do the same: and his associates follow his example, and frown, and roar, and denounce like himself. All this is playing a part. But when they have learned by heart the part that they are rehearsing now, under yon trees, in the transmogrified park of Monceaux, they will play it as their own to the life--nay, to the death! If we were to approach that fellow in the _blouse_ there, who is lying on his back on a hillock, reposing from his fatigues of doing nothing, and _jerking_ lazy puffs of blue-white smoke into the pure spring air from the short clay-pipe that almost seems to grow out of his mass of beard, we may get perhaps to some comprehension of the tenets of the _braves ouvriers_ of the _ateliers nationaux_; for, after all, although we are gentlemen, and he weens himself our lord and master, he looks like a _bon homme_, and he may condescend to expound to us his principles of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," upon the best-avowed communist, socialist, and ultra-republican system. Let us ask him who are the people? It is we--we who have nothing, and are not rascally thievish proprietors--we are the people; and the sovereignty of the people belongs to us, he will tell you. If you insinuate to him that, according to the laws of equality, you ought to have your own little share of this sovereignty, he will reply--No such thing--you are not of the people, you are, a _bourgeois_, a _mange-tout_, an _accapareur_, a _riche_, a _fainéant_ (what is _he_ doing?) an _aristocrate_: this last word is the climax of the terms of objurgation. Endeavour to explain to him, or to convey by inuendo, that "aristocrats," in all languages, mean those who pretend alone and exclusively to the exercise of the sovereignty of a country, he will scowl upon you with contempt, and, without deigning to analyse your definition, will again declare that you lie if you pretend to be of the people, which is sovereign, and not you.

The picture is a fanciful, and not an unpicturesque one. There is a wildness about the bearded haggard faces, and the disconsolate looks; there is colour enough in the blue _blouses_, the red cravats, the blood-red scarfs of the brigadiers, and the uniforms of the young men of the schools, who superintend: the background of the old trees, with the log-huts peeping out from among them, is well disposed. The greensward is below--the clear blue spring sky above. There is brightness enough about the picture; but dark and gloomy are the passions smouldering within the hearts of those men--passions that find vent now in short hasty ebullitions, like puffs of steam let off from a safety-valve, in their political declamations, but that shortly will burst out in terrific explosion, and cover Paris with devastation and destruction.

Let us open the Sketch-book once more, at a picture again representing one of these same _ateliers nationaux_, after a change in the government of the country. The National Assembly has met. Several of the more experienced and far-seeing members of that confused body have seen the misery of this filthy sore upon the body of the commonwealth; they have probed the ulcering wound; they have foreseen, like good political doctors, that gangrene and mortification of the whole social state of France, and death, to all its last chances of life in prosperity, must result from such a state of things. They have denounced the whole corrupted system with energy. The government has confessed the misery and the danger of the national workshops, as they were constituted: it has promised that they shall be entirely reorganised, that the tares of evil men shall be sundered from the wheat of good and honest, but suffering workmen; that some shall be draughted off, that the works shall be made useful and productive, that the superintendents shall be replaced; the chiefs, suspected of encouraging sedition and insurrectionary tendencies, removed; the abuses in the administration of the funds rectified. Much has been promised: and, until the needy workmen can be removed into the provinces, in order to be employed upon railroads and canals, and other great public works, or, where it is possible, upon labours congenial to their education, the Assembly has consented to close its eyes, and hope that the dangerous _ateliers nationaux_ are gradually acquiring a healthier and more prosperous aspect.

Let us turn, then, to a sketch of the workshops in their reorganised state. We seek it out with more cheerful hopes; and, in order to change the background of our picture, let us look in the direction of the eastern outskirts of Paris, and investigate the scene presented by the national workshops upon the little plain of St Maur. Before we arrive there, however, we shall fall upon another sketch, which is not without its characteristic traits, as illustrative of the history of revolutionising Paris. Those masses of towers that rise from the midst of walls surrounded by moats, not far from the roadside, and are flanked and backed by the low trees of thick woods at a little distance, belong to the fortress of Vincennes. Within these towers, connected with many a dark page of French history, are confined those frantic and disappointed demagogues, who on the 15th of May endeavoured to overthrow the Assembly, constituted by universal suffrage as the sovereign power of the country, and to substitute their own regime of tyranny and terror in its place. There sit the moody Barbés, whose ideas of republicanism go no further than constant subversion of "what _is_;" and the cold-blooded and cunning, but ferocious Blanqui, that strange mixture in character, as well as in physiognomy, of the fox and the wolf; there mourns Albert, so lately one of the autocratic rulers of the country--the workman who, not content with his temporary power, helped to plot its return under bloody auspices. There are many others of those furious ultra-republicans, who dreamed of founding a government upon pillage, and supporting it by the guillotine. Those towers, in fact, contain the leaders upon whom a furious party counts, as the master-spirits who are to lead it on to power. Their liberation from confinement is the dream of the party: in every _émeute_ with which the streets of Paris has been almost daily, or rather nightly, animated, the cry has been, "_Vive Barbés!_" in the fearful insurrection and the civil conflicts of June, the name of Barbés was the rallying cry. Long before that period of terrific memory, the government knew that plots were constantly being laid for the surprise of the fortress, and the liberation of the prisoners. When, led on by the chiefs of the ultra clubs, a band of so-called _ouvriers_ waited upon the minister of the interior, to inform him that an immense monster fraternity banquet was to be held in the forest of Vincennes on a certain day,--they were met by the reply of the minister, that no day could be better chosen, inasmuch as he had appointed that very day for a grand review, on the same spot, of all the troops of Paris, who would thus have an opportunity of fraternising with their "brethren of the workshops." The monster banquet was, consequently, never held,--or rather it was held in the streets of Paris; and the people banquetted upon carnage, and blood, and the still quivering limbs of the unhappy _Gardes Mobiles_. But that dread hour is not yet come, at the time the sketch is taken. Aware of the designs of the conspirators, the government has sent reinforcements to protect the fortress of Vincennes. The whole forest around is now a camp. In the midst looms the donjon, with its towers and walls, a dark and gloomy prison house: the cannon is on the battlements; the garrison is on duty, as if the fortress were at that moment in a state of siege; and, strikingly contrasting with this stern spectre of stone, is the scene presented by the wooded environs. It partakes of the camp and the fair. The whole place is beleaguered with troops. But if you look among the trees, you will see the tents gleaming forth from among the green. Pickets are scattered here and there; now you see a body of troops of the line drawn up under arms; there again they are reposing upon the grass, or playing among themselves. At intervals comes up the white smoke of a fire, at which the mid-day meal of the soldiers is being cooked, from among the trees; then _improviso al fresco_ kitchens are glimmering, and crackling, and smoking heavily in all directions. The jaunty _vivandières_, in their short blue petticoats, their tight red jacket boddices, and their little boots, with hats, bearing tricolor-cockades, stuck jauntily on the sides of their heads, are serving out wine to red-epauletted and red-breeched soldiers under the green branches, from their little painted barrels; and booths there are in every direction, with canvass coverings, gleaming out from the low forest, where there are wine and cider venders, and where sausages and other savoury dainties are being fired by little hand-stoves upon the ground. Venders of pamphlets and newspapers, all for one sou, are there also in herds, to tempt the young soldiers to buy their ultra-republican literary wares; and there may be a deeper purpose than mere speculation in the movements of some of the herd. Petty merchants there are also moving about, with every imaginable article of petty merchandise; ragged men with cracked voices, old women, and children of both sexes, are among these speculators upon the scanty purses of the military. The scene is gay and diversified, but it is sadly confused; and above all, when its component parts, and their various details be considered, it tells a sad tale of a city close by, given up to all the miseries of opposition, hatred, suspicion, mistrust, and active conspiracy.

Pass we on, then, to the picture of the reorganised national workshops,--of the reorganisation of which so much boast has been made by members of the government: we come to it at last, having only turned over, on our way, a leaf containing another sketch, which caught our eye in passing.

The scene is devoid of all the picturesque accessories of the park of Monceaux. It represents one of those desert, chalky, open space, that so violently offend the eye in the environs of Paris. In the distance are suburb houses, and scaffoldings of unfinished buildings, and heaps of stone, and mounds of earth,--all is dry, harsh, barren, desolate; it is glaring and painful to the sense in the bright sunlight; it is dreary, muddy, more desolate and offensive still in the time of rain. The sun, however, is bright and hot enough now, when the sketch is taken, about the middle of June. The brains of the thousand and nine workmen, who have been collected in the middle space of the picture, are seething probably beneath that hot sun, and fermenting to desperate schemes. What a pandemonium is represented by this desolate little plain, occupied by the reorganised national workmen. If they have been reorganised, it is only to worse confusion. They are more reckless, more lazy, more noisy, more insubordinate than ever. Those alone are quiet who lie snoring on their bulks in the sunshine; but they will wake ere long, and to active and bloody work, I trow. Yonder is a group employed, as if the welfare of the nation depended upon it, in the interesting and instructive game of _bouchon_, or of throwing _sous_ at a cork; all their energies and their activity, engaged to earn their pay, are occupied in this work. They are merry and thoughtless, however; but wait! their merriment is but for the moment, and bloody thoughts will be awakened in them before long, under the pernicious influence of those who are allowed to wander among them, and instil poison in their ears. Look! there are jovial fellows reeling about under the influence of strong drink,--they have already thrown away all disguise--they cry "_Vive Barbés! Vive la République Démocratique et Sociale! A bas tout le monde!_" They at least show that they are ripe for revolt. Some brandish their spades in their hands--for here again is the same pretence of work, and of wheeling earth from one heap to another--and shout the Marseillaise in hideous chorus, or the "_Mourir pour la patrie_;" and anon they change their song to the Ca Ira of fearful memory; for the other republican ditties are not advanced enough for the bold would-be heroes of the "Red Republic." Here is one squatting under a bare hillock of earth, and piping all alone, in melancholy tone, upon a clarionet; but his musical efforts are as miserably out of time and tune, as are his seeming bucolics under the circumstances. Another has got upon a mound, and is fiddling to a set of fellows who are dancing the horrid Carmagnole, with gestures and faces that need only the pikes, with trunkless heads on them, of the old revolution, to make the scene complete. But the scene _will be completed soon_; bayonets shall bear heads upon their points, and the Carmagnole shall be danced behind barricades around mutilated bodies. "_Vivent les Ateliers Nationaux!_" Look at that group who are lowering darkly among themselves, and hold on to each others' _blouses_ in the energy of their suppressed and whispered converse. See! there is another there upon the plain, and there again another such a crowd. They look like conspirators,--and in truth conspirators they are, communicating to each other the plans for the approaching insurrection. And this passes in open day, and we may be there to witness and even to hear; and the whole city shakes its head, and in vague apprehension expects the crisis that is about to come. And yet it will be said by ministers, and ministerial agents, that the national workshops are reorganised,--yes, reorganised to bloodshed and revolt! And no means will be taken by the government to control or suppress--it will not even attempt to stem--the torrent it has wilfully dammed up in these organised clubs of sedition. None now even deign to make a show of working, or, if the overseers come by and shake their heads, they take up their spades, and digging up a little earth, fling it, laughing in confident impunity, upon the back of the superintendent as he turns away. In the hands of such men as these, the pickaxes and spades have the air of the weapons of a murderous crew; and how soon will they not be used to aid them to purposes of murder! And this scene of confusion, and reckless effrontery, is sketched from the life at one of the national workshops in their _reorganised_ state. Bright it is not, but it might shame one of Callot's most wild and turbulent pictures, such as he alone has shown how to etch.