Under which hat or nightcap of the Twenty-five millions, this pregnant Idea first rose, for in some one head it did rise, no man can now say.  A most small idea, near at hand for the whole world:  but a living one, fit; and which waxed, whether into greatness or not, into immeasurable size.  When a Nation is in this state that the Fugleman can operate on it, what will the word in season, the act in season, not do!  It will grow verily, like the Boy’s Bean in the Fairy-Tale, heaven-high, with habitations and adventures on it, in one night.  It is nevertheless unfortunately still a Bean (for your long-lived Oak grows not so); and, the next night, it may lie felled, horizontal, trodden into common mud.—­But remark, at least, how natural to any agitated Nation, which has Faith, this business of Covenanting is.  The Scotch, believing in a righteous Heaven above them, and also in a Gospel, far other than the Jean-Jacques one, swore, in their extreme need, a Solemn League and Covenant,—­as Brothers on the forlorn-hope, and imminence of battle, who embrace looking Godward; and got the whole Isle to swear it; and even, in their tough Old-Saxon Hebrew-Presbyterian way, to keep it more or less;—­for the thing, as such things are, was heard in Heaven, and partially ratified there; neither is it yet dead, if thou wilt look, nor like to die.  The French too, with their Gallic-Ethnic excitability and effervescence, have, as we have seen, real Faith, of a sort; they are hard bestead, though in the middle of Hope:  a National Solemn League and Covenant there may be in France too; under how different conditions; with how different developement and issue!

Note, accordingly, the small commencement; first spark of a mighty firework:  for if the particular hat cannot be fixed upon, the particular District can.  On the 29th day of last November, were National Guards by the thousand seen filing, from far and near, with military music, with Municipal officers in tricolor sashes, towards and along the Rhone-stream, to the little town of Etoile.  There with ceremonial evolution and manoeuvre, with fanfaronading, musketry-salvoes, and what else the Patriot genius could devise, they made oath and obtestation to stand faithfully by one another, under Law and King; in particular, to have all manner of grains, while grains there were, freely circulated, in spite both of robber and regrater.  This was the meeting of Etoile, in the mild end of November 1789.

But now, if a mere empty Review, followed by Review-dinner, ball, and such gesticulation and flirtation as there may be, interests the happy County-town, and makes it the envy of surrounding County-towns, how much more might this!  In a fortnight, larger Montelimart, half ashamed of itself, will do as good, and better.  On the Plain of Montelimart, or what is equally sonorous, ‘under the Walls of Montelimart,’ the thirteenth of December sees new gathering and obtestation; six thousand strong; and now indeed, with these three