Nothing looks more awful and imposing than an ancient fortification.  Its lofty, embattled walls, its bold, projecting, rounded towers, that pierce the sky, strike the imagination and promise inexpugnable strength.  But they are the very things that make its weakness.  You may as well think of opposing one of these old fortresses to the mass of artillery brought by a French irruption into the field as to think of resisting by your old laws and your old forms the new destruction which the corps of Jacobin engineers of to-day prepare for all such forms and all such laws.  Besides the debility and false principle of their construction to resist the present modes of attack, the fortress itself is in ruinous repair, and there is a practicable breach in every part of it.

Such is the work.  But miserable works have been defended by the constancy of the garrison.  Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew.  But it is here that we shall eminently fail.  The day that, by their consent, the seat of Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for zeal in their favor; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy duty.  The glory will seem all on the other side.  The friends of the crown will appear, not as champions, but as victims; discountenanced, mortified, lowered, defeated, they will fall into listlessness and indifference.  They will leave things to take their course, enjoy the present hour, and submit to the common fate.

Is it only an oppressive nightmare with which we have been loaded?  Is it, then, all a frightful dream, and are there no regicides in the world?  Have we not heard of that prodigy of a ruffian who would not suffer his benignant sovereign, with his hands tied behind him, and stripped for execution, to say one parting word to his deluded people,—­of Santerre, who commanded the drums and trumpets to strike up to stifle his voice, and dragged him backward to the machine of murder!  This nefarious villain (for a few days I may call him so) stands high in France, as in a republic of robbers and murderers he ought.  What hinders this monster from being sent as ambassador to convey to his Majesty the first compliments of his brethren, the Regicide Directory?  They have none that can represent them more properly.  I anticipate the day of his arrival.  He will make his public entry into London on one of the pale horses of his brewery.  As he knows that we are pleased with the Paris taste for the orders of knighthood,[13] he will fling a bloody sash across his shoulders, with the order of the holy guillotine surmounting the crown appendant to the riband.  Thus adorned, he will proceed from Whitechapel to the further end of Pall Mall, all the music of London playing the Marseillaise Hymn before him, and escorted by a chosen detachment of the Legion de l’Echafaud.  It were only to be wished that no ill-fated loyalist,