sang everywhere the unformed but impassioned hopes of the people.  It is a sure augury—­it is full of enthusiasm, for its voice is heard on all sides; science, poetry, history, philosophy, the stage, mysticism, the arts, the genius of Europe under every form, had passed over to the Revolution:  not one name of a man of reputation in all Europe could be cited who remained attached to the party of the past.  The past was overcome, because the mind of the human race had withdrawn from it—­when the spirit hath flown life is extinct.  None but mediocrities remain under the shelter of old forms and institutions:  There was a general mirage in the horizon of the future; and, whether the small saw therein their safety, or the great an abyss, all went headlong towards the novelty.

XII.

Such was the tendency of minds in Europe, when the princes, brothers of Louis XVI., and the emigrant gentlemen, spread themselves over Savoy, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, to demand succour and vengeance from powers and principalities against the Revolution.  Never, from the first great emigrations of ancient people, fleeing from the Roman invasions, had been seen such a movement of terror and perturbation as this, which cast forth from the territory all the clergy and all the aristocracy of a nation.  An immense vacuum was created in France:  first, in the steps of the throne itself; next, in the court, in chateaux, in ecclesiastical dignities; and finally in the ranks of the army.  Officers, all noble, emigrated in masses; the navy followed somewhat later, the example of the army, which also abandoned the flag.  It was not that the clergy, the nobility, the land and sea officers were more pressed upon by the stir of revolutionary ideas which had agitated the nation in 1789; on the contrary, the movement commenced by them.  Philosophy had in the first place enlightened the apex of the nation.  The thought of the age was especially in the higher classes; but those classes who sought a reform by no means desired a disorganisation.  When they had seen the moral agitation of ideas transform itself into an insurrection of the people, they had trembled.  The reins of government violently snatched from the king by Mirabeau and La Fayette, at the Tennis court; the attempts of the 5th and 6th of October; privileges suppressed without compensation, titles abolished, the aristocracy handed over to execration, to pillage, to fire, and even to murder, in the provinces; religion deposed, and compelled to nationalise itself by a constitutional oath; and; finally the king’s flight, his imprisonment in his palace, the threats of death vomited forth by the patriotic press, or the tribunes of popular clubs, against all aristocracy, the triumphant riots in the provinces, the defection of the French guards in Paris, the revolt of the Swiss of Chateauvieux at Nancy, the excesses of the soldiery, mutinous and unpunished, at Caen, Brest, and everywhere,