In the midst of this sudden ferment, which has appeared towards the end of the republican year like a _tableau final_ at the conclusion of an act of a drama--hastily thrust forward when the interest of the piece began to languish,--how stands the state of parties in that Assembly which, although it is said--and very correctly, it would appear--no longer to represent the spirit of the country at large, must still be considered as the great axis of the republic, around which all else moves? Always tumultuous, disorderly, and disdainful of those parliamentary forms which could alone insure it the aspect of a dignified deliberative body, the National Assembly, as it sees its last days inevitably approaching--although it retards its dissolution by every quack-doctoring means within its grasp--seems to have plunged, in its throes, into a worse slough of triple confusion, disorder, and uncertainty than ever. Jealous of its dignity, unwilling to quit its power, unwilling--say malicious tongues--to quit its profit, and yet pressed upon by that public opinion which it would vainly attempt to deny, to misinterpret, or to despise, it has shown itself more vacillating, capricious, and childish than ever. It wavers, votes hither and thither, backwards and forwards--now almost inclined to fall into the nets spread for it by the ultra-democratic party, that supports its resistance against all attempts to dissolve it, and upon the point of throwing itself into that party's arms; and now, again, alarmed at the allies to whom it would unite itself, starting back from their embrace, turning round in its majority, and declaring itself against the sense of its former decisions. Now, it offers an active and seemingly spiteful opposition to the government; and now, again, it accepts the first outlet to enable it to turn back upon its course. Now it is sulky, now alarmed at its own sulkiness; now angry, now begging its own pardon for its hastiness. It is like a child that does not know its own mind or temper, and gives way to all the first vagaries that spring into its childish brain: it neglects the more real interests of the country, and loses the country's time in its service, in its eternal interpellations, accusations, recriminations, jealousies, suspicions, and offended susceptibilities; it quarrels, scratches, fights, and breaks its own toys--and all this in the midst of the most inextricable confusion. To do it justice, the Assembly, as represented by its wavering majority, is placed between two stools of apprehension, between which it is continually coming to the ground, and making wofully wry faces: and, between the two, it is not very easy to see how it should preserve a decent equilibrium. On the one hand, it suspects the reactionary, and perhaps counter-revolutionary designs of the moderate party on the right, whose chiefs and leaders have chosen to hold themselves back from any participation in the governmental posts,