all manner of high places. Out upon them all! Were we to turn to some edict of the past, issued for the celebration of the pure and mighty virtues of the days of the Convention, we should find exactly the same programme of some fête of fraternity in those fraternal times, ordained and arranged by the famous artist, Citizen David, the pure taste of whose classic pictures all amateurs, who have visited Paris, may have had the happiness of admiring in the galleries of the _ci-devant_ Louvre. No less to be condemned, for similar reasons, as uselessly and even deleteriously calling into life the past, was the edict of the Provisional Government, enacting that the representatives of the people in the national assembly should have a uniform costume, similar to that worn by the heroes of the Convention. This idea emanated, doubtless, from the same violent and misdirected source as the Greco-republican programme de fête: but why, it may be asked, did the more sensible and moderate majority of that government lend its hand to sign such a decree? The immense, majority, however, of the representatives of the people, who are unwilling, at the same time, to be the representatives of the ideas of '93, have, in their good sense, done justice to this edict, by their disdain of its ordinances, and their refusal to wear the costume imposed upon them. They felt the full force of the symbol they were told to adopt; they felt the dangerous importance of the sentiment that would be attached to it: they rejected the symbol; and they disavowed the sentiment. And they did well. The cocked hat with its gold-lace border, such as may be seen, in pictures, on the head or in the hand of Danton or St Just, was declared simply absurd, if nothing more: the tri-color scarf, to be bound round their waists, with its gold fringe, was thought puerile; but the celebrated white waistcoat, the fatal white waistcoat, with its broad lappels flung back upon the shoulders--that waistcoat known only under the popular names of the "_gilet à la Robespierre_,"--or the "_gilet à la guillotine_"--the new representatives of the people of a new republic, founded upon other principles, flung aside with indignation. The "_gilet à la Robespierre!_"--the very name was sufficient to excite feelings of abhorrence; and the edict, although it of course withheld the name, raised a storm of angry remonstrance and refusal. The whole affair,--the edict as the indignation,--may be considered as puerile, frivolous, and unworthy of strong feeling. But, again it must be repeated, the men who were told to don this costume knew what the sentiment would be that such a display of symbolical attire would excite; and a great importance was attached to it, which men in other countries may not understand, but which those who know the French, and their facility to be led away by the outward symbol, will entirely appreciate. It may seem ridiculous to say--and yet it may not be far