Nothing, then, is a more difficult or a more thankless task, than to sketch scenes of a revolutionary time among such a rapidly self-revolutionising people. Scarcely is the scene sketched, but it is superseded by one of newer, and consequently more powerful interest; its effect has faded utterly away; it is old, _rococo_, unsatisfactory: the new one alone claims every eye, and the tribute of all emotions. With such fearful express-train hurry and dash does history rush along, that the history of yesterday seems already "ancient" history, and the tale of the last hour "a tale of other times," no longer fit to command a thought, or excite a sensation; or, at best, it may be said to belong only to those grubbing antiquaries in political considerations, who live out of the whirling movement of their age. On those who linger among such scenes, this feeling is so powerfully impressed that they seem to themselves to grow old with frightful rapidity, and to have lived ten years at least in as many days. Thus, in opening a Parisian Sketch-book, in which many a scene has been traced during the last few months, the feeling that the sketches therein hastily made are already too old, too "flat, stale, and unprofitable," to please the novelty-craving public eye,--that even the latest, while being exhibited, may be thrown into the shade by newer and more vivid scenes, which would afford subjects for fresher pictures,--deters from their exhibition. But still there _may be_ some of those grubbing antiquaries in revolutionary history, who may not be sorry to have a specimen of "old times" in the shape of a vignette or two drawn upon the spot, although it was done yesterday, or even the day before, placed within his hands; and so the Sketch-book shall be opened, and turned over at hap-hazard, and a few sketches of revolutionary Paris offered to public gaze. See! first of all we fall upon a rapid tracing or two of scenes from those wild abysses, in which have sunk industry, trade, confidence, and principle--the _ateliers nationaux_. The pencil of a moral Salvator Rosa is alone worthy to paint them! But great breadth of light and shade, and powerful colouring, must not be sought for in a scrap of a vignette. Perhaps we have not stumbled so utterly _malà propos_ upon these pictures; for since the _ateliers nationaux_ were so intimately connected with the pretexted causes, and the fearful organisation, of the bloody insurrection in the latter end of June, they may be supposed, as events go rattling on, to belong to the "middle ages" of the past French revolutionary history, and not to be so positively lost already in its "dark ages" as to have become utterly uninteresting.