rhetoric raised to fever-heat, or of French run mad. Even its argument, I doubt not, sounded logical and satisfactory, when its slender postulate of truth was set off with oratorical sophistry, enforced with professorial shrugs of the shoulders, or driven home with conclusive raps upon the auxiliary _tabatière_. But the inanimate logic, as it lies coffined in the version of Mr Cocks, looks very revolting. In fact, stripped of its false ornament, all its practical part is simply the revolutionism of the Chartists. Worse stuff was never declaimed to a subterranean conclave of insurgent operatives by a drunken Barabbas, with Tom Paine for his text, and a faggot of pikes for his rostrum. The results have been too immediate for even Mons. Quinet's ambition. From hearing sedition in the "College of France," his motley and party-coloured audience has broken up to enforce it behind the barricades. They turned revolutionists against reaction _in posse_, and reaction _in esse_ is the very natural consequence. "Every nation, like every individual, has received a certain mission, which it must fulfil. France exercises over Europe a real magistracy, which cannot be denied, and she was at the head of its religious system." So says de Maistre, and so far his bitter enemy is agreed. But, says de Maistre, "She has shamefully abused her mission; and since she has used her influence to contradict her vocation, and to debauch the morals of Europe, it is not surprising that she is restored to herself by terrible remedies." Here speaks the spirit of Reaction, and Quinet immediately shows fight. In his view she has but carried out her vocation. The Revolution was a glorious outbreak towards a new universal principle. In the jargon of his own sect, "it was a revolution differing from all preceding revolutions, ancient or modern, precisely in this, that it was the deliverance of a nation from the bonds and limits of her church, into the spirit of universality." The spirit of the national church, he maintains, had become Ultramontane; had lost its hold on men's minds; had made way for the ascendency of philosophy, and had tacitly yielded the sceptre of her sway over the intelligence and the conscience to Rousseau and Voltaire. Nor does the Professor admit that subsequent events have restored that sceptre. On the contrary, he appeals to his auditors in asserting that the priesthood have ceased to guide the French conscience. His audience applauds, and the enraptured Quinet catches up the response like an auctioneer. He is charmed with his young friends. He is sure the reaction will never seduce them into travelling to heaven by the old sterile roads. As for the _réactionnaires_, no language can convey his contempt for them. "After this nation," says he, "has been communing with the spirit of the universe upon Sinai, conversing face to face with GOD, they propose to her to descend from her vast conceptions, and to creep, crestfallen,