Which is indeed too much the notion of even the masculine aristocracy of Europe at this day. One can imagine them, indeed, modest in the matter of their own luminousness, and more timid of the tax on agricultural horses and carts, than of that on lucifers; but it would be well if they were content, here in England, however dimly phosphorescent themselves, to bask in the sunshine of May at the end of Westminster Bridge, (as my boy on Abingdon Bridge,) with their backs against the large edifice they have built there,--an edifice, by the way, to my own poor judgment, less contributing to the adornment of London, than the new police-office to that of Abingdon. But the English squire, after his fashion, sends himself to that highly decorated gaol all spring-time; and cannot be content with his hands in his own pockets, nor even in yours and mine; but claps and laughs, semi-idiot that he is, at dog-fights on the floor of the House, which, if he knew it, are indeed dog-fights of the Stars in their courses, Sirius against Procyon; and of the havock and loosed dogs of war, makes, as the Times correspondent says they make, at Versailles, of the siege of Paris, "the Entertainment of the Hour." You think that, perhaps, an unjust saying of him, as he will, assuredly, himself. He would fain put an end to this wild work, if he could, he thinks. My friends, I tell you solemnly, the sin of it all, down to this last night's doing, or undoing, (for it is Monday now, I waited before finishing my letter, to see if the Sainte Chapelle would follow the Vendôme Column;) the sin of it, I tell you, is not that poor rabble's, spade and pickaxe in hand among the dead; nor yet the blasphemer's, making noise like a dog by the defiled altars of our Lady of Victories; and round the barricades, and the ruins, of the Street of Peace. This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the most honourable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nurtured men, who through their happy and, as they thought, holy lives, have sought, and still seek, only "the entertainment of the hour." And this robbery has been taught to the hands,--this blasphemy to the lips,--of the lost poor, by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ in vain, and leagued themselves with his chief enemy, "Covetousness, which is idolatry."