Which is the real Commune,--the thing that was, or the thing our orators have painted it? Which will be the influencing power in the days that are to come? Our Commune commemorators are wont to say, and surely they believe, that the declaration of the Commune was the spontaneous assertion of independence by the Parisian masses, consciously alive to the fact that the national government of France had treated them most outrageously in the matter of defense against the Prussian army. They believe that the farce of the situation in which the city found itself, had opened the eyes of the general populace to the fact that the national government, so far from serving the supposed prime purpose of government, viz., as a means of defense against a foreign invader, was in reality a thing so apart from them and their interests that it preferred to leave them to the mercy of the Prussians, to endangering its own supremacy by assisting in their defense, or permitting them to defend themselves. It is a pity that this legendary figure of Awakened Paris is not a true one. The Commune, in fact, was not the work of the whole people of Paris, nor of a majority of the people of Paris. The Commune was really established by a comparatively small number of able, nay brilliant, and supremely devoted men and women from _every_ walk in life, but with a relatively high percentage of military men, engineers, and political journalists, some of whom had time and again been in prison before for seditious writing or acts of rebellion. They flocked in from their exile in the neighboring countries, thinking that now they saw the opportunity for retrieving former errors, and arousing the people to renew and to extend the struggle of 1848. It is true that there were also teachers, artists, designers, architects and builders, skilled craftsmen of every sort. And perhaps no chapter in the whole story is more inspiring than the description of the gatherings of the workers, which took place night after night in every quarter of the beleaguered city, previous to the 18th of March and thereafter. To such meetings went those who burned with fervor of faith in what the people might and would accomplish, and, with the radiant vision of a new social day shining in their eyes, endeavored to make it clear to those who listened. One almost catches the redolence of outbursting faith, that rising of the sap of hope and courage and daring, like an incense of spring; almost feels himself there, partaking in the work, the danger, the glorious, mistaken assurance which was theirs. And yet the truth must have been that these apostles of the Commune were blinded by their own enthusiasm, deafened by the enthusiasm they evoked in others, to the fact that the great unvoiced majority who did not attend public meetings, who sat within their houses or kept silent in the shops, were not converted or affected by their teachings.