[114] How little has any adequate power as yet approached this great theme! Not the Grecian stage, not "the dark sorrows of the line of Thebes," in any of its scenes, unfold such tragical grouping of circumstances and situations as may be gathered from the memoirs of the time. The galleries and vast staircases of Versailles, at early dawn, on some of the greatest days--filled with dreadful faces--the figure of the Duke of Orleans obscurely detected amongst them--the growing fury--the growing panic--the blind tumult--and the dimness of the event,--all make up a scene worthy to blend with our images of Babylon or of Nineveh with the enemy in all her gates, Memphis or Jerusalem in their agonies. But, amongst all the exponents of the growing agitation that besieged the public mind, none is so profoundly impressive as the scene (every Sunday renewed) at the Chapel Royal. Even in the most penitential of the litanies, in the presence when most immediately confessed of God himself--when the antiphonies are chanted, one party singing, with fury and gnashing of teeth, _Salvum fac Regem_, and another, with equal hatred and fervour, answering _Et Reginam_ (the poor queen at this time engrossing the popular hatred)--the organ roared into thunder--the semi-chorus swelled into shouting--the menaces into defiance--again the crashing semi-choir sang with shouts their _Salvum fac Regem_--again the vengeful antiphony hurled back its _Et Reginam_--and one person, an eye-witness of these scenes, which mounted in violence on each successive Sunday, declares that oftentimes the semi-choral bodies were at the point of fighting with each other in the presence of the king. [115] That tract of the lake country which stretches southwards from Hawkshead and the lakes of Esthwaite, Windermere, and Coniston, to the little town of Ulverstone (which may be regarded as the metropolis of the little romantic English Calabria called Furness), is divided from the main part of Lancashire by the estuary of Morecamb. The sea retires with the ebb tide to a vast distance, leaving the sands passable through a few hours for horses and carriages. But, partly from the daily variation in these hours, partly from the intricacy of the pathless track which must be pursued, and partly from the galloping pace at which the returning tide comes in, many fatal accidents are continually occurring--sometimes to the too venturous traveller who has slighted the aid of guides--sometimes to the guides themselves, when baffled and perplexed by mists. Gray the poet mentions one of the latter class as having then recently occurred, under affecting circumstances. Local tradition records a long list of such cases.