Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Châteaus, black bodies of gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, _whither_ one knows not;—breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous. National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may quarrel, danger that they may _agree_. Strasburg has seen riots: a Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the winds; drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days, and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to desperation.[219] Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his triumphant transit, “escorted,” through Béfort for instance, “by fifty National Horsemen and all the military music of the place,”—M. Necker, returning from Bale! Glorious as the meridian; though poor Necker himself partly guesses whither it is leading.[220] One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall; with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss his hand; with Besenval’s pardon granted,—but indeed revoked before sunset: one highest day, but then lower days, and ever lower, down even to lowest! Such magic is in a name; and in the want of a name. Like some enchanted Mambrino’s Helmet, essential to victory, comes this “Saviour of France;” beshouted, becymballed by the world:—alas, so soon, to be _dis_enchanted, to be pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber’s Bason! Gibbon “could wish to shew him” (in this ejected, Barber’s-Bason state) to any man of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt out of him, and become a _caput mortuum_, by Ambition, unsuccessful or successful.[221] Another small phasis we add, and no more: how, in the Autumn months, our sharp-tempered Arthur has been “pestered for some days past,” by shot, lead-drops and slugs, “rattling five or six times into my chaise and about my ears;” all the mob of the country gone out to kill game![222] It is even so. On the Cliffs of Dover, over all the Marches of France, there appear, this autumn, two Signs on the Earth: emigrant flights of French Seigneurs; emigrant winged flights of French Game! Finished, one may say, or as good as finished, is the Preservation of Game on this Earth; completed for endless Time. What part it had to play in the History of Civilisation is played _plaudite; exeat!_