France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards
Paris; but from all sides of Europe. Where the carcase is,
thither will the eagles gather. Think how many a Spanish Guzman,
Martinico Fournier named “Fournier _l’Américain_,” Engineer
Miranda from the very Andes, were flocking or had flocked!
Walloon Pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage: him, they
say, Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped;” like
ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance—into an ostrich-_eater!_
Jewish or German Freys do business in the great Cesspool of
_Agio;_ which Cesspool this _Assignat_-fiat has quickened, into a
Mother of dead dogs. Swiss Clavière could found no Socinian
Genevese Colony in Ireland; but he paused, years ago, prophetic
before the Minister’s Hôtel at Paris; and said, it was borne on
his mind that _he_ one day was to be Minister, and laughed.[272]
Swiss Pachc, on the other hand, sits sleekheaded, frugal; the
wonder of his own alley, and even of neighbouring ones, for
humility of mind, and a thought deeper than most men’s: sit
there, Tartuffe, till wanted! Ye Italian Dufournys, Flemish
Prolys, flit hither all ye bipeds of prey! Come whosesoever head
is hot; thou of mind _ungoverned_, be it chaos as of
undevelopment or chaos as of ruin; the man who cannot get known,
the man who is too well known; if thou have any vendible faculty,
nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity, come! They come; with
hot unutterabilities in their heart; as Pilgrims towards a
miraculous shrine. Nay how many come as vacant Strollers,
aimless, of whom Europe is full merely towards _something!_ For
benighted fowls, when you beat their bushes, rush towards any
light. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too is here; mazed, purblind,
from the cells of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells, and his Ariadne
lost! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells wine; not
indeed in bottle, but in wood.
Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her
live-saving Needham;[273] to whom was solemnly presented a “civic
sword,”—long since rusted into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious
Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needleman, did by
his “_Common-Sense_” Pamphlet, free America;—that he can and will
free all this World; perhaps even the other. Price-Stanhope
Constitutional Association sends over to congratulate;[274]
welcomed by National Assembly, though they are but a London Club;
whom Burke and Toryism eye askance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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