Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our young Prince, Duke de Chartres, “hide in the hold;” or did he materially, by _active_ heroism, contribute to the victory? Alas, by a second edition, we learn that there was no victory; or that English Keppel had it.[36] Our poor young Prince gets his Opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees; and cannot become Grand-Admiral,—the source to him of woes which one may call endless. Woe also for _Ville de Paris_, the Leviathan of ships! English Rodney has clutched it, and led it home, with the rest; so successful was his new “manœuvre of breaking the enemy’s line.”[37] It seems as if, according to Louis XV., “France were never to have a Navy.” Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters; with small result; yet with great glory for “six” _non-defeats;_—which indeed, with such seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic. Let the old sea-hero rest now, honoured of France, in his native Cevennes mountains; send smoke, not of gunpowder, but mere culinary smoke, through the old chimneys of the Castle of Jalès,—which one day, in other hands, shall have other fame. Brave Lapérouse shall by and by lift anchor, on philanthropic Voyage of Discovery; for the King knows Geography.[38] But, alas, this also will not prosper: the brave Navigator goes, and returns not; the Seekers search far seas for him in vain. He has vanished trackless into blue Immensity; and only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts. Neither, while the War yet lasts, will Gibraltar surrender. Not though Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest projectors extant, are there; and Prince Condé and Prince d’Artois have hastened to help. Wondrous leather-roofed Floating-batteries, set afloat by French-Spanish _Pacte de Famille_, give gallant summons: to which, nevertheless, Gibraltar answers Plutonically, with mere torrents of redhot iron,—as if stone Calpe had become a throat of the Pit; and utters such a Doom’s-blast of a No, as all men must credit.[39] And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of War has ceased; an Age of Benevolence may hope, for ever. Our noble volunteers of Freedom have returned, to be her missionaries. Lafayette, as the matchless of his time, glitters in the Versailles Œil-de-Beouf; has his Bust set up in the Paris Hôtel-de-Ville. Democracy stands inexpugnable, immeasurable, in her New World; has even a foot lifted towards the Old;—and our French Finances, little strengthened by such work, are in no healthy way.