Moreover, to-day--the 10th April 1848--has been chosen for the great Chartist demonstration. Perhaps, in a few hours, these two hundred thousand men will have upset England, as the revolutionists have upset the rest of Europe, and this last refuge will have failed me. I shall know soon. 8 P.M.--Chartists are rather a decent sort of revolutionists. Those powerful orators--big guns--took the chair, and their mere presence was so convincing that speech was superfluous. The Chartists quite understood that the moment was not propitious for a revolution, and they dispersed quietly and in order. My good folks, you know as much about organising an insurrection as the Italians do about composing symphonies. _12th July._--No possibility of writing for the last three months, and now I am going back to my poor France--mine own country, after all! I am going to see whether an artist can live there, or how long it will take him to die amid those ruins beneath which Art lies--crushed, bleeding, dead! Farewell, England! _France, 16th July._--Home once more. Paris has buried her dead. The paving-stones, torn up for barricades, are replaced; but for how long? The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is one mass of desolation and ruin; even the Goddess of Liberty on the Bastille column has a bullet through her. Trees, maimed and uprooted; houses tottering to a fall; squares, streets, quays, still palpitating from the riot--all bear witness to the horrors they have suffered. Who could think of Art at such a time! Theatres are closed, artists undone, professors idle, pupils fled, pianists become street musicians, painters sweep the gutters, and architects mix mortar in the national work-sheds. Although the National Assembly has voted a subsidy to the theatres, and some help to the poorest of the artists, what is that among so many? Take a first violin of the opera, for instance; his pay is nine hundred francs a year, which is eked out by private lessons. What chance has he of saving? Transportation would be a boon to him and his colleagues, for they might earn a living in America, Sydney, or the Indies. But even this is denied them. They fought _for_ the Government and against the insurgents, and being only deserving poor instead of malefactors, they cannot even claim this last favour--it is reserved for criminals. Surely this way--in this awful, hideous confusion of just and unjust, of good and evil, of truth and untruth--this way doth madness lie! I must write on and try to forget. IV PARIS When Robert and I got to Paris in 1822, I loyally kept my promise to my father by studying nothing but medicine. My first trial came when my cousin, telling me that he had bought a _subject_, took me to the hospital dissecting room.