the Basoche in red coats we see marching now volunteers of the Basoche; the volunteers of the Palais Royal-National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one heart and mind. The King's muskets are the nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Sombreuil would fain hold parley, send couriers; but it skills not. The walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be flung open. Patriotism rushes in tumultuous, from grundsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar, or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found; all safe there, lying packed in straw-apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangor and vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching to the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture and probable extinction of the weaker Patriot. And so with such protracted crash of deafening, most discordant orchestramusic, the scene is changed; and eight-andtwenty thousand sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery light.

Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets, as they flash by! Gardes Françaises, it is said, have cannon levelled on him ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the river. Motionless sits he; “astonished," one may flatter one's self, "at the proud bearing (fière contenance) of the Parisians. And now to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! Their grapeshot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now tending.

Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew "into his interior" soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The Hôtel de Ville "invites" him to admit national soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the other hand His Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young Swiss; his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder; but, alas, only one day's provision of victuals. The city too is French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous old De Launay, think what thou wilt do!

All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere: To the Bastille! Repeated deputations of citizens" have been here, passionate for arms; whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through portholes. Toward noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance; finds De Launay indisposed for surrender; nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving-stones, old iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon-only drawn back a little! But outward, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street: tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the générale: the suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one man! Such vision, spectral yet real, thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of what other phantasmagories and loud-gibbering spectral realities, which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt. Que voulez-vous?"

Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty; beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer: seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in colored clothes: halfpay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève. Frantic Patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hôtel de Ville :-Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is "pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled all ways by panic madness. At every street-barricade there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.

And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine Service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used to the like); Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Françaises also

will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so thick!-Upward from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighboring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry-without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes, show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides' mess-rooms. A distracted "Perukemaker with two fiery torches" is for burning "the saltpetres of the Arsenal"—had not a woman run screaming; had not a patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these outer courts, and thought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Launay's sight; she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemère the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke: almost to the choking of patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart; and Réole the "gigantic haberdasher" another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; noise as of the crack of doom!

Blood flows; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed stronghold falls. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtel de Ville;

Abbé Fauchet (who was of one) can say, with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched gateway and stand rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such crack of doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their firepumps on the Invalides' cannon, to wet the touchholes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a "mixture of phosphorus and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps :" O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not even women are firing, and are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Françaises have come real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, halfpay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands.

How the great Bastille clock ticks (inaudible) in its inner court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing toward Five, and still the firing slakes not.-Far down, in their vaults, the seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their turnkeys answer vaguely.

Woe to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept,

reconnoitring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are come to join you," said the captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks: "Alight, then, and give up your arms!" The Hussar-captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, it is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au peuple! Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and newbirth: and yet this same day come four years! But let the curtains of the future. hang.

What shall De Launay do? One thing only De Launay could have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's length of the powder-magazine; motionless, like old Roman senator, or bronze lampholder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was. Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King's fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should, in no wise, be surrendered, save to the King's messenger: one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honor; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward !—In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red clerks of the Basoche, Curé of SaintStephen, and all the tagrag and bobtail of the world, to work their will.

And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's heart is so