And so,then,there remained King in Europe;King except the Public Haranguer,haranguing on barrel-head,in leading article;or getting himself aggregated into a National Parliament to harangue.And for about four months all France,and to a great degree all Europe,rough-ridden by every species of delirium,except happily the murderous for most part,was a weltering mob,presided over by M.de Lamartine,at the Hotel-de-Ville;a most eloquent fair-spoken literary gentleman,whom thoughtless persons took for a prophet,priest and heaven-sent evangelist,and whom a wise Yankee friend of mine discerned to be properly "the first stump-orator in the world,standing too on the highest stump,--for the time."A sorrowful spectacle to men of reflection,during the time he lasted,that poor M.de Lamartine;with hing in him but melodious wind and soft sawder ,which he and others took for something divine and diabolic!Sad egh;the eloquent latest impersonation of Chaos-come-again;able to talk for itself,and declare persuasively that it is Cosmos!However,you have but to wait a little,in such cases;all balloons do and must give up their gas in the pressure of things,and are collapsed in a sufficiently wretched manner before long.
And so in City after City,street-barricades are piled,and truculent,more or less murderous insurrection begins;populace after populace rises,King after King capitulates or absconds;and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive,much higher,more irresistible and less resisted than ever before;testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcaor universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutis chaotic elements,separated from us by a thin earth-rind,Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere,in the present epoch,rests!The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions--students,young men of letters,advocates,editors,hot inexperienced enthusiasts,or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes,acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,--might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch.Never till did young men,and almost children,take such a command in human affairs.A changed time since the word Senior (Seigneur,or Elder )was first devised to signify "lord,"or superior;--as in all languages of men we find it to have been!an hoable document this either,as to the spiritual condition of our epoch.
In times when men love wisdom,the old man will ever be venerable,and be venerated,and reckoned le:in times that love something else than wisdom,and indeed have little or wisdom,and see little or e to love,the old man will cease to be venerated;and looking more closely,also,you will find that in fact he has ceased to be venerable,and has begun to be contemptible;a foolish boy still,a boy without the graces,generosities and opulent strength of young boys.In these days,what of lordship or leadership is still to be done,the youth must do it,the mature or aged man;the mature man,hardened into sceptical egoism,ks monition but that of his own frigid cautious,avarices,mean timidities;and can lead whither towards an object that even seems le.But to return.
This mad state of matters will of course before long allay itself,as it has everywhere begun to do;the ordinary necessities of men's daily existence can comport with it,and these,whatever else is cast aside,will have their way.Some remounting--very temporary remounting--of the old machine,under new colors and altered forms,will probably ensue soon in most countries:the old histrionic Kings will be admitted back under conditions,under "Constitutions,"with national Parliaments,or the like fashionable adjuncts;and everywhere the old daily life will try to begin again.But there is hope that such arrangements can be permanent;that they can be other than poor temporary makeshifts,which,if they try to fancy and make themselves permanent,will be displaced by new explosions recurring more speedily than last time.In such baleful oscillation,afloat as amid raging bottomless eddies and conflicting sea-currents,steadfast as on fixed foundations,must European Society continue swaying,disastrously tumbling,then painfully readjusting itself,at ever shorter intervals,--till once the new rock-basis does come to light,and the weltering deluges of mutiny,and of need to mutiny,abate again!
For universal Democracy ,whatever we may think of it,has declared itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live;and he who has any chance to instruct,or lead,in his days,must begin by admitting that:new street-barricades,and new anarchies,still more scandalous if still less sanguinary,must return and again return,till governing persons everywhere k and admit that.Democracy,it may be said everywhere,is here:--for sixty years ,ever since the grand or First French Revolution,that fact has been terribly annced to all the world;in message after message,some of them very terrible indeed;and at last all the world ought really to believe it.
That the world does believe it;that even Kings as good as believe it,and k,or with just terror surmise,that they are but temporary phantasm Play-actors,and that Democracy is the grand,alarming,imminent and indisputable Reality:this,among the scandalous phases we witnessed in the last two years,is a phasis full of hope:a sign that we are advancing closer and closer to the very Problem itself,which it will behoove us to solve or die;that all fighting and campaigning and coalitioning in regard to the existence of the Problem,is hopeless and superfluous henceforth.The gods have appointed it so;Pitt,body of Pitts or mortal creatures can appoint it otherwise.
