tling the affairs of the nation according to their own views, or rather according to the frantic opinions instilled into them as a poisonous draught, rushing like fire through their veins, and disturb ing and corrupting the whole system, by the violent demagogic orators of a furious disappointed party, whom they imitate second-hand, and naturally caricature, if possible, to a still greater excess of anarchist doctrine. Listen to them! under the hot-bed fostering influence of the ateliers nationaux, or rather of their instigators and supporters, they have got far beyond Louis Blanc, the high-priest of the one deity of the Republican trinity, Egalité, and his utopian talent-levelling theories for the organisation of labour. Listen to the declamations that come rolling forth from these crowds. They are illustrative of communistic doctrines to the utmost limits of communism. The declaration that all property in land is a spoliation of the people, and a crying iniquity-that the soil of the earth belongs to the community, to the nation at large; that it must all be confiscated, seized, and placed in the hands of the Res publica, to be administered for the public good; that the profits of its culture must be distributed equally amongst all-is but the A B C of the long alphabet of communistic principles, which they proclaim in the name of humanity, and to the advantage of themselves. It is needless to run through every letter. The omega-the great O-which is to prove the result of all their declamations, is, that if the National Assembly does not decree this general confiscation, they will take up arms against it; that they have once made the stones of the street rise at their command, and that they will make them rise again, when the time shall come, to do once more their bidding. And how have they kept their word? The bloodred standard of that fantastic vision of blood, the République Sociale et Démocratique, the Republic of spoliation and destruction, is raised aloft in the ateliers nationaux, to be planted hereafter upon the deadly barricades of June. And round these open conspiracies, under the sky of heaven, and in the face of men, see, there stand the brigadiers, and superintendents and masters put over them by the

government, with their hands in their pockets; and they listen and applaud. Look, also, at the furious frown of the orator on the wheel-barrow, in the midst of his yelling companions of the national workshops. How he knits his brows, and rolls his eyes, with a tiger aspect! This is all "make-believe" again; for he thinks it necessary for an "only true and pure" republican to make a terrible face, to the alarm and terror of all supposed aristocrats. Republicans did it, and were painted so in former days; and, to be a real republican, he must do the same: and his associates follow his example, and frown, and roar, and denounce like himself. All this is playing a part. But when they have learned by heart the part that they are rehearsing now, under yon trees, in the transmogrified park of Monceaux, they will play it as their own to the life-nay, to the death! If we were to approach that fellow in the blouse there, who is lying on his back on a hillock, reposing from his fatigues of doing nothing, and jerking lazy puffs of blue-white smoke into the pure spring air from the short clay-pipe that almost seems to grow out of his mass of beard, we may get perhaps to some comprehension of the tenets of the braves ouvriers of the ateliers nationaux; for, after all, although we are gentlemen, and he weens himself our lord and master, he looks like a bon homme, and he may condescend to expound to us his principles of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," upon the best-avowed communist, socialist, and ultra-republican system. Let us ask him who are the people? It is we-we who have nothing, and are not rascally thievish proprietors-we are the people; and the sovereignty of the people belongs to us, he will tell you. If you insinuate to him that, according to the laws of equality, you ought to have your own little share of this sovereignty, he will reply-No such thingyou are not of the people, you are a bourgeois, a mange-tout, an accapareur, a riche, a fainéant (what is he doing?) an aristocrate: this last word is the climax of the terms of objurgation. Endeavour to explain to him, or to convey by inuendo, that "aristocrats," in all languages, mean

those who pretend alone and exclusively to the exercise of the sovereignty of a country, he will scowl upon you with contempt, and, without deigning to analyse your definition, will again declare that you lie if you pretend to be of the people, which is sovereign, and not you.

The picture is a fanciful, and not an unpicturesque one. There is a wildness about the bearded haggard faces, and the disconsolate looks; there is colour enough in the blue blouses, the red cravats, the blood-red scarfs of the brigadiers, and the uniforms of the young men of the schools, who superintend: the background of the old trees, with the log-huts peeping out from among them, is well disposed. The greensward is below the clear blue spring sky above. There is brightness enough about the picture; but dark and gloomy are the passions smouldering within the hearts of those men-passions that find vent now in short hasty ebullitions, like puffs of steam let off from a safety-valve, in their political declamations, but that shortly will burst out in terrific explosion, and cover Paris with devastation and destruction.

Let us open the Sketch-book once more, at a picture again representing one of these same ateliers nationaux, after a change in the government of the country. The National Assembly has met. Several of the more experienced and far-seeing members of that confused body have seen the misery of this filthy sore upon the body of the commonwealth; they have probed the ulcering wound; they have foreseen, like good political doctors, that gangrene and mortification of the whole social state of France, and death, to all its last chances of life in prosperity, must result from such a state of things. They have denounced the whole corrupted system with energy. The government has confessed the misery and the danger of the national workshops, as they were constituted: it has promised that they shall be entirely reorganised, that the tares of evil men shall be sundered from the wheat of good and honest, but suffering workmen; that some shall be draughted off, that the works shall

be made useful and productive, that the superintendents shall be replaced; the chiefs, suspected of encouraging sedition and insurrectionary tendencies, removed; the abuses in the administration of the funds rectified. Much has been promised: and, until the needy workmen can be removed into the provinces, in order to be employed upon railroads and canals, and other great public works, or, where it is possible, upon labours congenial to their education, the Assembly has consented to close its eyes, and hope that the dangerous ateliers nationaux are gradually acquiring a healthier and more prosperous aspect.

Let us turn, then, to a sketch of the workshops in their reorganised state.

We seek it out with more cheerful hopes; and, in order to change the background of our picture, let us look in the direction of the eastern outskirts of Paris, and investigate the scene presented by the national workshops upon the little plain of St Maur. Before we arrive there, however, we shall fall upon another sketch, which is not without its characteristic traits, as illustrative of the history of revolutionising Paris. Those masses of towers that rise from the midst of walls surrounded by moats, not far from the roadside, and are flanked and backed by the low trees of thick woods at a little distance, belong to the fortress of Vincennes. Within these towers, connected with many a dark page of French history, are confined those frantic and disappointed demagogues, who on the 15th of May endeavoured to overthrow the Assembly, constituted by universal suffrage as the sovereign power of the country, and to substitute their own regime of tyranny and terror in its place. There sit the moody Barbés, whose ideas of republicanism go no further than constant subversion of "what is;" and the cold-blooded and cunning, but ferocious Blanqui, that strange mixture in character, as well as in physiognomy, of the fox and the wolf; there mourns Albert, so lately one of the autocratic rulers of the countrythe workman who, not content with his temporary power, helped to plot its return under bloody auspices. There are many others of those furious

ultra-republicans, who dreamed of founding a government upon pillage, and supporting it by the guillotine. Those towers, in fact, contain the leaders upon whom a furious party counts, as the master-spirits who are to lead it on to power. Their liberation from confinement is the dream of the party in every émeute with which the streets of Paris has been almost daily, or rather nightly, animated, theory has been, "Vive Barbés!" in the fearful insurrection and the civil conflicts of June, the name of Barbés was the rallying cry. Long before that period of terrific memory, the government knew that plots were constantly being laid for the surprise of the fortress, and the liberation of the prisoners. When, ded on by the chiefs of the ultra clubs, a band of so-called ouvriers waited upon the minister of the interior, to inform him that an immense monster fraternity banquet was to be held in the forest of Vincennes on a certain day, they were met by the reply of the minister, that no day could be better chosen, inasmuch as he had appointed that very day for a grand review, on the same spot, of all the troops of Paris, who would thus have an opportunity of fraternising with their "brethren of the workshops." The monster banquet was, consequently, never held,―or rather it was held in the streets of Paris; and the people banquetted upon carnage, and blood, and the still quivering limbs of the unhappy Gardes Mobiles. But that dread hour is not yet come, at the time the sketch is taken. Aware of the designs of the conspirators, the government has sent reinforcements to protect the fortress of Vincennes. The whole forest around is now a camp. In the midst looms the donjon, with its towers and walls, a dark and gloomy prison house: the cannon is on the battlements; the garrison is on duty, as if the fortress were at that moment in a state of siege; and, strikingly contrasting with this stern spectre of stone, is the scene presented by the wooded environs. It partakes of the camp and the fair. The whole place is beleaguered with troops. But if you look among the trees, you will see the tents gleaming forth from among the green. Pickets are scat

tered here and there; now you see a body of troops of the line drawn up under arms; there again they are reposing upon the grass, or playing among themselves. At intervals comes up the white smoke of a fire, at which the mid-day meal of the soldiers is being cooked, from among the trees; then improviso al fresco kitchens are glimmering, and crackling, and smoking heavily in all directions. The jaunty vivandières, in their short blue petticoats, their tight red jacket boddices, and their little boots, with hats, bearing tricolor-cockades, stuck jauntily on the sides of their heads, are serving out wine to redepauletted and red-breeched soldiers under the green branches, from their little painted barrels; and booths there are in every direction, with canvass coverings, gleaming out from the low forest, where there are wine and cider venders, and where sausages and other savoury dainties are being fired by little hand-stoves upon the ground. Venders of pamphlets and newspapers, all for one sou, are there also in herds, to tempt the young soldiers to buy their ultra-republican literary wares; and there may be a deeper purpose than mere speculation in the movements of some of the herd. Petty merchants there are also moving about, with every imaginable article of petty merchandise; ragged men with cracked voices, old women, and children of both sexes, are among these speculators upon the scanty purses of the military. The scene is gay and diversified, but it is sadly confused; and above all, when its component parts, and their various details be considered, it tells a sad tale of a city close by, given up to all the miseries of opposition, hatred, suspicion, mistrust, and active conspiracy.

Pass we on, then, to the picture of the reorganised national workshops,

of the reorganisation of which so much boast has been made by members of the government: we come to it at last, having only turned over, on our way, a leaf containing another sketch, which caught our eye in passing.

The scene is devoid of all the picturesque accessories of the park of Monceaux. It represents one of those

desert, chalky, open spaces, that so violently offend the eye in the environs of Paris. In the distance are suburb houses, and scaffoldings of unfinished buildings, and heaps of stone, and mounds of earth,-all is dry, harsh, barren, desolate; it is glaring and painful to the sense in the bright sunlight; it is dreary, muddy, more desolate and offensive still in the time of rain. The sun, however, is bright and hot enough now, when the sketch is taken, about the middle of June. The brains of the thousand and nine workmen, who have been collected in the middle space of the picture, are seething probably beneath that hot sun, and fermenting to desperate schemes. What a pandemonium is represented by this desolate little plain, occupied by the reorganised national workmen. If they have been reorganised, it is only to worse confusion. They are more reckless, more lazy, more noisy, more insubordinate than ever. Those alone are quiet who lie snoring on their bulks in the sunshine; but they will wake ere long, and to active and bloody work, I trow. Yonder is a group employed, as if the welfare of the nation depended upon it, in the interesting and instructive game of bouchon, or of throwing sous at a cork; all their energies and their activity, engaged to earn their pay, are occupied in this work. They are merry and thoughtless, however; but wait! their merriment is but for the moment, and bloody thoughts will be awakened in them before long, under the pernicious influence of those who are allowed to wander among them, and instil poison in their ears. Look! there are jovial fellows reeling about under the influence of strong drink,they have already thrown away all disguise they cry "Vive Barbés! Vive la République Démocratique et Sociale! A bas tout le monde!" They at least show that they are ripe for revolt. Some brandish their spades in their hands for here again is the same pretence of work, and of wheeling earth from one heap to another-and shout the Marseillaise in hideous chorus, or the "Mourir pour la patrie," and anon they change their song to the Ca Ira of fearful memory; for the other republican ditties are not advanced enough for the bold would-be

heroes of the "Red Republic." Here is one squatting under a bare hillock of earth, and piping all alone, in melancholy tone, upon a clarionet; but his musical efforts are as miserably out of time and tune, as are his seeming bucolics under the circumstances. Another has got upon a mound, and is fiddling to a set of fellows who are dancing the horrid Carmagnole, with gestures and faces that need only the pikes, with trunkless heads on them, of the old revolution, to make the scene complete. But the scene will be completed soon.; bayonets shall bear heads upon their points, and the Carmagnole shall be danced behind barricades around mutilated bodies. "Vivent les Ateliers Nationaux!" Look at that group who are lowering darkly among themselves, and hold on to each others' blouses in the energy of their suppressed and whispered converse. See! there is another there upon the plain, and there again another such a crowd. They look like conspirators,—and in truth conspirators they are, communicating to each other the plans for the approaching insurrection. And this passes in open day, and we may be there to witness and even to hear; and the whole city shakes its head, and in vague apprehension expects the crisis that is about to come. And yet it will be said by ministers, and ministerial agents, that the national workshops are reorganised,-yes, reorganised to bloodshed and revolt! And no means will be taken by the government to control or suppress-it will not even attempt to stem-the torrent it has wilfully dammed up in these organised clubs of sedition. None now even deign to make a show of working, or, if the overseers come by and shake their heads, they take up their spades, and digging up a little earth, fling it, laughing in confident impunity, upon the back of the superintendent as he turns away. In the hands of such men as these, the pickaxes and spades have the air of the weapons of a murderous crew; and how soon will they not be used to aid them to purposes of murder! And this scene of confusion, and reckless effrontery, is sketched from the life at one of the national workshops in their reorganised state. Bright it is not,

but it might shame one of Callot's most wild and turbulent pictures, such as he alone has shown how to etch. Connected with such scenes as these, in as far as they tended to produce the last stirring sketches with which the Parisian Sketch-book was filled in the month of June, are others, which can only be fleetingly turned over. There is the large dingily lighted club-room, with its dark tribune, its president and secretaries and accolytes, dressed in blue smocks, with blood-red scarfs and cravats its fiery orators denouncing the bourgeois to the hatred of the working classes, and instilling division, rancour, battle to the death between classes, with violent gesture and frowning brow; and its benches and galleries filled with a fermenting crowd, that yells and clamours, and applauds the sentiment of "hatred and death" to the bourgeois. It is no uninteresting, although a heart-wearying chiaro-oscuro scene, with its strong lights and dark shades-albeit, in its moral as well as its material aspect, the lights are few, the shades many, and dark to utter blackness. Connected with the same suite of subjects, also, is the nature of the small room in the crooked streets of the Cité, or the suburb, with a table spread with papers, around which sit bearded full-faced men, discussing sternly, as may be seen by the scanty lamplight that illumines those haggard physiognomies; it is the room of the conspirators of the "Red Republic," or of the revolutionary agents to be despatched throughout the country, and into other lands, to propagandise the doctrine of destruction to all that is. But this scene must surely be a fancy sketch. Connected, also, is that black sketch of a cellar, in which are concealed arms, guns, pistols, lead, cartridges, barrels of powder, that have evidently fallen into the hands of subversive anarchist conspirators, by means of the connivance, treachery, or at least culpable negligence of those placed in power by the sovereign Assembly, and that have been conveyed thither hidden in wood, in bales, in sacks, amidst provisions. Connected, also, are many other gloomy vignettes. The scribbler in the small room, writing with

a sneer of bitterness upon his lip, and the stamp of overflowing bile on his pale face, writing with the red cap of liberty on his head, as if to inspire his brains with visions of all the horrors of a past revolution, glancing now and then, for a hint, at the portraits of Marat and Robespierre, which decorate his room, and grasping, now and then, the pistols on the table by his side, as if to instil the smell of powder and the breath of murder into the very lines he writes ;—and again, the printing press worked by the light of the dying candle; and again, in the hazy morning, the figure of the newspaper vender, swaggering down the boulevard, and skreeching out, with hoarse voice, the "True Republic," or the "People's Friend; " and of the deluded workman, who leans, after his morning dram, against a post, and sucks in the revolutionary poison of those prints, more deadly and damning to his mind, and more fatal to his future existence, than the dram is deleterious to his health, and pernicious to his future life; and prepares his mind for the bayonet and the gunbarrel, by which he means to destroy all those detested, and, his paper tells him, detestable beings, who have toiled to possess any wealth, while he possesses nothing;-and again, by night, the meeting of the man in power and the discontented conspirator, in the well-appointed apartment, where a hideous deed of treachery is to be plotted; or of the wavering workman-who fears he is about to plunge into greater misery, and yet hopes the realisation of the false promises made him-standing, still uncertain, to listen to the voice of the tempting instigator to rebellion under the gas lamp at the obscure street corner on a drizzling night. All these are sketches connected with the past ones of the national workshops, and with those to come; they lead on to the last in the dark series, irresistibly, inevitably: but as most of them must necessarily be fancy sketches, and not "taken from the life," let them be turned over hurriedly with but a glance.

And those that follow-what a confused mass of startling subjects they offer! See here! the bands of united men assembling by night, and march