deep destitution of the working classes in the manufacturing districts, until I became a resident therein. I then began to observe the striking contrast between those districts and the agricultural parts of England. In happy Lincolnshire,-for I may call it so comparatively, the strongest attachment subsisted between farmer and peasant-between landlord and tenant. No large fortunes could be there made, in the brief space of five or six years. In Leicester, and similar localities, the bitterest feeling of hostility subsists between manufacturer and workman: the workman is ground to the earth by successive "docks," as they are called, of his paltry wages,- by being thrown out of work, and by various kinds of ill treatment,--whilst his masters, amidst all their complaints about the Corn Laws, build large factories and rear tall chimneys; the workman toils in rags and starves, while the master rolls in luxury and comfort. It was my actual experience of the truth of this distress which kindled in me the resolution to espouse openly, manfully, and decidedly, the cause of the suffering and oppressed operatives. A poor framework-knitter on whose veracity I could repose my life, had suffered the deepest privation for weeks, but suffered silently. At length, when every article which could be so disposed of, had and infant reached the verge of starvation. Unable longer to conceal his extremity he laid a note upon my desk, at eleven o'clock one night, and ran out of my shop. That note depicted his destitution, and informed me that on the previous morning when he awoke with his young wife lying by his side, her first language, accompanied with heart-breaking sighs, was, -and ventured to London, depending chiefly on the promises of help given me by a literary baronet who then represented Lincoln, and in whose interest I had sedulously laboured for some years. For seven anxious weeks that baronet kept me in cruel suspense,pretending that he had placed a manuscript romance which, at his own request I had entrusted to him,-in the hands of his own publisher. I afterwards learned that this was a wholesale falsehood; and he had only been mocking me when he returned that manuscript, complimenting me on its merits, but affecting to regret that his publisher had too many things on hand to undertake to bring it out.-For eleven months I subsisted, almost by casualty, in London. My library, which was a choice one, amounting to 500 volumes, I sold, volume by volume, for bread. Sometimes I obtained a little employ on the magazines-but when I had earned five pounds, I usually received no more than one. Mr. Lumley, the bookseller of Chancery-lane, was one of the kindest friends I found in town: he employed me on various occasions, especially in the pleasing, though laborious work, of copying at the British Museum library. At length, when I was on the point of being reduced to extreme difficulty, having actually pawned my cloak, and several other articles, I received a letter offering me the editorship of the Greenwich Gazette or Kentish Mer-been taken to the pawn shop, himself, his young wife cury. I remained on that paper at a salary of £3 per week, until the prospect of retrieving it from ruin was gone. It has since become extinct. One fortnight after I had given notice to leave that situation,-by one of those sudden and unlooked-for incidents which I have so often experienced in life as to impel me to the belief that a High and Ever Watchful power presides over our ways,-I received an offer of a situation as reporter to the Leicestershire Mercury. There were several reasons which operated strongly to induce me to accept this offer. Leicester was my birth place, and although I had not seen it since infancy, I was romantic enough to feel an ideal attachment to my native town. I also wished to be nearer my aged mother, whose increasing infirmities warned me that she would soon quit this stage of existence. These reasons, added to the information that the paper I was invited to assist was ultra-democratic in its principles, induced me to remove at once to Leicester. It will be two years come November, since I settled there. In the month of January or February following my settlement, I was requested to attend and report a Chartist lecture. That was the first lecture of the kind I had ever heard in my life. I had never, before, either seen or conversed with a Chartist, to my knowledge. Yet the principles I heard enunciated in that lecture, by Mr. Mason, were my Of the causes of his arrest and trial Thomas Cooper own; they were the doctrines to which I had gives us some explanation in this defence. Having, as theoretically clung from boyhood. It was when leaving he states, been induced to enter heart and soul into the that lecture, too, that I first became acquainted with adoption of the People's Charter, as the means of rethe real suffering and destitution of the operatives in deeming them from the dreadful condition into which the manufacturing districts. It was about eleven they were fallen, he began to lecture to the masses o'clock when we were leaving the meeting; and as I on the necessity of adopting it. Amongst other places heard the crazy, rattling noise of the stocking frames in he was invited into the Staffordshire Potteries by the the garrets, while passing along the street, I said to Hanley Chartists, in August, 1842. He arrived at Hansome of the working men who had been at the meet-ley on Saturday the 13th of that month, and on the foling, "Bless me do these poor people frequently work so late ?" 66 Aye, and gladly, when they can get it to do; was the reply. "And what may their earnings be?" was my next question. "On the average, about 7s.; and three goes for frame-rent and other charges, so that they have about 4s. left." "Well," I replied; 4s. per day is a decent wage." "But we mean 4s. per week!" was the rejoinder. And on the closest enquiry I learnt that that was the sad truth. In fact, I had been incredulous as to the Sunday come again, and nothing to eat!" while the infant sought her breast, but there was no nutriment for it; Nature's fountains were dried up by starvation! Another poor stockinger came one morning into my house, and sitting himself down with a despairing look which I shall never forget, exclaimed with an oath,- "I wish they would hang me! I have lived on cold boiled potatoes, which were given me, for the last two days, and this morning I have eaten a raw potatoe from sheer hunger! Give me a bit of bread and a cup of coffee, or I shall drop!" Such is the wretchedness, the abject suffering, and the unparalleled destitution to which the manufacturing operatives of my unhappy country are reduced! Can you wonder that such beings become Chartists? -or that a man of my nature became a Chartist while beholding such wretchedness? lowing day addressed three assemblies, at Fenton and Longton, in the afternoon, and on the Crown Bank, at Hanley, at night. On this occasion, his text was Thou shalt do no murder." That evening he was requested to address the colliers on strike on the Monday morning. It appears that there was an extensive strike amongst the colliers at that time, and Thomas Cooper, before his arrival in the Potteries had addressed large assemblies of them on strike at Wednesbury, Bilston, and Wolverhampton. At the meeting at Wednesbury, 30,000 colliers had held up their hands in token of their determination to keep the peace, a resolution to that effect having been put. The result of this great meeting, however, on the morning of Monday the 15th, on the Crown Bank, at Hanley, was disastrous. The colliers, excited Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire, into disorto a high degree, broke out into riot on the following night, attacked the house of an obnoxious clergyman, and finding wine in his cellar, drank, became furious, and set on fire that and other houses, besides committing other acts of violence. It was natural enough that the direct causation of this outbreak should be charged on Cooper, who was not only the chairman and orator of the meeting, but had addressed another large meeting at the George and Dragon, on the evening of the same day. It would appear, therefore, that the outbreak did not occur immediately after the meeting on the Crown Bank, for Mr. Cooperstated on his trial that he had left Hanley, and was on his way to Manchester, unconscious of any tumult or mischief, when he was arrested. On his trial he proved an alibi, and was acquitted of the charge of aiding and abetting in the riot and burning, but was remanded for trial on two other indictments. In his defence on this occasion Thomas Cooper stated most candidly what he did, and what he did not do. He advised the people to strike all work till they got the Charter, and had again and again said. "Give me but one million of combined human wills, and the Charter shall in one day be law in England. He regarded himself as fully sanctioned in his advice of striking all work, by the same advice having been given by the Anti-Corn Law League, and by the perfect right of every man to desist from labour for the attainment of a clear legal right. But, on the other hand, he stoutly denied having, either on that or any occasion in his whole life, incited the people to acts of violence. He referred to his text on this very occasion-"Commit no murder." He referred to the principles and practices of his whole life. "I have always struggled," he said, "to popularize Chartism, by delivering familiar and elementary lectures on geography, geology, astronomy, history, phrenology, and other popular subjects. I have endeavoured to humanize, and civilize, and refine my own class. I never saw a pike, a gun, or a dagger, among the Leicester Chartists. I never had an offensive weapon of the kind in my own possession during my whole life. I never let off a gun or a pistol in my life- -nor do I know how to prepare either instrument for firing. It is by moral means, and moral means alone, that I have advanced Chartism, until I had enrolled in one association in Leicester nearly three thousand individuals of both sexes." der." On both occasions he was most keenly denounced by Sir William Follett, the Solicitor-General. He was imprisoned altogether two years and eleven weeks. The fruits of this imprisonment were neuralgia, rheumatism, and other torments, occasioned by sleeping in a damp cell, added to the generally injurious influences of imprisonment-and-the composition of "The Purgatory of Suicides." Reflecting on these latter facts, Mr. Cooper says with a just pride in the preface to this remarkable work-“ I am poor, and have been plunged into more than two hundred pounds' debt by the persecution of my enemies; but I have a consolation to know that my course was dictated by heart-felt zeal to relieve the sufferings and oppressions of my fellow men. Sir William Follett was entombed with pomp, and a host of titled great ones, of every shade of party, attended the laying of his clay in the grave: and they purpose now to erect a monument to his memory. Let them build it: the selfeducated shoemaker has also reared his; and despite its imperfections, he has a calm confidence that, though the product of poverty, and suffering, and misery, it will outlast the posthumous stone block that may be erected to perpetuate the memory of the titled lawyer." Of Thomas Cooper's great work we shall quote our own opinion as given in the "Eclectic Review" on its appearance. "We have here a genuine poem springing out of the spirit of the times, and indeed, out of the heart and experience of one who has wrestled with and suffered for it. It is no other than a poem in ten books by a Chartist, and who boldly sets his name and his profession of Chartism on the title-page. It is that of a soul full of thought, full of a burning zeal for liberty, and with a temperament that must and will into action. The man is all bone and sinew. He is one of those 'Terræ filii,' that England, more than all the other nations of the earth put together, produces. One of the same class as Burns, Ebenezer Elliot, Fox, the Norwich weaver-boy, to say nothing of the Arkwrights, Smeatons, Brindleys, Chantrys, and the like, all rising out of the labour-class into the class of the thinkers and builders-up of English greatness. What is morcover singular, is, that he is another of the shoemaker craft, that craft which has produced such a host of men of talent-as Hans Sachs, George Fox, Drew, Gifford of the Quarterly,' and others. "Till three-and-twenty"" he says of himself, "he bent over the last and the acl, struggling against weak health and deprivation to acquire a knowledge of languages,and his experience in after life was, at first limited to the humble sphere of a schoolmaster, and never enlarged beyond that of a laborious worker on a newspaper." It was at Leicester that Thomas Cooper was residing at that time. He was arrested there, and after the term of his imprisonment he returned thither. As we have said, he was acquitted of the charge of incendiarism, but in this he was more fortunate than William Ellis, another prisoner, arrested on the same charges, who was transported for twenty-one years, although he protested in the most solemn manner that he was utterly innocent, and was asleep in his bed at Burslem at the time of these outrages; and this statement was confirmed on oath by the aged woman with whom he and his wife lodged at the time. It is astounding on what evidence this poor man was condemned. A single man swore that he saw a tall figure, with its back towards him, at the fires-that he then, for a few moments, saw the side face, blackened, of this figure-and that he could swear that it was Ellis. There is now a universal feeling of the innocence of Ellis, and that he fell a victim to hav-ledge which he thirsted after; and the book abounds ing defeated the Lord-Lieutenant of the County at a public meeting, by moving an amendment-yet he is to this day suffering under this infamous sentence in a penal colony. On his second trial Thomas Cooper made a most determined, able, and memorable defence before Judge Erskine. The struggle lasted ten days, and the Tory papers made testy complaints of "the insolent daring of a Chartist, who had thrown the whole county business of Here, then, we have a striking instance of what are, and are likely to be, the fruits of general education and mechanics' libraries. Genius, freed from the heavy clogs and bonds of ignorance, thus does and will more and more develope itself in the labouring class, and not only distinguish its possessors, but add ich treasures to the national literature. If it were needful to convince us what a mass of information men of this description will glean up, the present volume is a striking evidence of it. The author tells us that he has spent years in mastering languages as the keys of that knowwith proof of the success of his endeavours. He appears to have revelled in history, ancient and modern. His acquirements in this department are quite amazing. It is probably this propensity to historic research which has suggested to him his subject-"The Purgatory of Suicides," certainly a singular one. As a subject, we should say that it is rather curious than poetical; and although he has contrived to invest it with features and circumstances of grandeur, yet we must at the same Of every age, and every mortal clime Alas, poor bird! thy lay 271. And all its sweetness is forgot; their want time declare, that it is not the legitimate matter of the subject, but the introductions to each book, which are the truly poetical portions of the volume. These are full of passion, and sentiment of the highest poetical character. They are, as we have said too, full of the spirit and tendencies of the present times. They are the actual produce of that spirit and tone of the great mass of the population of this country, which, under ate object. The introduction to the second book is an But this awful spectacle has led us from our immedithe influence of circumstances, good and evil, and of invocation to the poetic spirits of England, and conintellectual advance, are so interesting and so impor- tains a splendid eulogium on Milton, one of the noblest tant for us to contemplate. They speak out to us what to be found in any author. The next is an apostrophe is passing in the depths of the popular mind. We do not to the sun, but turns into a pathetic and beautiful trihesitate to affirm, that these introductions stamp Tho-bute to the author's mother. The fourth book is opened mas Cooper as a genuine poet of a high order. They place with a very poetical address to the robin, but speedily him at once beside that man of iron, Ebenezer Elliott. turns as the poor man's thoughts, especially those of the They are fraught with fire, power, tenderness, and a agricultural labourer now do, from the amenities of deep spirit of speculation on man and his prospects. nature to the crushing miseries of his condition. We will briefly enumerate these striking exordia. The first is a call on the enslaved to free themselves, couched in terms such only as those who feel the wrongs and the oppressions of life are stimulated to use; and in pursuing the review of which, the poet is tempted to ask himself, "Is life worth having?" This is the natural prelude to the great theme of his volume; and he soon finds himself voyaging through strange scenes, in company with a host of suicides. Like John Bunyan, he repeats the dream at will, and thus enters into the society of all the celebrated suicides of all ages. It is not till we are led by his demonstrations, that we become fully sensible of what a mighty host the suicidal portion of our race consists, and what a startling number of great names it includes. From the earliest age to the present, and in every country of the globe, men, and some, too, of high genius, fortune, and powers, have laid violent hands on themselves. Sardanapalus, Saul, Zimri, Achitophel, Eleazer Maccabæus, Ajax, Lycurgus, Charondas, Themistocles, Zeno, Demosthenes, Cleombrotus, Appius Claudius, Marc Anthony, Nero, Otho, Maximian, Mithridates, Lucretius, Brutus, Pompey, Lucan, Cato, Curtius, Caius Gracchus, Juba, Hannibal, Apicius, Sophonius Tigellinus, Petronius Arbiter, Atticus the friend of Cicero, Vibius Virius, with Sappho, Dido, Porcia, Arria, the wife of Asdrubal the Carthaginian, and numbers of other women. These names, taken without regard to order of time, and merely as they present themselves to the memory, are but a mere indication of the thousands in ancient times who fled from life by their own hand. The Greek and Roman annals abound with distinguished suicides. In every succeeding period, down to our own day, spite of the grand truths and awful warnings promulgated in Christianity, the case is the same. Pontalba, Villeneuve, Condorcet, Roland, Marshal Berthier, Pétion, Chatterton, Castlereagh, Romilly, Whitbread, etc. These have their numbers swelled to vast hosts by being With sages blended, For faiths fantastic, creeds incomprehensible, Fair Nature charms not; fellowship of song Ah! darling Robin,-thou wilt soon behold what is the night to which the mind of the poor is irBook the fifth opens with an apostrophe to night, and resistibly turned? It is not that of the fair moon, and the night of short rest from the wheel and the ill-paid the deep blue vault of heaven brilliant with stars, but loom. Darkness thy sceptre still maintain,-for thou Of light, the life-drop, and exhaust its feeble stream! Book the sixth begins with an execution, and calls forth the anathemas of the poet of the poor on the state of the criminal laws, and on capital punishment. London, with its splendour and its misery, its mammon worshippers and its strange regions of wretchedness and guilt, opens with a powerful but lurid picture the seventh. The commencement of the eighth book is a grand hymn to the progress of knowledge, religious information, and to the glory of the great men who have been the devoted labourers of love and human happiness. one portion is a superb and beautiful outpouring of a poetry worthy of the highest name in the art, making us almost unjust to its real author by causing us to forget that he is a poor and self-taught man, the son of a poor woman who toiled to win her child a crust And fainting, still toiled on. This Book the ninth begins with an address to woman, of equal beauty, and in its first stanzas presents another 'Tis woman's voice! woman in wailful grief, Poor wretched thing! well may she wail, I ween, She fainteth! yet awakes to moan and weep! How little didst thou think that smiling morn Into thy mirror, and thy breast adorn With virgin-rose, so soon the sorrow-thorn Would there have pierced, and thou, in two short years, And thou, a widowed bride, a thing of tears, How it hath come to pass, that toil must pine Not forceful, but fraternal: for the past Hath warned the Million that they must succeed By will, and not by war. Yet to hold fast Men's rage when they are starving-'tis a struggle vast! A struggle that were vain unless the Book p.p. 307-8. Thomas Cooper left Stafford Gaol on the 4th of May, 1845, when he was just turned 40 years of age, being born on the 20th of March, 1805, and consequently at the present time turned 43. He came to London with his From that stern grate, forlorn, to meet the world's rude jeers! manuscripts, as described in the preface to the "Purga p. 283. The tenth and last book opens with an invocation to liberty, in which, after a scarifying appeal to Lord Brougham, as the author of the New Poor Law Act, by the apt epithet of "Harlequin Demosthenes," he breaks out into a jubilant assurance of the triumph of freedom. This we must take as our last quotation because it demonstrates the operation of that salutary change of opinion amongst the Chartists, which has led them to abandon the fatal dream of physical force, and to rely, like enlightened men, on the omnipotence of moral power and knowledge. O not by changeling, tyrant, tool, or knave, The sinewy artizan,-the weaver lean,- And yet, O liberty! these humble toilers, tory," but was unable to get out his poem till the September following. Its immediate success was greatly promoted by a generous review in the "Britannia," a Conservative newspaper, and supposed to be written by Dr. Croly. The " Eclectic" and others immediately followed, and the merit of the poem, once made known, secured its own acknowledgment. In two months after this appeared, a prose work, called "Wise Saws and Modern Instances," consisting chiefly of stories of country life, and giving many startling insights into the real condition of the working classes of this country. In January 1846, he also published a poem entitled "The Baron's Yule Feast," which had been written previous to the Purgatory. An unfortunate turn in the affairs of his publisher stopped the issue of other works for which he had agreed. In the following summer Mr. Cooper was engaged on Douglas Jerrold's paper, and made a tour of the manufacturing districts and the North of England, to collect materials for a series of articles, which appeared in that newspaper under the title of "The Condition of the People of England." In November 1846, he returned to London, and commenced lecturing at the National Hall, where he delivered the "Two Orations against taking away Human Life under any circumstances. They contain his avowal of having entirely given up physical force doctrines, and his most explicit maintainance of the sacredness of human life. He has continued to lecture at the National Hall on almost every subject of history, science, morals, and government, to thronged audiences, up to within a very few weeks of this date. He has also delivered discourses on the lives and characters of Men of Genius, History, Poetry, etc., at various Literary Institutions, in particular at the Parent Mechanics' Aye, and while throne-craft decks man's murderous spoilers, Institute, Southampton-buildings, at the City of Lon While feverous power mocks the weary sun, Then, bending o'er his toil, weighs well the record wild. Aye, they are thinking,-at the frame and loom, don and City of Westminster Institutions, the St. John Street Institution, etc. He has also repeatedly supplied the place of the eloquent W. J. Fox, at his chapel at South-place, Finsbury, on Sunday mornings during his illness or absence; and has contributed various papers to this Journal, "Jerrold's Magazine," and other periodicals. Lately he has, moreover, published two songs, the music to which he composed in Stafford Jail; that to the "Minstrel's Song" being a minor, and reckoned by musical judges to display real musical taste. It will be seen that Thomas Cooper is still a hard worker--the especial fate of the author in London. The labour he performs would be a large amount for a man of strong habit and robust health, but in Thomas Cooper's case, this labour is performed with a constant struggle with ill health, debility, and neuralgia, the fruit of jail confinement. The difficulty with which he pursues his lecturing from this cause would perhaps, however, never be suspected by those who listen to the fervent addresses which often, for two hours together, he pours out. children have won. Let Englishmen demand the right to live by work at home, and then when each nation has rightly organized its own industry, nationality may cease, and the world become one wide workshop, free in common to all. The justice of this position every enlightened English workman must admit. Let no ear then be open to the temptations of that foul war-spirit, which some, for their own interest, would endeavour on the ground of this decree to instil into the minds of the labouring classes of England. The true interest of both peoples is one-the national employment in their own But it is the fate of almost every man of the present country of the members of each nation. The working day who devotes himself to the pursuits of literature, classes of both France and England have not only the and the advancement of political freedom to have to per- same interests, but are also embued with the same poliform nearly as much toil as a steam-engine. Thomas tical and social views. In vain then, will the war-cry Cooper, like too many of us, has to labour for his bread be raised. I am as safe here as in London. The Revowhile he labours also for the public cause, and we regret lution is not finished, but perfect order reigns in Paris, that he has to suffer the Purgatory of Martyrs, in the although citizens without uniform guard us; and this legacy of prison pains, as well as the daily arduous order will continue, even through further changes. Let strife of existence, when he would otherwise be able to not the press of England be believed when it says the devote himself to healthful reflection, and work out his contrary. Its falsehoods have already been infamous. long projected twin-epic of "The Purgatory of Suicides," | It has far from truly read the Placards of Paris. The Paradise of Martyrs, a noble and glorious subject. These placards surround the proclamations of the GoWe may conclude this notice by stating, that Thomas vernment, with a rainbow of all colours. On that wall Cooper has no children, but a most amiable and intelli- yet blackened with the discharge of the murderous musgent wife, who, however, suffers from constant ill health. ketry of a dead and drivelling despotism, now shine the He is careful always to proclaim his adherence" to his placards of each arrondissement calling their several inown order" the Working Class, and we believe the habitants to prepare for the election of the National warmest wish of his heart, is that for which he is con- Guards. Here a colonel offers himself for re-election on stantly labouring, to see them achieve what he conceives the ground of his past patriotism, in a green affiche. to be their RIGHTS. There a captain calls for support to his candidature through a pink paper. Fortunate the people, who choose their military, for soldiers must then become the organs of order, and not the delegates of despotism! LETTERS FROM PARIS. (For Howitt's Journal.) THE PLACARDS OF PARIS. DEAR FRIENDS, Paris is quite papered with placards. Its walls are inspired with mind, not only with the sacred words, LIBERTÉ, EGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ, which are gloriously prominent on every public edifice, not only in those mementos to tyrants which must have an eternal existence, but also with those signs of daily life, with those pulses of intellectual movement which we count by the minute, and which assuredly show that the grand heart of Paris beats quick, and that its throbs are magnificently momentous. Well will it be for the Belshazzars of the earth, if they will read its handwriting on the walls. Well would it be for all to mark as one can in Paris, how the overthrow of a lethargic monarchy quickens, and warmly vivifies the intellectual life of a people. First of all, for the sake of distinction, printed upon white paper, we see the proclamations of the Provisional Government, with its splendid array of names of European reputation, upon the walls of Paris. These with their beneficent ordinances have already been made known by the British journals. Two recent ones I will, however, notice. The first is one which decrees the gratuitous opening of one of the theatres, under the name of the Théatre de la République, to the poorest citizens. It is well to be known that this theatre is intended principally to produce the popular anthems. The second is the decree that the English workmen should leave France. Let not the working classes of England think this harsh. France is engaged in the organization of her national industry on a national basis, as an example to other nations. She has assuredly enough to do to serve her own sons, without being burthened with those who have no right to claim that which her Financial affairs have produced a host of projects in paper, which would suit the Birmingham brotherhood. One convenient citizen produces a plan by which he would make France rich in eight days. The project for a property tax by its side is, however, nearer the purpose. Assuredly, though we have had change and plenty, a certain change is not now always to be obtained, except for gold, which one can ever easily get rid of. The people of Paris, however, are not paralyzed by the difficulty. Bravely has it brought out that sacred sacrifice of theirs which is not bounded by the barricades, but is as universal as the heart. They come forward-that canaille, as Louis Philippe's silly son denominated them, in his anxiety for cannon-they come forward, God's hands as they really are-those working men of Paris, with their shoemakers' sous, with their plaisterers' pennies, with the centimes of their carpenters, and with the francs of their free-masons, with the wages of their days works, and offer them as a holy offering, as true tithe, to the Provisional Government, the political priesthood of the nation. The other classes, too, are following their example. With such faith as this, what fear for commercial credit! When the heart coins money the mint can never fail. The clubs, however, are the great placarders of Paris. Everywhere, where a placard could by possibility appear, they have papered the plaister with their prints. Some proclaim their principles. Others call upon the citizens to accord them their support, and others again make known the hours and the places of their meetings. The clubs thus convened in Paris are most numerousthey are ubiquitous. Every arrondissement has one. There is the club of the National Guard. There is the club of the Independants; not like those, however, who fought with Cromwell, for our Commonwealth, as not only seekers but soldiers of the Lord-but political independants, preaching no party, but wishing to weigh all things. There is the club of the Marais, meeting, I believe, in the house where Marat dwelt. The Girondist Club is not resuscitated, without Lamartine and his friends represent it. That, however, cannot be the case. |