Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou knowest not how, long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are all consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,--through Eternity itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God! Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

And yet, as we said, Hope is but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable.

It is very notable, and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation through all its wild destinies.

For we shall still find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope.

Thus is our Era still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,--when there is nothing left but Hope.
But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's Box lies there for the opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the symptom of all symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period.