(Fils Adoptif, Memoires de Mirabeau, t.iv.livv.4 et 5.) M.de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's Rod over France; miraculous; and is summoning quite unexpected things.

Audacity and hope alternate in him with misgivings; though the sanguine-valiant side carries it.

Anon he writes to an intimate friend, "Here me fais pitie a moi-meme (I am an object of pity to myself);" anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to sing 'this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is preparing.' (Biographie Universelle, para Calonne (by Guizot).) Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,--only not till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is.

In deep obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying: will M.de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten all together again, and get new revenues?
Or wrench all asunder; so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of French Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France towards the Chateau of Versailles: summoned thither de par le roi.

There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and got installed: Notables to the number of a Hundred and Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name: (Lacretelle, iii.286.Montgaillard, i.