The last sketch in the Parisian Sketch-book, as it is now filled up--now in the middle of the month of July (for others may be painting even as these lines are traced)--is the dark monster hearse containing the bodies of those who have fallen in the cause of order--the black-behung altar in that _Place_, which has lost its name of Concord and Peace, to take the more suitable one of "Revolution"--the catafalk--the burning candelabras--the black-caparisoned horses that drag the funeral-car--the black draperied columns of the Madeleine--the authorities in mourning attire--the long procession--the sprinkled clouds of burning incense from the waved censers--and the widow's tears.
Such a picture of mocking pomp in desolate sorrow closes well the long suite of sketches with which the Parisian Sketch-book has been filled during the _first phase_ of the French revolution. The curtain has fallen at the end of the first act, upon a _tableau_ befitting the dark scenes which have been so fearfully enacted in it. The curtain will rise again--again will bloody scenes, probably, be enacted upon that troubled stage of history,--again will harrowing sketches, probably, be drawn in the Parisian Sketch-book. Those which we have now recorded have been selected from among thousands, because they form a suite, as natural in their course, as fatally inevitable, as any suite of pictures in which the satirising artist painted the natural course of a whole life. From the fallacious promises, and the foolish or culpable designs, that occasioned the establishment of those nurseries of discontent, disorder, and conspiracy, the _ateliers nationaux_,--the steps through the club-room, the rendezvous of the conspirators, the furious journalist's office, to the sedition, the insurrection, the carnage, the civil war, the murder, the terror, and the mourning catafalk, have followed as they could not but follow. It is only the first series, however, that is closed here. There can be little doubt but that similar consequences will again follow, as similar causes still exist; and that the red banner of the so-called "social and democratic republic" will again wave,--and perhaps before long,--a prominent object in the scenes of the _Parisian Sketch-book_.