principally of either very young or old people. In the first Revolution the enthusiasm of liberty had chiefly inspired men of middle age, in whom the still youthful hatred of priestly deceit and aristocratic insolence was combined with clear and manly matured insight. The youngest and oldest men were the partisans of the senile régime—the latter, or the silver-haired ancients, out of mere custom—the former, the jeunesse dorée, from discontent with the bourgeois simplicity of republican manners. Now it is all changed—c'est l'inverse aujourd'hui—and the true enthusiasts for freedom consist entirely of young or aged people. The latter know from personal experience the infamies of the ancien régime, and they recall with rapture the times of the first Revolution, when they were so strong and great. The former, or the youth, love that age because they yearn for great deeds, and are above all things ambitious of sacrifice and heroism; hence they scorn the stingy small-mindedness and the huckstering selfishness of the present powers that be. The men of middle age are mostly weary with the harassing business of opposition during the Restoration, or spoiled and corrupted by the Empire, whose loud-roaring ambition and brilliant soldier-state destroyed all citizen-like simplicity and love of freedom; and, moreover, this Imperial period of heroism cost so many their lives who would be in their prime
