DANCING ON A VOLCANO.
As wasps fly back to the nest that has been blown up, uncon- scious of the danger, so human beings have rebuilt a Catania or a Lima, and so the curious Parisians pour forth into their streets after the carnage, to see what is to be seen. Paris has exhibited the most startling contact of calamity, gayety, and idle curiosity. On Monday night the city was illuminated—not for joy, but for fear ; the lights of rejoicing being converted to beacons of safety in the horrible watch of that last night of massacre. At the very climax of wo, a felicitous turn of expression would move the critical Assembly ; ever so quick to catch an antithesis, and to act upon it, even amid the roar of cannon and the dripping of blood. No sooner is the hideous battle over, than Paris becomes a set scene," and the mourning citizens become sightseers, issuing forth to view the spectacle as to a panorama. Amid the debris of civil war, "the centre of the carriage-road is crowded with curious spectators, promenading as they would on the occasion of some public celebration." It is to be hoped that they would profit by the moral of the scene—that they could read the sermons in stones piled by barricade-makers and displaced by cannon.
A sight not altogether dissimilar might be seen the other day near Manchester. An encampment of soldiery has been farmed on Kersal Moor, and that field for Chartist demonstrations has be- come the theatre for a demonstration of organized military force. On Sunday last, the spectacle attracted crowds like those at a great fair. It conveyed its moral. A Chartist preacher delivered an extempore sermon on the unchristian nature of war ; and a secular Chartist orator applied the discourse by pointing out to his hearers that justice is cheaper than injustice, that pikes and deadly weapons are less effective than the fraternal doctrine of do- ing as you would be done by, and so on. Very natural ideas to be suggested at the mere sight of such a force as would frustrate proselytism by pike. Similar reflections may have occurred to the reflective Parisians on surveying the bloodstained and dismantled walls of once peaceful abodes, sacrificed to a vain and criminal attempt. But how great an advantage did the Manchester men enjoy in the opportunity to make these reflections before civil war, instead of after it I
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