The French Revolution.

In allowing one's mind to wander back into the dim ages of the past, how fearfully strange does the history of Man appear! From the time when, as we are told in the Sacred writ, Nimrod, the hunter, began to be a mighty one in the earth; from the time when Nineveh was first built, and stood on the earth as a monument of the inequality which should ever exist between man and man; from the day when the few denizens of this lower world began to separate and form themselves into detached communities; from the very earliest time of which we have the faintest legendary record, to the present nineteenth century of the Christian era, man has been rising and falling, rising and falling, with a history which appears to us as that of one long continuous struggle of forces—forces which present to the mind such a strange chaotic medley, that one is perplexed in endeavouring to discern whether the powers of attraction or repulsion fasten on it most strongly. Nation has risen on the ruin of nation; power has had to submit to yet greater power; vast empires have raised themselves to be dominant over smaller or weaker peoples, and in their turn have had to succumb and grovel in the dust before others who were destined to become even vaster and more powerful than they; and so rising and falling like the storm-perturbed waves of the ocean, the surface of this globe we inhabit has changed its appearance along with the history of man, till we look upon it with bewilderment, and wonder what our exact position in the complete history can be now. Now—the only word which really belongs to us. The past, the past—it is no more; the future—it is before us, but we see it not ; both are in the endless eternity: but now, the present, it is in a limited degree ours, and even that, with all the knowledge of which we are so apt to boast, we cannot understand, In good truth do all men now look into a glass darkly; Heaven grant that when we come to see it face to face, we may be thankful and satisfied with what confronts us therein.

Of all the convulsions in which Universal History presents communities of men to us, perhaps none is so remarkable, both on account of its causes and origin, its aim, and its effects on the social condition of the nations, as that ordinarily spoken of as the French Revolution We have pictures of the plebeians struggling page 4 against the grinding tyranny of the Roman aristocracy; of times about which Macaulay makes the minstrel to sing:—

"For then there was no tribune to speak the word of might,

Which makes the rich man tremble, which guards the poor man rights."

In another page of the World's Annals, we see a Longbeard endeavouring to alleviate the condition of his brother Saxons under the ruthless Norman; a Rienzi trying to awaken the Romans to imitate the example of their glorious forefathers, when they obtained their tribune in "the brave days of old a Tyler made a leader by a maddened populace whom tyrannous exactions had goaded to frenzy; a rising under Ket against enclosures of common land; a general revolution among a loyal people to withstand, ay, and to punish, the perfidy of one who had been trained to believe that the millions were created for him, and not he for the millions; and last, but not least, we have the spectacle of a free and a god-serving people, who had fixed their homes among the sylvan solitudes on the other side of the wide Atlantic, uniting as one man to shake from them the chains which even pursued them to the home that they had fondly thought the ocean would secure free. We have innumerable convulsions depicted on the pages of history, but not one of them is presented to us with such a variety of phases as that Revolution which, in a few short months, transformed the ancient kingdom of France from the darkness of night to the confusion of chaos.

When Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette succeeded to the French Crown, Europe was very different to the several nations which constituted our western continent in the time of Francis and our own Henry VIII. Erasmus, and Luther, and Gottenburg with his printing press, had cast a burning brand amidst the millions of the commonalty, which, while it diffused light, also eradiated such materials of combustion, that the devouring flame could not be quenched, even though the swords of the mighty were employed for centuries in cutting down rubbish to smother it. Religion was fast casting aside the cloudy veil of superstition; and, as must ever be with real religion, it was marching under the protection of that which cannot fail to be invincible—Universal Truth. Truth is the peculiar attribute of the Omnipotent, and the march of man towards it must of necessity be both a glorious and a successful march—ending in eternity.

Hence religious and political freedom will invariably be found going hand-in-hand. Sometimes they may appear as if coming into collision, but this can only be when either the political freedom, or the religion, is wanting in the vital element of Truth. And the two did march hand-in-hand. In England the flame burst forth in our Great Revolution—a continuous struggle from before the year 1600 to the accession of the Prince of Orange in 1688. In France also there had been a struggle, but the strong arm of power had succeeded too well in deadening the sacred flame. The flame was put out, but the burning ashes still re- page 5 mained, and continued till the raging element again appeared, and startled the world by the uncontrollable fury with which it scathed everything that came in contact with it.

Louis Quatorze, le Grand Monarch, had not only insisted upon the indefeasible right of kings to govern arbitrarily, but also to lead what moral life seemed good to the kingly mind. Kings, he held, were exceptional beings, and were not bound by the ordinary codes of morality which fettered common mortals. Therefore he had his Maintenon, and other Delilahs, as suited his kingly whims. To him the people he governed were as slaves—they existed but for his sole pleasure. And so he got and spent, and, like the rest of us frail mortals, he died and was buried, and carried only a little cerecloth to rot with him in his grave. The only thing he could have been said to do effectually, was to demoralise the people over whom he had been destined to govern. His great-grandson, Louis the Fifteenth, improved upon such a kingly model, and in his turn kept his Pompadour; and loaded all who gratified his selfish desires, with the bread which his tax-gatherers wrung from the growling poor. His end was like the end of his kind.

And then, in 1774, came poor Louis the Sixteenth, and his wife, the ill-starred Marie-Antoinette. Rousseau was now middle-aged, Voltaire was an octogenarian, fast sinking into his grave; but though they in the body were going, their disciples, the Philosophes, still were active, until the whole of France had well nigh become leavened with their cheerless scepticism. With no religion to guide them, with a vitiated philosophy to lead them to speculate upon they knew not what, with an example of immorality among the royalty and nobility such as a nation has rarely been cursed with, it can be readily understood that the people of France were, on the accession of Louis the Sixteenth, in as dangerous a condition as it is possible for a people to be. Louis was only nineteen when he took upon himself the government of a people whom only one of the world's transcendental geniuses could have succeeded in managing. His beautiful wife had seen but eighteen summers. Poor souls! how little recked they, as the gaudy butterflies which usually flit, and buzz, and play their useless lives out around the stool of royalty, came to salute the rising morn; how little recked they of the abyss which was even now beginning to gape beneath them, and which, in a few short years, should yawn with its horrible jaws, and swallow them all indiscriminately into the unfathomable waste of eternity!

The year 1774 was one which could not fail to have a great influence upon the minds of a people who had already begun to look abroad into the world for new forms of things. The preceding year, the people of Boston, in America, had thrown out the whole of a ship's cargo of tea, which was being forced upon them as taxed by England. The standard of revolt was raised, and the whole of France sympathized with the movement of the sturdy colonists. In 1775 Bunker's Hill was fought, and the aims of the Americans to form a Republic became clearly defined. France hailed page 6 the news with delight, and in 1778, Lafayette, with his volunteer force, sailed across the Atlantic. The insurgents wore successful; the oppressions of Britain were among the things of the past; a Republic was erected in the New World, which thenceforth would tower as an inviting beacon to the down-trodden nations of the Old. Lafayette returned in glory; and in every town—nay, in almost every village throughout France, the starving myriads could talk of nothing but Scipio Americanus, and liberty, and glory, and the price of bread. Who had wanted to starve the New Englanders? The royalty and aristocracy of England. Who was ever starving the poor of France? The pining multitude was not slow in supplying the answer.

And what had the Court of France been about during these nine years? Maurepas, an oily fox, who could smile, and blandish, and be everything to everybody, so long as he could keep himself as the driver of the royal coach, was minister till 1781. The old sinner!

"Let the world jog on as it will,

I'll be free and easy still."

Such was the motto of the careless, unconscionable Maurepas. Turgot, the Economist, was the Controller of the Finances for two years. Famine was an ever-present spectre amongst the poor. There were bread riots; Turgot advocated a freedom from imposts in the domestic corn trade; Turgot was dismissed through the pressure of the selfish courtiers, and the riots were quelled for the nonce by suspending a number of the grumbling wretches on a gallows forty feet high. Turgot had hinted that it would be only fair to tax the nobles and clergy as well as the commoners; the nobles and clergy drove him from office with execrations.

And then Necker, the Genevese, was called to the exchequer; but he could not see how to meet the expenditure, unless the nobles, and clergy, and magistracy, who necessarily possessed so great a proportion of the whole wealth of the kingdom, were taxed like their poorer neighbours. He had to go the way of Turgot.

Old Maurepas, sadly against his will, was summoned to join his ancestors, and for two years the finance department could scarcely be said to have a director. Finally Calonne was appointed to keep the poor ship Argos afloat. As a thoroughly commercial man, Calonne kept the concern going, as thoroughly commercial men have often been too apt to do. He issued bills, and borrowed again and again to pay them with. The Court was jubilant, simply because the money came. The butter flies and grasshoppers were merry and happy, for they had a few days of summer. The cash was found, and the cup went round, and the dancers hopped right daintily. Three years passed away, and Calonne found that his power of borrowing farther had entirely failed him. He, as a last resource, persuaded the king to call a convocation of the notables. Accordingly, the notable men from all parts of France assembled at Versailles, and they lost no time in expressing their strong objection to both Calonne and his new plans of taxing. page 7 Oalonne had to gather up his papers and depart like his predecessors; his borrowing could not last for ever. "All the world," said he, "was holding out its hand; I held out my hat."

Cardinal Loménie de Brienne now took the helm, but he only hurried the devoted vessel the quicker into the gaping maelstrom. The notables were dismissed, but Loménie even found the Supreme Court of Law as refractory as the Convention. To raise money he was about to issue stamp-taxes, and requested the Parliament of Paris to register them. It refused; and when it discovered the Cardinal's scheme for nominating the members of a Plenary Court to undertake the registration, it declared itself in permanent session till its differences with the Government were settled. The upshot of it all was that the Parliament was banished from the capital, and some of its members suffered from Loménie's "lettres de cachet." Though the Parliament was eventually recalled, yet it was plain that its members and Cardinal Loménie de Brienne could never work cordially together. Loménie was dismissed, loaded with pensions and gifts bestowed by a grateful Court, and the Genevese Necker was once more recalled. He immediately advised another Convocation of the Notables, as a preliminary step to the assembly of a States-General. The Second Convocation of Notables met in the latter part of 1788, and, after agreeing about the meeting of a States-General, it separated without settling how the different bodies of the New Assembly should meet, or how they should discuss and vote upon the various questions which might arise.

The elections of the States-General commenced with the year 1789. On Sunday, the 4th of May, the elected members assembled, and marched in procession to the church of St. Louis, at Versailles. Then came the great question: how should they meet to discuss and vote? "In three separate chambers," said the king and courtiers. "In one," responded the representatives of the people. "No, in three," reiterated royalty and the court; "one for the nobles, a second for the church, and the third for the people—thus, there being only three votes, we, the court, can always secure the nobles and the clergy, and therefore shall ever swim on a majority of two to one." Two to one; the nobles and clergy to have two of the national votes, and the representatives of the people—of the twenty-five millions—to have only one!" Nay, nay, stubbornly ejaculated the representatives of the people," do not hope to play the cards into your own hands in that fashion. We represent twenty-five millions of human souls; we have twenty-five millions of human bodies to back us; and we must perforce have a main voice in whatever concerns the nation."

For seven long weeks the determined representatives of the people continued to doggedly sit and do nothing, and at length they found the door of the very room in which they assembled closed against them. They were deprived of their ordinary hall; but they had assembled as a meeting of representatives, and a meeting they would hold, even though it were in the open air. page 8 They accordingly adjourned to the Tennis Court hard by, and with President Bailly at their head, swore that they would cling together as one man till they had accomplished that for which they had been appointed—that is to say, until they had made the Constitution. Six hundred save one took this oath amidst the waning elements; but neither the thunder's peal nor the deluge of rain could cool the ardour of those men. They had met to regenerate their country, and they fervently trusted that they would live to compass that end. The Third Estate was victorious, and at length both the nobility and clergy were compelled to submit, and to meet in one house with the representatives of the people.

After such manifestations of a popular spirit as the Court had witnessed since the meeting of the States-General, it became of the utmost importance to secure the devotion of the troops. Their devotion was gone; for how could soldiers be expected to remain loyal to a master who could only pay them for their services by promises? Then again, the private soldiers who happened to be intelligent and ambitious, were galled by the thought that, strive as they might for promotion, their plebeian blood would for ever bar them from attaining higher than a subaltern's position. Sergeant they might become, but the ambition of a genius must be content there. France was cursed by a system which has so long degraded the rank and file of the British soldiery; the higher commands in a regiment were not dependent upon ability, but were exclusively retained for those who could boast themselves of gentle blood. No wonder, then, that Marshal Broglio soon found that his Gardes Francaises were not to be depended upon; that the only troops upon whom he could rest sure, were the aliens from Flanders and Germany, and the body-guards from Switzerland.

The whole of Paris was in a ferment. The troops had been inspected; the Guardes Françaises had been ordered to confine themselves to their quarters, and had dared to disobey; and on Sunday, the 12th of July, came the news that Necker, the favourite minister, had been dismissed, and had been commanded to depart secretly to his native Geneva. "Bread, bread, bread!" was the cry in every street, and in every alley. "We are starving, and he who was to provide us with bread is sent away—is now posting home to Switzerland." Immense crowds gathered in the streets; St. Antoine—the Whitechapel of Paris—poured forth its thousands upon thousands of hungry, squalid images of mortality; the crowd wanted to vent its rage on something, and congregated rascality was ready to give a direction to the fury of the storm. Bread, lettres de cachet, tyranny, the Bastile—such was the burden of the groans and the yells of the thousands who had wandered, like maddened dogs, from their kennels of St. Antoine; and immediately the stream of human life set towards the famed state prison which skirted and frowned upon their miserable homes. "To the Bastile! to the Bastile! raze it to the ground!"

To the Bastile they went. Howling and bellowing as only a page 9 Celtic mob can howl and bellow, the thousands clustered like savages around the devoted pile. With a noise which we attribute as a peculiarity of the infernal regions, did that furious crowd accompany the sharp crack of their fire-arms, and the herculean blows of their crows and hammers-The noise won the day, and, for once, the majesty of mere numbers was triumphant. The prisoners were set free, and the gallant defenders of that venerable remnant of feudalism were captured, and many of the unfortunate wretches were tom limb from limb as they were being escorted towards the Hotel de Ville. That 14th of July is a notable day in both the history of France and of the world. On that day a starving populace was revenging itself for their complaining brethren, who, when they dared to ask for bread, were suspended as scarecrows on a gibbet forty feet high.

The huge unwieldy mass of humankind had tasted blood, and was not long in returning to the horrid vindictiveness of its un-cultured nature. Henceforth it quickly assumed the dread ferocity of the famished wild beast.

'Tis true the Bastile was demolished, but the stones which they rolled from its ancient walls would not furnish the Parisians with bread. Bread, bread, bread! Why did bread continue so dear? Could not a maximum limit be put upon its price? A few of the king's servants had been hanged at the Lanterne, and "a la lanterne! a la lanterne!" had been the cry which had accompanied many a poor baker to his last and gratuitous swing in the mid-air; and yet the bread, the bread, continued to get scarcer and scarcer, dearer and dearer. From early morn could those dolorous strings of women be seen waiting at the baker's door for bread which often would never reach them; en queue, en queue,—ah, yes, en queue, indeed they might remain the whole miserable day, and still no bread, no bread! Starvation was becoming mad; and, in the midst of this exasperation, news came from the palace at Versailles that the king had been feasting, amidst music and dance, a troup of aliens who had just arrived from Flanders. This was too much for the thousands of women who were daily spending so many weary hours en queue before the baker's door. On the 3rd of October the king gave the dinner to his alien supporters; on die 4th the account of it reached Paris; and early in the morning of the 5th, ten thousand women were in the streets of the capital, with dark vengeance depicted on their starved countenances. Mademoiselle Théroigne, whose beauty was her only fortune, like a fallen angel had stepped into the crowd. With her petticoats daintily tucked up, and the regimental drum before her, did that lovely but unfortunate maiden beat her strange rat-a-ta-tat. First, the unprecedented crowd of women thrust themselves into the Hotel de Ville. They penetrated into every room; for what guard could shoot, or bayonet, or even lay unseemly hands on female besiegers? bad indeed would it have been for the Town Hall and the city officers that day, had not the ready-witted Usher Maillard seized a drum, and, with a brisk rat-a-ta-tat, shouted the magic words page 10 au roi, au roi—à Versailles, à Versailles! The Town Hull was freed from its swarms of petticoats as if by the stroke of a talisman, and the vast train of ten thousand women followed Usher Maillard towards the Champs Elysées.

What a spectacle! Ten thousand women marching the long ten miles towards the king's palace at Versailles! Demoiselle Théroigne sitting as drummer on one of the guns which they chugged along! A damp, cold day of October has very rarely presented the world with such a scene. Were it lady or gentleman whom that procession overtook, all alike had need to alight, and trudge on the muddy road afoot. No carriage and gaudy trappings while these thousands are wanting bread; alight, whoever you may be, and kiss the mire with your trim-cased feet, and drag your useless trains over the ruts which your rumbling chariots have made.

Meanwhile, news of the approach of this singular throng had been whispered into the ears of a few of the residents of Versailles. The States-General—or what we may perhaps better designate as the National Assembly—was sitting. "Mounier," warned Mirabeau as he walked up to the President's chair, "Pans marche sur nous." "Je n'en sms rien," returned the incredulous President, and attempted to go on with the orders of the day. But the tidings spread, and there was evidently a feeling of uncertain discomfort in the assembly. Anon a hubbub was heard at the entrance of the hall, and in streamed a number of women, headed by the clever Usher Maillard. The amazons made him their interpreter. They came, said he, for bread. "Du pain, du pain,"—this was what they wanted,—" du pain, et pas tant long discours."

What could the Assembly answer to such words as these? It agreed to send a petition to his Majesty—nay, a direct deputation of women should go with it, and beg Majesty for bread with their own tongues. And again, were there not the aliens about the palace; aliens who had trampled on the national cockade? These must be exterminated along with the black cockade which they had so swaggeringly assumed. The deputation was admitted into Louis' presence; he talked smoothly—nay, it was rumoured that he even kissed one of the fair demoiselles; but he could give them no direct response about the bread. Time passed quickly; the women and the rascality of St. Antoine swarmed the palace, and sorely pressed the poor guards. At length one of the officers lost patience, and chased a few of the most aggressive intruders away. A wild cry was raised; rascality drew its sword and presented its firelock; blood was spilt, and the poor guards were massacred without mercy. Now see majesty retreat to its innermost chamber in consternation; the women, aided by the mob of male vagabonds, forcing their way into almost every room, and majesty in vain seeking means of escaping from the palace. Surely such a scene ought to be pregnant with lessons, both to every thoughtful king and to every serious student! But Lafayette, on his noble white charger, has arrived with his guards; the abode of royalty is at length cleared of its motley throng; and poor Louis XVI., for a page 11 moment, consoles himself with the thought, that now ho may once more be permitted to rule in peace. No, no; it is at Paris where the people are starving—where they want bread; and our king must return with us to Paris, in order that he may see the wretchedness of the breech-less men of the metropolis himself. The women and the sans-culottes have gained the day, and both Lafayette's military, and the lack-bread women, and the breechless men, escort their sovereign to the Tailleries in triumph.

From the day when those ten thousand women fetched their king from Versailles to their own Tuilleries in Paris, poor Louis the Sixteenth was practically a prisoner. During the next two years the National or Constituent Assembly was busily engaged at what they called "making the Constitution." Never, I ween, was there a stranger gathering of men than that which sat for those two long years at their impracticable task of making the Constitution. Twelve hundred men—sent from every corner of France—presented a wondrous diversity of character. First, were the royalists—men who, either from the prejudice of class, from interest, or from principle, were staunch supporters of the monarchy, were it limited, were it absolute. These formed but a small minority in the Assembly; and, as they found their votes had no influence, gradually absented themselves from the debates, and, eventually, from the kingdom. Then were the Constitutionalists—men who, while seeking a radical change in the old government of France, were yet unwilling to part with royalty altogether, though they were desirous to curtail the kingly power by every possible check. And finally, were the uncompromising Republicans—who believed in nothing which savoured of either king or hereditary nobility. According to them, every title of address beyond "Fellow-citizen," was an insult to France and to rational humanity. The real struggle of the French Revolution was between these two latter sections of the Assembly—between the moderates and the ultras.

Mirabeau, born a noble, but who now saw in the good of the people the cause of his country, was as thorough a reformer as any of them, I believe that even a Republic would not have frightened him, had he seen that his country was ripe for it. But that it was not ripe was plain to him; and he saw that a Republic in France, at present, only meant an anarchic chaos. Hence he began to find himself, day by day, more estranged from the ultra-republicans on the left.

Was ever a city so stirred within itself as Paris during this Revolution? I think I see the giant Mirabeau standing before that Assembly of twelve hundred, and on the one side battering the remnants of feudalism to pieces, and on the other stamping down the senseless clamour of the men of one idea who gathered under the shadow of the ultra-republican Mountain. How earnestly he rubbed away the false gloss which, for so many ages, had been gathering on feudalistic society; and, on the other hand, how unsparingly he exposed the canting hollowness of many of the page 12 Jacobin loaders! See the venom which steals from the eye of the incorruptible Robespierre. He winces under the manly onslaught of the honest Mirabeau; he feels that the noble patriot penetrates into his inmost soul, and he hates the man who has the power so to read him. How stormy waxes the debate in this making of the Constitution! Now the ultras appear to be gaining the day; but up springs the indefatigable Mirabeau; words of fire issue from his indignant lips; he speaks as a man—as a Frenchman; and whatever is noble and intelligent in France no longer wavers; Mirabeau has not thundered forth his eloquence in vain.

But follow the members of that National Assembly from their common hall. The few royalists go to prepare for emigrating from their country; the Mountain retires en masse to its Jacobin hall, where the friend of the people, Marat, and Robespierre, the incorruptible, and the thorough-going Danton, have no Mirabeau to keep them within reasonable limits, and to expose their intolerant designs. And where does Mirabeau—the noble Mirabeau—wend his way? To his lodgings, where he stretches himself on his couch, and thinks, and thinks, till his brain is well nigh exhausted with the depth and variety of his anxious thoughts. He feels as if France depends upon his efforts, and heroically he struggles on. He was full of animation and even of gaiety when in the social circle; but with all this the man was alone—solitary even amidst the myriads of his countrymen for whom he so valiantly fought. Such men are moral and intellectual kings amongst us, and must ever be solitary.

He saw the inflammatory journals and broad-sheets of Marat, and the growing influence of the secret clubs. He felt the stupendous power which the Jacobins might obtain; for, corresponding with the mother society, which constantly held its debates in the Jacobin hall, it was marvellous to see with what rapidity thousands of its daughters were born in all the towns and villages throughout France. At the Feast of Pikes, he beheld the mock re-union of all parties of Frenchmen at Fatherland's Altar in the Champs de Mars. He heard the oaths of the myriads who went there in procession. Je le jure, je le jure—ah! how often have those words been solemnly uttered even while a determination to break the oath has been yet forming in the heart! Poor Mira-beau! with what bitterness would those broken vows come to his memory! And yet his countrymen took them; and, with all their faults, they still continued to be his countrymen. At length, the news came that French blood had been spilt. The soldiers stationed near Nancy, under General Bouille, had arrears of pay due to them. The revolutionary spirit was fast spreading among the ranks. A number of them refused to obey orders; closed the gates of Nancy against their brave commander; nay, tired upon his advancing columns. Then followed a rush, and the fire of musketry, and the din of clashing arms—Frenchman against Frenchman, till the disaffected were for the time subdued. Quick did all classes among the Parisians arm, and in walking through page 13 the streets of the capital by night, a citizen scarcely felt sure of his life. The Jacobin Club became bolder and bolder; the incendiary placards which were posted in the streets were ever increasing in the violence of their tone; and Mirabeau saw that unless something decisive was done, and done quickly, his country would drift into anarchy. As a last effort to save his beloved France, he resolved to give his assistance to the Court. He renewed his herculean struggles till his overtasked frame could bear no more. Wailing the fate of his poor France; wondering what the other side of the grave would disclose to him; the great, the noble Mirabeau yielded to the summons of death. He fell like a heathen of old. "Ah!" murmured he, as he gazed upon the last sun which in this world he was destined to behold," if that be not God, it must be very like him."

With the death of Mirabeau in the spring of 1791, may be said to have fled the hopes both of royalty and of the lovers of order. Only a fortnight afterwards, the king purposed to dine at St. Cloud, where he intended to remain a short time for his health's sake. His coach was drawn up before the palace gates in the Place de Carrousel, but the alarm had spread throughout the city. An immense crowd had soon flocked to the square; Louis and his wife entered the carriage, and the order was given to move forward. But no, royalty must not stir from its own palace. Strong aims seized the reins of the prancing steeds, and for a full hour and three-quarters royalty sat still. Nous ne voulons que le roi parle, was shrieked from a thousand throats, and royalty had to retire once more into the Tuilleries. Poor royalty! it could not so much as get to spend its Easter holiday even at its pretty country-seat at St. Cloud—a distance of but four or five miles from the capital!

From this moment it was plain that the members of the royal family were prisoners in their own palace, and therefore their constant thoughts were directed towards securing the means for their flight. On the night of Monday, the 20th of June, Louis the Sixteenth, with his wife and children, escaped from Paris on their way towards the German frontier. They were recognised, however, at Sainte-Ménehould, by Drouet, an old dragoon officer, who closely pursued them as far as Varennes, where he raised the inhabitants, and stopped the king's further progress. On Saturday of the same week, the royal pair was triumphantly brought back to Paris, never more to quit it. Three weeks afterwards one might have seen the ultras of Paris crowding towards Fatherland's Altar in the Champ de Mars. They went to sign a petition that the king should be deposed. But hark! what meant that shout around the altar? Some one beneath the platform upon which the subscribers stood. The boards were torn up, and lo! two wretched specimens of humanity were kneeling there, and they it was who, with a small gimlet, had been boring the shoes of the unsuspecting petitioners. The poor affrighted wights were madly dragged forth. They were first thrust into the nearest guard-house as spies of page 14 Lafayette, and finally punished for their whimsical curiosity by being hoisted for their last sad swing into eternity. The mob had begun to take upon itself the sovereign right of the executive; and the indignant Lafayette rode forth, with the bewildered Mayor Bailly, to read the riot act, and with the military to execute it. French blood was again shed, and this time even on Fatherland's Altar. The sore may appear to heal, but the healing will be false. The wound will continue to fester till completely washed away with blood.

But now it is the nut-brown October, and the Constitution, which the National Assembly has been so long in building, is complete. So they say; and surely one might hope for the Millenium. The labours of that historical States-General, or Constituent or National Assembly, which, more than twenty-seven months ago, swore, in the Tennis Court, amidst the thunder's roar, and under the drenching rain, that it would not separate till it had done the work for which it came together,—the labours of that strange gathering of twelve hundred representative men are now ended; and King Louis has accepted the Theoretical Constitution which it had framed. The National Assembly had dissolved itself, and had made the singular and absurd provision that none of its members should be eligible for election in the new Legislative Assembly which their wisdom had formed. The fiats for the elections have gone forth, and now the Legislative Assembly under the Theoretical Constitution has met, and all true constitutionalists look for peace at last.

Is it peace?—What peace so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many? Fond hopes of peace, whilst a whole nation is gone mad! How can there be peace under a Constitution which has not been sealed in blood? How can there be peace whilst uneasy insecurity reigns, and tumult rises, in every city, and village, and hamlet in France; while murder goes rampant in Avignon; whilst news is brought of the loss of St. Domingo and sugar, of the continental despots uniting to extinguish the very life out of our poor France, of a re-actionist camp at Jalès, and of brigands preparing everywhere to ride over innocence, industry, and patriotism? Looking for peace when not a single ministry can be formed which can satisfactorily carry on the executive! Good, honest Boland! I think I see thee sitting in thy study utterly perplexed. The Jacobins suspecting thee of a leaning towards royalty, and condemning thee for thy too scrupulous moderation; the king disliking thee because thou wert a creation of the times, and at heart a republican. I seem to behold thee there with thy face buried in thy hands, heaving a deep sigh in thy bewilderment. But now the door is pushed gently open, and thy angel wife glides to thy side, and places her hand soothingly on thy sorely burdened shoulders. She whispers words of strength to thee; she cheers thee on in thy pilgrimage; she endeavours to dispel the clouds which obstruct thy vision; she is thy companion and comforter, and raises thy soul to the ideal. Ah! page 15 well may thou press her soft hand in thine, for she is one of the world's heroines, and her spirit is made of such a true nobility, as is rarely vouchsafed to this perishing tabernacle of clay. The reigns of government are not for thy hands, O Roland! and well dost thou in relinquishing them to be held by more adventurous or more debased spirits.

When will this end? The king constantly using his veto against all important measures; a wild mob rushing into the palace of the Tuilleries, and forcing their king to assume the red woollen cap; a public procession, in which is borne high in the air such words of intimidation as, "Tremblez tyrans, voila les sansculottes." When we see these things, surely, where can the end be? In blood, one fears—in blood. The king cannot procure a ministry to act with him; bread continues scarce; and all public affairs are in a state of stagnation. Nay, the foes without are gathering around our devoted country, and yet the government remains inactive. "Send me six hundred men who know how to die," wrote Barbaroux, to the municipality of Marseilles; and forthwith start five hundred and seventeen men on their wearisome northward journey. Each one of the five hundred and seventeen offers himself as a man who knows how to die.

And while Marat is hatching his sanguinary plots in the cellars and kennels of Paris, do those dusty and footsore five hundred arrive. Some happy moment has inspired the soul-stirring song of the Marseillese, a song which has led thousands upon thousands of brave Frenchmen to carry their lives in their hands with the determination to do or die. Now the Jacobins receive the five hundred with open arms; a public dinner is given to them; the different sections of Paris are busy organizing themselves into armed committees, and everyone feels that the volcano of human passions is ready to burst.

But list! What sound was that from the eastern suburb of the metropolis? Surely the tocsin from some steeple or tower. But hark again! Is not that another bell ringing forth its agitated voice in response? Ay, and now another, and another sounds, until all the steeples of Paris utter their loud summons. And as the morning dawns, vast concourses from the different sections of the city move towards the Tuilleries as its centre. There has been no sleep for royalty during the past night. The few soldiers which the king has yet remaining to him have been under arms throughout the whole weary hours of darkness, and are completely jaded. The national troops cannot be depended on—they will not fight against the liberties of France. Only the Swiss are staunch and trae. There are a thousand of them, and they will stand like the solid rocks among which they were cradled. The king has forsaken the poor Swiss, and, without leaving orders, has sought safety with his family in the Salle de Manège, where the assembly is sitting. The Place du Carrousel is filled; on the inner side of the barriers stand the few Swiss, on the outer stand the Marseillese, backed by the whole of rabid France. The Marseillese demand page 16 entrance; the Swiss have no orders from their king and commander to that effect, and therefore must refuse. The infuriated Marseillese fire the three cannons which they have brought with them; the Swiss have no orders, but, of course, must defend themselves. They, in return, nervously raise their firelocks to their shoulders, O Swiss! see how those cannon belch destruction at you. You must not stand passively to die; the chateau is in your care; it is assailed; therefore—fire! Volley follows volley unceasingly, and many are the dead among the mad Parisians, and their leaders, the Marseillese, who knew how to die. And bravely stand those noble Swiss to their post, and deadly is their aim amongst that surging mass of humanity. But a messenger hastily presses forward to those valiant Swiss; he bears in his hand the king's written order that they shall cease firing. Cease firing? cease firing, when the cannon and musketry from those incarnate devils below are mowing us down?

Ah, poor, noble Swiss! Ye had been trained to obey,—ay, even in the face of grim death. Sad fate! No escape for ye, ye sons of the everlasting hills. In front, behind, in whatever direction you turn, a horrible death stares you in the face.

They seek shelter in despair. Some leap at once into the jaws of death. About three hundred rush towards the Champs Elysées, the majority of whom are shot down like dogs as they fly in separate parties. A few run right across the leaden hail, and find a temporary protection in the Legislative Assembly. Fifty are being escorted by the National Guards to the Hotel de Ville, when the breechless crowd bursts through the lines, and massacre the hapless prisoners to a man. O! that tenth of August, 1792, was a fearful and yet a memorable day in the history both of France and of the world. For many, many ages will the lovers of true nobility heave a mournful sigh, as they think of the heroic devotion of those ill-fated Swiss guards.

After spending three days in three small upper rooms connected with the hall in which the Legislative Assembly sat; after hearing the suspension of himself as Hereditary Representative or King being moved, Louis the Sixteenth was, with his family, taken as close prisoner to the Temple. Danton was declared Minister of Justice, and his first act was to obtain a decree empowering the arrest of all suspected of designing against the liberty of the people. On one evening the decree was demanded, on the following four hundred unhappy suspects were hurried from their domiciles, and exchanged their soft couches for the straw pallets or the hard floors of the Parisian prisons. The barriers are sealed; the ends of the streets and thoroughfares are guarded; and the nightly arrests follow each other till upwards of a thousand political prisoners are in the charge of the patriot turnkeys. And behold that novel machine which has been erected for the curious of Paris to gaze upon. Dr. Guillotine's practical invention stands waiting for its victims, and the new Tribunal of Justice of the seventeenth shall not let it long remain idle. The latter clays of August witness page 17 the tumbril daily carrying its doomed ones to that dread engine; but even the decapitation which that so speedily accomplishes, does not satisfy the sanguinary desires of some of the sanscullotic patriots. While the ministers are enrolling troops to go to meet Brunswick on the frontiers,—what, O Marat! what, O Villainy! what execrable designs have ye been hatching?

On Sunday, the 2nd of September, the tocsins are once more sounding in all parts of Paris. The sansculottes are crowding the streets, and rascality is marching in arms. The Abbé Sicard, with five unfortunate companions, is being conducted to the Abbaye Prison; rascality thrusts its head into the carriage with vituperative speech; the fellow will not withdraw his head; he will not allow the window-sash of the carriage to be raised; he will speak of vengeance and of traitors; and at length one of the priests loses patience, and strikes him with a cane. There is a rush of rascality; the carriages are smashed, and the poor priests are massacred, only poor Sicard being saved. Like the enraged tiger who in an instant returns to his native ferocity at the taste of blood, did that fearful multitude lash itself into fiendish madness over the life-blood of those wretched victims near the Abbaye Prison. I think I hear its awful voice. "Have we not traitors enough on our borders, who are bringing all the nations of Europe upon us? How can we go with confidence to withstand them, while we have plotting traitors in our very midst? Are not the Suspects who lie in our prisons the most dangerous of traitors? Let us free ourselves from them first. To the prisons; to the prisons; and death to the traitors and the friends of the emigrants!"

To the prisons they go, and many poor prisoners feel their flesh creep as they hear with dread forebodings the approach of those noisy and ruthless murderers.

Before the prisons are thousands upon thousands of spectators, and right in front of the crowd are ruffians fully armed, with murder stamped on their foreheads. A few of the intellectual ringleaders march into the interior. The various cells are opened by their myrmidons, and the hapless prisoners are dragged forth. "What is your name—profession—cause of being suspected? Oh! we see in your countenance that you are a traitor to liberty; let him be taken to the prison La Force." The doomed wretch is dragged to the entrance of the prison; no sound of Vive la Nation accompanies him, and with a savage yell he is received on the points of the spears and bayonets of the bloodthirsty ruffians who stand there waiting for their prey. For four long days they continue their murderous labours. The dead bodies begin to scent the air, and large quantities of quick-lime are procured as disinfectants; carters are paid by the load for transporting the ghastly wrecks of humanity to the cemeteries; and fair Paris, for the third time in its history, has become a horrible scene of human butchery. By Thursday, the 6th of September, ten hundred and eighty-nine human beings have been thus sent to fathom the unknown depths of Eternity. O, Marat! Ami du peuple! O, Danton! Minister page 18 of Justice! O, Robespierre, the Incorruptible! Ye have witnessed these things, and have not said Nay. Murder is rampant; and think ye, ye demagogues, to escape? Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.

Satiated at last, the bloody work ceases. Lafayette has escaped across the borders; the Duke of Brunswick is invading the land by Argonne. But France has still a Dumouriez, stanch and true,—ay, and a soldier not even second to the Hero of Two Worlds. With rain ever accompanying them, the Germans come among the woods and marshes of Argonne. But the fertile brain of Dumouriez is at work, and he throws up barricades to stop the progress of the enemy, and harasses poor Brunswick on all sides. Try as they may, utterly confused and cooped up amidst the woods, the marshes, and the deluge of rain, the Germans can get no farther. Day after day their position becomes worse, and they are only too glad in being able to secure their retreat. The September which witnessed the butcheries of Paris, witnessed the raw troops of the nation nobly straining every nerve to drive the enemies of their country back to their native Rhine. And they were successful.

The National Convention has also assembled, and the Legislative Assembly is defunct. The real power is gradually passing into the hands of the Ultra-Republicans, of whom Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, with the journalist and poet Camille Demoulins, are the most active and conspicuous members. Roland returns for a time, but his actions are jealously watched by the Mountain. For Roland, though a reformer, ay, and a republican, yet loves order, and therefore is disliked by all excepting his own party of Moderates or Girondists.

Ten hundred and eighty-nine suspected traitors have been offered at the altar of Moloch; the fifty prisoners brought from Orleans have been massacred as they were being conducted into Versailles; terror may have been struck into the hearts of many; but what is the use of all this while the archconspirator, the one great cause of national treason, is still in the flesh? "The life of Louis Capet," cry the Ultra-Republicans. "And two hundred and sixty thousand aristocratic heads," chimes in the horse-leech Marat," and then, and then, we may indeed hope for deliverance and peace." And Louis' accusation is prepared, and on this, the 11th of December, he is arraigned at the bar of the House of Convention.

We will not keep company with the patriotic dames who watched that trial, much the same as they would watch the play from an opera-box. There are, perhaps, many even in that Convention Hall whom the mind would willingly contemplate. The aged Malesherbes, pleading for his sovereign in dumb eloquence; the astute Roland, scarcely knowing which way to turn; the heroic Madame Roland, his wife, sitting as a calm spectator; the chivalrous Barbaroux, now beginning to doubt whether his Marseillese had brought with them the germ either of order or of peace,—over these and others the mind would fain linger as we look into that page 19 densely crowded hall; and as we turn from them, and glance at Marat and Robespierre, we feel a strange shudder in trying to imagine what the future may bring to all these. But we will not linger there, for the end is certain—Louis is condemned to death by a majority of some fifty votes—to death within twenty-four hours. Many of the Girondins have recorded their votes for death through a sort of fear, and yet the thought of what is being done is bitterness and wormwood to them. Henceforth no peace between the Girondins and the Ultras of the Mountain—it shall be war, war to the knife—to the Guillotine.

It was a cold morning, on the 21st of January, 1793, when Louis Capet was carried in the tumbril to the foot of the Guillotine which had been erected in the Place de la Revolution. The drums are beating loudly, so that a voice can scarcely be heard. "Taisezvous," cries the discrowned monarch in exasperation. He reluctantly submits to be bound, and then steps to the front of the scaffold. By his side is the fearful knife; around him are the six executioners, with Abbé Edgeworth his only attendant; beneath him are the revolutionary troops. Before his mortal eyes human life is teeming; on the other side of that dread machine is eternity. "Frenchmen," says the unfortunate mortal, "I die innocent. It is from the scaffold, and near approaching of God, that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies; I desire that France" Tambours," shouts the stentorian lungs of the general in charge, and the victim's voice is heard no more. "Executioners, do your duty and, amidst the rolling drums, the fated man is seized, and, after a short struggle, is pinioned to the board. The heavy axe falls, the head drops into the basket, and Louis the Sixteenth is no more. Luckless sovereign—even now only thirty-eight years old.

But the execution of Louis the Sixteenth only served to exasperate the various parties of the Revolution more and more. Many had been opposed to it, and these could not help looking upon the main movers of it with dislike. This distrustful and retaliatory feeling was reciprocal; for how could the resolute regicide do otherwise than have an ill-feeling towards those who, by their manner if not by their words, intimated that they considered that a crime had been committed. And Dumouriez, the victorious general of the N.E., was amongst the first to express aversion for the deed. Nay, he habitually spoke of it as murder—neither more nor less than bare, revolting murder. He was sick of it; how could he be victorious more, when serving under the orders of wretches who had consummated such a crime? The Convention became suspicious. Was Dumouriez, then, like his predecessor Lafayette, become a traitor? Better to seize time by the forelock, and call him to explain at all events. They sent four commissioners to arrest him; but Dumouriez, as soon as they had clearly told their errand, uttered a few words to the German troop which surrounded him, and the four were instantly pounced upon, and guarded safely across the border to cogitate in German page 20 dungeons. Dumouriez quickly followed them, anil numbered one more among the thousands of French emigrants.

There were scores of talented patriots like Dumouriez in the Convention, and it was clear that there could be no peace between them and the extreme Ultras. How could any French gentleman act with a party to which Marat and Robespierre—to which, the butchers of last September belonged? And mutually accusing one another, the Moderates or Girondins at length ventured to throw aspersions on the sincerity of Danton. This may be said to have sealed their doom; for now Danton cast the full weight of his influence against them, and they were finally expelled the Convention by another raging insurrection of sansculottes, similar to that which had ushered in the dreadful massacres of August and September. Twenty-two of the most talented among the discomfited Girondins were declared under arrest by the remnant of the Convention, which now was compelled to obey the orders of the miscreant Marat.

The days of this Marat were, however, numbered. Not a foe whom he once clutched could hope to escape; but there was one tall, stately maiden in the far north, who was musing on these things, and nerving herself to a sacrifice for her countrymen. The list of suspected even included some of her own friends at Caen, and at length she calmly resolved to act. No sudden deed of passion was hers—everything was foreseen, and quietly balanced in her mind. She obtained a note of introduction to Deputy Duperret, and travelled southwards in the company of her aged valet. She has bid farewell to her home, to her friends, and to the world. Little did her friends, little did that aged valet, suspect the errand upon which she was bound. She arrives in Paris; she quietly engages lodgings, and, walking abroad, purchases a sheath knife. She drives in a cab to the Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine, which is the residence of Marat, and asks to see him. He is ill, and cannot be spoken to. She returns to her hotel and writes a note to him. No answer. Another note she writes, stating that she has an important communication from the seat of rebellion at Caen. She follows it in a cab, and is introduced to the ailing Marat while he is seated, taking a bath. I am from Caen. "Ah! What deputies are there Charlotte names a few. Marat takes his tablets to write them down. "Their heads shall fall before the next fortnight. Barbaroux, Pétion, Louvet,"—but the steel is in his heart. She has struck home. To follow her to the guillotine were useless. She was doomed, but she was prepared for it. What she considered her mission, was completed when Marat shrieked his last A moi, mon ami. With the same unbroken calmness she stood before the judgment seat, and went on her last journey to the fatal axe. She was a meteor shining strangely on the page of history. She had slain Marat; she had taken, as she expressed it, one life, the life of a villain, to save the lives of a thousand of her countrymen. Charlotte Corday lived and died a republican.

To enter fully into the history of the following six months, page 21 which witnessed the total extinction of the leaders of the Moderates or Girondins, would lead us far beyond the limits which we have set ourselves, and would serve only to sicken the mind, by recounting a succession of atrocities which we can scarcely persuade ourselves to belong to this modem age. The nations of Europe were preparing to invade the frontiers of the Republic, and the remnant of the Convention declared Le Peuple Francais debout contre les tyrans. The Jacobins were determined that, in fighting against declared foes abroad, they would clear themselves of every soul who did not heartily co-operate with them at home. And the Jacobins, with their breechless supporters, bad number and strength on their side. Hence the struggle of the Girondins was only the struggle of death. In vain did the Eleven stand at bay in the devoted city of Lyons. The breechless ones must conquer you Poor Barlaroux—chivalrous Barlaroux! there thou goest, footsore and in disguise, with thy unfortunate companions; hiding in the wood by day, travelling in pain through the night. It is of no avail—thy fate pursues thee; thou art doomed. Now thou hast escaped the perils of the sea in that frail Scottish lubber. Thou art once more on the shore of thy native Prance. But hark! A sound of the tramping of men. Surely come to take thee! Thou raisest the pistol to thy head. Fire! Thy brains are scattered upon the soil thou lovedst so well. Poor Barbaroux! Thine was a hard fate,—and yet, better perhaps that, than to be carried, as so many of thy fellow-patriots were, amid the jeering, breechless crowd, on that dreary journey to the guillotine. Thou livedst to hear the last of the majority of them; to hear of the twenty-two—of Valazé stabbing himself to the heart before his judges, and then of his body being earned along the streets with the living twenty-one, and of the heads of the whole twenty-two being lopped off by the inexorable guillotine at the rate of about one per minute. Thou livedst to hear of these things; and at length, O, gallant Barbaroux, it was time for the pistol to go to thy head!

And the luckless Marie Antoinette—she too has disappeared. No crime could be truthfully laid to thy charge; but thou wert in the way, thou daughter of the heroic Thérese, and thou hast been sent to thy long home.

And thou, wife of the fugitive Roland, thou too art among the doomed! The heart bleeds to think of thee. Thou wert ever virtuous and sincere, and a true daughter of Liberty. Thou wert a true woman, and had served thy country well. But thy very talents and virtues were hateful to that bloodthirsty crew. They feared thy spotless purity, and thy unswerving truthfulness cowed them. Poor soul' Thy merciless judges are deaf to thy womanly appeal. To the prison—the cheerless prison—must thou return, and quickly prepare thee for the unknown country. Ah! choicest of earth's mortality! Thou smilest in order to keep up the spirits of thy friends who visit thee; but yet, in the retirement of thy closet, thou weepest bitter, bitter tears, to think of the dear husband whom thy fate will bring to utter, hopeless despair, and of page 22 the daughter whom thou must leave motherless. Thy queenly form is ignominiously borne towards the place of doom, and yet thy solicitude is not for thyself, but for those beside thee, and whose dread journey is linked to thine. "O Liberty, what things are done in thy name!" These must have been bitter words of thine, uttered with the soul's anguish, as thou didst contemplate the exertions of thy life-time. Lamarche, thy companion to the fatal axe, was unnerved; the fortitude of manhood had fled from his soul. Thou, noble lady, wilt die first, to show him how easy a thing it is Sunson, the executioner, says, that for Madame to die first is contrary to order. "Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady." She is pinioned, the neck placed on the frame, and one of the earth's choicest treasures has perished. Let us quit the fatal spot, for the scene is harrowing to the soul.

Destruction is doing its work in earnest. Buonaparte, the obscure lieutenant of artillery, has captured Toulon; at first seventy, and then more than two hundred, have been led out of Lyons to be destroyed by musketry en masse. Amidst the gloom of night, a vessel containing ninety priests has been moored into the middle of the Loire. They are from Nantes, and are fastened in the hold of the flat-bottomed boat. The prison-house, is scuttled by the disciples of Marat, and the vessel, with its living freight of ninety, sinks. Another night, and one hundred and thirty-eight are thrown into the river—one hundred and thirty-eight, among whom are women and infants.

Let us not recount more of these horrors. Never was there a country more racked than this poor France in the winter and spring of 1794. Foes without, wholesale executions of the suspected within—surely, the whole land was in a devouring fever. But now the opponents of the Jacobins were utterly crushed, and the leaders of the Mountain were supreme. Marat had gone to his long account, and there only remained Danton and Robespierre who had, unchecked and unscathed, kept themselves conspicuous in the van of the revolutionists and the ultra-republicans. And these two, Danton and Robespierre, now stood side by side as the chiefs of the triumphant Mountain. But there was no love between them. Danton was a man of a large mind, true to his friends, and a terrible though an open enemy to his political opponents. The guillotine might be always at work, so long as it was for the furtherance of the republican cause; but he took no delight in the destruction of human life from mere vindictiveness, or from mere love of slaughter. He was not by nature suspicious, and of late had become weary of the butcheries around him. He began to express his dissent to the continual and wanton arrests, and at once incurred the envenomed hatred of his coadjutor, Robespierre the Incorruptible. His end had come. He was arrested, and tried along with his friends, the witty Camille Demoulins, and others. The trial was abruptly stopped, in fear that the wild eloquence of this child of nature might provoke a rescue. They were doomed, and Danton and the witty page 23 poet rode side by side in the dread tumbrils. "Our heads will meet there," said he, as he embraced-one of the companions of his fate, and indicated the bag into which both must fall. Ah, Danton! There was a certain rude nobility about thee, but thou didst then travel on a road on which thou hadst sent hundreds more guiltless and quite as noble as ever thou wert.

Vengeance is mine, saith the. Lord, and I will repay. And, truly, vengeance is doing its work in bloody earnest. Robespierre is now supreme. He decrees that there is a God, and, under the Revolutionary Calendar, every tenth day is declared the Sabbath. Reason, and Beauty, and such like, are worshipped as in the old pagan days, until the virtuous Robespierre stops such profanities. Robespierre is the Great High Priest, and will make a religion by legal enactment. Daily now go the tumbrils to the barriers, bearing their living freight of doomed ones. The guillotine is as a constant spectre in the French mind, and a horrible terror sits on all. But the end is quickly drawing nigh. Tallien and others hear that their own names are pricked on the list of doom, and desperation prompts them to bestir themselves. To them it is a question of life or death. Delay and false security were madness, for through them Danton had suffered. The Incorruptible comes down to the Convention, and in a lugubrious speech deplores the lukewarmness of certain patriots. There is only one remedy. The guillotine, the guillotine, must he sharpened; it must fall quicker and quicker. So says the Incorruptible, and is thrown into consternation at not receiving the usual applause. "What can it mean? Wait till the morrow and we will see. Some of their heads shall roll among the sawdust for this strange silence." The morrow has come, and Robespierre is again endeavouring to address the Convention. But no; they will not listen to him; he is accused by Tallien, and, with a number of his supporters, is placed under arrest. The Convention separates—Robespierre escapes—all Paris is arming. The Convention meets again, and declares Robespierre and his confederates outlawed; his party is broken—he hears his foes ascending the stairs of the Hotel-de-Ville—he raises the pistol and fires, but only shatters the jaw; they seize him and his companions, and the following afternoon witnesses them all borne in the tumbrils, to be lopped out of existence by the engines whose velocity they had so lately begged the Convention to increase.

The fall of Robespierre the Incorruptible may be said to have been the fall of Jacobinical sansculottism, and of the anarchic period of the French Revolution. The tumbrils bore their doomed burden to the bloody engine on the very evening of the day when Robespierre was arrested. Ay, along that dreary journey went the aged General Loiserolles, who, availing himself of a mistake of the jailors, contrived to have himself conveyed to the fatal spot in the place of his unsuspecting son. Our countryman, Thomas Paine, was also named amongst the victims of that evening, but a mistake in chalking the innerside of his cell door saved him; and on the page 24 morrow the power of Robespierre had gone, and mercy had once more begun to raise its benign countenance to soften human woes.

The Convention had been a long, a very long time in making and settling the Constitution, but at length the cries from without caused them to act with despatch. The Constitution under the Republic was at length completed on paper, and one of its provisions instantaneously roused all the latent force of Jacobinism and Sansculottism into action. Two-thirds at least of the retiring members of the existing Convention must be elected in the new Legislative Council. Was there ever heard anything so tyrannical and unjust? This was purely a new phase of popular representation and freedom of election! St. Antoine was again and for the last time on its legs. Thousands upon thousands provided them- page 25 selves with arms, and vowing dire vengeance against all traitorous deputies, rolled in the confidence of numbers on their westward journey of reform. The members of the Convention sat debating in utter perplexity. How could they withstand these surging crowds of armed sansculottes? What force had they at command? and, above all, whom had they to command it? They had between five and six thousand troops under their orders, but what were they among so many? However, something must perforce be done. Mention is made of Barras as the most fitted for command; and a whisper is heard of the name of a certain gloomy, sallow-featured artillery officer, who had rendered such signal service at Toulon as well as in Italy. This officer is Citizen Napoleon Buonaparte, who happens to be here—moody, as any man out of employment is apt to be. Citizen Buonaparte is appointed through the influence of Barras, and, after half-an-hour's self-communion, decides to accept the responsible post.

Now a man—nay, now the man of France is at the helm. Cry aloud, ye sansculottes, ye breechless ones; vow with shouts your vengeance during the brief moments of seeming triumph which remain to you; for there is a short, taciturn young man in your midst, who has undertaken to scatter you to the four winds—and lie will do it, for they say his will is of iron. Quick fly the messengers; the bridges are guarded; the cannon is secured; and the vaunting crowd may come. We are ready; our linstocks are at hand; our matches are burning; our guns are charged with grape-shot; and ye, O ye breechless rabble, may do your worst. Law and order and the Convention is on our side, and we have a man at our head who knows how to act.

The crowd of sansculottes advance; they seize the Church of St. Roch; a few shots actually fall on the passages of the Tuilleries. Still the mad multitude presses on; ay, they will even storm us in the palace here. The artillery-officer is ready for them. With compressed, determined lips he waits. The fools! they yet push each other to their fate! It is four o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of October. They are too bold; they will be upon us in a few moments. Buonaparte's lips are opened—it must be. "Fire!" Again and again is the grape-shot belched forth, and by six o'clock the hungry crowd is dispersed, no more to reappear.

The power of the breechless ones was completely broken; that hour or two's hail of grape-shot thoroughly stamped out the life from the anarchic insurrectionists. True, the government of France was not finally settled by it—even now, in 1869, one can scarcely affirm it to be satisfactorily settled; and yet from that evening when Napoleon Buonaparte gave the command to fire, order began to reign, and terror took to flight with the groans of the wounded in front of the Church of St. Roch. From that memorable evening of October, 1795, the influence of the dark-complexioned Corsican began to extend itself, till he had become the man of the country and of the age; and the subsequent page 26 history of France is connected more or less with the history of Napoleon Buonaparte.

Now that the violent convulsions of the Revolution were among the things of the past, how could the thoughtful historian look upon the strange work which they had performed. Historians are fallible, and therefore differ according to their associations, their prejudices, or their individual interests. When I think of the work of blood, my mind wanders back upon the France of poverty and ignorance, which had been left as legacies by the feudal ages. I think of the licentiousness of her sovereigns and of her nobles, and the greed and worldliness of her priesthood. I then turn to the wretched people of the land, who had to bear all the burdens of the country on their aching shoulders. And then the witty, but reckless and scoffing encyclopedists rise before my mind's eye, and I hear the plausible and sarcastic words of the Philosophes, and see them disseminating their revolutionary and sceptical doctrines throughout the length and breadth of the land. The sovereign, the nobility, and the clergy, did not strive after their country's good; they merely sought to crush the life's blood out of their country, in order to obtain means to minister to their own inordinate pleasures. And the people, the people, the twenty-five millions—they were starving, they were starving. The Revolution was inevitable, and its excess of violence was only in proportion to the debt which had for so many ages been accumulating. Deeds of blood were done during those six years, the recounting of which makes the blood curdle in one's veins; but then, think of the hundreds of years during which the combustibles of that six years' explosion were in preparation. The governing classes had become too thoroughly corrupt, to allow any hope of effecting a change excepting by violence,—and who shall set limits when once retaliation is in the hands of the multitude?

"For then there was no Tribune to speak the word of might,
Which makes the rich man tremble, and guards the poor man's right.
There was no brave Licinius, no honest Sextius then;
But all the city, in great fear, obeyod the wicked Ten."

Ay, and all France had too long been ruled by a despotism. The poor people of France had no Tribune—no representative to speak the word of might, and to guard the poor man's right. No, all that the people of France had to do was to patiently suffer—to support their rulers in idle, nay, in licentious luxury, and themselves to want for bare bread. Surely this was very far from the greatest, happiness to the greatest possible number!

Is France—is Europe, better or Worse on account of the French Revolution? Undoubtedly better. A strange, unwieldy Republic had been formed on the western shores of the Atlantic, and stood as a monument of contented liberty to the whole of the Old World. Suffering France bestirred itself, and though its position and its page 27 historical associations prevented it from building an edifice like that of the United States, yet its Revolution served at all events to shake off the unjust oppression which had held it riveted for so many centuries. The chains of feudalism were broken, whatever else might be forged on which to anchor the vessel of state. And there is not a nation on the Continent which has not felt the effect of this Revolution in the character of its government. Truly did the Republic, and its adopted son, Napoleon Buonaparte, teach the sovereigns of Europe—

"That common men have rights as well as kings."

The fire-brand which was thrown in the midst of the ancient dynasties is even burning to this day, and for many years will continue to burn. Fearful and bloody as was the Revolution of '89, yet every thinking man must feel that it was one of the great cleansing epochs in the history of the world. The soul-numbing Shams of ages received a rude shock, and, by the ordeal, Truth, at all events, became purified of a great portion of the festering hypocrisies which had grown around it.

In all revolutions, and particularly when the principal actors in them are the uneducated part of the community, many outrageous extravagancies and fearful cruelties are sure to stain the best of causes; but where would Progress find a home and a pathway in the world, if the fear of these extravagancies and cruelties altogether deterred mankind from action?

"Wagt es, Herr!
Eu'r Walton hat ein Ende. Dcr Tyrann
Des Landes ist gefallen. Wir erdulden
Keine Gewalt mehr. Wir sind freie Mensehen."

Wir sind freie Menschen,—we are free men! Ah! the way to every perfection in this lower world must be through blood. Wir sind frcie Mensehen, indeed! No nation ever could call itself free until blood—ay, and often much blood, had been shed As it was in the Jewish kingdom of old; as it was with the Roman plebeians; as it was in the days of our Magna Charta; so was it with the poor Swiss who fought with Tell; and so is it even to this, the year eighteen hundred and sixty-nine. And we almost weep as we mournfully shake our heads with the noble and pure-spirited Madame Roland, and echo to her murmur—

"O Liberty! what Things are done in thy Name!"