moral powers to uncover an abyss and reveal its dangers to his affrighted hearers. Never was a more rapid and more terrible impulse communicated: his voice, his gesture, his broken words, his eyes flashing with anger and horror, the shuddering of his whole frame, all announced the sublimest effort of human eloquence. It triumphed; and had this been its only service to humanity, its blessings should be held in eternal memory.' (Bibliothèque d'un homme de gout. Vol. 4. p. 212.)

We return to M. Lavallee.

Hardly had Tallien finished, when Robespierre darted to the tribune. At the same moment, twenty members rush towards it. Instantly the whole mountain arose, and cries of-down with Robespierre-down with the tyrant, resounded from every side. Vadier, Amar, Bourdon de l'Oise, Lecointre de Versailles, Collot d'Herbois, Leonard Bourdon, Javogue, Legendre, even Billaud de Varennes, roused from his profound dissimulation by a dexterous appeal from Tallien, spoke in succession. O what crimes, what hateful intrigues, what bloody oppressions, what unheard of iniquities, were brought to light on that terrible morning! During more than two hours Robespierre was absolutely in convulsions; all the movements of his frame expressed the rage which devoured him. A hundred times did he demand permission to speak, and could not obtain it. He clung to the stair of the tribune, and could not be torn from it, and in this position the speakers who followed each other in rapid succession, seemed like so many divinities launching thunders at his head, and the countless details of his atrocities streamed upon him like a rain of fire. His strength at last gave way. He sought on every seat a resting place, and every where met with a repulse. He was pursued from place to place with the bitterest reproaches. When he seemed nearly fainting, one said to him, "You are choaked with the blood of Danton." "Wretch, touch not that bench," exclaimed another, "for there sat Vergniaux. He advanced to the galleries, and raising his arms towards those who filled them, exclaimed, Will you abandon me, will you suffer me to perish; me, your champion?-All were silent; and those very men who were posted there by himself, terrified at so unexpected a scene, remained motionless at his appeal. Robespierre, sinking with exhaustion, succeeded once more in reaching the front of the tribune. Thuriot was president. Robespierre exclaimed to him: President of assassins, for the last time I ask leave to speak. At this moment a general cry bursts forthThe decree of accusation to the vote! The President put the question, and not a single deputy kept his seat.'

At this very time, when Robespierre seemed abandoned by all, and hunted to the very precipice of his fate, a dreadful proof was afforded of the awful ascendency which he had acquired. One member demanded to be included in his act of accusation, and when he was conveyed to prison by the gens

d'armes, the jailors one, and all, refused to incur the responsi bility of receiving him, and he was conveyed to the commune which immediately ordered the tocsin to be rung and declared itself in a state of insurrection. Had Robespierre possessed common courage, he would probably even now have been victorious; but he was wholly unmanned; he wept like an infant, and whined most lamentably about the ingratitude of men. In the mean time, the leaders of the opposite party acted with promptness and decision. Legendre, singly, entered the hall of the jacobins, and by his rude but vigorous eloquence, actually dispersed them, put out the lights, locked the doors, and carried the keys to the convention. Barras and Leonard Bourdon collected some battalions of national guards, and their columns met at the house of the commune. They ascended the staircase amid shouts of vive la convention, and the reign of Robespierre was at an end. As another proof of the uncertainty of history, and even of evidence, we may refer to the different ways of narrating one of the most important particulars in the fall of this execrable being. His jaw-bone was broken by a pistol-shot: -Who fired it? General report affirmed that it was himself. M. Lavallee was told by well-informed men, that it was a gen-d'arme. The Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans hints that his brother pulled the trigger. On turning to the Dictionnaire Historique, we find the name of the gen d'arme Charles Meda to whom the honour of shooting him is assigned; and to crown this assemblage of contradictions, Beaulieu, in his very interesting Essais Historiques, affirms that it was Robespierre himself who fired the pistol, and produces in a note the testimony of the keeper of the hotel de ville, who was of course on the spot, and declares that he had witnessed the act.

The attempt to purify the representative body, was a very partial one. The motives of the principal agents were far from being pure and patriotic; their primary object was clearly to save themselves from the visitations of Robespierre, and the second, to secure for their own profit his popularity and power. In this last they completely failed; the blow which they had struck, while it was effectual in the removal of their enemy, was equally so in the destruction of the tyranny he had established. The Thermidorians, by destroying their idol, destroyed the talisman of their destinies. One advantage they had over their master, but that was not enough; they were men of courage, but Robespierre trembled at a naked sword, and could not summon up courage to mount even a led horse. He was influenced by dreams, and consulted fortune-tellers. Notwithstanding all these miserable weaknesses, however, he had a certain hold upon the public mind, and his successors had

none. The most able man among them, it should seem, was Collot D'Herbois a man of daring spirit, handsome exterior, strong voice, and with the most perfect knowledge of what he called the stage-play of the revolution. He had formerly been an actor of considerable celebrity in characters of a particular cast, and Lavallee, who was intimate with him in early life, describes him as a man of engaging but dissolute manners. Nor was he unmindful of his ancient friendships, for he interfered on a very important occasion, without any solicitation, to save the life of his former intimate, who does not appear to have been at any time a party man.

Some interesting anecdotes are related of this sanguinary ruffian, which may well illustrate the misery of the conscious mind; but these, with many others of the same description relating to different individuals, we are compelled to omit. The most singular circumstance which is mentioned in this part of the book, is the fact, that Robespierre maintained a secret and mysterious police, which was in brisk correspondence with all the minor authorities in every part of France. After his death, a number of official letters came in from all parts of the kingdom, referring to previous correspondence, and replying to of ficial inquiries, which could be traced to no proper source. A few days after, the secret office itself was discovered; at least its desks and inkstands were detected, but the occupants had fled, and never afterwards appeared to claim the reward of their services.

The times which succeeded the fall of Robespierre, were not less stormy, and scarcely less bloody, than those which preceded. The terrible re-action, the famous Reveil du peuple, stimulated the French to mutual slaughter;' and few were the portions of the south of France that escaped this scourge, which afflicted humanity under the pretext of avenging its violations.

The paroxysms of this horrible fever lasted several months. Hundreds of corpses at a time were thrown into the Rhone; the Mediterranean received the assassins of the second year of the Republic, despatched by the assassins of the fourth; and in this enormous crowd of victims, the bones of the innocent slain in Lyons, were mingled in the ocean with the skeletons of the innocent murdered by Carrier in Nantes.'

The twelfth Germinal and the first Prairial, were days of insurrection in Paris; the latter especially threatened fearful results. A deputy was assassinated, the jacobins were stirring, and a civil war seemed inevitable; but the more moderate party obtained the ascendency, and tranquillity was restored. Affairs went on in their usual train, little varied by domestic

changes, till the battle of the Muscadins, or in more common phrase, the revolt of the sections on the twelfth and thirteenth Vendemiaire, (October the third and fourth, 1795,) in which Bonaparte commanded, under Barras, the conventional force. Soon after this, the convention dissolved itself, after ordering the suppression of the punishment of death, when a general peace should take place; an example which might well have been followed at the present time, instead of retaining the old and barbarous system of mutilation and dismembering, in addition to the extremum supplicium.

In the new system of government the power was divided; the convention was changed into two councils, and the committee of public safety became an executive directory, of which the first members were Barras, Latourneur, Lareveillere-Lopaux, Reubel, and Carnot. M. Lavallee culogizes each of these men. The first was splendid and brave; the second and third were well-intentioned, and proof against flattery and intrigue; the fourth was blessed with an excellent heart and an inflexible probity;' Carnot, we shall first quote in opposition to M. Lavallee, and then bestow a few words on his own character. We have seen the high praise given to the directory by M. L.; let us now see what is said of them by Carnot, of whom he speaks in far higher terms.

'Reubel is the patron of men accused of theft and dilapidation, as is Barras of nobles of blasted character, and Lareveillére of abandoned priests!'. . . . . . . . ' I have never heard expressions more similar to the language of Robespierre than those of Reubel. He appears entirely convinced that probity and patriotism are two things absolutely incompatible with each other."

Such were the sentiments of Carnot, (to which M. Lavallee makes no allusion whatsoever,) respecting the character of his brother directors. Of Carnot himself, we find it more difficult to give a decided opinion. Repeated and recent attempts have been made to prove him to be a man of pure and spotless worth, and M. L. speaks of his loyal frankness,' his noble character,' his estrangedness from faction' and his 'opposition to all kinds of despotism on behalf of his country.' Now, setting aside his vote for the death of Louis XVI., of which, though we think much, we shall at present say little, it is a thing hard to believe of a man who has all his life time been connected with the very worst factions, that his spirit is the reverse of factions; and it is yet more difficult to credit his uniform'opposition to despotism in behalf of his country,' when we find him sanctioning by his undeniable signature, the most intolerable kind of despotism, the bloody oppressions of the reign of terror. Prudhomme, in his Histoire des Crimes,

the most original and important work, even with all its defects yet published respecting this revolution, quotes the authority of Isabeau, a furious member of the committee of public safety, for the participation of Carnot in all the measures of that sanguinary group. In the sixth volume of his collections, also, he cites a fragment of his correspondence with Lebon, to which, in conjunction with those of Barrere and Billaud, his signature is affixed, and in which he applauds the atrocities of that ferocious assassin, and excites him to perseverance, besides giving a pretty broad hint, respecting the expediency of bribing informers. In another page of the same work, we find the following note.

'Carnot, one of the members of this famous committee of destruction, publicly defended them (Barrére, Billaud, and Collot) and declared that if his colleagues were guilty, he had shared their crimes. It was not necessary for Carnot to make this confession; every one knows that under pretext of being wholly occupied in the war department, he really shared in every sanguinary decree, and that of some he was the sole author; of this last description, may be instanced the instruction to the Orange Commission.'

With respect to his talents, they are undeniable, though attempts have been made to diminish his reputation in this particular. We shall pass over the reign of the directory with all its intrigues, oppressions, and imbecilities, and devote the remainder of this article to that extraordinary man, who, after having been the protege of Barras, and raised by his own military talents to the height of popularity and fame, overthrew the directorial chair of his patron, and replaced it by his own imperial throne. In fact, Bonaparte is evidently the idol of M. Lavallee's imagination; he gets sight of him as soon as he possibly can, and reproduces him occasionally on the scene, until at last he establishes him, the object of perpetual eulogy, or apology, on the vast theatre of his ambition. When he visited Paris after his brilliant campaign in Italy, he was courted and flattered by all parties; but he conducted himself with the most impenetrable reserve. From this moment he became 'the chief of the most formidable of factions,' the idol of the soldiery. We pass over a number of unimportant, but not altogether uninteresting details, connected with this visit, and come at once to his return from Egypt. A report of his death had been universally believed, and the depression of the public mind was excessive; in the midst of this mourning he suddenly presented himself; the Parisians were frantic with joy.

but it was the joy of egotism. Let not Bonaparte deceive himself, it was not the joy of affection; the people of Paris love