vention, they could not be at once wit- | people, hoping to interest them in his nesses and accusers. "We are about," favour. "Generous people, unhappy said Danton and Lacroix, "to be judged without being heard in our defence: deliberation is at an end. Well! we have lived long enough to go to rest on the bosom of glory: let them lead us to the scaffold." The jury were enclosed, and soon after the president returned, and, with a savage joy, declared the verdict was Guilty. The court instantly pronounced sentence after they were removed, which was read to them in their cells in the evening. "We are sacrificed," said Danton, "to the ambition of a few dastardly brigands; but they will not long enjoy their triumph: I drag Robespierre after me in my fall." Lucile, the youthful wife of Camille Desmoulins, earnestly besought Madame Danton, a young woman of eighteen, to throw herself at Robespierre's feet, and pray for the lives of both their hubands, but she refused. "I will willingly," said she, "follow Danton to the scaffold, but I will not degrade his memory before his rival. If he owed his life to Robespierre, he would never pardon me, in this world or the next. He has bequeathed to me his honour-I will preserve it entire." Camille Desmoulins had less firmness. He tried to read "Young's Night Thoughts," but the book fell from his hands, and he could only articulate, "O my Lucile, O my Horace, what will become of you!"* " people," he exclaimed, "they mislead 103. They went to the scaffold with the stoicism so usual at that period. A numerous escort attended them, and an immense crowd was assembled, which beheld in silence their former leaders led out to execution. Camille Desmoulins exclaimed, when seated on the fatal chariot-" This, then, is the recom-long dismal procession, guarded on each side "They entered the city of Rome in a pense awarded to the first apostle of by a file of troops under arms. In their looks liberty!" In moving towards the scaf- no sign of repentance, no dejected passion; fold, he never ceased to address the they retained an air of ferocity, and heard the taunts of the vulgar with sullen contempt. Not a word escaped from any of them unworthy of their warlike character. They were unfortunate, but still respected for their valour." How identical are the heroism of the brave and the baseness of the mob in every age! The words of Tacitus applied to the executions of Vitellius, might pass for a description of the last moments of Danton and Camille Desmoulins.-TACITUS, Hist. iv. 2. * Hérault de Séchelles, on being conducted to his cell, after his condemnation, read for a while a volume of Rousseau, which he took from his pocket, and, closing it, said, "Oh, my master! thou hast suffered for the truth, and I am about to die for it: thou hast the genius, I the martyrdom: thou art a greater man, but which of us is the most philosophical?"-LAMARTINE, Histoire des Girondins, viii. 63. Lucile's hair, the last relic of this world | embourg, in which her husband was which he took to the edge of the next.* confined, night and day during his deHe approached the fatal spot, looked tention. The gardens where she now calmly at the axe, yet red with the gave vent to her grief had been the scene blood of his friend, and said, "The of their first loves; from his cell winmonsters who assassinate me will not dows her husband could see the spot long survive my fall. Convey my hair where they had met in the days of their to my mother-in-law." Danton ascend- happiness. Her distracted appearance, ed with a firm step, and said to the with some hints dropped in the jails by executioner " You will show my head the prisoners as to their hopes of being to the people, after my death; it is delivered by the aid of the people, durworth the pains.' These were his last ing the excitement produced by the trial words. The executioner obeyed the of Danton and his friends, led to a fresh injunction after the axe had fallen, and prosecution for a conspiracy in the carried the head around the scaffold. prisons," which was made the means The people clapped their hands! of sweeping off twenty-five persons of wholly different principles and parties at one fell swoop. The apostate bishop Gobel, Chaumette, the well-known and once formidable prosecutor of the mu 104. The wife of Camille Desmoulins, a young woman of twenty-three, to whom he was passionately attached, wandered round the prison of the Lux 66 *The letters written by Camille Desmou- thee alone, and never of the business that lins during his imprisonment, and the night has brought me here!"Last Letter.“I before his execution, to his wife, a young and implore thee, by our eternal love, Lulotte, elegant woman who had married him for love send me thy portrait! Amid the horrors of two years before, during the first fervour of my prison, the day in which I see again thy the Revolution, are among the most interest-portrait will be to me a fête, a day of ravishing and pathetic monuments of the Revolu- ing joy. In the mean time, send me some of tion, opening as it were a glance into that thy hair, that I may place it next my heart. awful amount of sorrow and wretchedness My dear Lucile, behold me restored to the which that convulsion brought even upon its days of our early loves, when nought had earliest and most ardent supporters. They interest for me but as appertaining to thee. are preserved in the Histoire Parlementaire, Yesterday, when the citizen who carried my and the following extracts will convey some letter to thee came back, it seemed to me as idea of their heart-rending affection: "My if his very garments breathed of thee. Yesdear Lucile, my Vesta, my angel, destiny terday I discovered a crevice in my apartbrings before my eyes, in my prison, that ment. I applied my ear, and heard the voice garden where I passed eight years of my life of one ill and in pain. He asked my name, looking upon thee. A corner of the Luxem- and I told it. O my God!' he exclaimed; bourg in sight recalls in crowds the memories and I recognised distinctly the voice of Fabre of our loves. I am in solitary confinement, d'Eglantine. Pitt or Cobourg might have but never have I felt in thought, in imagina- treated me thus !-but my colleagues! Robestion, almost in body, nearer to thee, to thy pierre, who signed the order for my imprisonmother, to my little Horace. My complete ment! the Republic, after all that I had done justification is contained in my eight republi- for it! It is the reward I meet for my sercan volumes. O my good Lulotte! let us vices to it. I had dreamed of a republic that speak of other things. I throw myself at thy all the world would have adored. I could knees; I stretch out my arms to embrace not have supposed that men would have been thee I find no more my poor Lulotte ! so savage and unjust. In spite of my suffer[Here we find the traces of a tear.] Send me ings, I believe that there is a God. I shall the glass on which there is a C and a D-our see thee again some day, O Lucile ! O Antwo names; a book in 12mo, which I bought nette! Sensitive as I was, is the death that from Charpentier: that book treats of the delivers me from the sight of such crimes so immortality of the soul. I need to persuade great a misfortune? Adieu, Lucile! Adieu, myself that there is a God more just than my life!-my soul!-my divinity on earth! men, and that I cannot fail to see thee again. I leave you good friends, all men of virtue Adieu, Lucile !-adieu! I cannot embrace and feeling. Adieu, Lucile! my Lucile ! my thee; but in the tears which I shed, I seem dear Lucile!-Adieu, Horace!-Adieu, Adèle ! still to hold thee to my bosom." [Here we-Adieu, my father! I feel life fleeting from find the trace of a second tear.Second Letter."I am ill: I have eaten nothing since yesterday but the soup you sent me. Heaven has had compassion on my innocence; a dream has been granted me, in which I have seen you all. Send me a lock of thy hair, and thy portrait-oh, I beseech you, for I think of me. I still see Lucile! I see thee, my beloved-my Lucile! My hands in their bonds embrace thee, and my dissevered head still turns its dying eyes to thee!"-Hist. Parlementaire. (Here is the pathos of nature! When will romance or poetry figure any. thing so touching?) the Dantonists to arrest it: both perished in the attempt. They perished, because they were inferior in wickedness to their opponents; they fell, the victims of the little humanity which yet lingered in their bosoms. The combination of wicked men who thereafter governed France is without a parallel in the history of the world.* Their power, based on the organised weight of the multitude, and the ardent cooperation of the municipalities, everywhere installed by them in the posses nicipality, the widow of Hébert, the widow of Camille Desmoulins, Arthur Dillon, a remnant of the Dantonists, and twenty others of inferior note, were indicted together for the crimes of having "conspired together against the liberty and security of the French people, endeavoured to trouble the state by civil war, to arm the citizens against each other, and against the lawful authority; in virtue of which they proposed, in the present month, to dissolve the national representation, assassinate its members, destroy the republicansion of office, was irresistible. By them government, gain possession of the sovereignty of the people, and give a tyrant to the state." The absurdity of thus charging, as in one conspiracy, the leaders of two opposite factions, so recently at daggers-drawing with each other-Gobel and Chaumette, the partisans of anarchy and blood, with Dillon and the widow of Desmoulins, who had been exposing their lives to procure a return to humanity-produced no impression on the inexorable tribunal. They were all condemned, after a long trial, and the vital difference between them appeared in their last moments. The infamous Gobel wept from weakness; the atrocious Chaumette was almost lifeless from terror; but the widow of Desmoulins exhibited on the scaffold the heroism of Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday, and died rejoicing in the hope of rejoining her lost husband. She did not appear with the undaunted air of those heroines, but she showed equal firmness. She died not for her country, but for her husband; love, not patriotism, inspired her last moments. Her beauty, her innocence, the knowledge that she was the victim of her humanity, produced universal commiseration. 105. Thus perished the tardy but last defenders of humanity and moderation -the last who sought for peace, and advocated clemency toward those who had been vanquished in the Revolution. For long after their fall, no voice was heard against the Reign of Terror. Silent and unopposed, the tyrants struck redoubted blows from one end of France to the other. The Girondists had sought to prevent that fatal rule, opulent cities were overturned; hundreds of thousands of deluded artisans reduced to beggary; agriculture, commerce, the arts destroyed; the foundations of every species of property shaken, and all the youth of the kingdom driven to the frontier, less to uphold the integrity of France than to protect themselves from the just vengeance which awaited them from within and without. All bowed the neck before this gigantic assemblage of wickedness. The revolutionary excesses daily increased, in consequence of the union which the constant dread of retribution produced among their perpetrators. There was no medium between taking a part in these atrocities and falling a victim to them. Virtue seemed powerless: energy appeared only in the extremity of resignation; religion in the heroism with which death was endured. There was not a hope left for France, had it not been for the dissensions which, as the natural result of their wickedness, sprang up among the authors of the public calamities. 106. It is impossible not to be struck, in looking back on the fate of these different parties, with the singular and "The tyrant proud frown'd from his lofty cell, And with his looks made all his monsters tremble, His eyes, that full of rage and venom swell, His yawning mouth that foamed clotted blood, Gap'd like a whirlpool wide in Stygian flood." providential manner in which their of Heaven itself; but scarcely were their crimes brought about their own punishment. No foreign interposition was necessary; no avenging angel was required to vindicate the justice of the Divine administration. They fell the victims of their own atrocity, of the passions which they themselves had let loose, of the injustice of which they had given the first example to others. The Constitutionalists overthrew the ancient monarchy, and raised a throne surrounded by republican institutions; but their imprudence in rousing popular ambition paved the way for the 10th August, and speedily brought themselves to the scaffold. The Girondists established their favourite dream of a Republic, and were the first victims of the fury which it excited; the Dantonists roused the populace against the Gironde, and soon fell under the axe which they had prepared for their rivals; the Anarchists defied the powers blasphemies uttered when they were swept off by the partners of their bloody triumphs. One only power remained, alone, terrible, irresistible. This was the power of DEATH, wielded by a faction steeled against every feeling of humanity, dead to every principle of justice. In their iron hands, order resumed its sway from the influence of terror; obedience became universal from the extinction of hope. Silent and unresisted they led their victims to the scaffold, dreaded alike by the soldiers who crouched, the people who trembled, and the victims who suffered. The history of the world has no parallel to the horrors of that long night of suffering, because it has none to the guilt which preceded it; tyranny never assumed so hideous a form, because licentiousness never required so severe a punishment. "Die weltgeschichte ist das weltgericht."* * "The world's history is the world judged."-SCHILLER. CHAPTER XV. REIGN OF TERROR-FROM THE DEATH OF DANTON TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE APRIL 5-JULY 27, 1794. 1. "ALL bad actions," says Sallust, "spring from good beginnings;"-"And the progress of these events," says Machiavel, "is this, that in their efforts to avoid fear, men inspire it in others; and that injury which they seek to ward off themselves they throw upon their neighbours, so that it seems inevitable either to give or receive offence."+"You are quite wrong," said Napoleon to Talma, in the representation of Nero; "Omnia mala exampla," says Sallust, "bonis initiis orta sunt." "E l'ordine di questi accidenti," says Machiavel, "è che mentre che gli uomini cercano di non temere, cominciano a fare temere altrui, e quella injuria che gli scacciano di loro, la pongono sopra un altro, come se fusse necessario, offendere o esser offeso." you should conceal the tyrant; no man admits his wickedness either to others or himself. You and I speak history, but we speak it like other men." The words which Sallust puts into the mouth of Cæsar, and Napoleon addressed to the actor of Nero, point to the same, and one of the most important principles of human nature. When vice appears in its native deformity, it is universally shunned-its features are horrible alike to others and itself. It is by borrowing the language, and rousing the pas "Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, That to be hated needs but to be seen; sions of virtue, that it insinuates itself | hundred thousand men in a single caminto the minds, not only of the specta-paign, to preserve a province, or conquer tors, but of the actors; the worst deeds a frontier town; but what are the wars are committed by men who delude of princes to the eternal contest bethemselves and others by the noblest tween freedom and tyranny? and what expressions. Tyranny speaks with the the destruction of its present enemies, voice of prudence, and points to the to the liberty of unborn millions of the dangers of popular insurrection; am- human race? Such is the language of bition strikes on the chords of patriot-revolutionary cruelty; such are the ism and loyalty, and leads men to ruin maxims which, beginning with the enothers in the belief that they are sav-thusiasm of philanthropists, ended in ing themselves; democratic fury appeals the rule of Robespierre. The unexto the spirit of freedom, and massacres ampled atrocities of the Reign of Terror thousands in the name of insurgent arose from the influence yielded to a humanity. In all these cases, men single principle; the greatest crimes would shrink with horror from them- which the world has ever known, were selves if their conduct appeared in its but an extension of the supposed extrue colours; they become steeped in pedience which hangs for forgery and crime while yet professing the inten- burns for heresy. tions of virtue, and before they are well aware that they have transgressed its bounds. 2. All these atrocities proceed from one source; criminality in them all begins when one line is passed. This source is the principle of expedience; this line is the line of justice. "To do evil that good may come of it" is perhaps the most prolific cause of wickedness. It is absolutely necessary, say the politicians of one age, to check the growing spirit of heresy; discord in this world, damnation in the next, follow in its steps; religion, the fountain of peace, is in danger of being polluted by its poison; the transient suffering of a few individuals will insure the eternal salvation of millions. Such is the language of religious intolerance, such the principles which lighted the fires of Smithfield. How cruel soever it may appear, say the statesmen of another age, to sacrifice life for property, it is indispensable in an age of commercial industry; the temptations to fraud are so great, the facilities of commission so extensive, that, but for the terror of death, property would be insecure, and industry, with all its blessings, nipped in the bud. Such is the language of commercial jealousy, and the origin of that sanguinary code which the humanity and extended wisdom of England has now perhaps too far relaxed. You would not hesitate, say the leaders of another period, to sacrifice a 3. The error in all these cases is the same, and consists in supposing that what is unjust ever can be ultimately expedient, or that the Author of Nature would have implanted feelings in the human heart which the interests of society require to be continually violated. "A little knowledge," says Lord Bacon, "makes men irreligious, but extended wisdom brings them back to devotion." With equal truth it may be said, that "a little experience makes governments and people iniquitous, but extended information brings them back to the principles of justice." The real interests of society, it is at last perceived, can only be secured by those measures which command universal concurrence; and none can finally do this but such as are founded on the virtuous feelings of our nature. It is by attending only to the first effect of unjust measures that men are ever deceived on this subject; when their ultimate consequences come to be appreciated, the expedience is found all to lie on the other side. But these ultimate effects often do not appear for a considerable period, and hence the immediate danger of revolutions, and the extreme difficulty of arresting their course. The stoppage, however, is certain at last. When the feelings of the great body of mankind are outraged, or their interests menaced, by the measures of government, a reaction invariably, sooner or later, follows, and the |