in petitions to the Assembly, demanding the forfeiture of the crown, and the proclamation of the Republic. But the "pear was not yet ripe,”—the meetings were dispersed--the petitions read with indifference and the Assembly continued its revision of the constitution, regardless of popular clamor. We have named three men whose writings were of much influence over the mutable people of Paris. Brissot, eminent as a journalist, soon rose to higher distinction, and became in after years the acknowledged head of the Girondists. "He was,' says M. De Lamartine, "at the outset, a Constitutionalist, and by turns the friend of Necker and of Mirabeau; a hireling before he became a statesman, he saw in the people only a sovereign about beginning its reign. The Republic was his rising sun. He hailed its approach as the source of his fortune, but he hailed it with prudence, looking often around to see if public opinion justified his adoration." Camille Des Moulins was a man of different stamp, with more talent, and less ambition, venality, or calculation. The following portrait of him bears the impress of truth : "This young student, who became a politician by mounting a chair in the Palais Royal on the first outbreak of the people in July, 1789, preserved in his brilliant style something of his early character. His was the sarcastic genius of Voltaire sunk from the saloon to the mounte bank's bench. No man was ever in himself a more striking personification of the people than Camille Des Moulins. He was the mob with its tumultuous, unexpected movements, its mutability, its want of connected thought, its rage interrupted by laughter, or suddenly changed to sympathy and pity for the very victims it immolated. A man so ardent and yet so trifling, 30 common-place and yet so inspired, so undecided between blood or tears, so ready to drag in the dust what in his hour of enthusiasm he had raised to heaven, must have had over a revolted people an authority proportioned to the resemblance which he bore to them. The part which he played was in conformity with his nature. He did not ape the people-he was the people. His journal, distributed by night in public places, or cried by day with coarse commentaries, has not been swept away with the filth of the time. It remains, and will remain, a Menippean satire steeped in blood.” The character of Marat is not less impressive: "Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a man of learning without repreceived from nature or society the means of utation, ardently loving glory, without having becoming illustrious; he avenged himself on all that is great in society or in nature. To him genius was not less odious than aristocracy. He pursued it like an enemy wherever it ap peared. He would have levelled creation itself. Equality was his passion, because superiority caused his martyrdom. He loved the He loved it even unto blood, because blood Revolution, since it brought all to his level. washed out the stain of his long obscurity. He was the people's informer; he knew that denunciation was flattery to all that tremble, and that the people trembled. A prophet of demagogism, inspired by insanity, he uttered his night-dreams as the revelations of day-conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he gained its favor by devotion to its interests. Like all oracles, he affected mystery. He lived in seclusion, and never went forth but by night. His communications with his fellow-men were guarded with sinister precautions. A cellar was his home and refuge against poison or the dagger." Such were the apostles of the new faith, who found eager listeners among a people prepared by centuries of oppression to regard revolt as a duty, and vengeance as a right. On the 17th of May, 1792, a general meeting of the citizens of Paris was held in the Champ de Mars; to give to it increased solemnity, an altar to Liberty had been erected, and it was proposed, that on that altar a last petition, similar in character to those which before had been presented in vain, should receive the signatures of citizens, and from thence be forwarded to the provinces for approval and concur rence. Such was the ostensible purpose of the meeting, but those who had been most active in promoting it-Danton, Des Moulins, Robespierre, and others—expect ed from it a course of action far more vigorous. The experiment was to be tried, how far the firmness of the National As sembly would be found available against the force of a mob. On the morning of that day, however, an event sufficiently deplorable in itself, was followed by effects for which the demagogues were unprepared. Two invalid soldiers were discov ered concealed under the frame-work of the newly built altar: a rumor ran through the crowd, that they were emissaries of of artillery told France that the King and the King, and placed there for a mischievous purpose. According to mob-law, execution preceded trial, and the truth of the charge was not investigated till the unhappy veterans had been torn to pieces. The news of this outrage reached the ears of Bailly, then Mayor of Paris. He was a just man, and firm as he was just. Summoning the military force with Lafayette at its head, he set forth to arrest and punish the guilty. His advance was resisted, the troops assailed with clubs, stones and pistol-shots; nor was it till the red flag was unfurled, and the soldiers made their charge, that the dense mass melted away, leaving several hundred dead upon the field. For a time, the triumph of law and order seemed to be complete. The clubs were closed; the instigators of the mob, Danton, Des Moulins, Fréron and others, fled from offended justice, and sought seclusion and safety in the obscurest recesses of Paris; and had as much energy been manifested in the pursuit, as was shown in the conflict, Jacobinism would have ceased to exist. Had Mirabeau been then alive and present to direct the public councils, how many crimes would have been spared! how much misery averted! But Lafayette and Bailly hesitated in the hour of success, and this hesitation ruined all. After an interval of a few days, the agitators crept from their hiding-placesthe clubs were re-opened-the press again teemed with denunciations-the dispersion of a lawless mob was represented as a cruel slaughter of unarmed men-the number of sufferers was swelled from hundreds to thousands and such is the effect on the public mind, of a constant repetition of falsehood, that the lawful actionof the force raised for the protection of Paris, and led by two of the purest men of their time, is spoken of to this day as the "Massacretion should reign; his great popularity made it of the 17th of May !" But the hour was approaching, when the Assembly, having completed its labors, was to disappear from the scene, leaving the future operations of government to be carried on according to the forms of the new constitution. The King, liberated from imprisonment, was brought forward to swear to the maintenance of the compact between him and his people. The ceremony adopted on the occasion was imposing."Military music and repeated salvos It now remained for the National Assembly to take leave of the public; but ere it separated, a motion was made by Robespierre, and carried by a large majority of votes, that no member should be eligible to the new Assembly for the space of four years. The object of the motion is thus explained by M. De Lamartine: "Robespierre, knowing his weakness in an Assembly composed of its present elements, wished to exclude these elements from the new legislative body. The law to which he subjected his colleagues, bore equally on himself, but the source of his power was the Jacobin club, and there he had no rival. Instinct or calculation had taught him that the action of a legislature new, inexperienced, and composed of obscure men, would necessarily be controlled by the clubs. It was enough for his purpose that fac certain, that sooner or later, he would reign over faction." if to give the world an early proof of frivolity and incapacity, the first two days of the session were employed in debating a question of etiquette-whether or no, the King should be addressed by the title of "Majesty," and be received in the Chamber with covered or uncovered heads! Within the brief space of forty-eight hours, this important question was decided in two ways: even Vergniaud, the eagle of the Gironde, is said to have spoken on one side, and voted on the other. It was soon evident, that instead of coming together with the honest intention of supporting the constitution, a majority of the Assembly were busily engaged in preparing its overthrow. The Girondists and Mountaineers, far from regarding the King as equally with themselves, a representative of the nation, charged with the double duty of executing the laws, and of restraining within proper bounds legislative action, by the exercise of the veto power, looked upon him as an enemy to be watched and thwarted at every turn; as a dead weight on the progress of national freedom, to be thrown aside on the first occasion; and as that occasion might not occur as soon as wished, they conspired together to produce it. Such, in a few words, is the story of the second Assembly, as it may be gathered, not only from the pages of M. De Lamartine, but of every other author of reputation who has written of this eventful period. The most distinguished of the provincial deputations was, certainly, that from Bor deaux. It was composed of young men, many of them lawyers, and accustomed to speak in public. Though previous education had made them somewhat familiar with matters connected with the science of government, yet their knowledge was merely theoretical. From the philosophy of the age, they had learned that man has natural rights, but they had not learned from experience how far these rights can be claimed or exercised consistently with the public good. A French proverb says, Parmi les aveugles, les borgnes sont rois;" and thus it fared with the deputies of the Gironde limited as was their knowledge, it sufficed, when combined with ardor and talent, to give them a decided influence over an Assembly composed of men more ignorant and equally inexperienced. One of the chief merits of M. De Lamartine's | work lies in the felicity of his delineations of individual character. His history is a gallery of portraits by the hand of a master. Before we proceed to examine the action of the Girondists as a party, it may not be amiss to make our readers acquainted with the moral characteristics of those men whom that party acknowledged as its leaders. The first of the Bordeaux deputation in talent and fame was, undoubtedly, Vergniaud-a young man whose early cleverness had attracted the notice and patronage of the celebrated Turgot. Originally intended for the church, he had finished the course of preparatory studies, when, struck by the discordance between his tastes and habits of life, and those that would be required of him as a religious teacher, he withdrew from a profession which he could not conscientiously exercise. Returning home, he gave himself up to the cultivation of poesy and belles-lettres; but the spirit of the orator was strong within him, and having one day been overheard addressing with force and feeling an imaginary audience, it was resolved in family council that he should be a lawyer. Scarcely had he entered on this new career, when the Revolution came to open to his ambition the road of political honors. The little fortune he possessed had been exhausted in the payment of his father's debts; he arrived in Paris a pennyless deputy, and his private letters, filled with the details of petty, pecuniary embarrassments, show, that poverty was his companion, even at a time when his eloquence shook France like a reed. "Vergniaud," says the historian, "born at Limoges, and by profession an advocate, was then thirty-three years old, and had early become a convert to the free doctrines of the day. His calm majestic features revealed the consciousness of power. Facility, that concomitant of genius, pervaded his whole nature, moral and physical. Though a lover of ease, he could, whenever necessity required it, rise at once in the fullness of his strength. His brow was thoughtful, his look composed, and on his lips sat a grave, perhaps melancholy expression. The severe thoughts of antiquity had left their by the smiling carelessness of youth. Men impress on his countenance, though modified loved him at the base of the tribune; when he ascended it, they respected and admired him. The first word that he spoke, the first glance radation: an ardent attachment to a woman whom he had married against the wishes of her family, untiring industry, and a courage exercised in encountering the difficulties of life, and which, at a later period, enabled him to face death with triumphant composure." of his eye, revealed the mighty space between the man and the orator. His sentences had the harmony and richness of verse; he would have been the poet of democracy, had he not been its orator. His passions were noble like his language, and even when addressing the people, he never stooped to the vulgar flattery of adopting the popular forms of speech. He Guadet, like Vergniaud, was an eloquent adored the Revolution as the manifestation of a man, and brought to the Assembly a repsublime philosophy, destined to exalt the nation, utation for ability, which was not undeand destroy nothing, save tyranny and prejudice. served. Gensonne's power was in his pen; He had no doctrines--no hatreds-no bigotry—his style was terse and epigrammatic, and no ambition: even power was to him something too substantial and vulgar to be valued he sought it not for himself, but for his ideas. Present glory, future fame, were the aims of his existence; when he rose in the tribune, it was to catch sight of them from a higher point of elevation. At a later day, his last look was “This man was the sovereign of Paris. The turned towards them from the scaffold, when, populace, with admirable instinct, called him leaving a name immortal in the memory of King Pétion. He had purchased popularity France, he sprang into eternity, young, beau- by democratic speeches in the Constituent tiful, with all his fresh enthusiasm about him, Assembly, and the equilibrium which he and a few stains, then washed out in his gen-maintained at the Jacobin club, between the erous blood." Though thus fitted by nature to become the leader of his party, indolence, and perhaps self-distrust, prevented this highly gifted man from accepting a position which was pressed upon him by the affectionate admiration of his associates. The post which he thus rejected, was sought and obtained by one who, with less ability, possessed in a higher degree the genius of intrigue so necessary to the success of a faction. We allude to Brissot de Warville. "He was," says M. De Lamartine," the son of a pastry cook at Chartres, and had been educated at the same school as his countryman Pétion. A literary adventurer, he assumed the name of Warville, beneath which he concealed the obscurity of his own. A plebeian's nobility consists in not blushing at his originBrissot had it not. He stole a title from that very aristocracy against whom he subsequently made war, under the banner of equality. Like Rousseau, in everything but genius, he descended even lower than the Genevese, before he rose to celebrity. Men become worn and sullied when striving for existence amid the corruption of great cities. Rousseau carried his poverty and imagination into the country, where the constant spectacle of rural nature soothes and purifies the soul: he became a philosopher. Brissot displayed his vanity and wants in London and Paris-creeping through the narrow, dirty ways of the adventurer and pamphleteer: he became an intriguer. Yet, though soiled by vices which drew suspicion on his name and morals, he nourished in his heart three virtues, capable of lifting him out of the abyss of deg his logic irresistible; on him devolved the duty of drawing up public reports. But a more useful party agent, not from his talents, but character, was Pétion. Girondins and Robespierre, made him respectable and important. The friend, at one and the Danton, and suspected of having secret relasame time, of Roland, Robespierre, Brissot and tions with the Duke of Orleans, he managed, nevertheless, always to be covered with the mantle of devotion to established order. He had thus every apparent title to the esteem of honest men, and the regard of factions; but his best title to popular favor was mediocrity. Mediocrity, it must be allowed, is a stamp always set on the people's idols, either because the crowd loves only what resembles itself, or because Providence, just in its distribution of gifts and faculties, will permit no man to unite in himself three qualities, each irresistiblevirtue, genius, and popularity; or, what is more probable still, because the favor of the multitude is of such a nature, that its price is greater than its value in the eyes of virtuous men. Pétion was the people's king, on the condition of permitting the people's excesses. In the official reproaches which he addressed to the mob, he always introduced an apology for crime, a smile for the guilty, a word of encouragement for misled citizens. The people loved him, as anarchy loves weakness." Fresh from the study of the classics, the deputies of the Gironde were republicans. In the clubs, they found many who shared the same political faith, and among them Roland, whose house became a place of common resort to the initiated. Roland was a political economist of moderate talents, and obstinate temper. He had been a member of the Constituent Assembly, and during his residence at Paris, became closely connected with Brissot, Robespierre, Buzot, and others, who then formed the nucleus of the democratic faction. After the dissolution of the Assembly, he went back to a small country estate near Lyons; but stimulated by the patriotic fervor of his wife, and his own unsatisfied ambition, he soon returned to the capital in search of political preferment, and for a brief period became Minister of the Interior. Not the least interesting part of M. De Lamartine's work is that which he has given to the memory of the celebrated Madame Roland. She was a woman of great abilities, and possessed many virtues; yet the severe pen of the historian has recorded one anecdote which must tend to diminish the sympathy which otherwise would be felt for the fate of one so able, courageous, and unfortunate. When, on the 20th of June, Marie Antoinette was subjected to the insults of the populace, Madame Roland, on hearing the story, joyfully exclaimed: "How her pride must have suffered! How I wish I had seen her in the hour of humiliation!" Cruel words, --that must have recurred to her memory, when she was herself carried to execution, amid the coarse execrations and filthy revilings of the scum of Paris. It was at the house of Roland, that the plot was first formed against King and constitution. Brissot and Robespierrethe Gironde and the Mountain-here met for the same treasonable purpose. Three subjects of disagreement existed between Louis and the Assembly: the first was the law respecting non-juring priests; the second, the enactments against emigration and the emigrants; and the third, the policy of going to war with Austria and Prussia. In obedience to the dictates of conscience, and in conformity to the advice of his ministers, the King had opposed his veto to both decrees. With respect to the first, he was morally right, and politically wrong. The non-juring priests were men whom ill-considered laws had placed in a cruel position;-compelled to choose between the sacrifice of duty, either as citizens, or as ministers of the holy Catholic faith, they preferred disobedience to apostacy, aud became martyrs. The debates of the Assembly on this question, as related by M. De Lamartine, show how easily men professing the principles of toleration can, under the influence of political excitement, give the lie to their faith, and sink into abettors of persecution. But it was evident, that the King's refusal to sanction the decree, could do no good: as the quick-sighted Dumouriez wisely observed, "It was better by assenting to the law to subject the priests to legal penalties, than by refusing assent, to deliver them over to massacre." It was not, however, the first time that the unhappy Louis had sacrificed policy to conscience. The second point of difference was one on which the King could not yield without violating the best feelings of his nature: he was required to affix his name to a bloody enactment, specially aimed at the members of his family, and at friends whose only crime was fidelity to him. The wisdom of his opposition to the war is more questionable: the Revolution struck at the principle of monarchy; it was evident that sooner or later, the princes of Europe would combine to repress the growth of opinions so fatal to themselves; to suppose it possible, that any diplomacy could either prevent altogether, or even modify the nature of their interference, was a blunder, and to act upon that supposition, was virtually to justify the suspicions of bad faith which the King's enemies had so busily disseminated. And yet, had the decree been signed as soon as presented, would not other causes of quarrel have been found? Let the reader of M. De Lamartine's volumes pass in review the circumstances of the time, and then ask himself, if the ill-fated monarch could have taken any course that would not have led to the same result? Like the lamb of the fable, at whatever point of the stream he drank, he must have been accused of troubling its waters. The limits of this review will not permit us to dwell on the events which immediately preceded the fatal 10th of August. The angry debates and insolent denunciations of the Assembly; the insubordination of the army, encouraged by the clubs; the violence of mobs, set on foot by the Girondists and the Mountain; the massacres at Brest and Avignon, forerunners of the bloodshed at Paris; the rising of the 20th of June, when the royal palace was invaded by a mob, led by the butcher Legendre, and the brewer Santerre; the noble inter |