and that notorious popular potentate whom | our saucy friends over the water have facetiously denominated "the Yankee Justinian," had the supreme jurisdiction in Paris. The Journal de Paris was put down vi et armis, and its conductors and contributors precipitately scattered. Chénier was in imminent danger; many thought that he must have fallen a victim to the popular fury, and Wieland, the German poet, wrote to inquire if he were yet alive. But he was not dead yet, nor even silent; only his writings were now anonymous or pseudonymous. Owing to this fact, nearly all that he published in the autumn and winter of 1792-3 has been lost. It is certain, however, that he was the author of the letter in which Louis after his condemnation vainly appealed to the French people. After the king's death his friends persuaded him to quit Paris for Versailles, where he remained a whole year. By that time most of his personal enemies had disappeared, some torn to pieces by wolves, and some by their fellow Jacobins. But Collot d'Herbois still lived, and his power nearly equalled Robespierre's.

On the 6th of January, 1794, Chénier was arrested. The immediate and ostensible cause of his arrest was a visit to a suspected lady at Passy. The proceeding was utterly illegal, even according to such scanty remains of law as the Terrorists had preserved for themselves, for Chenier was not under the local jurisdiction of the man who seized him, and had a safe conduct and certificate of good citizenship from the authorities of his quartier. Indeed the gaoler of the Luxemburg prison refused to receive him, but the functionary at St. Lazare was less scrupulous.

bins, having grown wiser as they grew more frantic; that he was then a suspected if not a denounced man, and would himself have shared the fate of André, had the rule of Robespierre lasted a fortnight longer. The two pleas are not perfectly consistent, and we think that generally the editors and biographers of the brothers have erred in trying to prove too much, and in giving to the accusation a greater importance than it deserved.* For our own part, we do not believe one syllable of it. The Chéniers had that strong family attachment which all families ought to have, and it is absurd to suppose that if Joseph regarded the wishes of his relatives, when the question was only about breaking off a paper war with his brother, he would have disregarded them when that brother's life was at stake. The advice he gave his father, who wished him to agitate openly for his brothers, "Rather try to let them be forgotten," was the very best that could have been given, as the event too truly showed. Had nothing been said about André, he might have remained unnoticed for two days longer, which would have been enough to save his life, and actually did save the life of Sauveur ; but the memorial which his father addressed to that body called with a mournful irony the Committee of Public Safety, was his death-warrant. *

And now comes a characteristic specimen of radical inaccuracy. Another of the Cheniers, Sauveur, formerly an officer in the army of the north, had been arrested and imprisoned at Beauvais. In such haste was the indictment against Andre drawn up, that it confounded him with Sauveur; attributed to one brother the acts and writings of both, and designated

Especially do we think M. Arnault to blame, for seriously confuting, in a narration of two pages, a scandalous story of Madame de Genlis, about Mademoiselle Dumesnil's reception of Joseph Chenier; as if a French actress would trouble herself about truth, when there was a chance of saying a mot, or making a scene.

that triumph. Alas! it is not too well remembered even at the present day, that they cho help to open the flood-gates, are responsible for the inundation.

the poet-editor as ex-adjutant-general and chief of brigade, under Dumouriez! One of Andre's eulogists suggests that he made no allusion to this palpable flaw, in hopes that this confusion of personal identity might be the means of saving his brother. If so, his silence was successful.

There were, indeed, many reasons why Andre Chenier should have made no further opposition to the proceedings against him, than was necessary to expose their injustice and illegality in the eyes of future generations. To one whose patriotic hopes had been so cruelly disappointed, life was of little value. When a man of refined education, liberal principles, hopes of liberal institutions, and freedom from party fanaticism, sees all constitutional landmarks swept away, and the ochlocracy triumphant, his despondency is utter and hopeless. He has "lost the dream of doing and the other dream of done," and knows not how to help himself or others. In one case only can he be sustained. his mind has been deeply imbued with the true philosophy-the philosophy of Christianity-he may remember that "God

If

fulfils himself in many ways," and faith will illumine for him what, to the eye of reason alone, is thick darkness.

θάρσει μοι θάρσει τέκνον,
μέγας ἔτι ἐν ὀυρανῳ Ζεῦς
ὃς τάδ' ἐφορα καὶ κρατύνει.

But we very much fear Chenier had not this consolation. His views, lofty and noble as they were, were still bounded by this world and the limits of human ability. And at that time it seemed as if no human ability could do anything for the French. The people, from whom the gallows was a more acceptable gift than the right hand of friendship,* had triumphed, and he had long before made up his mind which alternative to choose.

Chenier was guillotined July 25th, 1794. His works were not collected till 1819, and complete editions of them did not appear till 1840.

S'ils triumphent, ce sont gens par qui il vaut mieux etre pendre que regarde comme ami."-Avis aux Francais sur leurs veritables Ennemis.

FREDERICK WILLIAM the Fourth was born in the royal palace, at Berlin, on the 15th of October, in the year 1795. His father was then Crown Prince of Prussia, for his grandfather, Frederick William II., was still on the throne.

It must be confessed, that this monarch came into existence in one of the most stormy periods that mark the history of our world. The great French Revolution was well advanced in its wonderful career. Like a tornado, it had swept over France,

VOL. I. NO. I. NEW SERIES.

burying in ruin the ancient house of the Capets, and all the time-honored institutions of the Church and of the State. All the old orders of society, all the former usages and opinions, all the cherished modes of administering the government, and even the very boasted military tactics of the age of Louis the Great, (as Louis XIV. had long been called,) had gone down together in the overwhelming vortex of that astounding movement; and a new social and political world was beginning to

rise out of the chaos. The Directory had succeeded the overthrow of Robespierre and his Jacobin friends; and it was preparing the way for its own dissolution, and the accession of the Consulate, with the Corsican at its head.

Nor had the moral volcano, which had levelled every ancient institution of France in the dust-just as the tremendous hurricane in the natural world, prostrates forests, overturns houses, and spreads desolation everywhere-been confined, in its ravages, to the limits of that beautiful, but then unhappy country. Its effects were felt in all the civilized world, especially in the European portion of it. Thrones which had endured a thousand years, trembled on their bases, and fear fell upon all the venerable adjuncts by which they had been so long propped up.

In no country was there more alarm among sensible and far-seeing men, than in Germany in none was there greater occasion for it. From immemorial time-at least from the downfall of the Roman empire-that country had been the prey of all sorts of despotism, from that of the poorest baron and the humblest priest, up through the double lines of State and Church, to the throne of the Emperor and the chair of the Fisherman.

Yet, strange as it may seem to men of our day, the trembling despotisms of that country-wholly insensible of their own weakness, and ignorant of the nation with which they had to do-combined their forces, for the purpose of reducing France to her pristine condition. Large armies were marched to the Rhine, there to meet inglorious defeat, and thence to be driven back, overwhelmed with shame, to the lands whence they came.

Nor is it wonderful that they suffered such disasters. The enemy with whom they went to contend, was a young giant, awaking up in all his energy, and intoxicated with the enthusiasm of newly-gotten freedom. The sudden acquisition on the part of the masses of liberty, or what was deemed to be such, had infused a new life throughout the entire nation. Old things had passed away, and all things had become new-alas! not always in the best sense. And when the old dynasties undertook to put down this most astonishing movement which the world has ever seen,

the Allons! and the Marchons! of the Marseillaise Hymn sent young France in overwhelming force into Flanders, to the Rhine, to the Jura, to the Alps. No hostile foot was allowed to tread the soil of France many days. The panic-stricken foe was pursued even into the marshes of Holland, nor found, in its dykes and its canals, the safety which it sought. Not only did the blue-eyed Germans retreat with precipitation back to the eastern bank of the Rhine, but were glad to surrender the western, and with it, four millions of inhabitants, to the Republic of France. The Austrians were chased out of Switzerland, and were compelled to retire altogether from their ill-gotten possessions in Italy! Such were the achievements of a mighty nation, when freedom had infused a new life throughout all the classes of its population.

And what if liberty was perverted to licentiousness, and new despots mounted to the deserted seats whence the old had so recently been hurled? Still the people possessed the emblems and some of the substantial fruits of freedom. Old monopolies were gone. The enormous landed possessions of the church, of the nobility, and of the crown, had been, for the most part, confiscated, and a new order of things, so far as the agricultural population was concerned, had commenced. And if despotism had again taken the place of liberty, even while wearing its garb, it was some consolation to the masses, that the despots were from among themselves, and not of an ancient, privileged, and longdetested caste. And then, if it was a despotism, it was a glorious one, which to Frenchmen is a great deal. What if it gave them chains at home? it gave them consideration and glory abroad. Still more, if it was a despotism, it was one of their own making; and we all know that men will submit with much more contentment and better grace, to burthens of which they themselves are the authors, than to those which others impose on them.

But let us return from this digression-a digression, however, needed to illustrate the subject to the state of Germany at the epoch of the birth of Frederick William IV. Two great military governments ruled the Germanic and Germano-Slavonic races-the Austrian and Prussian