the world, that man saw nothing but the success, the power of one little individual—that individual was himself, was Robespierre. More evil has been said of this triumvir than perhaps he merited. The most powerful of the terrible mountain, he has frequently been taken as its representative. The slayer of those by whom so many had been slaughtered; the sole possessor for a time of the dread machine which then dictated the law; the vanquisher of the Gironde which had vanquished the monarchy; the vanquisher of C. Desmoulins, who had commenced the revolution, of Danton, whose name was so terrible in its annals; he has been considered as a person at once more marvellous and more monstrous than he really was.

Robespierre had this great advantage in the revolution, he arrived late in it. Too insignificant in the national assembly for the part he took there, to be attached to his career, he entered the convention at the head of a new party, whose ungratified ambition panted for action, when the Girondists, having succeeded in their object, were disposed to enjoy in quiet the fruits of the victory they had obtained. But the Girondists could not have gone so far as they had gone, without strongly exciting the passions of the people: and when the passions of the people are thoroughly

excited, that faction the most violent soon becomes the most powerful. In order to understand the real character, the crimes, and the talents of Robespierre, it is necessary to say two or three words more of the views of that party with which he acted.

6

When St. Just talked of making justice and virtue the order of the day,' he was sincere according to his comprehension of those terms. His idea was to banish misery and wealth from society, which he considered the origin of all vice. The St. Simonians of the present day say the same thing. But that which the St. Simonians wish to arrive at by means of the pulpit and the press, St. Just and Marat were determined to arrive at by the guillotine. They did not blind themselves to the necessity of establishing a tyranny for this, but they justified their means by their end and to sanction the one, made perpetual references to the other.

These two men were fanatics who united the most horrible crimes with the most benevolent intentions. Robespierre was more of an egotist than a fanatic, and adopting the views of his faction less from general principles than private ambition, did not carry them to the same insatiate extent. We find him mild at times when his comrades are implacable, and it

is only during the last two months of his reign, when he saw a system of blood indissolubly connected with himself, that he sent his fellowcitizens by groups of fifty a day down to execution. Even then, however, he was meditating a compromise; and having sent his brother on an expedition into the provinces, would most probably have regulated himself by his advice. Once sensible of the re-action in favour of order, he would probably, if he had lived, have attempted to restore it, and accomplished the part with energy and economy, which the Directory discharged with feebleness and waste.

245

THE DIRECTORY.

The march towards a new 6 régime' begun—The government of III.—A system of energy succeeded by a system of repose-Up to a certain time fortunateCould not continue so when its armies were defeated, its overthrow certain, and its successor sought for-Bonaparte supplied the man whom Sièyes was in search of.

ROBESPIERRE was destroyed, but the guillotine was still furnished with victims; and the conquest made in the name of peace supported itself by terror; and "the golden youth," their long hair dressed à la victime, were seen running up and down the Boulevards, and hunting their enemies with the same cry of "Liberty!" that had presided over the noyades of Nantes, and the executions of Paris. But the march towards a new régime now began; after the committee, fell the mountain; the Jacobins were cast down; the Faubourgs disarmed; and the bust of Marat removed from the Pantheon as the bust of Mirabeau had been before it. The

re-action which commenced by depriving the people of power ended by the appeal of the royalists to arms, and from the double defeat of the populace, and the sections-rose, the constitution of III., the government of the Directory. The government of the Directory was the regency of the republic. To the system which had been adopted as the means of awaking all the energies of the nation, succeeded a system intended to lull those energies to repose. The city was wooed to pleasure in the balls of the luxurious Barras, and the army employed in suppressing the tumults which the Faubourgs had formerly been instigated to create.

This government had one merit-exposed to the attacks of two different factions, it spilt little blood. Pichegru and his party, with a humanity rare in those times, were transported to Cayenne, and the conspiracy which Babœuf had denounced as so formidable, was suffered to disperse in quiet after the death of its leader. Up to a certain time the Directory was fortunate. At home the royalists and the democrats were alike subdued. Abroad the peace of Campo Formio and the treaty of Radstadt proclaimed in Germany and Italy the power of the republic. But a government perpetually obliged to conquer must be constituted on a system of con