siasm, their hatred of a foreign yoke,-were obliged to derive their valour from their fears. The Romans were better judges of the sentiments which animate, and ought to animate, an army-when they left honour even to defeat. They felt that we humiliate those whom we threaten, or whom we punish, and that the way to make men capable of great actions, is to show a great generosity for their weaknesses.

As for liberty, it does not consist in planting trees, and signing decrees with the names symbolic of a republic. When Danton said, “We are few in number-we must show no mercy, for the sake of liberty, to those who are opposed to us," he did not simply establish a momentary despotism among his fellow citizens; he said that which will favour despotism through all ages-he did not merely inflict an injury upon his countrymen, he inflicted a severer injury upon his principles, upon the principles professed by him and his; for he sullied and rendered suspicious those great words which the Romans had left us, and which up to that time were fresh in all their antique purity—and thus it is hardly wonderful that the crimes of Jacobinism were said to be paid by royal gold.

No one would willingly pause long upon the events of this mysterious and awful epoch. I pass them gladly by-but there was one man who,

when politics were a game at which the loser laid down his head, took a prominent part in that terrible amusement.

You who declaim against the vice and venality of Mirabeau, will be delighted to know that this man was surnamed the pure, the incorruptible, the just. No follies had disfigured his youth; severe, neat, careful in his carriage and his costume, there was none of that easy negligence, of that happy carelessness in his character or his person, which marks and makes a man forgetful of himself. In the preciseness of his dress, you saw what was uppermost in his opinion. In every thing about him you read the egotism which reigned in his heart, and that firm and unconquerable will, superior to all things, even to genius, which elevated him above Vergniaud and Danton, chiefs of a party like himself—more capable of great enterprizes-but less active, less intriguing-with views more vast than his, but more obscure for they knew not frequently at what they aimed.

He never doubted, never for one moment doubted as to the object of his endeavours. It was circumscribed, concentrated, clear: amidst all the misery, all the terror, all the victories, and all the glories which stupified

VOL. I.

M

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 Iwith which he acted.

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.