always trace the increase of any particularly atrocious crime to this cause. The recital roused the dormant appetite for sin, as the sight of blood became an irresistible temptation to those human tigers. By the same awful and mysterious process must the History we have been reading have operated upon those whom it excited to reproduce, or to run the faintest risk of reproducing horrors, the like of which, neither before nor since, God be thanked! has it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive, much less to perpetrate. The deep interest attaching to this momentous epoch in the destinies of mankind, the dramatic skill of the narrative, the poetry and pathetic eloquence of the style, have been scarcely sufficient to prevent us from laying down in sickening disgust and horror the description of scenes which appear as if they ought to have been written in blood. If Danton himself exclaimed with horror at the propositions of Marat, "More blood! more blood! ever more blood!" what must be the feeling of those who now read of the hundred victims offered daily in Paris to "la sainte guillotine?" of the massacres "en masse" at Lyons, by the agency of cannon and grape-shot? of the incredible cruelty of the "noyades" at Nantes, by the fiend Carrier? and the unutterable wickedness of Fouché, at Lyons? All these-and, alas! more--are painted by M. De Lamartine with a vividness of colouring which we have never seen surpassed. And if his power is great in placing these general scenes before our eyes, still more to be admired is it, when he describes the martyrdom of the individual sufferer. We rise from the perusal with the feeling that we have ourselves been present at the spectacle, every circumstance of which appears to be graven upon our heart. We are ready to cry aloud with Homer: ἀφρήτωρ, ἀθέμιστος, ἀνέστιός ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος, Il. ix. 63. But that these scenes should have generated any other inclination in the minds of French readers, than that of resolving to shun as a pestilence any measures, with even an apparent tendency to cause them to be re-acted, does surely denote a most unhealthy, depraved, irregular, irreligious state of general sentiment in that volcanic country. It will be said that this is not a fair statement: that the desire excited by M. De Lamartine's work is not to imitate the crimes of the Jacobins, but to emulate the virtues of the Girondins; to realize and secure those liberties to their country, for the sake of which those heroic persons shed their blood upon the scaffold. To this defence we have more than one answer to offer. First granting, for the sake of argument, that this is a correct description of the acts and objects of the Girondists, it is not the less true that the determination to embark the fortunes of the kingdom (absit verbo invidia) in another revolution, even in pursuit of these ends, indicates that condition of the public mind which we have described. There is no man alive to the moral responsibility of his actions, conscious of the shortsightedness of his wisest views, tolerably modest in the estimation of his own sagacity, and, at the same time, instructed in the lamentable history of the failure of theories of government which were founded on the contempt of all previous example, aware that, in the attempt to establish them, his country had shed her blood like water, and passed through agonies unparalleled during a quarter of a century, from which she was but now recovering, who would have lent his aid to throw her again into the fiery furnace, upon the chance of her being again rescued from it, defecated of some of the alloy which he conceived to be mingled with her pure gold, and this at a period when it would be idle to deny that she was enjoying the chief practical blessings of a free constitution, though it was one susceptible of many improvements. No. We We say unhesitatingly, that the mind required for this patricidal act was of a very different character; the mind of which, unhappily, there are too many types now existing in France, but especially in Paris-which still is France-a mind accustomed to little or no early religious control. So that a conscientious obligation to obey, or even to hesitate long before you disobey the government under which you live, is not felt at all. A morbid craving for individual notoriety, with a disgust for the quiet round of useful labours and peaceful duties, fed and fanned into a delirious excitement by the popular novels of Victor Hugo and Dumas, and the leading articles of newspapers catering to the same vitiated palate;-a mind possessed with the notion of an individual right of insurrection against whatever restraint displeases you ;-a hard-hearted and cruel vanity, utterly reckless of consequences, and as indifferent as Robespierre, their present idol, to the means by which a visionary end is to be produced; impatient of discipline of any kind; intolerant of precept; deafer than the deafest adder to the voice of experiencethis is the mind, the general prevalence of which could alone cause M. De Lamartine's Girondins to be the fuel of a new revolution. : Secondly we entirely deny that M. De Lamartine's own representation of the acts and objects of the Girondins is such as, even if they were unaccompanied by the horrors to which we have alluded, would stimulate any reader who thought the object of a statesman should be the happiness of his country, and his acts such as conduce to that end. We have never read any account of the Girondins which was so little favourable to them. Nor do we find that the author commits himself to any approbation whatever of their policy; or, indeed, to the belief that they had any fixed policy whatever: he does not hesitate to declare that they were grossly deficient in all the common qualifications of administrative capacity, during the short period in which they held the reins of government; that beyond vague ideas of general liberty-we speak of the part which they took in the Legislative Assembly-they seemed to have had no views or plans for the benefit of a country sinking every moment, before their eyes, deeper and deeper into bankruptcy, distress, anarchy, and misery, of more than all imaginable kinds. On the contrary, the author evidently repeats with pleasure Danton's sneers at "les beaux parleurs," who were wholly incompetent to act, though they were capable of dying heroically upon the scaffold; to which, however, M. De Lamartine shows that they had previously been in great measure the means of consigning many innocent victims. Above all infamy, as he tells the story, is the conduct pursued by the Girondins, and by Vergniaud, their idol, pre-eminently, with respect to the vote upon Louis the Sixteenth's death. Having declaimed in clubs, in private societies, and in the National Convention itself, against this cold-blooded atrocity, they finally voted for it from the basest of motives-the fear that their popularity would otherwise wane before the increasing influence of the terrorists. "On attendait avec anxiété que l'ordre alphabétique de l'appel nominal des départements, arrivant à la lettre G., appelat les députés de la Gironde à la tribune. Vergniaud devait y paraître le premier. On se souvenait de son immortel discours contre Robespierre, pour disputer le jugement du roi detrôné à ses ennemis. On connaissait sa répugnance et son horreur pour le parti qui voulait des supplices. On répétait les conversations confidentielles, dans lesquelles il avait avoué vingt fois sa sensibilité sur le sort d'un prince dont le plus grand crime à ses yeux était une faiblesse qui allait presque jusqu'à l'innocence. On savait que la veille même, et quelques heures avant l'ouverture du scrutin, Vergniaud, soupant avec une femme qui s'apitoyait sur les captifs du Temple, avait juré par son éloquence et par sa vie qu'il sauverait le roi. Nul ne doutait du courage de l'orateur; le courage était écrit, à ce moment même, dans le calme de son front et dans ses plis sévères de sa bouche fermée à toute confidence. Au nom de Vergniaud les conversations cessèrent, les regards se portèrent sur lui seul. Il monta lentement les degrés de la tribune, se recueillit au moment, la paupière baissée sur les yeux, comme un homme qui réfléchit pour la dernière fois avant d'agir: puis d'une voix sourde, et comme résistant dans son âme à la sensibilité qui criait en lui, il prononça: La mort. Le silence et l'étonnement confirme le murmure et la respiration même de la salle, Robespierre sourit d'un sourire presque imperceptible où l'œil crut distinguer plus de mépris que de joie. Danton leva les épaules, Vantez donc vos orateurs !' dit-il tous bas à Brissot. Des paroles sublimes, des actes lâches! Que faire de tels hommes? Ne m'en parlez plus, c'est un parti fini.' L'espérance mourut dans l'âme du petit nombre d'amis du roi cachés dans la salle et dans les tribunes. On sentit que la victime était livrée par la main de Vergniaud."-tom. v. p. 47, 48. When the result of the scrutiny into the votes for the death or banishment of the king was made known, it was discovered that for the immediate execution of this most innocent man, the majority consisted, in fact, of only seven votes. Many of our readers may, perhaps, like ourselves, have been in the habit of hearing the Girondins lauded for their incorruptible public morals, their genuine love of liberty, their manly and courageous devotion to the stern principles of inflexible justice. We would entreat them to read with attention the following passages from the work before us. Hear the French republican historian of the Girondins : : "Il ne restait donc qu'une majorité de sept suffrages pour la mort. Ainsi trois hommes déplacés déplaçaient le chiffre et changeaient le jugement. C'étaient donc les douze ou quinze chefs de la Gironde dont la main avait jeté le poids décisif dans une balance presque égale. La mort, vœu des Jacobins fut l'acte des Girondins. Vergniaud et ses amis se firent les exécuteurs de Robespierre. La mort du tyran, passion chez le peuple fut une concession dans la Gironde. Les uns demandaient cette tête comme le signe du salut de la République, les autres la donnaient pour le salut de leur parti. Si la passion des uns était aveugle et impitoyable, quel nom donner à la concession des autres ? S'il y a un crime dans le meurtre par vengeance, dans le meurtre par lácheté il y en a deux."-tom. v. 1. 35. c. 8. p. 53. We most heartily subscribe to the truth, both of the historical fact and of the moral judgment upon this "meurtre par lâcheté" here laid before us. We rejoice that it is from a French writer, an enthusiast for the Revolution, from whom we learn this character of Vergniaud that it is, M. De Lamartine, who says: "Malvagio traditor-alla tu' onta Inf. 32. Madame Roland, as is well known, was the soul of the Girondin party in the Convention. Her beauty attracted, and her wit animated the leaders of that band; her knowledge of the difficult science of government was probably on a par with theirs, being almost entirely derived from an intimate acquaintance with a French historian of Plutarch's Lives. Thus qualified for the undertaking, it appears never to have occurred to her to doubt that she was fully justified in dissolving society into its elements, for the chance of re-constructing it anew upon an improved, that is-for by a slight assumption the terms were then, as now, in France held to be synonymous-a republican pattern. In which of the Lives written by Plutarch she found the precedents for her conduct upon two occasions recorded by the author before us, we are not informed. The occasions to which we allude were the following: 1. In March, 1792, Louis XVI. formed an administration under the influence of the Girondins, of which Monsieur Roland was Minister of the Interior. Nothing could be fairer, franker, more confiding than the conduct of the king to these persons; and it appears that Roland was sensibly touched by this treatment, and declared to his wife that the king had been grossly maligned. At this time, however, the Girondins were continually pressing the king to sanction those cruel, persecuting, and tyrannical decrees against the emigrants and the priests, which the Assembly had passed. The king endeavoured to postpone the consideration of this subject; hoping, perhaps, that in time sentiments less abhorrent from common justice and humanity might. be kindled in the Assembly, and foreseeing that the refusal, which he had determined upon with the courage which never deserted him, would cost him his life. Now we will use our historian's own language: "Prévoyant que les ministres auraient tôt ou tard un compte sévère à rendre au public de ces sanctions ajournées, Madame Roland voulait prendre ses mesures avec l'opinion. Elle persuada à son mari d'écrire au roi une lettre confidentielle, pleine des plus austères leçons de patriotisme, de la lire lui-même en plein conseil devant ce prince, et d'en garder une copie que Roland rendrait publique au moment marqué, pour servir d'acte d'accusation contre Louis XVI., et de justification pour lui-même. Cette précaution perfide contre la perfidie de la cour était odieux comme un piége, et lâche comme une dénonciation. La passion seule qui trouble la vue de l'âme, pouvait aveugler une femme généreuse sur la nature d'un pareil acte; mais l'esprit de parti tient lieu de morale, de justice et aussi de vertu. Cette lettre était une arme cachée, avec laquelle Roland se réservait de frapper à mort la réputation du roi en sauvant la sienne; sa femme rédigea la lettre après l'avoir inspirée. Ce fut son seul crime, ou plutôt ce fut le seul égarement de sa haine, ce fut aussi son seul remords au pied de l'échafaud." |