manner in which writers like M. Hip- Mountain were to a great extent created by that very policy. We could, we think, also show that the evils produced by the Jacobin administration did not terminate when it fell; that it bequeathed a long series of calamities to France and to Europe; that public opinion, which had during two generations been constantly becoming more and more favourable to civil and religious freedom, underwent, during the days of Terror, a change of which the traces are still to be distinctly perceived. It was natural that there should be such a change, when men saw that those who called themselves the champions of popular rights had compressed into the space of twelve months more crimes than the Kings of France, Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian, had perpetrated in twelve centuries. Freedom was regarded as a great delusion. Men were willing to submit to the government of hereditary princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of priests; to any government but that of philosophers and philanthropists. Hence the imperial despotism, with its enslaved press and its silent tribune, its dungeons stronger than the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obsequious than the old parliaments. Hence the restoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, the Chamber of 1815 with its categories of proscription, the revival of the feudal spirit, the encroachments of the clergy, the persecution of the Protestants, the appearance of a new breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full light of the nineteenth century. Hence the admission of France into the Holy Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers of the tricolor against the liberties of Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions with which, even at the present day, the most temperate plans for widening the narrow basis of the French representation are regarded by those who are especially interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Half a century has not sufficed to obliterate the stain which one year of depravity and mad-it be pretended that it was from public ness has left on the noblest of causes. spirit that he raved for the head of Nothing is more ridiculous than the the Austrian woman? In these very These, however, are considerations to which, on the present occasion, it is hardly necessary for us to advert; for, be the defence which has been set up for the Jacobin policy good or bad, it is a defence which cannot avail Barère. From his own life, from his own pen, from his own mouth, we can prove that the part which he took in the work of blood is to be attributed, not even to sincere fanaticism, not even to misdirected and ill-regulated patriotism, but either to cowardice, or to delight in human misery. Will it be pretended that it was from public spirit that he murdered the Girondists? In these very Memoirs he tells us that he always regarded their death as the greatest calamity that could befall France. Will Memoirs he tells us that the time spent | government was always laying plans in attacking her was ill spent, and ought to have been employed in concerting measures of national defence. Will it be pretended that he was induced by sincere and earnest abhorrence of kingly government to butcher the living and to outrage the dead; he who invited Napoleon to take the title of King of Kings, he who assures us that after the Restoration he expressed in noble language his attachment to monarchy, and to the house of Bourbon? Had he been less mean, something might have been said in extenuation of his cruelty. Had he been less cruel, something might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicide and court-spy, for him who patronised Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in gasconades of Jacobinism and gasconades of servility, what excuse has the largest charity to offer? We cannot conclude without saying something about two parts of his character, which his biographer appears to consider as deserving of high admiration. Barère, it is admitted, was somewhat fickle; but in two things he was consistent, in his love of Christianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we must say that England is much more beholden to him than Christianity. It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but we think that we do not flatter ourselves when we say that Barère's aversion to our country was a sentiment as deep and constant as his mind was capable of entertaining. The value of this compliment is indeed somewhat diminished by the circumstance that he knew very little about us. His ignorance of our institutions, manners, and history is the less excusable, because, according to his own account, he consorted much, during the peace of Amiens, with Englishmen of note, such as that eminent nobleman Lord Greaten, and that not less eminent philosopher Mr. Mackensie Cofhis. In spite, however, of his connection with these well-known ornaments of our country, he was so ill-informed about us as to fancy that our to torment him. If he was hooted at Saintes, probably by people whose relations he had murdered, it was because the cabinet of St. James's had hired the mob. If nobody would read his bad books, it was because the cabinet of St. James's had secured the Reviewers. His accounts of Mr. Fox, of Mr. Pitt, of the Duke of Wellington, of Mr. Canning, swarm with blunders surpassing even the ordinary blunders committed by Frenchmen who write about England. Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt, he tells us, were ministers in two different reigns. Mr. Pitt's sinking fund was instituted in order to enable England to pay subsidies to the powers allied against the French republic. The Duke of Wellington's house in Hyde Park was built by the nation, which twice voted the sum of 200,000l. for the purpose. This, however, is exclusive of the cost of the frescoes, which were also paid for out of the public purse. Mr. Canning was the first Englishman whose death Europe had reason to lament; for the death of Lord Ward, a relation, we presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr. Cofhis, had been an immense benefit to mankind. Ignorant, however, as Barère was, he knew enough of us to hate us; and we persuade ourselves that, had he known us better, he would have hated us more. The nation which has combined, beyond all example and all hope, the blessings of liberty with those of order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been false alike to the cause of order and to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for popular rights; we have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty. But we have never been shocked by such a spectacle as the Barère of 1794, or as the Barère of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest demagogues have been gentle; compared with him, our meanest courtiers have been manly. Mix together Thistlewood and Bubb Dodington; and you are still far from having Barère. The antipathy between him and us is such, that neither for the crimes of his earlier nor for those of his later life does our language, rich as it is, furnish us with adequate names. We have found it difficult to relate his history without having perpetual recourse to the French vocabulary of horror, and to the French vocabulary of baseness. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct in the Convention, without using those emphatic terms, guillotinade, noyade, fusillade, mitraillade. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct under the Consulate and the Empire without borrowing such words as mouchard and mouton. We therefore like his invectives against us much better than anything else that he has written; and dwell on them, not merely with complacency, but with a feeling akin to gratitude. It was but little that he could do to promote the honour of our country; but that little he did strenuously and constantly. Renegade, traitor, slave, coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, hack writer, police-spy-the one small service which he could render to England was to hate her: and such as he was may all who hate her be! ful, whatsoever things are of evil report, if there be any vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended in Barère. But one thing was still wanting; and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an assemblage of qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect becomes overpowering. We sink under the contemplation of such exquisite and manifold perfection; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous it was in us to think of composing the legend of this beatified athlete of the faith, St. Bertrand of the Carmagnoles. Something more we had to say about him. But let him go. We did not seek him out, and will not keep him longer. If those who call themselves his friends had not forced him on our notice we should never have vouchsafed to him more than a passing word of scorn and abhorrence, such as we might fling at his brethren, Hébert and Fouquier Tinville, and Carrier and Lebon. We have no pleasure in seeing human nature thus degraded. We turn with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of the fiction; and the filthiest and most spiteful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble creature when compared with the Barère of history. But what is no pleasure M. Hippolyte Carnot has made a duty. It is no light thing that a man in high and honourable public trust, a man who, from his connections and position, may not unnaturally be supposed to speak the sentiments of a large class of his countrymen, should come forward to demand approbation for a life black with every sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has This makes the character complete. forced us to gibbet it; and we venture Whatsoever things are false, whatso- to say that, from the eminence of inever things are dishonest, whatsoever famy on which we have placed it, he things are unjust, whatsoever things will not easily take it down. are impure, whatsoever things are hate We cannot say that we contemplate with equal satisfaction that fervent and constant zeal for religion which, according to M. Hippolyte Carnot, distinguished Barère; for, as we think that whatever brings dishonour on religion is a serious evil, we had, we own, indulged a hope that Barère was an atheist. We now learn, however, that he was at no time even a sceptic, that he adhered to his faith through the whole Revolution, and that he has left several manuscript works on divinity. One of these is a pious treatise, entitled "Of Christianity, and of its Influence." Another consists of meditations on the Psalms, which will doubtless greatly console and edify the Church. 282 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA. FRANCIS ATTERBURY. (DECEMBER 1853.) ther. Atterbury undertook to defend the great Saxon Reformer, and performed that task in a manner singularly characteristic. Whoever examines his reply to Walker will be struck by the contrast between the feebleness of those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and the vigour of those parts which are rhetorical and aggressive. The Papists were so much galled by the sarcasms and invectives of the young polemic that they raised a cry of treason, and accused him of having, by implication, called King James a Judas. FRANCIS ATTERBURY, a man who holds a conspicuous place in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of England, was born in the year 1662, at Middleton in Buckinghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. Francis was educated at Westminster School, and carried thence to ChristChurch a stock of learning which, though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial observers believed his at- After the Revolution, Atterbury, tainments to be immense. At Oxford, though bred in the doctrines of nonhis parts, his taste, and his bold, con- resistance and passive obedience,readily temptuous, and imperious spirit, soon swore fealty to the new government. made him conspicuous. Here he pub- In no long time he took holy orders. lished, at twenty, his first work, a He occasionally preached in London translation of the noble poem of Absa- with an eloquence which raised his relom and Achitophel into Latin verse. putation, and soon had the honour of Neither the style nor the versification being appointed one of the royal chapof the young scholar was that of the lains. But he ordinarily resided at Augustan age. In English composition Oxford, where he took an active part he succeeded much better. In 1687 he in academical business, directed the distinguished himself among many able classical studies of the under-graduates men who wrote in defence of the Church of his college, and was the chief adof England, then persecuted by James viser and assistant of Dean Aldrich, II., and calumniated by apostates who a divine now chiefly remembered by had for lucre quitted her communion. his catches, but renowned among his Among these apostates none was more contemporaries as a scholar, a Tory, active or malignant than Obadiah Wal- and a high-churchman. It was the ker, who was master of University practice, not a very judicious practice, College, and who had set up there, of Aldrich to employ the most promisunder the royal patronage, a press for ing youths of his college in editing printing tracts against the established Greek and Latin books. Among the religion. In one of these tracts, writ- studious and well-disposed lads who ten apparently by Walker himself, many were, unfortunately for themselves, inaspersions were thrown on Martin Lu-duced to become teachers of philology when they should have been content | between the infancy and the dotage of to be learners, was Charles Boyle, son Greek literature. So superficial indeed of the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of was the learning of the rulers of this Robert Boyle, the great experimental celebrated society that they were philosopher. The task assigned to charmed by an essay which Sir WilCharles Boyle was to prepare a new liam Temple published in praise of the edition of one of the most worthless ancient writers. It now seems strange books in existence. It was a fashion, that even the eminent public services, among those Greeks and Romans who the deserved popularity, and the gracecultivated rhetoric as an art, to com- ful style of Temple should have saved pose epistles and harangues in the so silly a performance from universal names of eminent men. Some of these contempt. Of the books which he counterfeits are fabricated with such most vehemently eulogised his eulogies exquisite taste and skill that it is the proved that he knew nothing. In fact, highest achievement of criticism to dis- he could not read a line of the langutinguish them from originals. Others age in which they were written. Among are so feebly and rudely executed that many other foolish things, he said that they can hardly impose on an intelli- the letters of Phalaris were the oldest gent school-boy. The best specimen letters and also the best in the world. which has come down to us is perhaps Whatever Temple wrote attracted nothe oration for Marcellus, such an imi- tice. People who had never heard of tation of Tully's eloquence as Tully the Epistles of Phalaris began to inquire would himself have read with wonder about them. Aldrich, who knew very and delight. The worst specimen is little Greek, took the word of Temple perhaps a collection of letters purport- who knew none, and desired Boyle to ing to have been written by that Pha- prepare a new edition of these admirlaris who governed Agrigentum more able compositions which, having long than 500 years before the Christian slept in obscurity, had become on a era. The evidence, both internal and sudden objects of general interest. external, against the genuineness of these letters is overwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they emerged, in company with much that was far more valuable, from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by Politian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the greatest scholar on our side of the Alps. In truth, it would be as easy to persuade an educated Englishman that one of Johnson's Ramblers was the work of William Wallace as to persuade a man like Erasmus that a pedantic exercise, composed in the trim and artificial Attic of the time of Julian, was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian, who roasted people alive many years before there existed a volume of prose in the Greek language. But, though ChristChurch could boast of many good Latinists, of many good English writers, and of a greater number of clever and fashionable men of the world than belonged to any other academic body, there was not then in the college a single man capable of distinguishing The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who was Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of the college. It was an edition such as might be expected from people who would stoop to edite such a book. The notes were worthy of the text; the Latin version worthy of the Greek original. The volume would have been forgotten in a month, had not a misunderstanding about a manuscript arisen between the young editor and the greatest scholar that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters, Richard Bentley. The manuscript was in Bentley's keeping. Boyle wished it to be collated. A mischief-making bookseller informed him that Bentley had refused to lend it, which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contemptuously of the letters attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics who were taken in by such counterfeits, which was perfectly true. Boyle, much provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly ironical compliment to Bentley's courtesy. Bentley revenged himself by a |