public, and in our pages. The same may be said of another prominent literary sufferer, Madame Roland; who, democratic as were her tenets, receives a merited eulogium in this work.

The talents and fate of Vergniaud have also been generally known. He was born in 1759, and practised as a counsellor at Bourdeaux.Elected one of the representatives of the department of the Gironde, he was soon rendered conspicuous by his eloquence. After having co-operated for a season with the violent measures of the revolutionists, he took part, in autumn 1792, against the Jacobins; and, on the trial of Louis XVI., he urged a reference to the decision of the people. Henceforwards he was marked for destruction; and, on 10th April, he, Guadet, and Gensonné, were denounced by Robespierre. On this occasion, Vergniaud succeeded, after much interruption, in getting possession of the tribune, and answered the studied invective of his adversary by an extemporaneous speech which may be regarded as a model of courage and eloquence. He may be characterized as the orator of the imagination, and he was accustomed to deliver his discourses with a seductive flexibility of voice. The night before his execution was passed in conversation with several fellow prisoners, who were about to accompany him to the scaffold. During this gloomy meeting, he spoke long and forcibly of governments and revolutions; and he threw away some poison which he had kept till then, saying that, since he had not enough to share with the companions of his destiny, he would not forsake them."

Of the celebrated Condorcet, a fair account seems to be given but the circumstances of his life are familiar to our readers. With regard to the immediate cause of his death, it is here remarked:On his arrival at Bourg, he was shut up in a dungeon, and forgotten for 24 hours; the man who went the next day to carry him a little bread and water, found him motionless and cold. It appears that Condorcet, losing all hope, perished either by a quick poison, which it is said that he always had about him, or of inanition and faintness, being worn out with want and fatigue.'

Rabaut St. Etienne (J. P.) a lawyer, a man of letters, and a minister of the reformed religion, was deputy from the tiers-état of the seneschalate of Nimes to the States-general. An ardent convert to the new philosophy, a sworn enemy to the Catholic clergy, from whom he said he had met with insults, he missed no opportunity of destroying their body; and we may with justice place him among the number of men in whom the sectarian spirit added greatly to revolutionary enthusiasm.-He early announced in his writings that "all the ancient establishments were hurtful to the people; that it was necessary to renew the minds, change the ideas, the laws, the customs, the men, the things, the words; in short, to destroy every

thing, in order to be able to create every thing afresh." But he forcibly combated the opinion of those who desired that the Convention should itself try Louis XVI. He maintained that it had not a right to do so; that the constitution had not created it a court of judicature; that to the tribunals alone belonged such an act, and that it must even be confirmed by the people. "I am tired," cried he," of my portion of despotism, and sigh for the moment when a national tribunal will make us lose the forms and features of tyrants."

He opposed with great energy the terrorist party which was oppressing the National Convention; and, particularly on the 14th of May, he supported a petition from the Bordelais; but on the 15th (a day when he made fresh efforts against the Montagne) a decree of arrest was passed against him, as a member of the faction of statesmen. He then escaped, and at first fled to Bourdeaux; but a decree of outlawry having been passed against him, on the 28th of July he came and concealed himself near Paris; was arrested on the 4th of December, delivered up by an old friend, of whom he went to beg an asylum, and executed the very next day, pursuant to the sentence of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris. He was 50 years of age, and a native of Nimes. We owe to him as a writer, Letters on the Primitive History of Greece; Considerations of the Interests of the Tiers-Etat, and a Historic Summary of the French Revolution, to which Lacretelle the younger has written a sequel.'

We shall now quit the enumeration of literary victims of the Revolution, to mention a few of those who have been so fortunate as to survive it. Madame Genlis is one of the most voluminous authors of the present age; and her works, it is computed, would form above forty volumes:

• Madame de Genlis, who was remarked from her entrance into the world for agreeable accomplishments, a cultivated mind, and a charming person, married young, and was early enabled to mix the colours of which she has since composed her pictures. Formed to observe society, the absurdities of which she seizes to admiration, all the shades of which she distinguishes with accuracy, and the perfidies of which she divines with skill, it would doubtless have been desirable that she should not have been called by the nature of her connexions to play a part in the Revolution. She left France in 1792, and remained in Germany till the accession of Bonaparte. Her novels contain, besides pictures which have the air of striking likenesses, that profound knowledge of the iniquity of the world, which no person can describe so faithfully who has not long had its models before his eyes, and preserved its cruel remembrances in his heart. The government granted her, in 1805, a pension of 6000 livres.'

Fontanés, the poet, had the courage to present to the Convention, during the reign of terror, a petition in behalf of the wretched inhabitants of Lyons. After the fall of Robespierre, he was appointed a professor at Paris and a member of the Institute, but found it necessary in 1797 to withdraw into England, where he remained until the accession of Bonaparte. In

1803, he allowed his political ambition to get the better of his literary ardour, and forsook his poetical labours for a place in the Legislative Body. In consequence of these injudicious aberrations, the public continues to be deprived of an epic poem under the title of "Greece preserved," in which he had made some progress, and had given rise to very favourable impressions on the part of those friends who had an opportunity of hearing the manuscript read. His case, we believe, is not uncommon among French literati, who are much more remarkable for ardour in commencing than for perseverance in prosecuting a work of magnitude.

Cardinal Maury was born in 1746, and had acquired considerable reputation by his talent for preaching, before the tumults of the Revolution. He came forwards in the constituent assembly as the zealous advocate of the crown, and persevered in that course with a courage which must be regarded as highly creditable to him when due allowance is made for the surrounding dangers. His private character has not escaped censure, but all parties were united in praising his intrepidity and eloquence; and the frankness of his conduct seems to have been one of the means of preserving his life. "At least he does not seek to betray us, but openly supports the cause he has embraced," said the people of the capital. A striking instance is recorded of his presence of mind in perilous circum-stances, when the crowd pursued him, and rang in his ears the fatal cry of "To the lamp-post."-"When you have put me in the place of the lamp," said he coolly to those who came near him, "will you see the better for it?" He fortunately left France at the end of 1791, and thus escaped the judicial murders of the Jacobin reign: but all his near relations fell victims to that execrable tyranny. On his retiring to Rome, it was judged politic to invest him with high honours, by way of affording an example of the determination of the Pope to reward those who should support the cause of the throne and the altar. He was therefore made a bishop, and eventually a cardinal; on which it was pleasantly remarked, with reference to the red hat worn by these dignitaries, that the Pope had done more than the whole national assembly of France :-" il a fait rougir l'Abbé Maury." It was not till 1805 that the Cardinal discovered a disposition to become a subject of Bonaparte; when the latter, aware of the importance of attaching to him a man of so much weight in the church, received him with open arms, and placed him, soon afterward, at the head of the ecclesiastical affairs of France. Of his talents as a writer, we recently took occasion (Appendix to Vol. Ixix.) to render a full report. Much of the secret history of the French Revolution

Revolution must be within his knowlege, and recorded pro bably in his manuscripts: but his change of situation is likely to prevent their appearance during his life.

Sièyés is two years younger than Cardinal Maury, having been born in 1748. He owed his nomination and his early popularity to the famous pamphlet, Qu'est ce que le Tiers Etat? and he was the author of several of the most ingenious propo sitions suggested in the early part of the Revolution. It was he who planned the division of France into departments, districts, and municipalities; and the arrangements for regulating the elections of representatives of the people are likewise ascribed to him. He long continued faithful to the cause of limited monarchy. "I prefer it," he said in July 1791, "because it is evident to me that the citizen has more liberty in a monarchy than in a republic, and because, in every circumstance, there is more freedom under the former of these governments." His escape during the subsequent horrors is to be attributed partly to his art in keeping in the back ground during seasons of danger, and partly to the effect of temper, which led him to wrap himself up in thought and silence whenever he met with contradictions. Even after the fall of Robespierre had removed the apprehension of personal danger, Sièyés refused repeatedly the presidentship of the Convention; and, which was more remarkable, he declined in 1795 the tempting station of member of the Directory. It was not till May 1799 that, on being again named to that high office, he consented to accept it.-On Bonaparte's return from Egypt, Sièyés was soon induced to enter into his projects; and, to those who knew the imbecility of his brother-director Ducos, it was amusing to see the artifice with which, in the public orders of government, the name of this puppet was made to precede those of the real agents. The signatures were always, "Ducos, Sièyés, Bonaparte ;" and it is more than probable that Sièyés did not know, till it was too late, the design of the usurper to absorb all power in himself. One of Bonaparte's first acts was to make over to Sièyés a considerable property on the part of the nation; a measure which had the effect of lessening the popularity of the quondam Abbé, while it gave him an interest in avoiding machinations against the new government.

The name of Chateaubriant is already known to English readers by his literary labours. Being the nephew of M. de Malesherbes, he found it necessary to quit France in consequence of the Revolution.

He went first to North America, and it was while travelling in its deserts that he conceived the plan of his Genius of Christianity. Returning to Europe, he travelled in Germany, where his meditative

air caused him to be arrested in 1799 by the Austrian troops, who supposed him engaged with something very different from literature. His release being then demanded by the most distinguished persons, was granted, and he went to London, where he published an Essay on Revolutions, ancient and modern, considered with relation to the French Revolution. At the same time he began there a first edition of his Genius of Christianity: he had already half printed it, when having perceived some imperfections, he resolved that this first work should not see the light, and went to France, whither the revolution of the 18th of Brumaire, year 8, (9th of November 1799,) permitted him to return. He there connected himself with Fontanes, Laharpe, and all the most distinguished men in the literary world. He assisted in editing the Mercure, and employed himself in bringing out his important work. After having begun printing it, he once more thought he could make it more perfect, and began it again. At last his work appeared, and called forth the highest praises and the severest criticisms.'

Prudhomme has a claim to our notice, not on the ground of personal eminence, but as one of the many individuals who, after having proceeded vehemently in the career of Revolution, felt an almost total conversion produced in him by the progress of events. In 1792, he went so far as to publish a proclamation which began, " Prudhomme to all the nations of the earth; I hereby give notice that I shall continue to publish the crimes of all the potentates of Europe." Four years afterward, he published, on the opposite side of the question, "A general History of the Crimes of the Revolution," a shapeless, ill digested compilation. Of late years, his occupations have been of a more tranquil cast, and he has exercised peaceably the business of a bookseller in Paris.

III. Jacobins. We must now turn, for a few moments, to the disgusting picture exhibited in the history of sanguinary demagogues. Among the men who deluged France with blood in 1793 and 1794, two of the most energetic, and least unfit to retain their usurped power, were Danton and St. Just. Danton was educated to the law, and, in the progress of the Revolution, was successively the associate of Mirabeau, Marat, and Robespierre. Having acquired great influence, over the Parisian mob, he was one of those who organized the tumults of 12. June and 10. August. After the fall of royalty, he obtained the appointment of administrator of justice; a station in which money poured on him from all sides, and was as speedily distributed by him to procure adherents and reward atrocities. He was the reputed cause of the horrid massacres of September, and, when subsequently called to account for the distribution of the money charged for secret service, he declared that " in a Revolution there could be no reckoning in detail." It was REV. DEC. 1814.

C.c

he