In his fourth chapter Mr. Adolphus takes a comprehensive sketch of the views of foreign powers towards France, and mentions the pretended treaty of Pavia with merited contempt. The temporary credit assigned to this weak invention, was strengthened, he observes, by the conference of the Emperor with the King of Prussia, at Upper Pilnitz, in Saxony; at which it was finally agreed, that each should furnish twelve thousand men, to support the army of the emigrants, demonstrate unequivocally their protection of the French Princes, and urge the concurrence of other powers.

Had a copy of this treaty reached Louis time enough to have prevented his free and unconditional acceptance of the revolution, it might have produced beneficial effects. As it was, however, it could have been wished the emigrant princes had been prevailed on to take advantage of the general amnesty to return to France, as their refusal furnished the legislative assembly (which had met on the first of October, and by a decree of the former body was entirely composed of new members) with a pretext for proceeding to still greater severities.

In November a decree was passed that all the French assembled in the Frontiers after the first of January, should be considered guilty; and the same month another severe decree against the nonjuring clergy, to both of which the king opposed his veto.

The jacobins in the mean time were eager for war, and the death of Leopold, on the first of March, and the assassination of the King of Sweden, on the sixteenth of the same month, rather accelerated than retarded hostilities. The ministry were compelled, by the exertions of the demagogues, who disliked their pacific measures, to resign; and were succeeded by what is usually denominated the jacobin administration, consisting of Dumouriez, Degraves, Lacoste, Claviere, and Roland. The new ministry employed all their talents in rendering an accommodation with the successors of Leopold impos sible, and on the twentieth of March war was declared against the King of Hungary and Bohemia, without mentioning Prussia, though Frederic William had already made known his determination of resisting an attack on the imperial dominions.

The principal events of the first campaign of the war are clearly narrated by Mr. Adolphus; our readers will remember they were attended with eminent disgrace and ill success to the republicans.

That however perpetually waged against their king and constitution was attended with more encouraging results. Pretended plots for the re-establishment of the old system were daily discovered, and the people were encouraged to insult their monarch and his

consort with every species of licentious abuse. The popular party had succeeded in exasperating the people on the king's refusing to sanction the decrees against the nonjuring priests, and petitions were favourably received which complained of the absurdity of permitting one man to paralize the will of twenty-six millions.

The breach between the ministers was daily widening. Dumou riez, Lacoste, and Durauthon still continued to treat the king with respect, and, had their powers been honestly exerted, might have afforded him effectual protection. Servan adhered to Roland and Claviere, till at length (on account of their insolent behaviour in consequence of the king's refusing, by the advice of Dumouriez, ta sanction another severe decree against nonjuring priests, and a memorial for a camp of twenty thousand men round the capital) all three were dismissed.

Dumouriez, however, perceiving he had offended the popular faction by accepting the office of minister of war, made haste to regain their good opinion, by resigning on the very same grounds which had furnished him with a pretext for dismissing Roland and his friends. The king was deeply affected by his treachery; "only conceive," says he, in a letter to M. Bertrand de Moleville, "only conceive the strange inconsistency of this man, after having persuaded me to dismiss those three ministers, because they insisted on my sanctioning the decrees, he now abandons me for persisting in the measures he himself urged."

In consequence of the king's refusal to sanction the two decrees being made public, an immense mob, armed with pikes and bludgeons, collected on the site of the Bastile on the twentieth of June, and after marching through the hall of the assembly in procession, proceeded to the palace, where they soon surmounted the feeble opposition of the Swiss guards, who did not dare to resist without express orders. No doubt, Mr. Adolphus thinks, can be entertained of the intention of some of the insurgents to assassinate the king. The work of murder was however left incomplete, and the mob, after loading the unfortunate family with the grossest insult and abuse, in consequence of the approach of evening and the entreaties of Petion the mayor (who had sought to avoid responsibility during the early part of the day by going to Versailles) gradually dispersed. The fourteenth of July, the day of the confederation, passed over in tolerable tranquillity.

During these transactions, the King of Prussia, faithful to his engagements with the Emperor, prepared to co-operate with him in invading France, and the Duke of Brunswick, who had been ap

pointed commander of the allied forces, published, on the twentyfifth of July, that imprudent and sanguinary manifesto which operated as a warrant for the destruction of Louis XVI. Petitions were now daily presented, praying for the suspension of the executive power in the king; and to procure a decree of the forfeiture of the crown was the general aim of the popular faction. The acquittal of La Fayette had enflamed the mob with the most implacable resentment, and, determined to gain their point, they prepared to have recourse to insurrection and revolt.

The friends of the king, with means far disproportioned, laboured for his defence. Mandat, commander of the national guard, was firm and loyal; the fidelity of the Swiss guard was highly and justly appreciated, and many of the royalists assembled, armed with swords and pistols, and swore to spend the last drop of their blood in defence of their sovereign.

At midnight, on the 10th of August, the tocsin gave the signal of insurrection, the générale beat to arms, and the agents of faction hastily collecting in the sections, voted the dismission of all the municipality and commune, except Petion, Danton, and Manuel; and elected in their stead one hundred and ninety-two commissioners, from among the most desperate of their own body. The resources of the palace had been weakened by a groundless jealousy between the National and the Swiss guards; Mandat had been sent for by the new commune, and barbarously murdered; and a considerable part of a reinforcement of troops, detached for its defence, being devoted to the revolutionary faction, retreated with their cannon, and Santerre, who had been appointed their commander, after the murder of Mandat, took care to dispose of the remainder in such a manner, as fully to prevent their exertions being effectual. The king, queen, and family at length were compelled to seek for refuge in the assembly, and after remaining for two days in the Loge du Logographe (a narrow box separated from the hall by a railing, and appropriated to the reporters for that newspaper) in hourly expectation of being assassinated, were committed to, and closely confined in, the temple. The assembly pronounced a decree for suspending the royal functions. Roland, Claviere and Servan were recalled, and, with Danton, Monge, and Le Brun, invested, pro tempore, with the executive power.

When the king left the Thuilleries, he unfortunately forgot to order it to be immediately surrendered. A desperate contest ensued between the Marseillois and the Swiss guards, who performed prodigies of valour, till they received an order from the king to lay

down their arms. Their corps was wholly exterminated, and the mob, when masters of the palace, inhumanly butchered all they found; door-keepers, porters, and even the lowest menial servants. The whole number slaughtered on both sides in the course of the day, is estimated at between four and five thousand; and Mr. Adol phus, for the credit of human nature, regrets that the fidelity of an historian obliges him to add, that "some of these bodies were roasted and devoured, and draughts of human blood quaffed by the people.”

The massacres of the second and third of September, were yet more dreadful. At Paris alone eight thousand were slain, and between the fourth and sixteenth, Orleans, Meaux, and Lyons, had each its separate massacre to relate. The dismal scene was closed with the state prisoners from Orleans, who were waylaid at Versailles, in their road to Paris, and all put to death,

Thus, amid anarchy, turbulence, and every species of horror, the legislative assembly terminated its career. The members of the national convention which succeeded it, were yet more infamous; and the presence of the invading armies, which might have put a check to their proceedings, was no longer regarded with terror. Dumourier, who had succeeded to the command, abdicated by the flight of La Fayette, had compelled the allied army to retreat, and the success of the French arms still continued to be every where conspicuous.

The issue of the king's trial is too well known to need repetition. Sentence of death was awarded by a majority of eleven, and ordered to be put in execution in twenty-four hours. The unfortunate monarch was guillotined on the twenty-first of January, 1793, on a scaffold erected between the pedestal which had supported the statue of Louis XV. and the Champs Elisées. His body was thrown, without funeral ceremony, into a space in the church yard of Saint Mary Magdalen, which was filled with quick-lime, carefully guarded till the body was supposed to be consumed, and then levelled with the circumjacent ground, that every trace of the spot where it was deposited, might be effectually obliterated.

"Such," says Mr. Adolphus, was the tragical end of the last acknowledged king of France. His character has been descanted upon in the most glowing terms, by his affectionate subjects; no part of their eulogies are deficient in foundation; and most of his enemies, in the midst of a studied system of calumny, have been obliged, at some periods, to acknowledge his virtues. Want of firmness, and active courage, is the fault most generally attributed to him; but his whole conduct proves that he had no fear for himself,

his only terror arose from the probability of shedding the blood of his subjects in civil war. His conduct from the time his trial commenced, till the moment which terminated his existence, forms a picture of excellence, almost surpassing humanity, and demonstrates the transcendant benefit of that religious purity, which takes the sense of shame from premeditated infamy, which deprives cruelty of its venom, and death of its sting.”

We shall embrace the earliest opportunity of resuming our account of this interesting and accurate production.

St. Clair, or the Heiress of Desmond. By S. O. 8vo. pp. 248. Highley.

NOVELS are so generally resorted to, and so eagerly perused by the rising generation of both sexes, that it becomes more peculiarly the duty of the novelist to endeavour to blend instruction with amusement, and to please the head without corrupting the heart.

St. Clair is evidently the production of a man of distinguished abilities; and although many of its sentiments may, perhaps, be justly considered as exceptionable, it affords, upon the whole, a most useful lesson to those, who, vanquished by the sophistry of reasoning vice, nourish a criminal passion under the guise of sentiment, and 66 pervert the faculties of reason to sanction the errors of inclination."

The Catastrophe, a Tale, founded on Facts. From the French of the Chevalier de St. Aubigné. By T. Byerly. 8vo. pp. 230. 6s. 6d. Highley.

MR. BYERLY presents the "Catastrophe" to the public as a “ free translation of the select parts of a correspondence between the friends of a German officer of distinction," and affects to consider it as never intended to receive aid from the embellishments of fiction.

Although, generally speaking, we by no means approve of such desultory and unconnected publications, the tale before us, we must own, is pleasing and probable, and may serve to afford a leisure half hour an innocent and delightful recreation.

Swiftiana, 2 Vols. Phillips.

THE Volumes before us are the third of the series of Anas, pubfished on the plan announced in a former review, and are happily calculated to rescue from oblivion a variety of those ingenious and valuable observations which fell from a man who truly had, as Cardinal Polignac expresses, L'Esprit Createur.

E-VOL. XVII.