handsome apartments at a very | celebrated party gave way before good inn. LETTER XVI. had left Lyons a day or two before, and as I found that the person whose protection I had principally depended on for him at Geneva, was not there, we felt the necessity of rendering our stay as short as possible. You must read in some book of Geography the history of this great city, which is situated at the confluence of two rivers, in'a beautiful and fertile country; it carried on an extensive trade, and contained one hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants before the Revolution. I must refer you to the same source for an account of the various arts and manufactories for which Lyons was distinguished, and for the names and works of the illustrious men which it has produced. As mercantile opulence was for a time equally the object of persccution in France, with nobility of blood, or sanctity of character, or respectability of profession, the same sad scenes have been acted here as in Bordeaux. The Lyonese, however, had the energy to take up arms against their tyrants, nor was it until after an honourable defence that they submitted. They bravely exposed themselves to the dangers of a siege, in defence of their just rights, and when it was no longer possible to resist, they supported, with a patience truly heroick, all the evils, that could be heaped upon them by a cruel and rapacious enemy. In their first efforts against the tyranny of the convention and its agents, they were for a time assisted by the Girondists; nor did their courage fail them, when that the common enemy. Having ventured to punish their tyrant Challier, who was the first victim of his own guillotine, they soon foresaw the vengeance with which they were threatened and prepared to meet it. A city for ages removed from scenes of war, assumed at once, as if by miracle, the appearance of a frontier town; a military chest was erected, a paper currency founded on the joint credit of every commercial house of eminence, was put in circulation, cannon were cast, redoubts thrown up, and a commander in chief appointed: it required no solicitation for the young and active to enrol themselves in the regiments which were raised: those also whose age and infirmities or habits of life prevented the offer of their personal services, very willingly submitted to such occupations as were assigned them, whilst the women undertook the charge of the hospitals, and the children were to be alert in picking up the balls that might drop from the batteries of the besieged. I have conversed with a merchant, who commanded a company during the siege, in which his twosons, his four servants, and his thirteen clerks served as common soldiers. The effective force of the besieged never exceeded eight thousand men, whilst that of the besiegers was from forty to sixty thousand: with all their courage and their internal resources, the inhabitants of Lyons would scarcely have ventured upon such a contest, had they not relied upon the general fermentation which then prevailed in the south of France, and which ended so wofully for the people of Toulon. The king of Sardinia too, gave them hopes of assistance, and a body of troops | leaving the tender helpless objects was set in motion for that pur- of their affection behind them, expose; but circumstances, connec- posed to the vile passions and sated, I really believe, with the safe-vage cruelty of a licentious, unrety of his own dominions, and with lenting enemy. Figure to yourthe selfish short-sighted politicks self the march of this devoted of Austria intervened, and the column from their native city. troops were countermanded. The Gibbon's description of the effort Swiss Cantons were to the last made by a portion of the inhabidepended upon for assistance, but tants of Damascus, to withdraw they persevered in their unfeeling themselves from the power of the neutrality, as if Ulysses in the Saracens will furnish you with some monster's den had remained con- idea of such a scene, but the extent with the boon of being the iles of Damascus, were more forlast devoured. The emigrants, tunate than those of Lyons, who seem also to have lost all energy having been compelled after seveupon the occasion; they made no ral severe conflicts to seek for effort to throw themselves into the safety in flight and dispersion, town, though collected, apparently were encountered by a still worse for that purpose in great numbers enemy than the soldier who had upon the frontiers, and though the routed them; the peasantry of the fury of civil war had rekindled a neighbouring villages had been flame of royalism in the breast of made to believe, that this poor the Lyonese. Assistance in short remnant of Lyonese, were aristooffered itself from no quarter, excrats loaded with gold, or foreigncept from the little town of Mont- ers whose object it had been to brisson, at the distance of about parcel out the territory of the reeight leagues; the efforts of whose publick among their different soinhabitants, however, served only vereigns; this, with the desire, too to draw upon themselves a share natural upon all occasions of siding of those calamities which over- with the strongest, was sufficient whelmed their friends. Under all to put arms into their hands, and these discouragements, and with to steel them against compassion. internal treachery to guard against, They waylaid every path, examiwas the siege protracted to up- ned every grot and thicket, and wards of two months, until the proceeded to the deliberate debatteries of the enemy command- struction of their former benefaced every part of the city, and the tors, as if they had been engaged daily ration of provisions was re- in a hunting expedition against an duced to half a pound of bad inroad of wolves from the mounbread: it then became necessary tains, or any other savage race of to surrender at discretion, but their noxious animals. Of the original general, the gallant Precy had fifteen hundred or two thousand made arrangements for forcing his exiles, not more than 150 effected way into Switzerland, at the head their escape, but you will derive of fifteen hundred or two thou- a degree of satisfaction from knowsand determined followers, many ing that Precy was of the number. of these were joined by their wives A lady, who had accompanied her and some by their parents, whilst husband under the disguise of a others were under the necessity of soldier, saw him killed at her side. but was so fortunate as to reach | which had frequently been a scene the frontiers. The parish priests saved a few individuals, and a young man from whose conversation I have derived the greater part of this narration, was able to gain the cottage where he had been a nurse, and lay concealed there for a month. Of those who, unwilling to make the attempt, or unable from different circumstances, or trusting to some degree of mercy in the government, had remained at Lyons, the fate was infinitely worse: death in the field of battle, or from the hands of a ferocious peasant was soon inflicted; but death after weeks confinement in a loathsome gaol, and with all the circumstances of refined, unheard-of cruelty, which attended the executions of Lyons, was a termination that completed the sum of human misery. În addition to the common motives which seems to have influenced the agents of the government, who were familiar to scenes of distress, who catched at every excuse to confiscate the property of the rich, and who thought France overburthened with inhabitants, it was the misfortune of the Lyonese, that the principal personage upon this sad occasion was Collot d' Herbois, whom they had formerly known as an actor upon their stage, and had more than once hissed for performing his part badly: this wretch found the guillotine too slow an instrument, and drowning too easy a death for the purposes of his revenge, and it was by his order, that artillery loaded with what is called langrish, was pointed against the devoted victims, who were drawn up for that purpose at one time in the square of the town, at others in a field at a little distance from the gates, of triumph to them during the siege. You may form some idea of the cruel disorder and confusion which prevailed at these executions by a single circumstance: on counting over the dead bodies after the butchery was over, it was found upon one occasion that there were two hundred and two, instead of two hundred, the number ordered for the slaughter of the day; two of the jailors, had, it seems been fastened by mistake to two of the prisoners and had shared their fate. There must be something in the frequent frequent view of destruction, joined to the oppression the victim feels himself about to be withdrawn from, and the secret sense of a good cause, and the hope perhaps of a hereafter, which not only buoys up man above the fear of death in the worst form, but renders him on some occasions even insensible to its approach; it was not simply with resignation, but even with appearances of joy and exultation that the prisoners marched over the fatal bridge, which led to the field of death; it was in vain that all was put practice by their oppressors which might destroy the last energies of the human mind-they saw unmoved the battery which pointed against them, and the soldiers, who, to the disgrace of honourable warfare, were to finish the work of death, and the pit into which they were to be promiscuously thrown: the courage even of the women, many of whom were of an inferiour class in society, was not to be overcome; they were seen to tear from their caps as they approached the place of trial, and to throw to throw away with contempt, the tri-coloured cockade, which the pity of the bystanders had placed | there. I have conversed at different times whilst I remained at Lyons, and since I have been at Geneva, with persons who bore a part in the siege; and were of the few who had escaped, or had been able to secrete themselves after the surrender. One gentleman, whom I saw dancing at a ball last night, had prepared for himself before the surrender, a hole in a thick wall behind a press, the back boards of which he could remove at pleasure; luckily for him, it happened not to be one of the many houses selected for destruction, and he remained there, as the rabbits in our country do in the hollow of a tree, descending into the street at night, and listening very frequently during the day to the search that was made after him: the press, he says, was frequently opened and examined; in his place I should have been afraid of their hearing my heart beat. Another owed his life to a female visitor at the prison where he was confined: she to his great astonishment claimed acquaintance with him, reminded him of his having once made room for her in a crowded box at the theatre, and being a person of some charms and some influence contrived to get him enlarged. POLITE LITERATURE. LETTERS FROM BRUTUS. LETTER V. To the Right Hon. Charles James Fox. SIR, We easily pardon in others, and excuse in ourselves, an eccentricity of conduct which we suppose connected with the warmth of feeling or the energies of fancy, and set down propriety and discretion as homely qualities, to be valued, perhaps, but not to be envied. If brilliancy of talents could excuse their misdirection, you, Sir, of all men living, might plead that apology. The variety of powers with which your mind is endowed; the extent of your knowledge, with the vivacity of your imagination; the logical closeness of your reasoning, with that overwhelming torrent of eloquence in which it is conveyed; the rapidity of your thought, with the accuracy of your perception; the intuitive and lightning glance of your own observation, with your just and clear conception of that of othersaltogether form a combination which astonishes equally and delights the observer. than the possession of abilities, that But it is by the application, rather men are useful or respectable in life; and this maxim holds particularly true with regard to publick men, to whom discretion in the conduct of their talents is more absolutely essential than to others, in proportion to the extent of their influence, and the importance as well as delicacy of the situations in which they are plac ed. In the course of your political life, Sir, such situations have been uncommonly frequent; and it was highly favourable to the celebrity as well as to the development of your abilities, that they rose in a period more eventful than almost any other in the annals of Great Britain, or in the history of Europe. In those situations, Sir, the publick has not perhaps always done justice to your conduct. In the national temper of England there is a downright openness and good nature, The irregularities of genius have which allows much to purity of inbeen so often observed that it has attention, which pardons many errours length become almost proverbial to in its respect for general good chaassociate a want of prudence with the racter; while, on the other hand, it possession of a brilliant imagination. is always disposed to detract from abilities or success, if unaccompanied with these estimable qualities. Your great opponent, so long (alas! much too long) in administration, possessed the virtues of temperament, which, though they were often vices to his country, its generosity trusted and approved; and it looked with complacency on his amiable domestick character, to which the tenour of your life, and the complexion of your society, were known to be adverse. Your pposition to him was supposed to be grounded on personal resentment. Your opposition to his measures was attributed only to the turbulence of faction. The publick had just begun to feel his demerits, when your coalition with him took place; a coalition which the people felt as individuals, and could not, in the antipathy of that feeling, allow for party combination or political expediency. You suffered thus alike from their indulgence and their censure of that unfortunate minister; and they gave credit to the justice of your former accusations against him, only at that moment when your ill-sorted junction laid you under the mortifying necessity of retracting them. But on the subject of Lord North, the publick indignation has ceased, and we will not awaken it; though we may be allowed, with a retrospective sigh for national disaster, or a smile at national credulity, to wonder that so weak an agent could occasion so giant a mischief to his country. That country, in its wonted good nature, and with a certain reverence for misfortune and infirmity, of which he has not always shown them an example, has allowed his age to remain unquestioned; has left him undisturbed to the quietism of his nature, if haply it may sooth the pangs of recollection, or blunt the dread of that obloquy with which posterity will cover his name. perhaps he owes much of this indulgence to the circumstance of being so fortunate in a successo ur-"Deus nobis hac otia fecit." We are un Or From this natural and commendable propensity in the people to enhance or to lessen the publick merits of men according to their private dispositions, or private character, you have suffered a disadvantage which has counterbalanced all your natural endowments, and all your acquired information, great and extraordinary as we are willing to admit them. It is not sufficient for you to answer, that much of the blame imputed to you in this respect is unjust and ill-founded; for your friends to tell us of the candour of your mind, the benevolence of your heart, the warmth and disinterestedness of your friendship. Did the publick give them credit for their assertions, it would still reply, Why waste those qualities on objects so improper? why degrade them by an association with men so unworthy? But the publick is general in its conclusions, and cannot easily suppose particular exceptions to rules which experience has established. The people look to that circle of which you form a part, and involve you in that general colour it assumes to their eye. They cannot couple dissipation and business, and do not easily associate deep gaming and scrupulous integrity. Some of your friends publickly disclaim gaming, and are content to cheat without it: You play with that gentleman-like fairness which marks every part of your conduct; yet with the million, those friends of yours have the merit of their abstinence from play, while you derive none from that honour with which your indulgence in play is accompanied. The profession of play, like every other profession against which publick virtue and prejudice is armed, subjects to the general obloquy of the calling every individual, however honourably he may exercise it. is it often that this general opinion of Nor |