popular horrors, there is always something superfluous added to the picture and the emotion.

Danton was caught in the snare which he had laid. It proved of no use to him to throw pellets of bread in the faces of his judges, to answer their questions with courage and nobleness, to cause the tribunal to hesitate, to put the convention in danger and fear, to reason logically upon the crimes by which the very power of his enemies had been created, and, seized with a fruitless repentance, to cry out, "It was I who established this infamous tribunal; I ask pardon for the deed from God and men!"-a phrase which has been pillaged more He should have made this declaration respecting the infamy of the tribunal before being called to its bar.

than once.

Nothing now remained for Danton, but to show himself as unfeeling with respect to his own death, as he had been with regard to that of his victims-to carry his head higher than the suspended sword: this he did. From the scaffold of the reign of terror, where his feet were covered with the clotted blood shed the previous evening, having cast a look of contempt and pride on the multitude, he said to the executioner ; will show my head to the people; it is worth the trouble." Danton's head remained in the hands of the executioner, whilst the headless trunk went to mix with the decapitated bodies of his victims; this was, still, equality.

"You

Danton's deacon and sub-deacon, Camille Desmoulins and Fabre d'Eglantine, perished in the same manner as their priest.

At the time in which grants were made to the guillotine, and when people wore alternately at their buttonhole, disguised as a flower, a little golden guillotine, or a very small portion of the heart of some one who had been guillotined; at the time in which men shouted Vive l'enfer! in which joyful orgies of blood, steel, and rage were celebrated; when men drank to annihilation, and in complete nakedness danced the dance of the dead, not to have the trouble of undressing when they went to join the departed; at this time, a man must sooner or later arrive at the last banquet, at the last jest of sorrow. Desmoulins was called before the tribunal of Fouquier-Tinville; "And what is your age?" asked the president: "The age of Jesus Christ, the sansculotte," replied Camille, playing the buffoon. A sort

of avenging constraint compelled these cut-throats of Christians unceasingly to confess the name of Jesus.

It would be unjust to forget that Camille Desmoulins dared to brave Robespierre, and by his courage to redeem his crimes. He gave the signal for a reaction against the reign of terror. A young and beautiful woman, full of energy, by rendering him capable of love rendered him capable of virtues and sacrifices. Indignation raised the intrepid and biting irony of the tribune to the rank of eloquence; in a bold and haughty strain he assailed the use of the scaffold, which he had contributed to raise. Suiting his conduct to his words, he would not agree to his own punishment; he struggled with the executioner in the hurdle, and only arrived at the brink of the last gulf half torn to pieces.

Fabre d'Eglantine, author of a piece which will survive, exhibited a character the very reverse of Desmoulins,-of pitiable weakness. Jean Roseau, the executioner in Paris at the time of the League, ordered to be hung for having lent his aid to the assassins of President Brisson, could not resolve to submit to the rope. It appears that a man does not learn to die, by putting others to death.

The debates at the Cordeliers furnished me with the view of a condition of society in the most rapid moments of its transformation. I had seen the Constituent Assembly commence the murder of royalty in 1789 and 1790; I found the dead body of the old monarchy, still warm, given up in 1792 to gutspinning legislators; they eviscerated and dissected it in the vaults of their clubs, just as the halberdiers cut in pieces and burned the body of Balafré in the ruins of the castle of Blois.

Of all the men whose names I have here recalled, Danton, Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Fabre d'Eglantine, and Robespierre, not one is now alive. I met with them for a moment on my passage between a new springing society in America and a dying system in Europe; between the forests of the New World and the solitudes of exile: I had only been some months upon a foreign soil, and these lovers of death were already exhausted by it. At the distance at which I now am from their apparitions, it appears to me, that having descended into hell in my youth, I have a confused recollection of the ghosts which I

met wandering about on the banks of the Cocytus; they com plete the varied dreams of my life, and are now to be inscribed on the tablets of my posthumous memoirs.

London, from April till September, 1822.

M. DE MALESHERBES' OPINION ON THE EMIGRATION.

Ir was a great gratification to me again to meet M. de Malesherbes, and to talk to him about my former plans. I entered into the details of a journey which I intended should occupy nine years; previously, however, I would make a hurried visit to Germany; I would hasten to the army of the Princes; then return to crush the revolution; all this was to be accomplished in two or three months, and I would then hoist my sail and return to the New World, freed from a revolution and having got a wife.

And yet, my zeal outran my faith; I felt persuaded that emigration was a great folly; "like Pelaudé every way," says Montaigne, "with the Ghibelins I was Guelph, with the Guelphs, Ghibelin." My slight attachment to absolute monarchy prevented me from acting under any illusion in the determination to which I came; I had some scruples; and although I was resolved to sacrifice myself for what I looked upon as a point of honour, yet I wished to have the opinion of M. de Malesherbes on the emigration question. I found him very much excited: the crimes perpetrated before his eyes had destroyed the political toleration of this friend of Rousseau; between the executioners and their victims he did not hesitate which side to take. He thought that any thing would be better than the then existing state of affairs; and in my particular case, he said that no man wearing a sword could dispense with joining the brothers of his king, oppressed and delivered up to his enemies. He quite approved of my return from America, and urged my brother to set out with me.

I stated the usual objections about the alliance with foreigners, the interests of one's native country, &c., &c.: he answered

them; and passing from general reasons to particular details, cited several embarrassing examples. He recalled to my memory the Guelphs and Ghibelins strengthening their several parties by the troops of the emperor and the pope; and in England, the barons taking up arms against John Lackland; and to conclude, he instanced, in our own times, the Republic of the United States imploring the assistance of France.

Was

"Thus we see," continued M. de Malesherbes, "that men the most devoted friends of liberty and philosophy, who were republicans and Protestants, saw no culpability in borrowing such aid as might give the victory to their party. Without our gold, our ships, and soldiers, would the New World be now emancipated? I myself, who now address you, did I not, in 1776, receive Franklin, who came to renew the negotiations begun by Silas Deane, and yet Franklin was no traitor! the liberation of America less honourable because it had been aided and assisted by Lafayette and French grenadiers? Every government which, instead of guaranteeing the fundamental laws of society, transgresses itself the laws of equity, and the rules of justice, by so doing ceases to exist, and restores man to the state of nature. Self-defence is, then, allowable : it is lawful to have recourse to such means as seem most proper for the overthrow of tyranny, and re-establishing the rights of each and of all."

The principles of natural justice, advanced by the greatest civilians, developed by such a man as M. de Malesherbes, and supported by numerous historical examples, struck my mind, but without convincing me: in yielding to them, I in reality was guided merely by the feelings natural to my age, and the punctilios of honour. To these instances given by M. de Malesherbes, I shall add a few of more recent date: during the war in Spain, in 1823, the republican French party embraced the cause of the Cortes, and felt no scruple about bearing arms against their country; in 1830 and 1831, the Poles and the Italian constitutional party solicited assistance from France; and the Portuguese of the charte invaded their native land with the money and troops of the foreigner. We have two standards

of weight and measure we approve, in relation to one idea, one system, one interest, one man, what we blame in relation to another idea, another system, another interest, another

man.

London, from April till September, 1822.

I PLAY AND LOSE-ADVENTURE OF THE HACKNEY COACH-MADAME ROLAND-BARRERE AT ROUSSEAU'S HERMITAGE-SECOND FEDERATION OF THE 14TH OF JULY-PREPARATIONS FOR EMIGRATION.

THESE Conversations, between the illustrious adherent of the king and myself, took place at the house of my sister-in-law ; her second son had just been born; M. de Malesherbes stood godfather to him, and gave him his own name, Christian. I was present at the baptism of this child, whose only sight of his parents was destined to be at an age when life leaves no trace on the memory, but appears in after years like the distant shadow of a dream. The preparations for my emigration in the meantime proceeded; my friends had thought to secure me a good fortune by my marriage; but it was now found that my wife's fortune was in church property, which the nation undertook to pay after its own fashion. Madame de Chateaubriand had, besides, with the consent of her guardians, lent the title to a great proportion of her income to her sister, the Countess du Plessis-Parscau, now an émigrée. There was still, then, a deficiency of money, and it was found necessary to borrow

some.

A notary procured us 10,000 francs. I was carrying them home with me, in assignats, when I met, in the Rue de Richelieu, one of my former comrades in the regiment of Navarre, Count Achard. He was a great gambler: he proposed that we should go together to the M- Rooms, where we couldtalk more comfortably: my evil genius urged me on; I went, played, and lost all except 1500 francs, with which, full of remorse and shame, I flung myself into the first vehicle I met. I had never gambled; play produced a sort of painful intoxication in me; and if the passion for it had once seized me, it would certainly have turned my brain. In a state of half-distraction I got out of the carriage at St. Sulpice, and left behind me the pocket-book containing the poor fragment of my treasure. I hastened home, and said I had left the 10,000 francs in a hackney coach.

I went out again, down the Rue Dauphine, and over the Pont Neuf, not without an inclination to throw myself into the