other in Europe, lent its powerful arm to sap what was sound in morals and salutary in principle.

"A strain of voluptuous and seducing immorality," says Sir Walter, "pervaded not only the lighter and gayer compositions of the French, but tinged the writings of those who called the world to admire them as poets of the highest mood, or to listen as to philosophers of the most lofty pretensions.

This license, with the corruption of morals, of which it is both the sign and the cause, leads directly to feelings the most inconsistent with manly and virtuous patriotism. Voluptuousness, and its consequences, render the libertine incapable of relish for what is simply and abstractedly beautiful and sublime, whether in literature or in the arts, and destroy the taste, while they degrade and blunt the understanding. But, above all, such libertinism leads to the exclusive pursuit of selfish gratification, for egotism is its foundation and its essence. Egotism is necessarily the very reverse of patriotism, since the one principle is founded exclusively upon the individual's pursuit of his own peculiar objects of pleasure or advantage, while the other demands a sacrifice, not only of these individual pursuits, but of fortune and life itself, to the cause of the public weal. Patriotism has, accordingly, always been found to flourish in that state of society, which is most favourable to the stern and manly virtues of self-denial, temperance, chastity, contempt of luxury, patient exertion, and elevated contemplation; and the public spirit of a nation has invariably borne a just proportion to its private morals. Religion cannot exist where immorality generally prevails, any more than a light can burn when the air is corrupted; and accordingly, infidelity was so general in France, as to predominate in almost every rank of society. Unhappily blinded by self-conceit, heated with the ardour of controversy, gratifying their literary pride by becoming members of a league in which kings and princes were included, and procuring followers by flattering the vanity of some, and stimulating the cupidity of others, the men of the most distinguished parts in France became allied in a sort of anti-crusade against Christianity, and indeed against religious principles of every kind."

Our author has not forgotten the usurpations and pecuniary distresses of the crown; the exorbitant privileges of the noblesse and clergy; the exclusive pressure of the taxes upon the middle and lower classes; the abject and illiterate condition of the peasantry; the example of liberty in other countries; as additional sources of disaffection, and just motives to revolution. He acknowledges that the French people had, in the strict sense, "neither liberty nor property,"-that their restoration to indefeasible rights, and the abolition of abuses, were not only proper and desirable, but had become necessary and inevi

table. With Burke, however, he condemns, while he confesses it to have been natural, the sentiment which grew to be so general, and the consequent endeavour of the French innovators,that the whole fabric of government and society should be pulled down, and the area cleared for the erection of an experimental edifice in its place. He suggests that "a simple, virtuous, and religious people, would have rested content with such alterations in the constitution of their government, as might remove the evils of which they had just and pressing reason to complain;" and that in the history of innovation, the indirect and unforeseen consequences of every grave change of an existing system, are more numerous and extensive than those which are foreseen and calculated by either its agents, advocates, or adversaries. As regards the topic to which primary consequence has been ascribed by many speculators on this question,we mean the influence of the American revolution and the French alliance,-Sir Walter avows it to have been great. He mentions that the king (Louis) was almost alone, even at his court, in opposing the alliance; that the talents and demeanour of the American envoys at Paris, rendered them irresistibly popular; and that the return of the French army from America brought a strong body of auxiliaries to the revolutionary opinions; a body from which the revolution derived, in fact, many of its most formidable champions. We are tempted to quote what Mr. Burke, in his second Letter on a Regicide Peace, has said on this point, as it is one that belongs to American history.

"The eager desire of raising France from the condition into which she had fallen, as her politicians conceived, from her monarchical imbecility, was the mainspring of their interference in that unhappy American quarrel, the bad effects of which to the British nation have not, as yet, fully disclosed themselves. These sentiments had been long lurking in their breasts, though their views were only discovered now and then, in heat, and as by escapes; but on this occasion, they exploded suddenly. They were professed with ostentation, and propagated with zeal. These sentiments were not produced, as some think, by their American alliance. The American alliance was produced by their republican principles, and republican policy. This new relation undoubtedly did much. The discourses and cabals that it produced, the intercourse that it established, and above all, the example which made it seem practicable to establish a republic in a great extent of country, finished the work, and gave to that part of the revolutionary faction a degree of strength, which required other energies than the late king possessed, to resist, or even to restrain. It spread every where; but it was no where more prevalent than

in the heart of the court. The palace of Versailles, by its language, seemed a forum of democracy."

In the opinion of Sir Walter, the derangement of the finances was the proximate cause, and the meeting of the States General the first day, of the Revolution. In discussing these heads, he descants on the excellent dispositions, but irresolute spirit, and mutable policy, of Louis XVI., about whose virtues and whose errors scarcely any diversity of judgment seems to remain among the reflecting part of inquirers. He notes that few monarchs, of any country, ever changed their ministry, and with their ministry their councils and measures, so often as Louis. We have, in glorious Ferdinand of Spain, the example of one who has changed his ministry still oftener; but persisted in the same councils and measures, with a chance of experiencing, through his steadfastness, the fate which Louis is said to have incurred by his flexibility. Not seldom, the fatal paths that converge to utter ruin or intricate misery, are the widest apart in the outset. Our author laments the ascendency of the unfortunate Marie-Antoinette over the uxorious French sovereign; remarking, that her estimable qualities were connected with a spirit of intrigue, "proper to the sex in such elevated situations," which but too frequently thwarted or bore down the more candid intentions of Louis.

Without entertaining so favourable an opinion of her as Burke and Scott express, and the Memoirs of Me. Campan are adapted to inspire, we are sure that her faults and offences were grossly exaggerated, and more than expiated by her final unparalleled, most dismal sufferings, inflicted with a black and savage ferocity of soul, and an abominable perversion of the manly character, which might make us imagine that her persecutors were a new, miscreate species of the human family; and which would seem, alone, to warrant all the epithets, definitions, and analogies lavished by Burke on the Jacobins in general. Misrepresentation, slander and satire, never accomplished their ends in a more remarkable and fatal degree, than in the instances of the martyr Louis and his queen. To those evils, in no small proportion, the discredit of the monarchy is to be attributed; just as that of the clerical order was produced not less by the unwearied and fanatical hostilities of Atheism and Libertinism, "embodied into factions, accredited and avowed," than by the degeneracy of the Bishops, the dissoluteness of the Abbés, or the depression of the Curates. Of melancholy reverse of fortune all history furnishes no examples,-not excepting that of Napoleon in Dresden and Napoleon in St. Helena-so signal and awful, if we look back on the situation of the parties at the pe

riod of their marriage, or only a few years before the catastrophe, as the cases of Louis, hurled from a throne which his ancestors had occupied for nine hundred years, and conveyed from "the palace of contempt to the dungeon of horror," and thence to the scaffold,-and of Marie-Antoinette, the descendant of twenty-four emperors, and the daughter of Maria Theresa, dragged, in her thirty-ninth year, to the same ignominious death; her dishevelled locks grey and her visage haggard with complicated wretchedness; her hands closely tied; her attire mean and scant; in an open tumbril-her companion an apostate priest whom she loathed as a confessor; followed by an immense crowd of her once adoring and gallant subjects, now yelling exultation over her agony, and nearly realizing Burke's daring image of "a drunken delirium from the hot spirit drawn out of the alembic of hell."*

It is neither practicable nor desirable for us to follow our author, particularly, in his interesting account of Necker's first administration; the Compte Rendu; the measures of Maurepas, Vergennes, and Calonne; the Assembly of the Notables; the baneful disputes with the parliaments; the convocation of the States General; and the other initial, leading transactions, which precipitated the general convulsion and the total overthrow of the government. He depicts Necker, as a minister of an honest and candid disposition; a worthy person, but not an enlightened statesman; better acquainted with mathematics than with men. We pretermit, too, from necessity, the composition and proceedings of the States General; the consolidation of the three bodies into the National or Constituent Assembly, so famous;t the abortive attempts of the Court upon it; the parties into which it was divided; and the various decrees by which, successively, it demolished the old despotism, and substituted a "Royal Democracy," or acephalous realm. All the principal transactions are well narrated and canvassed by Sir Walter. He does not forget the prompt formation of the Clubs in Paris, especially that of the Jacobins; and of the affiliated societies throughout France, into whose hands the business of the Revo

* The official account of Marie-Antoinette's execution says: "Elle avoit l'air calme, et paroissoit insensible aux cris de vive la republique, à bas la tyrrannie, qu'elle n'a cessé d'entendre sur son passage:--apres sa mort l'executeur montra sa tête au peuple, au milieu des cris mille fois répétés de vive la Republique. The official report of Louis's decapitation says: "sa tete est tombée, les citoyens ont trempé leurs piques et leurs mouchoirs dans son sang." See the work entitled Proces Des Bourbons, in two octavos, containing all the details of the dethronement, imprisonment, trials and execution of the sovereigns. † See Burke, passim, on the composition, situation, and schemes of the two first Assemblies, in his "Reflections," &c.

lution quickly fell, and who soon converted it into the scourge of their own country, and the terror of the world. "The Jacobins," he observes, "were termed in ridicule Les Enragés, by the Republicans of the Assembly, who seeing in them only men of a fiery disposition and great violence of deportment and declamation, vainly thought they could halloo them on and call them off at pleasure." The Jacobins, however, understood better their own game and resources; they instituted and disciplined the populace in anarchy and atrocity; lost no time in debauching the troops, and preluded, as it were, by specimens of the rabid fury with which their own trainbands could be inflamed. Organized insurrection began its sanguinary career in the capital; and when its first excesses were denounced to the Assembly, then at Versailles, Barnave, a conspicuous member, asked, with a sneer, "if the blood which had been shed was so pure," while Robespierre exclaimed that "the people oppressed for ages had a right to the revenge of a day." In the provinces, the peasants, seized with an epidemic phrenzy, rose against the wealthy and privileged proprietors; attacked and burned the chateaux of the nobility; and added to this wild devastation the crimes of murder, rape, and rapine. As a sample of Sir Walter's historical manner, we quote here his relation of the first grand movement of the Paris mob against the Royal Family.

"The town of Versailles owed its splendour and wealth entirely to its being the royal residence, yet abounded with a population singularly ill disposed towards the King and royal family. The National Guard of the place, amounting to some thousands, were animated by the same feelings. There were only about four hundred Gardes du Corps, or Lifeguards, upon whom reliance could be placed for the defence of the royal family, in case of any popular tumult either in Versailles itself, or directed thither from Paris. These troops consisted of gentlemen of trust and confidence, but their numbers were few in proportion to the extent of the palace, and their very quality rendered them obnoxious to the people as armed aristocrats.

About two-thirds of their number, to avoid suspicion and gain confidence, had been removed to Rambouillets. In these circumstances, the grenadiers of the French Guards, so lately in arms against the royal authority, with an inconsistency not unnatural to men of their profession, took it into their heads to become zealous for recovery of the posts which they had formerly occupied around the King's person, and threatened openly to march to Versailles to take possession of the routine of duty at the palace, a privilege which they considered as their due, notwithstanding that they had deserted their posts against the King's command, and were