make it for ourselves. Find you but men to strike the blow, and I will devote myself as the victim."" What! you will?" "Certainly; what is there so wonderful as that? My life is of no great utility; my person of no great account. I shall be most happy to make it a sacrifice for my country.""Ah, my friend, you shall not be alone," exclaimed Chabot, with a look of enthusiasm: "I am determined to share the glory with you." "-"As you please; one is enough; two may be better. But there will be no glory from the deed, for no one must ever know it. Let us then devise the means of execution."-Chabot undertook to provide them; and a few days after informed Grangeneuve that he had found fit instruments, and that every thing was prepared." Well! let us fix the time. We will go to the Committee to-morrow evening: I will leave at half after ten: we must go through some unfrequented street, in which you will take care to have your people posted. But, let them mind what they are about. It is their business to shoot us properly, and not make us cripples for life."-The hour was fixed, and every thing agreed upon. Grangeneuve went to make his will, and arrange some domestic concerns, without any bustle, and was punctual to the appointment. Chabot did not make his appearance: the hour elapsed, and he did not come; whence Grangeneuve concluded he had given up his design of participation; but supposing that the project held good as to himself, he set off, took the road agreed on, walked with measured steps, met nobody on his way, walked back again, for fear of any mistake, and was obliged to return home safe and sound, much displeased at having made all his preparation in vain. Chabot saved himself from reproach by some paltry excuse.'-Madame Roland's Appeal to impartial Posterity. Part first.

Besides this direct opposition in the statement of a particular and very remarkable fact--the predominant moral quality of the man in question appears strangely different, as described by the present work, and by Madame Roland; and though we are by no means bound, and indeed recollect very good reasons why we ought not, to attribute quite so much judgement as brilliance to the delineations of that extraordinary woman, we think that at the least we are not required to reject them as indiscriminating or fallacious, in pure deference to an anonymous partnership of Parisian book-makers. We have occupied much more paper with this one instance than any importance in the matter itself claimed; but it seemed worth while to notice such a symptom of carelessness and assurance, in the mode of treating memoirs from which some of the information in the work professes to be drawn;

It is so seldom, however, there is any kind of reference to any authority at all, that a sceptical or captious reader will hold himself quite at liberty to attribute, if he pleases, a large portion of what forms the colouring of characters in this work, to malice and fiction,-unless his estimate of human nature in general is such, as to constrain him to admit every bad deposi tion against individuals, as probable because it is bad.

Nevertheless, there is evidence on the face of the work, if it were only in the constant attention paid to dates, which are produced in great and laudable multiplicity, that these memoirs have in general been prepared with great labour and research; and it should seem perhaps due in fairness to the writers to conclude, that, while they were exerting so much diligence to be accurate in relating facts which had been of a nature to be put on record as public transactions, they could, not be altogether indifferent about the truth of more private circumstances, and unchronicled anecdotes, illustrative of individual characters. Still these unknown biographers were not systematically attentive to accuracy, if it be true, as asserted in the introduction to this English edition, that the omitted memoirs of foreigners are miserably scanty and erroneous." It may be presumed that the person who asserts this, whether it be Mr. Walsh or the translator, owes his ability to judge to his having had large means of knowledge concerning the history and character of the persons not belonging to France; and had he possessed equal means of being acquainted with the many Frenchmen whose actions and qualities are here exhibited, it is possible enough that a great deal of erroneous representation might have been also detected in this part of the work, on the accuracy of which a foreigner can, of course, be but little qualified to decide.

A few observations of this kind seemed proper, by way of caution against the simplicity of taking this collection of memoirs as any thing like established historical authority. All it can claim to be accepted for, is a respectable book of dates of revolutionary public acts, and legislative proceedings, a brief enumeration of the recorded unquestioned facts in the lives of the noted men who figured iu the revolution, or have figured since, and a small proportion, selected, we cannot know according to what rule, of the vast quantity of mixed truth and detraction circulated concerning these men, in Paris, during and since the revolution. When it is added, that the performance maintains, for a French book, a most uncommonly plain sober historical style, it should be recollected that this is not of the same value in the present instance, as if it had resulted from the temperament of the writers; that it is the moderation of policy and fear; that it is an artificial coolness which must sometimes repress truth, as well as at others beware of exaggeration.

After all this is taken into the account, it is still but justice to say, that the work has, throughout, very much the appearance of an honest, consistent, well-informed endeavour to display, in the real light of truth, the strangest assemblage of mortals that ever was or could have been found contemporary

since the beginning of the world. And we may perhaps justly attribute to a severity of feeling, resulting from the long and indignant contemplation of a world of crimes, that willingness to let all characters come forth in their darkest colours, which appears in almost every part of the work,-except where it introduces the past and present possessors of French royalty, who are treated with marked favour, Lewis from kindness, and Napoleon from fear.

The book is to be considered not as a series of biographical memoirs, but simply as a dictionary; many of the names not Occupying more than a page-not more than twelve or eighteen being afforded to even such persons as Mirabeau and Robespierre-and the great Emperor himself not being complimented with more than about twenty. It will therefore prove a much less attractive book for continuous reading, than a valuable one for occasional reference. A few of the longer articles doubtless approach to sotnewhat like regular memoirs, and several of them are extremely interesting. And the whole book taken together, comprizes, by its very nature, more to excite and to confound reflection than any other modern record of humat beings. It is more comprehensive, we apprehend, in point of numbers, than any other collection of revolutionary biography.

We had intended to transcribe two or three of the most remarkable characters; but it will perhaps suffice to extract part ofone only-that of Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, in the time of Robespierre.

The tribunal of Paris condemned him to death on the 6th of May. 1795, for having caused the destruction of an innumerable multitude of French persons of every age and sex, under pretence of conspiracies; for having caused between sixty and eighty individuals to be tried in four hours; for having caused carts, which were ready before hand, to be loaded with victims whose very names were not mentioned, and against whom no depositions were niade; and for having made up a jury of his own adhe rents. M. de Gamache was brought into court, but the officer declared he was not the person accused. Never mind," said Fouquier, “bring him nevertheless." A moment after the real Gamache appeared, and both were at once condemned and guillotined. An agent of government one day expressing some apprehensions to Fouquier, he replied, " Patriot or not, if Robespierre chose it you would come yourself, and I should make you go up my little steps; when Robespierre has pointed out any one to me, there is no help for it." Sixty or eighty unhappy wretches, who had never seen hor known each other, were often contounded in the same accusation, and when Fouquier wished to dispatch them in the mass, he merely said to the jurymen, "I think, citizens, that you are convinced of the guilt of the accused." When this remark was made, the jurymen declared their consciences sufficiently enlightened, and condemned all the accused in the gross, without hearing one of them. He was accustomed

to frequent a coffee-house in the palace of Justice, where the judges and and jurymen of his tribunal met. There they reckoned the number of heads which had fallen in the course of the decade." "What do you think I have gained to day for the republic?" Some of the guests to pay court to him, would answer, "So many millions;" and he immediately added, "In the next decade I shall undres three or four hundred," meaning guillotine. A considerable number of victims were one day met in their way to [from] the tribunal by Fouquier, who had not been present at their trial; he asked the jurymen on what erime they had been pronouncing sentence. They did not know," they said, "but he might run after the condemned persons, and enquire;" upon which they all began to laugh, saying, "It is so much got at least." Even the fate of Rob spierre could not slacken his sanguinary zeal. On the 27th of July, 1791, he condemned forty-two persons, whom he caused to be executed; and some one having represented to him that the seizure of Robespierre ought to cause some change, he answered, "Never mind; justice must take its

When led to execution, he answered the populace, who greeted him with hisses, by the most sinister predictions, and was executed last. Thus speaks Mercier of him: "Fouquier Tinville, formerly an attorney at the Chatelet, excessively artful, quick in attributing guilt, and skilled in controverting facts, shewed immoveable presence of mind on his trial. While standing before the tribunal, from which he had condemned so many victims, he kept constantly writing; but, like Argus, all eyes and ears, he lost not, while he wrote, one single word uttered by the president, by an accused person, by a judge, by a witness, or by a public accuser. He affected to sleep during the public accuser's recapitulation, as if to feign tranquillity, while he had hell in his heart. No eye but must involuntarily fall before his stedfast gaze; when he prepared to speak he frowned, and bis brow was furrowed; his voice was loud, rough, and menacing: he carried audacity to the utmost in his denial, and shewed equal address in alt ring facts and rendering them independent of each other, and especially in judiciously placing his libis. With a firm voice he denied his signature, and trembled not before the accusing witness. When led to execution, hi forehead, hard as marble, defied all the eyes of the multitude; he was even seen to smile and utter threatening words. At the foot of the seffold he seenied for the first time to feel remorse, and trembled as he ascended it." V. II. p. 79.

It is unnecessary to say that a considerable number of characters, not less atrocious than this, are presented to view in this comprehensive receptacle,-horrid and portentous forms, as if the most grim and bideous images of Moloch, and the Scandinavian and Mexican gods that ever were smeared with himan blood, could be recovered and placed in order within one gloomy edifice. And though they are contrasted by some characters of great excellence of a certain kind, it is most melancholy to think, how very few of the persons who have ob tained a record in this work, had probably the smallest acquain

tance with that great principle which is the basis of virtue, and its only absolute security in scenes of arduous trial.

A most prominent subject throughout these memoirs, and to which almost every second page unavoidably reverts, is the dreadful and mortal conflict between the faction denominated the Mountain, the Jacobins, or the Terrorists, and the party of the Gironde. There never was an hostility more truly internecine, by intention, on the one side, and by necessity, and even duty on the other. The progress and termination of this grand contest form one of the most afflictive views in all history. Whatever degree of visionary theory, or of personal ambition, might be imputable to the Girondins, among the chiefs of whom we hardly need to name Brissot, Roland, Guadet, Gensonné, Louvet, Lanjuinais, Kersaint, &c. &c. it is most evident that they were the only hope of France, after the monarchy was fallen. Theirs was the fine and cultivated talent, the sincere love of freedom, and the solicitude to preserve substantial justice, humanity, and order, amidst the tumultuous breaking loose of a great and depraved people from an inveterate slavery, to pass, as these eloquent philosophers promised themselves alas! for the melancholy delusion-into the state of a wellordered and happy republic. However hopeless this might have been foreseen to be, by less enthusiastic and more religious speculators on the qualities of nations and of mankind, it is not the less grievous to see these men baffled in all their patriotic schemes and efforts; insulted, clamoured against, and menaced, by a ferocious rabble that usurped and dishonoured the name of the people; losing ground, notwithstanding their faithful co-operation and their prodigious combination of eloquence, at each successive contest in the hall of what purported to be the national legislature; and finally sinking under the fury and the axe of the most dreadful league of demoniacs that the sun ever shone upon in one place. The mind is appalled in attempting to think what they even ought to have done in a situation quite unparalleled, a situation in which, unless they could have thought it right to adopt prompt and summary measures for the personal destruction of the dreadful murderers with whom they were committed in a conflict absolutely inevitable, their own fate was but rendered the more certain by every effort they made to save the nation.

It is some little relief to a tragedy so much more crowded with the novelties and the monsters of evil than poetry has ever presumed to feign, to see the spirit of amity and compact which prevailed among these patriots in their perilous and unsuccessful warfare, as contrasted with the mutual jea