discriminating between right and wrong, innocence and guilt, and not absolutely callous to every emotion of humanity; but in the heart of a woman, to whom was then conveyed, in all the freshness of its horror, the account which we now weep to read, a sensation of pity, at least, for the sufferings of the Queen, must have been awakened of the tenderest and most exquisite kind. Let us hear the remark of the heroine of the Girondins, the model of republican virtue and feeling unsophisticated by the corrupt teaching of tyrants and the slavish education of courts: "Que j'aurais voulu voir sa longue humiliation, et combien son orgueil a dû souffrir! s'écria Madame Roland en parlant de Marie Antoinette." -tom. iii. p. 3. l. 17. c. 3. This gentle and heroic creature, breathing the sentiment of universal love, "which scarce collective man can fill," regretted that she had not seen with her own eyes a wife and a mother during five hours expecting the death of her husband and child at the hands of miscreants, and compelled to hear the most insulting and filthy language, that degraded and brutalized man can utter. She was sorry not to have witnessed this scene of cruel infamy,—and why? because the principal sufferer in it was a queen. It is right that facts like these should be recorded, that History may fulfil one of her tasks-that of teaching those who will read her records, to distinguish between realities and the semblances which usurp their garb; between the professions and the practices of persons who seek to govern the world; between the vices and defects incident to particular stations of life and those which cling to human nature generally. Madame Roland remarked, on her way to the scaffold, how many crimes were perpetrated under the sacred name of Liberty. If she had examined her own heart, she would have discovered how many bad passions and paltry jealousies may bear the mask of philanthropic liberality. Let us suppose that the scene had been changed, that Madame Roland had been the sufferer from the brutality of the royal guard, and the queen had uttered the remark, who can tell the torrent of republican indignation against the innate vices of queens, which would have inundated the pages of republican writers from that hour till the present day? If the names of individual members of the Girondins have little room to be grateful to M. De Lamartine, still less has the "inhumata infletaque turba" generally. One of the gravest passages in the work before us affords incontrovertible proof of this. M. De Lamartine having described the various abortive attempts of the Girondins to crush Marat, Hébert, and Varlet, and the final result, namely, the triumph of the Terrorists, and the proVOL. XI.-NO. XXI.-MARCH, 1849. G scription of the twenty-two, which constituted the strength and life of the Girondin party,-proceeds to say : "Telle fut la catastrophe politique de ce parti; il mourut comme il était né, d'une sédition légalisée par la victoire (memorable words!). La journée du 2 juin, qu'on appelle encore le 31 mai, parce que la lutte dura trois jours, fut le 10 août de la Gironde. Ce parti tomba de faiblesse et d'indécision comme le roi qu'il avait renversé. La république qu'il avait fondée s'écroula sur lui après huit mois seulement d'existence. On honora ce groupe des républicains pour ses intentions, on l'admira pour ses talents, on le plaignait pour ses malheurs, on le régretta à cause de ses successeurs, et parce que ses chefs en tombant ouvrirent cette longue marche à l'échafaud. On se demande après la disposition de ce parti, quelle était son idée, et s'il en avait une ? L'histoire se demande à son tour si le triomphe de la Gironde, ou 31 mai, aurait sauvé la République? S'il y avait dans ces hommes des paroles, dans leurs conceptions, dans leur union, dans leurs caractères et dans leur génie politique les éléments d'un gouvernement à la fois dictatorial et popularie, capable de comprimer les convulsions de la France au dedans, de faire triompher la nation au dehors, et de prouver l'avénement d'une république régulière, en la préservant des Rois et des démagogues? L'Histoire n'hesite pas à répondre: Non.-Les Girondins n'avaient eu aucune de ces conditions. La pensée, l'unité, la politique, la résolution, tout leur manquait. Ils avaient fait la Révolution sans la vouloir; ils la gouvernaient sans la comprendre. La Révolution devait se révolter contre eux et leur échapper." Call you this backing your friends, M. De Lamartine? or are they your friends? or who are, throughout the whole eight volumes which detail the events of less than three years? but to proceed with another part of the same sketch : "Aussi les Girondins, depuis leur avénement, avaient-ils marché de défis en concessions et de résistances en défaites. Le 10 août leur avait arraché le trône, dont ils rêvaient encore la conservation, dans le decret même où Vergniaud proclamait la déchéance du Roi. Danton leur avait arraché les proscriptions de Septembre, qu'ils n'avaient su ni prévenir par un déploiement de force, ni punir en couvrant les victims de leur corps. Robespierre leur avait arraché la tête de Louis XVI. cedée lâchement en échange de leurs propres têtes. Marat leur avait arraché son impunité et son triomphe après son accusation au 10 mars. Les Jacobins leur avaient arraché le ministère dans la personne de Roland. Enfin Pache, Hébert, Chaumette et la commune leur arrachaient maintenant leur abdication, et ne leur laissaient que la vie **** Ils détestaient les Jacobins, et ils les laissaient régner. Ils abhorraient le tribunal révolutionnaire, et ils laissaient frapper au hasard, en attendant qu'il les frappât eux-mêmes. Ils redoutaient le déchirement de la République, et leurs correspondances désespérées ne cessaient de pousser leurs départements au suicide par le fédéralisme."tom. vi. 1. 42. c. 13. He also says that their foreign was as weak as their domestic policy, and that the treachery, as he calls it, of their General Dumouriez, had cast shadows of doubt and suspicion upon their character. It may well be doubted whether Dumouriez deserves this stigma. There seems to be no evidence that he intended to sacrifice to the invading armies any part of the territory of France, though his open and avowed object was to march his army upon Paris, and put an end to the horrible anarchy which prevailed there, and that the only means which suggested themselves to him for the final accomplishment of this end, was the re-establishment of a monarchy-probably in the person of his aide-de-camp, the Duc de Chartres, (afterwards Louis-Philippe,) who had recently distinguished himself at Jemappes. It may well be questioned whether such conduct was treachery; whether he was not fulfilling his first duty to his country, in endeavouring to set her free from a bondage, heavier and more galling than had ever before in the history of the world entered into the soul of a nation. He failed, and made his escape with the Duc de Chartres, General Valence, Madame de Genlis, and the martial young ladies Fernig, to whom our author ascribes such feats as we have read of in Spenser or Ariosto. If the voice of History has not condemned the conduct of Monk, it will not, in spite of the pages before us, blast the reputation of Dumouriez. M. De Lamartine's description of the fall of this accomplished man is perhaps the most favourable specimen of his style that could be selected: "Tête de politique, bras de héros, cœur d'intrigant, on s'afflige de ne pas l'admirer tout entier." And then, after a few more sentences denouncing what he calls his crimes against the Revolution, he proceeds : "Depuis ce jour, Dumouriez, maudit dans son pays, toléré chez l'étranger, erra de royaume en royaume, sans retrouver une patrie. Objet d'une dédaigneuse curiosité, presque indigent, sans compatriotes et sans famille, pensionné par l'Angleterre, il faisait pitié à tous les partis. Comme pour le punir d'avantage, le ciel, qui lui destinait une longue vie, lui avait laissé tout son génie pour le tourmenter dans l'inaction. Il ne cessa d'écrire des mémoires et des plans militaires pour toutes les guerres que l'Europe fit à la France (a very curious way of stating the case) pendant trente ans ; il offrit son épée, toujours refusée, à toutes les Assis vieux et importun au foyer de l'Allemagne et de l'Angleterre, il n'osa pas rompre son exil, même quand la France se souvrit aux proscrits de tous les partis : il craignit que le sol même ne lui reprochât sa trahison. Il mourut à Londres. Sa patrie laissa ces cendres dans l'exil, et n'éleva pas même sa tombe vide sur le champ de bataille où il avait sauvé son pays."-tom. v. l. 37. c. 24. cours. Has the historian of the Girondins forgotten that the history of most nations teems with examples of the ingratitude of the people to the most illustrious of their countrymen, to which black catalogue the fate of the brave and wise Rossi has, even while we write, added another name. Did M. De Lamartine never hear of a greater captain, a wiser statesman, a more illustrious exile than Dumouriez, who caused this inscription to be graven on his tomb, "INGRATA PATRIA NE OSSA QUIDEM MEA HABES." We suspect that the principal parts of this description of Dumouriez, after he came to England, to be as poetical and inaccurate as the minor parts of it undoubtedly are, eiкòç iπì Tò μεTSOV μEV TOINTην оνта коσμñoai. (Thucyd. 1. 10.) Dumouriez soon after his arrival took up his abode at Turville, near Nettlebed, in Oxfordshire, where a very different person now reposes after the toils of a very different public life-the ex-chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst. There the great exile of France remained, we believe voluntarily, till his death, which took place in 1823: he was buried, not in London, but in the parish church of Henley-upon-Thames. As his epitaph is not without interest to many readers, we subjoin it here at length: Hic jacet, Tardam expectans patriæ Justitiam, Qui Cameraco natus Januarii xxix. A.D. MDCCXXXII. ad summum militare imperium Nefandis in temporibus Bis Galliam et depopulatione et sævitate servavit ; Asylum exuli Germania primum, Gratus obiit Turville Die Martii xiv. A.D. MDCCCXXIII. Illustrissimo Civi, peritissimo Ministro, Dedicaverunt amici. This epitaph is inscribed between the pillars on the south side of the organ gallery. On a plain slab over the grave is inscribed :— Ici repose Le Général M. De Lamartine may be sure that, in spite of his eloquent writing, History will continue, as she has hitherto done, to try the conduct of Dumouriez by a few very simple tests. Was, or was not, she will ask, France at this period groaning under a tyranny which has, as yet, no parallel in history, and no precedent in the records of fiction? Does M. De Lamartine deny this? Far from it. It is by the light of his description that we may read more readily and clearly, than before, the details of abominations at which the soul sickens and the blood turns back to its fountains. Was, or was not, the strong arm of military despotism the only means by which this tyranny could be destroyed? And if so, was not Dumouriez more than justified in wishing to raise that arm, and, when he failed to do so, in preferring exile to being the instrument of such wretches as then domineered at Paris? The Red Republic of our day had not declared itself when M. De Lamartine's book was published. But what gave Cavaignac the power to establish a despotism as absolute as necessary for many months over Paris? The common consent and earnest desire of the honest portion of his fellow-citizens, upon whom the lessons of the past had not been wholly lost; and who therefore knew that no other weapon could avail against an enemy which threatened not only life, but all that makes life valuable. It was this most terrible of all foes that Dumouriez would fain have struck down; and which the feeling, both of his army and his fellow-citizens, would have enabled him to strike down, if the dreadful experience had then been purchased, was subsequently bought at so dear a price, and which during the course of the last year has installed with general acclamation a military dictator in the throne of France. M. De Lamartine sets up-not, indeed, in express words, but by sure implication-the defence, now so popular with the Red Republicans, of the atrocities of those for whom History has been obliged to coin the appellation of Terrorists. The country was invaded, it is said, by foreign foes; and such measures, however shocking, were necessary for the national preservation. Το say nothing of that memorable decree of the Republic which invited every nation upon earth to plunge into the filthy torrent of blood and crime which was then devastating France, which called upon all subjects to revolt against, that is, to murder, their |