well remember what I said, but the result was, that they all came over to us. I instantly dismounted, seized my pistols, addressed myself to my grenadiers, and made for the staircase of the Hotel de Ville." He then describes the difficulties he had to overcome, and his various perils. At last he got the door opened, and saw, he says, about fifty people together in great confusion. In the middle he observed Robespierre sitting, his elbow on his knees, his head on his hand. “I rushed upon him," he says, says, "presented my sabre to his breast, "Yield, traitor!' I cried. It is thou art the traitor,' he replied, and I will have you shot.' I instantly drew out one of my pistols, and fired at him. I aimed at his breast, but the ball hit him about the chin, and shattered all his left jaw: he fell from his chair. At the sound of the explosion his brother threw himself through the window: the uproar was immense. I cried Vive la république!' My grenadiers returned the cry. The confusion was general. The conspirators dispersed on all sides; I remained master of the field of battle."

Other particulars, and all that need be known of this memorable night, you will see in the histories. The chief difference is, that according to the general account, Robespierre endeavoured to shoot himself, and, according to Meda, that it was he who wounded him. The deputies succeeded in the sections. On the whole the Convention prevailed, and the fall of the tyrant was procured.

Of this memorable fall the real cause evidently was, in the main, the disgust, and still more the consternation which his system had every where produced. When the members even of the Convention were obliged from a regard to their own lives, openly to resist him, and when head was at last made against him, people must in general have seen, that the cause was common; the armed force more or less participated in the common sentiment, and a little time being given by the want of personal courage in Robespierre, he and his adherents were overpowered, and the extinction of their odious tyranny accomplished. But whatever difficulty, and whatever danger there might for many hours have been, in effecting so desirable a change; however formidable and numerous, through all the day, and all the night, might have appeared

the followers and adherents of Robespierre, all Paris seemed to unite, as one man, in expressing the most unbounded exultation at his fall, when it had been once accomplished. He and his supporters in the Hotel de Ville had been taken, after the manner of wild beasts, hunted down into their den. Robespierre, above all, lay more dead than alive, disfigured and ghastly, and covered with the blood that had issued from his wound. He was sent to the hospital to be dressed, and imprecations followed him as he was carried along. He was laid on a table, his chin bound up by a handkerchief, defiled with gore, the bag that had held his pistol mechanically resting still in his hand; and as he lay, he was spit upon by some, taunted and reviled by others, and every mark of abhorrence that the mind could invent, exhausted upon him. One of the gens d'armes approached, stood looking at him for some time in a thoughtful manner, and then expressed the natural sentiment, " Yes, Robespierre," said he (alluding to the fête), "yes, Robespierre, there is a God, there is a God." "Hast thou had blood enough, monster?" said another to him.

As he was carried to execution, a woman broke through the crowd, clambered up the cart, and holding herself by one hand and menacing him with the other, "Monster!" she said, "vomited out by hell itself, thou art punished now; I am delighted to see thee here." Robespierre roused from his stupor, opened his eyes, and looked at her. "Go, wretch that thou art," she continued, "to the grave! go, go, and carry along with thee the curse of every wife and every mother." The streets were crowded, every window lined with spectators, every house-top covered. It is probable that there was scarcely a single inhabitant of Paris, that was not in some way, or at some point or other, present on this memorable occasion. The triumph was universal; it was expressed with a sort of fury. It is seldom that a surrounding crowd are not made at least mute and thoughtful, while they see a fellow creature led out to be put to death before their eyes; but it was not so now, for the criminal was not a fellow creature, it was Robespierre. As he passed along, as he reached the scaffold, no sounds were heard but those of the most triumphant joy. Even at the last, when the executioner tore off

the bandage from his wound (an useless cruelty), when the jaw dropped frightfully, and the suffering man uttered a piercing shriek, still no heart was melted, and his shriek of pain was answered by new expressions of abhorrence, and acclamations of delight.

And even now, the historian, or the reader of history, at a distance from these awful scenes, who has had no parent, friend, or brother to lament, no wife or child murdered by this unsparing man, what sentiment has he to feel?

The Almighty Master may forgive, the Divine compassion may reach his lost and fallen creature, we presume not to speak of this; but no pity, that is, human pity, can ever be brought to cast a regard upon Robespierre. He is hurried to the scaffold by his own instruments of guilt, by Tallien, by Collot d'Herbois, by his own butchers; he is cursed by his own savage populace; he is massacred by his own blunted. guillotine; his ghastly head is held up by his own hardened executioner; his wretched carcass is cast, as a sort of abomination, into the deepened pit that he had dug for others; the earth is rid of him; he is punished. There is here something for the mind to dwell upon, and perhaps even with complacency; the rest is all unutterable disgust, detestation, and horror

I

LECTURE XLIV.

CONCLUDING LECTURE.

AM not without my hopes, that my hearers may have now acquired some general notion of this particular period of the French Revolution, the reign of Robespierre and the Jacobins. Your attention has been directed, I apprehend, to most of the principal points, and you must fill up for yourselves the indistinct sketch that I have made. For the present, however, I will endeavour to recall them to your attention.

In the first place I remonstrated against the representations of the modern French writers, who are very able and intelligent, but always too much disposed to conceal and varnish over the faults of their nation, and who, in my opinion, betray the cause of humanity, and violate the truth of history (how little soever they may intend it, or be aware of it), while they consider the Reign of Terror as necessary to the defence of the country. There was no want of military spirit in France; the very fault of the nation has been always a passion for military glory. Nor was there any want of enthusiasm in the cause of the Revolution. Indeed, this military spirit, this passion for military glory, and this enthusiasm, furnish the only solution that can be given of the success of the French armies, are the only reasons why Robespierre and his Jacobins were enabled to confiscate the property, and take away the lives of all who were not of their own party; and why the system of terror, the moment it was attempted, was not instantly fatal to those, who could dare so to make every man their enemy.

That Robespierre and the Jacobins defied and resisted Europe, may be true: they were at the head of the govern

ment, while the spirit of the people and of the armies enabled them to do so; and they were assisted by Carnot, a man of singular ability in military matters. But how can it be supposed, that the nation would not have repelled invasion, as they had done in the instance of Dumourier, though such atrocious men as Danton and Robespierre had never existed? And what was necessary to the cause of freedom, but that foreign invasion should be repelled? Nothing could be so fatal to the cause, and so in the end it proved, as this Reign of Terror; these massacres and confiscations; these scaffolds every day, and in every part of France, streaming with blood. Of all other men, it is the lovers of liberty by whom these Jacobins should be most detested and abjured; the very men who alone seemed disposed to tolerate them.

Having entered the protest, to which I have just alluded, against what I hold to be the misrepresentations of the more modern French historians, I then proceeded to give you extracts from them, the better to enable you to form some notion of what was suffered by this unhappy country, during the years 1793 and 1794; not choosing that you should have to depend on any representations of mine, even during the time that you were listening to my lectures. Extracts of this nature might have been multiplied to a much greater extent; but you will hereafter look at the historians yourselves. Even in these extracts, as given you, you will allow, that a state of things has been exhibited to you, totally overpowering to the feelings of any man of reflection and humanity, and well justifying me in the hope I expressed, that both the rulers of the earth, and the patriots of the earth, would take warning from the appalling scenes that were here displayed. Those scenes, indeed, had produced such an impression on the writers and reasoners of our own country, on our ministers and our orators, in both houses of parliament, that I could not but suspect that their descriptions of them, as delivered in their pamphlets and speeches, had been somewhat exaggerated; and I therefore turned to the Moniteur to see what the simple facts really were. Of what I found in this official gazette, I gave you some general notion, and I produced for you several different paragraphs.

I gave you some account of the divorces and marriages,