and children were not with me, it would soon appear that I am not so weak as is imagined; but what would become of them if the measures you allude to should fail?'

"But if your majesty should be assassinated, do you think that your family would be in greater safety?' 'Yes, I think they would; I hope so at least; and if it should be otherwise, I could not be reproached with being the cause. But what do you think I can do?' 'I think,' answered I, that your ma-. jesty could now get out of Paris with less difficulty than ever; because the events of yesterday have made it too clear that your life is not in safety in the capital.' 'Oh, I will not attempt to escape a second time; I suffered too much on the last occasion.' 'I am of your majesty's opinion,' replied I,' that you ought not to think of escaping secretly at present; but the general indignation which is raised by the events of yesterday, offers in my mind a very favourable opportunity for your leaving Paris openly, and without opposition, not only with the consent of the great majority of the citizens, but even with their approbation. I beg that your majesty will give me leave to take the measure into consideration, and afterwards to submit my ideas to you, respecting the mode of executing it.' You may do so,' replied the king, but you will find it more difficult than you imagine."

The king was but too reasonable in his apprehensions, though the minister was equally reasonable in supposing the general indignation that these outrages could not but excite.

The events of the 20th of June had certainly produced a great sensation in Paris, and through the whole kingdom of France. Some years before, there were those (and men of rank and consideration in the state) who held that a king of France derived his power from God only, and his sword. But now, it appeared that a king of France found not even in his palace the common asylum and protection which are afforded by his own house to the meanest individual. Doors had been broken open, the privacy of apartments had been violated, the royal family insulted, the king's life menaced, more than once endangered; armed men were in undisturbed possession of the king's palace for some hours; these had been the melancholy facts: Frenchmen appeared no longer to retain their nature; even society itself seemed at once dissolved, if measures of state (and this was to make the best of the case) were to be carried by outrages like these. Sentiments of this kind could not but be entertained by thinking and good men of every description; and the

king had exhibited virtues, well fitted not only to attract the affection and respect of his subjects, but such as the violent party had not at all expected. The moderation he had often displayed seemed now not necessarily to have arisen from weakness, but rather perhaps from reflection; and both his friends and enemies could perceive that he wanted not presence of mind in moments of danger, nor fortitude in the hour of trial. To the Girondists and Jacobins the issue of this lawless enterprise had been a complete failure: neither had the king perished, nor had he been terrified into a recall of the three ministers, or an assent to the two decrees. On the whole, therefore, a new crisis appeared to have taken place, and there seemed an opportunity afforded of some effort to be made in favour of the monarchical part of the constitution, now, while the wishes and opinions of all men were so strongly excited in its favour, and while its enemies were checked by defeat, and covered with shame and disgrace.

We will slightly, therefore, allude to the main facts that now occurred. Immediately after the day of the insurrection, the king sent a message to the Assembly, which, considering how • culpable had been their conduct, was very dignified and judicious; "that France would hear of the events of the 20th with astonishment and sorrow; that he was very sensible of the zeal which the National Assembly had testified to him on the occasion; that he left it to their prudence to discover the causes of those events, and take the measures necessary for maintaining the constitution; that as to himself, nothing should prevent his acting at all times according to the duties imposed upon him by the constitution which he had accepted, and the true interests of the French nation." This was followed by a proclamation of the same proper and dignified cast, addressed to the French people. The outrages committed were shortly stated; and the king then observed, "that violence, to whatever excess it might be carried, should never force from him a consent to anything he should judge injurious to the public interest; that if they who wished to overthrow the monarchy had need of one crime more, they might commit it, but that in the present critical situation of that monarchy, the king would to the last moment set all the constituted authorities an example of that courage and firmness which alone could save the empire.'

These addresses of the king, and the insults he had been exposed to, were not without their effect. Resolutions appeared from different Assemblies in the provinces, replete with testi

monies of zeal, respect, and devotion, of admiration of his conduct, and indignation against the authors and instigators of the outrages he had endured. "The king shall be presented,"

says the resolution of the directory of the department of the Somme, "with the thanks of this department for the firmness which he displayed on the occasion of the seditious mob of the 20th: for having suppported the dignity of the nation by refusing, at the risk of his life, to yield to the threats of a crowd of unknown persons unlawfully armed; and for having undauntedly made use of the right given him by the constitution.' The assistance of their national guards, of the two hundred battalions of their department, was then offered, if the national guard of Paris was found insufficient to insure the life of the king and the liberty of the legislative body.

The minister of the interior, Ferrier de Monciel, was very indefatigable in the service of his master. All the petitions and resolutions that appeared were immediately printed and circulated. The leading men in Lyons, Rouen, and other capital towns and cities, sent petitions individually subscribed; and a similar petition, called the Petition of the Twenty Thousand, was got up in Paris. The number of signatures was not so great, but it was openly and freely signed, after having been left at the houses of the different notaries by those who might be considered as the bourgeois, as the most respectable part of the inhabitants of Paris. "The National Assembly were required to display all the energy of their zeal, to wash away from the nation the foul stain that it had incurred from the outrages that had been committed; that these outrages had been the result of a conspiracy formed against all the established authorities of the constitution, and the constitution itself. The Assembly were called upon to oppose some invincible barrier against

all machinations of the kind."

On the whole, the general testimonies in favour of the king and of the constitution, and in reprobation of the atrocious behaviour of the violent party, were very distinct and very general. Sixty-nine out of eighty-three departments are stated to have expressed themselves in favour of the king, as well as several large cities and towns, in addition to those we have already mentioned.

But the violent party consisted of men not easily to be either daunted or overpowered. They soon recovered from the first effects of their failure on the 20th; they were soon heard in the Assembly, as loud and determined as before, as hostile to the

king, and as fierce in the expression of any sentiment of a republican nature. Many addresses of this kind were sent to them, and were received with the warmest applause. Accommodation in their galleries and the most grateful acclamations were ready for every one that appeared from the provinces, or the sections of Paris, in their favour. Hardy spirits were not wanting, both within and without the capital, even to outdo them in the display of republican sentiments and expressions of menace and hostility to their fallen sovereign. A second attempt on the Tuilleries seems to have been in contemplation almost immediately after the outrage of the 20th, but to have been stifled by Pétion, probably on prudential motives, lest a second failure should be incurred; and in the MS. on the table you will see that M. Malouet writes to his friend, M. Mallet du Pan, on the 27th of June, in the following manner :

"The scene of Monday, the 25th of June, has been almost as audacious as that of the 20th. People have come to the bar of the Assembly; You are looking,' they cried, 'for the authors of the 20th: here we are: we, we were the authors;' and they have immediately received the honours of the sitting. I was at the Tuilleries: every thing was prepared to defend it, somewhat better than on the 20th; but on the cannons in the court was mounted the red bonnet. You see here the spirit of a large part of the citizens, not merely the Sans-culottes. The right side of this Assembly is treated just as was the right side of the last; that is, considered as made up of scoundrels and aristocrats. They can no longer speak without being hooted. Jaucourt (La Fayette's great friend) has been well nigh assassinated.

"What is one to suppose from all this," continues Malouet, "what, but that not only among the factions, but through the whole mass of the people, wherever found, such a revolutionary spirit prevails, that even those who are not Republicans will rather choose to unite themselves to those who are, than to any whom they suppose only moderately attached to the constitution."

Such were the views of Malouet. In this situation of things intelligence was brought that the army had broken out into the most violent indignation at the account they had received of the occurrences of the 20th of June; that several corps had been very eager to march to Paris, to chastise the brigands; and that M. La Fayette had been able to prevent them only by undertaking to come himself and express the wishes of the soldiers to that Assembly. And so, indeed, the fact turned out to be, for in the morning of the 28th La Fayette appeared in Paris, de

claring that such was the case, and such the object of his mission.

Now here was evidently a great crisis in the history of the Revolution. A great effort was now possible in favour of the constitution. La Fayette had long been the idol of the national guard at Paris and of the Constitutionalists there and all over the kingdom. These were still the predominant party, as far as numbers went, even in the Assembly. The question then was, Are the Girondists and Jacobins now to be put down or not? "The king," says Bertrand de Moleville, "on being informed of the object of La Fayette's journey, conceived at first the greatest expectations from it." Certainly it was possible that some great turn might have been given at this moment to the Revolution, and men at the time were overpowered with anxiety, while unable to conjecture what the event might be.

It is now that we again have to deplore the want of memoirs from La Fayette. To have put down the Girondists and Jacobins at this particular moment was a great object to a virtuous and patriotic man like himself, but was an enterprise of no ordinary difficulty, and was not to be attempted without a reasonable prospect of success. Revolutions in favour of liberty have so generally ended in the domination of some military chief, that there was every presumption against any interference of his. He was at the moment commander of the armies of the state, had been long their idol, and was employed at the time in his proper office of beating back the invaders of his country. He had been already foiled in one attempt to influence the Legislative Assembly and to control the violent party. The word "Cromwell" had been already pronounced by a very distinguished member there; "dictator" and "traitor" were the terms applied in the clubs and streets of Paris. Even as a friend to liberty, it behoved him to come to some distinct understanding with the court, to ascertain what their views were; whether he and his army or the Duke of Brunswick and the Prussians were to be preferred, whether the constitution, or an entire counterrevolution. He had as yet experienced no favour; and the very fury and violence of the republican party, which he himself abhorred, could not but have rendered the court, as he must have been well aware, more disposed than ever to turn to the allied powers, and to hate the constitution and himself, and every person and thing that could be associated with the very name of liberty.

Reflections of this kind must have necessarily occurred to La Fayette, but he had no time, or he must have thought it not