came a husband. Our own guess is, that his wife was, as he says, a virtuous and amiable woman, and that she did her best to make him happy during some years. It seems clear that, when circumstances developed the latent atrocity of his character, she could no longer endure him, refused to see him, and sent back his letters unopened. Then it was, we imagine, that he invented the fable about his distress on his wedding-day.

in one venerable institution, called the Acade- | ed his domestic life till some time after he be my of the Floral Games. This body held every year a grand meeting, which was a subject of intense interest to the whole city, and at which flowers of gold and silver were given as prizes for odes, for idyls, and for something that was called eloquence. These bounties produced of course the ordinary effect of bounties, and turned people who might have been thriving attorneys and useful apothecaries into small wits and bad poets. Barere does not appear to have been so lucky as to obtain any of these preci- In 1788, Barere paid his first visit to Paris, ous flowers; but one of his performances was attended reviews, heard Laharpe at the Lyca mentioned with honour. At Montauban he um, and Condorcet at the Academy of Sciences, was more fortunate. The academy of that stared at the envoys of Tippoo Saib, saw the town bestowed on him several prizes, one for royal family dine at Versailles, and kept a joura panegyric on Louis the Twelfth, in which the nal in which he noted down adventures and blessings of monarchy and the loyalty of the speculations. Some parts of this journal are French nation were set forth; and another for printed in the first volume of the work before a panegyric on poor Franc de Pompignan, in us, and are certainly most characteristic. The which, as may easily be supposed, the philo- worst vices of the writer had not yet shown sophy of the eighteenth century was sharply themselves; but the weakness which was the assailed. Then Barère found an old stone in- parent of those vices appears in every line. scribed with three Latin words, and wrote a His levity, his inconsistency, his servility, were dissertation upon it, which procured him a seat already what they were to the last. All his in a learned assembly, called the Toulouse opinions, all his feelings, spin round and round Academy of Sciences, Inscriptions, and Polite like a weathercock in a whirlwind. Nay, the Literature. At length the doors of the Acade- very impressions which he receives through my of the Floral Games were opened to so his senses are not the same two days together. nuch merit. Barère, in his thirty-third year, He sees Louis the Sixteenth, and is so much took his seat as one of that illustrious brother-blinded by loyalty as to find his majesty handhood, and made an inaugural oration which some. "I fixed my eyes," he says, "with a was greatly admired. He apologizes for re-lively curiosity on his fine countenance, which counting these triumphs of his youthful genius. We own that we cannot blame him for dwelling long on the least disgraceful portion of his existence. To send in declamations for prizes offered by provincial academies, is indeed no very useful or dignified employment for a bearded man; but it would have been well if Barère had always been so employed.

In 1785 he married a young lady of considerable fortune. Whether she was in other respects qualified to make a home happy, is a point respecting which we are imperfectly inforined. In a little work, entitled Melancholy Pages, which was written in 1797, Barère avers that his marriage was one of mere convenience, that at the altar his heart was heavy with sorrowful forebodings, that he turned pale as he pronounced the solemn "Yes," that unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks, that his mother shared his presentiment, and that the evil omen was accomplished. "My marriage," he says, "was one of the most unhappy of marriages." So romantic a tale, told by so noted a liar, did not command our belief. We were, therefore, not much surprised to discover that, in his Memoirs, he calls his wife a most amiable woman, and declares that, after he had been united to her six years, he found her as amiable as ever. He complains, indeed, that she was too much attached to royalty and to the old superstition; but he assures us that his respect for her virtues induced him to tolerate her prejudices. Now Barère, at the time of his marriage, was himself a royalist and a Catholic. He had gained one prize by flattering the throne, and another by defending the church. It is hardly possible, therefore, that disputes about politics or religion should have embitter

I thought open and noble." The next time that the king appears, all is altered. His majesty's eyes are without the smallest expression; he has a vulgar laugh which seems like idiocy, an ignoble figure, an awkward gait, and the look of a big boy ill brought up. It is the same with more important questions. Barere is for the parliaments on the Monday and against the parliaments on the Tuesday, for feudality in the morning and against feudality in the afternoon. One day he admires the English consti tution: then he shudders to think that, in the struggles by which that constitution had been obtained, the barbarous islanders had murdered a king, and gives the preference to the constitution of Bearn. Bearn, he says, has a sublime constitution, a beautiful constitution. There the nobility and clergy meet in one house and the commons in another. If the houses differ, the king has the casting vote. A few weeks later we find him raving against the principles of this sublime and beautiful consti tution. To admit deputies of the nobility and clergy into the legislature is, he says, neither more or less than to admit enemies of the na tion into the legislature.

In this state of mind, without one settled pur pose or opinion, the slave of the last word, royalist, aristocrat, democrat, according to the prevailing sentiment of the coffee-house of drawing-room into which he had just looked, did Barère enter into public life. The states general had been summoned. Barère went down to his own province, was there elected one of the representatives of the Third Estate, and returned to Paris in May 1789.

A great crisis, often predicted, had at last arrived. In no country, we conceive, have in

In the National Assembly he had no opportunity of displaying the full extent either of his talents or of his vices. He was indeed eclipsed by much abler men. He went, as was his habit, with the stream, spoke occasionally with some success, and edited a journal called the Point du Jour, in which the debates of the Assembly were reported.

tellectual freedom and political servitude ex- | from bombast down to buffoonry, was not isted together so long as in France, during the wholly without force and vivacity. He had seventy or eighty years which preceded the also one quality which, in active life, often last convocation of the orders. Ancient abuses gives fourth-rate men an advantage over firstand new theories flourished in equal vigour rate men. Whatever he could do, he could do side by side. The people, having no constitu- without effort, at any moment, in any abuntional means of checking even the most flagi- dance, and on any side of any question. There tious misgovernment, were indemnified for op- was, indeed, a perfect harmony between his pression by being suffered to luxuriate in moral character and his intellectual character. anarchical speculation, and to deny or ridicule His temper was that of a slave; his abilities every principle on which the institutions of the were exactly those which qualified him to be a state reposed. Neither those who attribute the useful slave. Of thinking to purpose, he was downfall of the old French institutions to the utterly incapable; but he had wonderful readipublic grievances, nor those who attribute it to ness in arranging and expressing thoughts furthe doctrines of the philosophers, appear to us nished by others. to have taken into their view more than onehalf of the subject. Grievances as heavy have often been endured without producing a revolution; doctrines as bold have often been propounded without producing a revolution. The question, whether the French nation was alienated from its old polity by the follies and vices of the viziers and sultanas who pillaged and disgraced it, or by the writ- He at first ranked by no means among the ings of Voltaire and Rousseau, seems to us as violent reformers. He was not friendly to idle as the question whether it was fire or gun- that new division of the French territory powder that blew up the mills at Hounslow. which was among the most important changes Neither cause would have sufficed alone. Ty-introduced by the Revolution, and was espe ranny may last through ages where discussion cially unwilling to see his native province disis suppressed. Discussion may safely be left membered. He was entrusted with the task free by rulers who act on popular principles. of framing reports on the woods and forests. But combine a press like that of London with Louis was exceedingly anxious about this a government like that of St. Petersburg, and matter; for his majesty was a keen sportsthe inevitable effect will be an explosion that man, and would much rather have gone withwill shake the world. So it was in France. out the veto, or the prerogative of making Despotism and license, mingling in unblessed peace and war, than without his hunting and union, engendered that mighty Revolution in shooting. Gentlemen of the royal household which the lineaments of both parents were were sent to Barère, in order to intercede for strangely blended. The long gestation was ac- the deer and pheasants. Nor was this intercomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hope cession unsuccessful. The reports were so and terror, that agonizing travail and that por-drawn, that Barère was afterwards accused of tentous birth.

"Si canimus sylvas, sylvæ sint Consule digne." This literary foppery was one of the few things in which he was consistent. Royalist or Girondist, Jacobin or Imperialist, he was always a Trissotin.

having dishonestly sacrificed the interests of Among the crowd of legislators which at this the public to the tastes of the court. To one conjuncture poured from all the provinces of of these reports he had the inconceivable folly France into Paris, Barère made no contempti- and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from Virble figure. The opinions which he for the mo-gil, fit only for such essays as he had been in ment professed were popular, yet not extreme. the habit of composing for the Floral GamesHis character was fair; his personal advantages are said to have been considerable; and, from the portrait which is prefixed to these Memoirs, and which represents him as he appeared in the Convention, we should judge that his features must have been strikingly handsome, though we think that we can read in them cowardice and meanness very legibly written by the hand of God. His conversation was lively and easy; his manners remarkably good for a country lawyer. Women of rank and wit said that he was the only man who, on his first arrival from a remote province, had that indescribable air which it was supposed that Paris alone could give. His eloquence, indeed, was by no means so much admired in the capital as it had been by the ingenious academicians of Montauban and Toulouse. His style was thought very bad; and very bad, if a foreigner may venture to judge, it continued to the last. It would, however, be unjust to deny that he had some talents for speaking and writing. His rhetoric, though deformed by every imaginable fault of taste,

As the monarchical party became weaker and weaker, Barère gradually estranged himself more and more from it, and drew closer and closer to the republicans. It would seem that, during this transition, he was for a time closely connected with the family of Orleans. It is certain that he was entrusted with the guardianship of the celebrated Pamela, afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald; and it was asserted that he received during some years a pension of twelve thousand francs from the Palais Royal.

At the end of September 1791, the labours
of the National Assembly terminated, and
those of the first and last Legislative Assem-
bly commenced.

It had been enacted that no member of the
National Assembly should sit in the Leg

similar to that of ipecacuanha. "Those," he said, "who have framed a constitution for their country, are, so to speak, out of the pale of that social state of which they are the authors; for creative power is not in the same sphere with that which it has created."

M. Hippolyte Carnot has noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable excellence of Barère's memory.

Many members of the National Assembly were indemnified for the sacrifice of legislative power, by appointments in various departments of the public service. Of these fortunate persons Barère was one. A high Court of Appeal had just been instituted. The court was to sit at Paris; but its jurisdiction was to extend over the whole realm, and the departments were to choose the judges. Barère was nominated by the department of the Upper Pyrenees, and took his seat in the Palace of Justice. He asserts, and our readers may, if they choose, believe, that it was about this time in contem plation to make him minister of the interior, and that, in order to avoid so grave a responsi bility, he obtained permission to pay a visit to his native place. It is certain that he left Paris early in the year 1792, and passed some months in the south of France.

lative Assembly; a preposterous and mis-insight into politics, produce an effect very chievous regulation, to which the disasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In England, what would be thought of a parliament which did not contain one single person who had ever sat in parliament before? Yet it may safely be affirmed, that the number of Englishmen who, never having taken any share in public affairs, are yet well qualified, by knowledge and observation, to be members of the legislature, is at least a hundred times as great as the number of Frenchmen who were so qualified in 1791. How, indeed, should it have been otherwise? In England, centuries of representative government have made all educated people in some measure statesmen. In France, the National Assembly had probably been composed of as good materials as were then to be found. It had undoubtedly removed a vast mass of abuses; some of its members had read and thought much about theories of government; and others had shown great oratorical talents. But that kind of skill which is required for the constructing, launching, and steering of a polity was lamentably wanting; for it is a kind of skill to which practice contributes more than books. Books are indeed useful to the politician, as they are useful to the navigator and to the surgeon. But the real navigator is formed by the waves; the real surgeon is formed at bedsides; and the conflicts of free states are the real school of constitutional statesmen. The National Assembly had, however, now served an apprenticeship of two laborious and eventful years. It had, indeed, by no means finished its education; but it was no longer, as on the day when it met, altogether rude to political functions. Its later proceedings contain abundant proof that the members had profited by their experience. Beyond all doubt, there was not in France any equal number of persons possessing in an equal degree the qualities necessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and, just at this moment, these legislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness, deserted the duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, and left their hall to a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudiments of political business. When Barère wrote his Memoirs, the absurdity of this self-denying ordinance had been proved by events, and was, we believe, acknowledged by all parties. He accordingly, with his usual mendacity, speaks of it in terms implying that he had opposed it. There was, he tells us, no good citizen who did not regret this fatal vote. Nay, all wise men, he says, wished the National Assembly to continue its sittings as the first Legislative Assembly. But no attention was paid to the wishes of the enlightened friends of liberty; and the generous but fatal suicide was perpetrated. Now the fact is, that Barère, far from opposing this ill-advised measure, was one of those who most eagerly supported it; that he described it from the tribune as wise and magnanimous; and that he assigned, as his reasons for taking this view, some of those phrases in which orators of his class delight, and which, on all men who have the smallest

In the mean time, it became clear that the constitution of 1791 would not work. It was, indeed, not to be expected that a constitution new both in its principles and its details would at first work easily. Had the chief magistrate enjoyed the entire confidence of the people, had he performed his part with the utmost zeal, fidelity and ability, had the representative body included all the wisest statesmen of France, the difficulties might still have been found insuperable. But, in fact, the experi ment was made under every disadvantage. The king, very naturally, hated the constitu tion. In the Legislative Assembly were men of genius and men of good intentions, but not a single man of experience. Nevertheless, if France had been suffered to settle her own affairs without foreign interference, it is possible that the calamities which followed might have been averted. The king who, with many good qualities, was sluggish and sensual, might have found compensation for his lost prerogatives in his immense civil list, in his palaces and hunting-grounds, in soups, Perigord pies, and Champagne. The people, finding themselves secure in the enjoyment of the valuable reforms which the National Assembly had, in the midst of all its errors, effected, would not have been easily excited by demagogues to acts of atrocity; or, if acts of atrocity had been committed, those acts would probably have produced a speedy and violent reaction. Had tolerable quiet been preserved during a few years, the constitution of 1791 might, perhaps, have taken root, might have gradually acquired the strength which time alone can give, and might, with some modifications which were undoubtedly needed, have lasted down to the present time. The European coalition against the Revolution extinguished

all hope of such a result. The deposition of Louis was, in our opinion, the necessary consequence of that coalition. The question was now no longer, whether the king should have an absolute veto or a suspensive veto, whether there should be one chamber or two chambers, whether the members of the representative body should be re-eligible or not; but whether France should belong to the French. The independence of the nation, the integrity of the territory, were at stake; and we must say plainly, that we cordially approve of the conduct of those Frenchmen who, at that conjuncture, resolved, like our own Blake, to play the men for their country, under whatever form of government their country might fall.

with which, after the victory of the republicans, he and his family were treated. But this we say, that the French had only one alternative, to deprive him of the powers of first magistrate, or to ground their arms and submit patiently to foreign dictation. The events of the tenth of August sprang inevitably from the league of Pilnitz. The king's palace was stormed; his guards were slaughtered. He was suspended from his regal functions; and the Legislative Assembly invited the nation to elect an extraordinary Convention, with full powers which the conjuncture required. To this Convention the members of the National Assembly were eligible; and Barère was chosen by his own department.

It seems to us clear that the war with the con- The Convention met on the twenty-first of tinental coalition was, on the side of France, at September, 1792. The first proceedings were first a defensive war, and therefore a just war. unanimous. Royalty was abolished by acclaIt was not a war for small objects, or against mation. No objections were made to this despicable enemies. On the event were staked great change, and no reasons were assigned all the dearest interests of the French people. for it. For certainly we cannot honour with Foremost among the threatening powers ap- the name of reasons such apophthegms, as peared two great and martial monarchies, that kings are in the moral world what moneither of which, situated as France then was, sters are in the physical world; and that the might be regarded as a formidable assailant. history of kings is the martyrology of nations. It is evident that, under such circumstances, But though the discussion was worthy only of the French could not, without extreme impru- a debating-club of school-boys, the resolution dence, entrust the supreme administration of to which the Convention came seems to have their affairs to any person whose attachment been that which sound policy dictated. Ir. to the national cause admitted of doubt. Now, saying this we do not mean to express an it is no reproach to the memory of Louis to opinion that a republic is, either in the abstract say, that he was not attached to the national the best form of government, or is, under ordicause. Had he been so, he would have been nary circumstances, the form of government something more than man. He had held abso- best suited to the French people. Our own lute power, not by usurpation, but by the acci- opinion is, that the best governments which dent of birth and by the ancient polity of the have ever existed in the world have been kingdom. That power he had, on the whole, limited monarchies; and that France, in parused with lenity. He had meant well by his ticular, has never enjoyed so much prosperity people. He had been willing to make to them, and freedom as under a limited monarchy. of his own mere motion, concessions such as Nevertheless, we approve of the vote of the scarcely any other sovereign has ever made Convention which abolished kingly governexcept under duress. He had paid the penalty ment. The interference of foreign powers had of faults not his own, of the haughtiness and brought on a crisis which made extraordinary ambition of some of his predecessors, of the measures necessary. Hereditary monarchy dissoluteness and baseness of others. He had may be, and we believe that it is, a very usebeen vanquished, taken captive, led in triumph, ful institution in a country like France. And put in ward. He had escaped; he had been masts are very useful parts of a ship. But, if caught; he had been dragged back like a run- the ship is on her beam-ends, it may be necesaway galley-slave to the oar. He was still a sary to cut the masts away. When once she state prisoner. His quiet was broken by daily has righted, she may come safe into port under affronts and lampoons. Accustomed from the jury rigging, and there be completely repaired. cradle to be treated with profound reverence, But, in the mean time, she must be hacked he was now forced to command his feelings, with unsparing hand, lest that which, under while men, who, a few months before, had been ordinary circumstances, is an essential part of hackney writers or country attorneys, sat in her fabric, should, in her extreme distress, sink his presence with covered heads, and addressed her to the bottom. Even so there are political him in the easy tone of equality. Conscious emergencies in which it is necessary that of fair intentions, sensible of hard usage, he governments should be mutilated of their fair doubtless detested the Revolution; and, while proportions for a time, lest they be cast away charged with the conduct of the war against for ever; and with such an emergency the the confederates, pined in secret for the sight Convention had to deal. The first object of a of the German eagles and the sound of the good Frenchman should have been to save German drums. We do not blame him for France from the fate of Poland. The first this. But can we blame those who, being re-requisite of a government was entire devotion solved to defend the work of the National to the national cause. That requisite was Assembly against the interference of strangers, wanting in Louis; and such a want, at such a were not disposed to have him at their head in the fearful struggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation of the insolence, injustice, and cruelty,

moment, could not be supplied by any public or private virtues. If the king were set aside, the abolition of kingship necessarily followed. In the state in which the public mind then was.

ous.

It would have been idle to think of doing what lent the whole weight of their names to the our ancestors did in 1688, and what the French Girondist connection. The wife of Roland Chamber of Deputies did in 1830. Such an brought to the deliberations of her husband's attempt would have failed amidst universal friends masculine courage and force of thought, derision and execration. It would have dis- tempered by womanly grace and vivacity. Nor gusted all zealous men of all opinions; and was the splendour of a great military_reputa there were then few men who were not zeal-tion wanting to this celebrated party. DumouParties fatigued by long conflict, and rier, then victorious over the foreign invaders, instructed by the severe discipline of that and at the height of popular favour, must be school in which alone mankind will learn, reckoned among the allies of the Gironde. are disposed to listen to the voice of a mediator. But when they are in their first heady youth, devoid of experience, fresh for exertion, flushed with hope, burning with animosity, they agree only in spurning out of their way the daysman who strives to take his stand between them and to lay his hand upon them both. Such was in 1792 the state of France. On one side was the great name of the heir of Hugh Capet, the thirty-third king of the third race; on the other side was the great name of the Republic. There was no rallying-point save these two. It was necessary to make a choice; and those, in our opinion, judged well who, waiving for the moment all subordinate puestions, preferred independence to subjugation, the natal soil to the emigrant camp.

As to the abolition of royalty, and as to the vigorous prosecution of the war, the whole Convention seemed to be united as one man. But a deep and broad gulf separated the representative body into two great parties.

The errors of the Brissotines were undoubtedly neither few nor small; but when we fairly compare their conduct with the Conduct of any other party which acted or suffered during the French Revolution, we are forced to admit their superiority in every quality except that single quality which, in such times, prevails over every other-decision. They were zeal ous for the great social reform which had been effected by the National Assembly; and they were right. For though that reform was, in some respects, carried too far, it was a blessing well worth even the fearful price which has been paid for it. They were resolved to maintain the independence of their country against foreign invaders; and they were right. For the heaviest of all yokes is the yoke of the stranger. They thought that, if Louis remained at their head they could not carry on with the requisite energy the conflict against the European coali tion. They therefore concurred in establishing a republican government; and here, again, they were right. For in that struggle for life and death, it would have been madness to trust a hostile or even a half-hearted leader.

On one side were those statesmen who are called, from the name of the department which some of them represented, the Girondists, and, from the name of one of their most conspicuous Thus far they went along with the revolu leaders, the Brissotines. In activity and prac- tionary movement. At this point they stopped; tical ability, Brissot and Gensonné were the and, in our judgment, they were right in stopmost conspicuous among them. In parliamen- ping, as they had been right in moving. For tary eloquence, no Frenchman of that time can great ends, and under extraordinary circum be considered as equal to Vergniaud. In a stances, they had concurred in measures which, foreign country, and after the lapse of half a together with much good, had necessarily procentury, some parts of his speeches are still duced much evil; which had unsettled the read with mournful admiration. No man, we public mind; which had taken away from are inclined to believe, ever rose so rapidly to government the sanction of prescription; which such a height of oratorical excellence. His had loosened the very foundations of property whole public life lasted barely two years. This and law. They thought that it was now their is a circumstance which distinguishes him duty to prop what it had recently been their duty from our own greatest speakers, Fox, Burke, to batter. They loved liberty, but liberty associPitt, Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which ated with order, with justice, with mercy, and of these celebrated men would now be remem- with civilization. They were republicans; but bered as an orator, if he had died two years they were desirous to adorn their Republic with after he first took his seat in the house of Com- all that had given grace and dignity to the fallen mons? Condorcet brought to the Girondist monarchy. They hoped that the humanity, the party a different kind of strength. The public courtesy, the taste, which had done much in regarded him with justice as an eminent mathe- old times to mitigate the slavery of France, matician, and, with less reason, as a great would now lend additional charms to her freemaster of ethical and political science; the dom. They saw with horror crimes exceeding philosophers considered him as their chief, as in atrocity those which had disgraced the the rightful heir, by intellectual descent, and by infuriated religious factions of the sixteenth solemn adoption, of their deceased sovereign century, perpetrated in the name of reason D'Alembert. In the same ranks were found and philanthropy. They demanded, with eloGuadet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, too quent vehemence, that the authors of the lawless well known as the author of a very ingenuous massacre which, just before the meeting of the and very licentious romance, and more honour- Convention, had been committed in the prisons ably distinguished by the generosity with which of Paris, should be brought to condign punishhe pleaded for the unfortunate, and by the in- ment. They treated with just contempt the trepidity with which he defied the wicked and pleas which have been set up for that great powerful. Two persons whose talents were crime. They admitted that the public danger not brilliant, but who enjoyed a high reputation was pressing; but they denied that it justified for probity and public spirit, Pétion and Roland, a violation of those principles of morality on