the white and the black cockades; in holding | Guards, already getting saluted with stones, council at the Palais Royal, over the Faubourg think it reasonablest to open a passage; and, Saint Antoine, at the end of bridges, on the like waters through a broken dike, the floods quais. At the doors of the coffee houses there of the multitude inundate the Hotel de Ville. arise free conferences between the Upper "It is a picture interesting to paint, and one House, of the coats that are within, and the of the greatest in the Revolution, this same Lower House, of jackets and wool-caps, as- army of ten thousand Judiths setting forth to sembled extra muros. It is agreed upon that cut off the head of Holofernes; forcing the the audacity of the aristocrats increases ra- Hotel de Ville; arming themselves with whatpidly; that Madame Villepatour and the queen's ever they can lay hands on; some tying ropes women are distributing enormous white cock- to the cannon-trains, arresting carts, loading ades to all comers in the Eil-de-Bouf; that them with artillery, with powder and balls for M. Lecointre, having refused to take one from the Versailles National Guard, which is left their hands, has all but been assassinated. It without ammunition; others driving on the is agreed upon that we have not a moment to horses, or seated on cannon, holding the relose; that the boat which used to bring us doubtable match; seeking for their generalisfiour from Corbeil, morning and evening, now simo, not aristocrats with epaulettes, but Concomes only once in two days:-do they plan querors of the Bastille !"-Vol. iii. p. 110. to make their attack at the moment when they have kept us for eight-and-forty hours in a fasting state? It is agreed upon," &c.-Vol. iii. p. 63.

We hasten to the catastrophe, which arrives on the morrow. It is related elsewhere, in another leading article:

"At break of day the women rush towards the Hotel de Ville. All the way, they recruit fresh hands, among their own sex, to march with them; as sailors are recruited at London: there is an active press of women. The Quai de la Ferraille is covered with female crimps. The robust kitchen-maid, the slim mantuamaker, all must go to swell the phalanx; the ancient devotee, tripping to mass in the dawn, sees herself for the first time carried off, and shrieks help! whilst more than one of the younger sort secretly is not so sorry at going without mother or mistress to Versailles to pay her respects to the august Assembly. At the same time, for the accuracy of this narrative, I must remark that these women, at least the battalion of them which encamped that night in the Assembly Hall, and had marched under the flag of M. Maillard, had among themselves a Presidentess and Staff; and that every woman, on being borrowed from her mother or husband, was presented to the Presidentess or some of her aids-de-camp, who engaged to watch over her morality, and insure her honour for this day.

So far Camille on veto, scarcity, and the Insurrection of Women, in the end of 1789. We terminate with a scene of a very different complexion, being some three years farther on, that is to say, in September, 1792! Félémhesi, (anagram for Méhée Fils,) in his "Vérité toute entière," a pamphlet really more veracious than most, thus testifies, after a good deal of-preambling

"I was going to my post about half past two," (Sunday, the 2d of September, tocsins all ringing, and Brunswick just at hand;) "I was passing along the Rue Dauphine; suddenly I hear hisses. I look, I observe four hackney-coaches, coming in a train, escorted by the Fédéré's of the departments.

"Each of these coaches contained four persons: they were individuals" (priests) "arrested in the preceding domiciliary visits. Billaud-Varennes, Procureur-Substitute of the Commune, had just been interrogating them at the Hotel de Ville; and now they were proceeding towards the Abbaye, to be provisionally detained there. A crowd is gathering; the cries and hisses redouble: one of the prisoners, doubtless out of his senses, takes fire at these murmurs, puts his arm over the coachdoor, gives one of the Fédéré's a stroke over the head with his cane. The Fédéré, in a rage, draws his sabre, springs on the carriagesteps, and plunges it thrice over into the heart of his aggressor. I saw the blood come out in Once arrived on the Place de Grêve, these great jets. Kill every one of them; they are women piously begin letting down the Lan- scoundrels, aristocrats!' cry the people. The terne; as, in great calamities, you let down the Fédéré's all draw their sabres, and instantly shrine of Saint Genevieve. Next they are for kill the three companions of the one who had mounting into the Hotel de Ville. The Com- just perished. I saw, at this moment, a young mandant had been forewarned of this move- man in a white nightgown stretch himself out ment: he knew that all insurrections have of that same carriage: his countenance, exbegun by women, whose maternal bosom the pressive, but pale and worn, indicated that he bayonet of the satellites of despotism respects. was very sick; he had gathered his staggering Four thousand soldiers presented a front strength, and, though already wounded, was bristling with bayonets; kept them back from crying still, Grace, grace, pardon!' but in vain the step: but behind these women there rose-a mortal stroke united him to the lot of the and grew every moment a nucleus of men, armed with pikes, axes, bills; blood is about to flow on the place; the presence of these Sabine women hindered it. The National Guard, which is not purely a machine, as the Minister of War would have the soldier be, makes use of its reason. It discerns that these women, now for Versailles, are going to the root of the mischief. The four thousand

others.

"This coach, which was the hindmost, now held nothing but corses; it had not stopped during the carnage, which lasted about the space of two minutes. The crowd increases, crescit eundo; the yells redouble. The coaches are at the Abbaye. The corpses are hurled into the court; the twelve living prisoners dismount to enter the committee-room. Tw

are sacrificed on alighting; ten succeed in en- | the villains in this prison, whom other villains tering. The committee had not had time to outside will open the doors to, shall go and put the slightest question, when a multitude, kill my wife and children in the meanwhile! armed with pikes, sabres, swords, and bayonets, I have three boys, who I hope will be usefuller dashes in; seizes the accused, and kills them. to their country one day than these rascals you One prisoner, already much wounded, kept want to save. Any way you have but to send hanging by the skirts of a Committee-member, them out; we will give them arms, and fight and still struggled against death. them number for number. Die here or die on the frontiers, I am sure enough to be killed by these villains, but I mean to sell them my life; and, be it I, be it others, the prison shall be purged of these sacres gueux la, ‘He is right!” responds the general cry."-And so the frightful "purgation" proceeds.

"Three yet remained; one of whom was the Abbé Sicard, teacher of the deaf and dumb. The sabres were already over his head, when Monnot, the watchmaker, flung himself before them, crying, 'Kill me rather, and not this man, who is useful to our country! These words, uttered with the fire and impetuosity of a generous soul, suspended death. Profiting by this moment of calm, Abbé Sicard and the other two were got conveyed into the back part of the room."

.

Abbé Sicard, as is well known, survived; and the narrative which he also published exists-sufficient to prove, among other things, that "Félémhesi" had but two eyes, and his own share of sagacity and heart; that he has mis-seen, miscounted, and, knowingly or unknowingly, misstated not a little, as one poor man, in these circumstances, might. Félémhesi continues, we only inverting his arrangement somewhat:

"At five in the afternoon, Billaud Varennes, Procureur-Substitut, arrives; he had on his sash, and the small puce coat and black wig we are used to see on him: walking over carcasses, he makes a short harangue to the people, and ends thus: 'People, thou art sacrificing thy enemies; thou art in thy duty. This cannibal speech lends them new animation. The killers blaze up, cry louder than ever for new victims :-how to staunch this new thirst of blood? A voice speaks from beside Billaud; it was Maillard's voice: There is nothing more to do here; let us to the Carmes! They run thither: in five minutes more I saw them trailing corpses by the heels. A killer, (I cannot say a man,) in very coarse clothes, had, as it would seem, been specially commissioned to dispatch the Abbé Lenfant; for, apprehensive lest the prey might be missed, he takes water, flings it on the corpses, washes their blood-smeared faces, turns them over, and seems at last to ascertain that the Abbé Lenfant is among them."-Vol. xviii. p. 169.

This is the September massacre, the last scene we can give as a specimen. Thus, in these curious records of the “Histoire Parlementaire," as in some Ezekiel vision become real, does scene after scene disclose itself, now in rose-light, now in sulphurous black, and grow ever more fitful, dream-like,—till the Vendémiaire scene come, and Napoleon blow forth his grape-shot, and Sansculottism be no more!

"Twelve scoundrels, presided by Maillard, with whom they had probably combined this project beforehand, find themselves 'by chance' among the crowd; and now, being well-known one to another, they unite themselves in the name of the sovereign people,' whether it were of their own private audacity, or that they had secretly received superior orders. They lay hold of the prison registers, and turn them over; the turnkeys fall a-trembling; the jailer's wife and the jailer faint; the prison is surrounded by furious men; there is shouting, clamouring the door is assaulted, like to be forced; when one of the Committee-members presents himself at the outer gate, and begs audience: his signs obtain a moment's silence; the doors open, he advances, gets a chair, mounts on it, and speaks:- Comrades, friends,' said he, you are good patriots; your resent- Touching the political and metaphysical ment is just. Open war to the enemies of the speculations of our two editors, we shall say common good; neither truce nor mercy; it is little. They are of the sort we lamented in a war to the death! I feel like you that they Mignet, and generally in Frenchmen of this must all perish; and yet, if you are good citi-day-a jingling of formulas; unfruitful as zens, you must love justice. There is not one of you but would shudder at the notion of shedding innocent blood.' 'Yes, yes!' reply the people. Well, then, I ask of you if, without inquiry or investigation, you fling yourselves like mad tigers on your fellow-men- -?' Here the speaker was interrupted by one of the crowd, who, with a bloody sabre in his hand, his eyes glancing with rage, cleaves the press, and refutes him in these terms: 'Tell us, Monsieur le Citoyen, explain to us then, would the sacres gueux of Prussians and Austrians, if they were at Paris, investigate for the guilty? Would they not cut right and left, as the Swiss on the Tenth of August did? Well, I am no speaker, I can stuff the ears of no one; but I tell you I have a wife and five children, whom I leave with my section here while I go and fight the enemy: but it is not my bargain that

that Kalmuck prayer! Perhaps the strangestlooking particular doctrine we have noticed is this: that the French Revolution was at bottom an attempt to realize Christianity, and fairly put it in action, in our world. For eighteen centuries (it is not denied) men had been doing more or less that way; but they set their shoulder rightly to the wheel, and gave a dead-lift, for the first time then. Good M. Roux! and yet the good Roux does mean something by this; and even something true. But a marginal annotator has written on our copy-" For the love of Heaven, Messieurs, humez vos formules" make away with your formulas; take off your facetted spectacles; open your eyes a little and look! There is, indeed, here and there, considerable rumbling of the rotatory calabash, which rattles and rumbles concerning Progress of the Species, Doc

trine du Progrès, Exploitations, le Christ, the Verbe, and what not; written in a vein of deep, even of intense seriousness; but profitable, one would think, to no man or woman. In this style M. Roux (for it is he, we understand) painfully composes a preface to each volume, and has even given a whole introductory history of France: we read some seven or eight of his first prefaces, hoping always to get some nourishment; but seldom or never cut him open now. Fighting in that way, behind cover, he is comparatively harmless; merely wasting you so many pence per number: happily the

space he takes is small. Whoever wants to form for himself an image of the actual state of French Meditation, and under what surprising shackles a French thinking man of these days finds himself gyved, and mechanized, and reduced to the verge of zero, may open M. Roux's Prefaces, and see it as in an expressive summary.

We wish our two French friends all speed in their business; and do again honestly recommend this "Histoire Parlementaire" to any and all of our English friends who take interest in that subject.

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT.*
[LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.]

AMERICAN Cooper asserts, in one of his books, that there is "an instinctive tendency in men to look at any man who has become distinguished." True, surely; as all observation and survey of mankind, from China to Peru, from Nebuchadnezzar to Old Hickory, will testify! Why do men crowd towards the improved drop at Newgate, eager to catch a sight? The man about to be hanged is in a distinguished situation. Men crowd to such extent, that Greenacre's is not the only life choked out there. Again, ask of these leathern vehicles, cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men and women in them, that scour all thoroughfares, Whither so fast? To see dear Mrs. Rigmarole, the distinguished female! Great Mr. Rigmarole, the distinguished male. Or, consider the crowning phenomenon, and summary of modern civilization, a soirée of lions. Glittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished: oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thankful. For your lionsoirée admits not of speech; there lies the speciality of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civilization gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dispensed with in it. Utterance there is not: nay, there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. For which reason it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-soirées, Might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters are? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good, his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. Vol. i.-vi. Cadell. Edinburgh, 1837.

what farther ocular survey you find useful, and speech is not needed at all. O Fenimore Cooper, it is most true there is "an instinctive tendency in men to look at at any man that has become distinguished;" and, moreover, an instinctive desire in men to become distinguished and be looked at!

For the rest, we will call it a most valuable tendency this; indispensable to mankind. Without it where were star-and-garter, and significance of rank; where were all ambition, money-getting, respectability of gig or no gig; and, in a word, the main impetus by which society moves, the main force by which it hangs together? A tendency, we say, of manifold results: of manifold origin, not ridiculous only, but sublime;—which some incline to deduce from the mere gregarious purblind nature of man, prompting him to run, "as dimeyed animals do, towards any glittering object, were it but a scoured tankard, and mistake it for a solar luminary," or even," sheep-like, to run and crowd because many have already run!" It is, indeed, curious to consider how men do make the gods that themselves worship. For the most famed man, round whom all the world rapturously huzzahs, and venerates as if his like were not, is the same man whom all the world was wont to jostle into the kennels; not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man. Foolish world, what went ye out to see? A tankard scoured bright; and do there not lie, of the self-same pewter, whole barrowfuls of tankards, though by worse fortune all still in the dim state?

Not the gilt

And yet, at bottom, it is not merely our gre garious sheep-like quality, but something better, and indeed best; what has been called "the perpetual fact of hero-worship;" our inborn sincere love of great men! farthing, for its own sake, do even fools covet, but the gold guinea which they mistake it for. Veneration of great men is perennial in the nature of man; this, in all times, especially in these, is one of the blessedest facts predicable of him. In all times, even in these seemingly so disobedient times, "it remains a blessed

evil or to do no evil; will depend not on the multitude, but on himself. One thing he did decidedly wish; at least to wait till the work were finished: for the six promised volumes, as the world knows, have flowed over into a seventh, which will not for some weeks yet see the light. But the editorial powers, wearied with waiting, have become peremptory; and declare that, finished or not finished, they will have their hands washed of

best. The physiognomy of Scott will not be
much altered for us by the seventh volume;
the prior six have altered it but little;—as, in-
deed, a man who has written some two hundred
volumes of his own, and lived for thirty years
amid the universal speech of friends, must have
already left some likeness of himself.
as the peremptory editorial powers require.

fact, so cunningly has nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey he cannot but obey. Show the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship." So it has been written; and may be cited and repeated till known to all. Understand it well, this of "hero-worship" was the primary creed, and has intrinsically been the secondary and ternary, and will be the ultimate and final creed of man-it at this opening of the year. Perhaps it is kind; indestructible, changing in shape, but in essence unchangeable; whereon politics, religions, loyalties, and all highest human interests have been and can be built, as on a rock that will endure while man endures. Such is hero-worship; so much lies in that our inborn sincere love of great men !-In favour of which unspeakable benefits of the reality, what can we do but cheerfully pardon the multiplex ineptitudes of the semblance,-cheerfully wish even lion-soirées, with labels for their lions or without that improvement, all manner of prosperity? Let hero-worship flourish, say we; and the more and more assiduous chase after gilt farthings while guineas are not yet forthcoming. Herein, at lowest, is proof that guineas exist, that they are believed to exist, and valued. Find great men if you can; if you cannot, still quit not the search; in defect of great men, let there be noted men, men, in such number, to such degree of intensity as the public appetite can tolerate.

Be it

First, therefore, a word on the “Life” itself. Mr. Lockhart's known powers justify strict requisition in his case. Our verdict in general would be, that he has accomplished the work he schemed for himself in a creditable workmanlike manner. It is true, his notion of what the work was does not seem to have been very elevated. To picture forth the life of Scott according to any rules of art or composition, so that a reader, on adequately examining it, might say to himself, "There is Scott, there is the physiognomy and meaning of Scott's appearance and transit on this earth; such was he by nature, so did the world act on him, so he on the world, with such result and signifiWhether Sir Walter Scott was a great man, cance for himself and us:" this was by no is still a question with some; but there can be manner of means Mr. Lockhart's plan. A plan no question with any one that he was a most which, it is rashly said, should preside over noted and even notable man. In this gene- every biography! It might have been fulfilled ration there was no literary man with such a with all degrees of perfection from that of popularity in any country; there have only the "Odyssey" down to "Thomas Ellwood" or been a few with such, taking in all generations lower. For there is no heroic poem in the and all countries. Nay, it is farther to be ad- world but is at bottom a biography, the life of mitted that Sir Walter Scott's popularity was a man: also, it may be said, there is no life of a select sort rather; not a popularity of the of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic populace. His admirers were at one time poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed. It is a almost all the intelligent of civilised countries; plan one would prefer, did it otherwise suit; and to the last, included and do still include a which it does not in these days. Seven volumes great portion of that sort. Such fortune he had, sell so much dearer than one; are so much and has continued to maintain for a space of easier to write than one. The "Odyssey,” for some twenty or thirty years. So long the instance, what were the value of the "Odysobserved of all observers; a great man, or only sey," sold per sheet? One paper of "Picka considerable man; here surely, if ever, is a wick;" or say, the inconsiderable fraction of singularly circumstanced, is a "distinguished" one. This, in commercial algebra, were the man! In regard to whom, therefore, the "in-equation: "Odyssey" equal to “Pickwick” distinctive tendency" on other men's part can- vided by an unknown integer. not be wanting. Let men look, where the world has already so long looked. And now, while the new, earnestly expected "Life by his Son-in-law and literary executor" again summons the whole world's attention round him, probably for the last time it will ever be so summoned; and men are in some sort taking leave of a notability, and about to go their way, and commit him to his fortune on the flood of things, why should not this periodical publication likewise publish its thought about him? Readers of miscellaneous aspect, of unknown quantity and quality, are waiting to hear it done. With small inward vocation, but cheerfully obedient to destiny and necessity, the present reviewer will follow a multitude to do

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write. Nay, in sober truth, is not this actually the rule in all writing; and, moreover, in all conduct and acting! Not what stands above ground, but what lies unseen under it, as the root and subterrene element it sprang from and emblemed forth, determines value. Under all speech that is good for any thing there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time. Paradoxical does it seem? Wo for the age, wo for the man, quack-ridden, bespeeched, bespouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this world-old truth were altogether strange !-Such we say is the rule, acted on or