wide his nostrils with such a greatness of dis- | POSTURE waver? Burst there, in starry sheen, gust, that all the audience, even Lamotte her- updarting, Light-rays from out its dark founself, sympathetically imitated him.-"O Dame dations; as it rocks and heaves, not in travailde Lamotte! Dame de Lamotte! Now, when throes, but in death-throes? Yea, Light-rays, the circle of thy existence lies complete: and piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,-lo, my eye glances over these two score and three they kindle it; their starry clearness becomes as years that were lent thee, to do evil as thou red Hellfire! IMPOSTURE is burnt up; one Redcouldst; and I behold thee a bright-eyed little sea of Fire, wild-billowing en wraps the World; Tatterdemalion, begging and gathering sticks with its fire-tongue licks at the Stars. Thrones in the Bois de Boulogne; and also at length a are hurled into it, and Dubois Mitres, and Presquelched Putrefaction, here on London pave-bendal Stalls that drop fatness, and-ha! what ments; with the headdressings and hungerings, see I?-all the Gigs of Creation: all, all! Wo the gaddings and hysterical gigglings that is me! Never since Pharaoh's Chariots, in came between,-What shall I say was the the Red-sea of water, was there wreck of meaning of thee at all?Wheel-vehicles like this in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they wander in the wind.

"Villette-de-Retaux! Have the catchpoles trepanned thee, by sham of battle, in thy Tavern, from the sacred Republican soil. It is "Higher, higher, yet flames the Fire-Sea; thou that wert the hired Forger of Hand- crackling with new dislocated timber; hissing writings? Thou wilt confess it? Depart, un- with leather and prunella. The metal Images whipt, yet accursed.-Ha! The dread Symbol are molten; the marble Images become morof our Faith? Swings aloft, on the Castle of tar-lime; the stone Mountains sulkily explode. St. Angelo, a Pendulous Mass, which I think I RESPECTABILITY, with all her collected Gigs discern to be the body of Villette! There let inflamed for funeral pyre, wailing, leaves the him end; the sweet morsel of our Juggernaut. Earth, to return under new Avatar. Impos"Nay, weep not thou, disconsolate Oliva; ture, how it burns, through generations: how blear not thy bright blue eyes, daughter of the it is burnt up-for a time. The World is black shady Garden! Thee shall the Sanhedrim ashes; which-when will they grow green? not harm: this Cloaca of Nature emits thee; The Images all run into amorphous Corinthian as notablest of unfortunate-females, thou shalt brass; all Dwellings of men destroyed; the have choice of husbands not without capital; very mountains peeled and riven, the valleys and accept one.t Know this, for the vision black and dead: it is an empty World! Wo of it is true. to them that shall be born then!-A King, a Queen, (ah me!) were hurled in; did rustle once; flew aloft, crackling, like paper-scroll. Oliva's Husband was hurled in; Iscariot Ega

"But the Anointed Majesty whom ye profaned? Blow, spirit of Egyptian Masonry, blow aside the thick curtains of Space! Lolité; thou grim De Launay, with thy grim Basyou, her eyes are red with their first tears of pure bitterness; not with their last. Tirewoman Campan is choosing, from the Printshops of the Quais, the reputed-best among the hundred likenesses of Circe de Lamotte: a Queen shall consider if the basest of women ever, by any accident, darkened daylight or candle-light for the highest. The Portrait answers: Never!'-(Sensation in the audience.)

tille; whole kindreds and peoples; five millions of mutually destroying Men. For it is the End of the Dominion of IMPOSTURE (which is Darkness and opaque Firedamp; and the burning up, with unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are in the Earth!"-Here the Prophet paused, fetching a deep sigh; and the Cardinal uttered a kind of faint, tremulous Hem!

"Mourn not, O Monseigneur, spite of thy nephritic cholic, and many infirmities. For "Ha! What is this? Angels, Uriel, Ana- thee mercifully it was not unto death.* 0 chiel, and the other Five; Pentagon of Re-Monseigneur, (for thou hadst a touch of goodjuvenescene; Power that destroyed Original ness,) who would not weep over thee, if he Sin; Earth, Heaven, and thou Outer Limbo, also laughed? Behold! The not too judicious which men name Hell! Does the EMPIRE OF IM-Historian, that long years hence, amid remotest

wilderness, writes thy Life, and names thee *See Georgel, and Villette's Mémoire. Mud-volcano; even he shall reflect that it was +Affaire du Collier is this MS. Note: "Gay d'Oliva, a thy Life this same; thy only chance through common-girl of the Palais-Royal, who was chosen to whole Eternity; which thou (poor gambler) play a part in this Business, got married, some years hast expended so: and, even over his hard afterwards, to one Beausire, an Ex-Noble, formerly attached to the d'Artois Household. In 1790, he was heart, a breath of dewy pity for thee shall Captain of the National Guard Company of the Temple: blow.-O Monseigneur, thou wert not all ignoHe then retired to Choisy, and managed to be named Procureur of that Commune: he finally employed him- ble: thy Mud-volcano was but strength disself in drawing up Lists of Proscription in the Luxem-located, fire misapplied. Thou wentest ravenbourg Prison, when he played the part of informer, ing through the world; no Life-elixir or Stone (mouton.) See Tableau des Prisons de Paris sous Robes

pierre." These details are correct. In the Mémoires of the Wise could we two (for want of funds) sur les Prisons, (new Title of the Book just referred to,) discover: a foulest Circe undertook to fatten ii. 171, we find this: "The second Denouncer was

Beausire, an Ex-Noble, known under the old govern- thee; and thou hadst to fill thy belly with the ment for his intrigues. To give an idea of him, it is east wind. And burst? By the Masonry of enough to say that he married the d'Oliva," &c., as in the MS. Note already given. Finally is added: "He was the main spy of Boyenval; who, however, said that he made use of him; but that Fouquier-Tinville did not like him, and would have him guillotined in good time.'

See Campan.

Rohan was elected of the Constituent Assembly; and even got a compliment or two in it, as Court-victim, from here and there a man of weak judgment. He was one of the first who, recalcitrating against "Civil Constitution of the Clergy," &c., took himself across the Rhine.

say; 'The Brow of Brass, behold how it has got all unlackered; these Pinchbeck lips can lie no more! Eheu! Ohoo!"-and he burst into unstanchable blubbering of tears; and sobbing out the moanfullest broken howl, sank down in swoon; to be put to bed by De Launay and others.

Enoch. No! Behold has not thy Jesuit | whither? By-standers wag their heads, and Familiar his Scouts dim-flying over the deep of human things? Cleared art thou of crime, save that, of fixed-idea; weepest, a repentant exile, in the Mountains of Auvergne. Neither shall the Red Fire-sea itself consume thee; only consume thy Gig, and, instead of Gig (0 rich exchange!) restore thy Self. Safe beyond the Rhine-stream, thou livest peaceful days; savest many from the fire, and anointest their smarting burns. Sleep finally, in thy mother's bosom, in a good old age!"-The Cardinal gave a sort of guttural murmur, or gurgle, which ended in a long sigh.

"O Horrors, as ye shall be called," again burst forth the Quack, "why have ye missed the Sieur de Lamotte; why not of him, too, made gallows-carrion? Will spear, or swordstick, thrust at him, (or supposed to be thrust,) through window of hackney-coach, in Piccadilly of the Babylon of Fog, where he jolts disconsolate, not let out the imprisoned animal existence? Is he poisoned, too?" Poison will not kill the Sieur Lamotte; nor steel, nor massacres. Let him drag his utterly superfluous life to a second and a third generation; and even admit the not too judicious Historian to see his face before he die.

Thus spoke (or thus might have spoken) and prophesied, the Arch-quack Cagliostro; and truly much better than he ever else did: for not a jot or tittle of it (save only that of our promised Interview with Nestor de Lamotte, which looks unlikelier than ever, for we have not heard of him, dead or living, since 1826,) but he has turned out to be literally true. As, indeed, in all his History, one jot or title of untruth, that we could render true, is, perhaps, not discoverable; much as the distrustful reader may have disbelieved.

Here, then, our little labour ends. The Necklace was, and is no more: the stones of it again “circulate in commerce" (some of them perhaps, in Rundle's at this hour;) may give rise to what other Histories we know not. The Conquerors of it, every one that trafficked in it, have they not all had their due, which was Death?

"But, ha!" cried he, and stood wide-staring, This little Business, like a little cloud, horror struck, as if some Cribb's fist had bodied itself forth in skies clear to the unobknocked the wind out of him: "O horror of servant: but with such hues of deep-tinted horrors! Is it not Myself I see? Roman In- villany, dissoluteness, and general delirium, as quisition! Long months of cruel baiting! to the observant, betokened it electric; and Life of Giuseppe Balsamo! Cagliostro's Body wise men (a Goethe, for example) boded still lying in St. Leo Castle, his Self fled-Earthquakes. Has not the Earthquakes come?

MEMOIRS OF MIRABEAU."

[LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1837.

A PROVERB says, "The house that is abuilding looks not as the house that is built," Environed with rubbish and mortar-heaps with scaffold-poles, hodmen, dust-clouds, some rudiments only of that thing that is to be, can, to the most observant, disclose themselves through the mean tumult of the thing that hitherto is. How true is this same with regard to all works and facts whatsoever in our world; emphatically true in regard to the highest fact and

* See Lamotte's Narrative, (Mémoires Justificatifs.) +Lamotte, after his wife's death, had returned to Paris; and been arrested-not for building churches. The Sentence of the old Parlement against him, in regard to the Necklace business, he gets annulled by the new Courts; but is, nevertheless, "retained in confinement," (Moniteur Newspaper, 7th August, 1782.) He was still in Prison at the time the September Massacre broke out. From Maton de la Varenne we cite the foliowing grim passage: Maton is in La Force Prison.

"At one in the morning," (of Monday, September 3,) writes Maton, "the grate that led to our quarter was again opened. Four men in uniform, holding each a naked sabre and blazing torch, mounted to our corridor; a turnkey showing the way; and entered a room close on ours, to investigate a box, which they broke open. This done, they halted in the gallery; and began interrogating one Cuissa, to know where Lamotte was; who, they said, under a pretext of finding a treasure, which they should share in, had swindled one of them

work which our world witnesses, the Life of what we call an Original Man. Such a man is one not made altogether by the common pattern; one whose phases and goings forth cannot be prophesied of, even approximately; though, indeed, by their very newness and strangeness they most of all provoke prophecy. A man of this kind, while he lives on earth, is "unfolding himself out of nothing into something," surely under very complex conditions:

out of 300 livres, having asked him to dinner for that purpose. The wretched Cuissa, whom they had. in their power, and who lost his life that night, answered, all trembling, that he remembered the fact well, but could not say what had become of the prisoner. Resolute to find this Lamotte and confront him with Cuissa, they ascended into other rooms, and made further rummaging there; but apparently without effect, for I heard them say to one another: "Come, search among the corpses, then for, Nom de Dieu! we must know what is become of him." (Ma Resurrection, par Maton de la Varenne; reprinted in the Histoire Parlementaire, xviii. 142.)-Lamotte lay in the Bicêtre Prison; but had got out, precisely in the nick of time,— and dived beyond soundings.

Mémoires biographiques, littéraires, et politiques, de Mirabeau; écrits par lui-même, par son Père Oncie, et sen Fils Adoptif (Memoirs, biographical, literary, and political, of Mirabeau: written by himself, by his Father, bis Uncle, and his Adopted Son.) 8vols. 8vo, Paris, 1834-36

he is drawing continually towards him, in con- | the sum of its strength, its sacred "property tinual succession and variation, the materials for ever," whereby it upholds itself, and steers of his structure, nay, his very plan of it, from forward better or worse, through the yet undisthe whole realm of accident, you may say, and covered deep of Time. All knowledge, all art, from the whole realm of free-will: he is build-all beautiful or precious possession of existing his life together in this manner; a guess ence, is, in the long run, this, or connected with and a problem as yet, not to others only but to this. Science itself, is it not, under one of its himself. Hence such criticism by the by- most interesting aspects, Biography; is it not standers; loud no-knowledge, loud misknow- the Record of the Work which an original man, ledge! It is like the opening of the Fisher- still named by us, or not now named, was man's Casket in the Arabian Tale, this begin- blessed by the heavens to do? That Spherening and growing-up of a life: vague smoke and-cylinder is the monument and abbreviated wavering hither and thither; some features of history of the man Archimedes; not to be fora Genie looming through; of the ultimate gotten, probably, till the world itself vanish. shape of which no fisherman or man can judge. Of Poets, and what they have done, and how And yet, as we say, men do judge, and pass the world loves them, let us, in these days, very provisional sentence, being forced to it; you singular in respect of that Art, say nothing, or can predict with what accuracy! "Look at next to nothing. The greatest modern of the the audience in a theatre," says one: "the life poetic guild has already said: "Nay if thou of a man is there compressed within five hours' wilt have it, who but the poet first formed gods duration; is transacted on an open stage, with for us, brought them down to us, raised us up lighted lamps, and what the fittest words and to them?" art of genius can do to make the spirit of it Another remark, on a lower scale, not unclear; yet listen, when the curtain falls, what worthy of notice, is by Jean Paul: that, "as in a discerning public will say of that! And now, art, so in conduct, or what we call morals, beif the drama extended over three-score and ten fore there can be an Aristotle, with his critical years; and were enacted, not with a view to canons, there must be a Homer, many Homers clearness, but rather indeed with a view to with their heroic performances." In plainer concealment, often in the deepest attainable words, the original man is the true creator (or involution of obscurity; and your discerning call him revealer) of Morals too: it is from his public occupied otherwise, cast its eye on the example that precepts enough are derived, business now here for a moment, and then there and written down in books and systems: he profor a moment?" Wo to him, answer we, who perly is the Thing; all that follows after is has no court of appeal against the world's judg- but talk about the thing, better or worse interment! He is a doomed man: doomed by con-pretation of it, more or less wearisome and inviction to hard penalties; nay, purchasing ac-effectual discourse of logic on it. A remark, quittal (too probably) by a still harder penalty, that of being a trivialty, superficialty, self-advertiser, and partial or total quack, which is the hardest penalty of all.

But suppose farther, that the man, as we said, was an original man; that his life-drama would not and could not be measured by the three unities alone, but partly by a rule of its own too: still farther, that the transactions he had mingled in were great and world-dividing; that of all his judges there were not one who had not something to love him for unduly, to hate him for unduly! Alas! is it not precisely in this case, where the whole world is promptest to judge, that the whole world is likeliest to be wrong: natural opacity being so doubly and trebly darkened by accidental difficulty and perversion? The crabbed moralist had some show of reason who said: "To judge of an original contemporary man, you must, in general, reverse the world's judgment about him; the world is not only wrong on that matter, but cannot on any such matter be right."

this of Jean Paul's which, well meditated, may seem one of the most pregnant lately written on these matters. If any man had the ambition of building a new system of morals, (not a promising enterprise, at this time of day,) there is no remark known to us which might better serve him as a chief corner-stone, whereon to found, and to build, high enough, nothing doubting ;-high, for instance, as the Christian Gospel itself. And to whatever other heights man's destiny may yet carry him! Consider whether it was not, from the first, by example, or say rather by human exemplars, and such reverent imitation or abhorrent aversion and avoidance as these gave rise to, that man's duties were made indubitable to him? Also, if it is not yet, in these last days, by very much the same means, (example, precept, prohibition, "force of public opinion," and other forcings and inducings,) that the like result is brought about; and, from the Woolsack down to the Treadmill, from Almack's to Chalk Farm and the west-end of Newgate, the incongruous One comfort is, that the world is ever work- whirlpool of life is forced and induced to whirl ing itself righter and righter on such matters; with some attempt at regularity? The two that a continual revisal and rectification of the Mosaic Tables were of simple limited stone; world's first judgment on them is inevitably no logic appended to them: we, in our days, going on. For, after all, the world loves its are privileged with Logic-Systems of Morals, original men, and can in no wise forget them; Professors of Moral Philosophy, Theories of not till after a long while; sometimes not till Moral Sentiment, Utilities, Sympathies, Moral after thousands of years. Forgetting them, Senses, not a few; useful for those that feel. what indeed, should it remember? The world's comfort in them. But to the observant eye, is wealth is its original men; by these and their it not still plain that the rule of man's life rests works it is a world and not a waste: the me-not very steadily on logic (rather carries logic mory and record of what MEN it bore-this is unsteadily resting on it, as an excuse, an ex

position, or ornamental solacement to oneself | plosion and new creation of the world:" but and others;) that ever, as of old, the thing a the actors in it, that went buzzing about him, man will do is the thing he feels commanded to a “handvoll mücken, handful of flies."* And to do; of which command, again, the origin and reasonableness remains often as good as indemonstrable by logic; and, indeed, lies mainly in this, that it has been demonstrated otherwise and better by experiment; namely, that an experimental (what we name original) man has already done it, and we have seen it to be good and reasonable, and now know it to be so once and for evermore ?—Enough of this.

ring through the deafest brain, in the remotest | enemies. De l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et nook of this earth, and now, in consequence, toujours de l'audace: to dare, and again to dare, with so many biographies, histories, and histo- and without limit to dare!"-there is nothing rical arguments for and against, it may be left but that. Poor "Mirabeau of the Sanscusaid that he can now sift for himself; that his lottes," what a mission! And it could not be true figure is in a fair way of being ascer- but done,—and it was done! But, indeed, may tained. Doubtless it will be found one day there not be, if well considered, more virtue in what significance was in him; how (we quote this feeling itself, once bursting earnest from from a New England Book) "the man was a the wild heart, than in whole lives of immadivine missionary, though unconscious of it; culate Pharisees and Respectabilities, with and preached, through the cannon's throat, their eye ever set on "character," and the that great doctrine, La carrière ouverte aux talens, letter of the law: "Que mon nom soit flétri, Let (The tools to him that can handle them,) which my name be blighted, then; let the Cause be is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein glorious, and have victory!" By and by, as alone can Liberty lie. Madly enough he we predict, the Friend of Humanity, since so preached, it is true, as enthusiasts and first many Knife-grinders have no story to tell him, missionaries are wont; with imperfect utter will find some sort of story in this Danton. A ance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articu- rough-hewn giant of a man, (not anthropopha lately, perhaps, as the case admitted. Or call gous entirely;) whose "figures of speech" (and him, if you will, an American backwoodsman, also of action) "are all gigantic;" whose who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle "voice reverberates from the domes,"-and with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely dashes Brunswick across the marches in a forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; very wrecked condition. Always his total whom, nevertheless, the peaceful sower will freedom from cant is one thing; even in his follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, briberies, and sins as to money, there is a bless."-From "the incarnate Moloch," which frankness, a kind of broad greatness. Sinthe word once was, onwards to this quiet cerity, a great rude sincerity, (of insight and version, there is a considerable progress. of purpose,) dwelt in the man, which quality is the root of all: a man who could see through many things, and would stop at very few things; who marched impetuously, where to march was almost certainly to fall; and now bears the penalty, in a "name" blighted, yet, as we say, visibly clearing itself. Once cleared, why should not this name, too, have significance for men? The wild history is a tragedy, as all human histories are. Brawny Dantons, still to the present hour, "rend the glebe," as simple brawny Farmers, and reap peaceable harvests, at Arcis-sur-Aube; and this Danton-! It is an unrhymed tragedy; very bloody, fuliginous, (after the manner of the elder dramatists;) yet full of tragic elements; not undeserving natural pity and fear. In quiet times, perhaps still at a great distance, the happier onlooker may stretch out the hand, across dim centuries, to him, and say: "Illstarred brother, how thou foughtest with wild lion-strength, and yet not with strength enough, and flamedst aloft, and wert trodden down of sin and misery;-behold, thou also wert a man!" It is said there lies a Biography of Danton written, in Paris, at this moment; but the editor waits till the "force of public opinion" ebb a little. Let him publish, with utmost convenient despatch, and say what he knows, if he do know it: the lives of remarkable men are always worth understanding instead of misunderstanding; and public opinion must positively adjust itself the best way it can.

Still more interesting is it, not without a touch almost of pathos, to see how the rugged Terra Filius Danton begins likewise to emerge, from amid the blood-tinted obscurations and shadows of horrid cruelty, into calm light; and seems now not an Anthropophagus, but partly a man. On the whole, the Earth feels it to be something to have a "Son of Earth;" any reality, rather than a hypocrisy and formula! With a man that went honestly to work with himself, and said and acted, in any sense, with the whole mind of him, there is always something to be done. Satan himself, according to Dante, was a praiseworthy object, compared with those juste-milieu angels (so over-numerous in times like ours) who "were neither faithful nor rebellious," but were for their little selves only trimmers, moderates, plausible persons, who, in the Dantean Hell, are found doomed to this frightful penalty, that "they have not the hope to die, (non han speranza di morte;) but sunk in torpid death-life, in mud and the plague of flies, they are to doze and dree for ever,-"hateful to God and to the Enemies of God:"

"Non ragionum di lor, ma guarda e passa!” If Bonaparte were the "armed Soldier of Democracy," invincible while he continued true to that, then let us call this Danton the Enfant Perdu, and unenlisted Revolter and Titan of Democracy, which could not yet have soldiers or discipline, but was by the nature of it lawless. An Earthborn, we say, yet honestly born of Earth! In the Memoirs of Garat, and elsewhere, one sees these fire-eyes beam with earnest insight, fill with the water of tears; the huge rude features speak withal of wild human sympathies; that Antæus' bosom also held a heart. "It is not the alarm-cannon that you hear," cries he to the terrorstruck, when the Prussians were already at Verdun: "it is the pas de charge against our

But without doubt the far most interesting, best-gifted of this questionable trio is not the Mirabeau of the Sansculottes, but the Mirabeau himself: a man of much finer nature than either of the others; of a genius equal in strength (we will say) to Napoleon's; but a much humaner genius, almost a poetic one. With wider sympathies of his own, he appeals far more persuasively to the sympathies of men.