case, are independent of the pen. One of the most interesting English biographies we have is that long thin folio on Oliver Cromwell, published some five-and-twenty years ago, where the editor has merely clipt out from the contemporary newspapers whatsoever article, paragraph, or sentence he found to contain the name of Old Noll, and printed them in the order of their dates. It is surprising that the like has not been attempted in other cases. Had seven of the eight translators of Faust, and seventy times seven of the four hundred four-score and ten Imaginative Authors, but thrown down the writing instrument, and turned to the old newspaper files judiciously with the cutting one! give this tragedy of old Foulon, which all the world has heard of, perhaps not very accurately. Foulon's life-drama, with its hasty cruel sayings and mean doings, with its thousandfold intrigues, and "the people eating grass if they like," ends in this miserable manner. It is the editors themselves who speak; compiling from various resources: "Towards five in the morning, (Paris, 22d July, 1789,) M. Foulon was brought in; he had been arrested at Vitry, near Fountainbleau, by the peasants of the place. Doubtless this man thought himself very guilty towards the people,” (say, very hateful;)" for he had spread abroad a report of his death; and had even buried one of his servants, who happened to die then, under his own name. He had afterwards hidden himself in an estate of M. de Sartines;" where he was detected and seized. We can testify, after not a little examination, that the editors of the "Histoire Parlementaire" are men of fidelity, of diligence; that their accuracy in regard to facts, dates, "M. Foulon was taken to the Hotel de Ville, and so forth, is far beyond the average. Of where they made him wait. Towards nine course they have their own opinions, prepos- o'clock the assembled Committee had decided sessions even but these are honest prepos- that he should be sent to the Abbaye prison, sessions, which they do not hide; which one M. de Lafayette was sent for, that he might can estimate the force of, allow for the result execute this order; he was abroad over the of. Wilful falsification, did the possibility of Districts: he could not be found. During it lie in their character, is otherwise out of this time a crowd collected in the square; and the question. But, indeed, our editors are required to see Foulon. It was noon: M. men of earnestness, of strict principle; of a Bailly came down; the people listened to him; faith, were it only in the republican Tricolor. but still persisted. In the end they penetrated Their democratic faith, truly, is palpable, into the great hall of the Hotel de Ville; would thorough-going; as it has a right to be, in see Foulon, whom,' say, they, 'you are wantthese days, since it likes. The thing you have ing to smuggle off from justice.' Foulon was to praise, however, is that it is a quiet faith, presented to them. Then began this remarkanever an hysterical one; never expresses it- ble dialogue. M. de la Poize, an Elector:self otherwise than with a becoming calm-Messieurs, every guilty person should be ness, especially with a becoming brevity. judged.' 'Yes, judged directly, and then The hoarse deep croak of Marat, the brilliant hanged.' M. Osselin: To judge, one must sharp-cutting gayety of Desmoulins, the dull have judges; let us send M. Foulon to the bluster of Prudhomme, the cackling garrulity of Brissot, all is welcomed with a cold gravity and brevity; all is illustrative, if not of one thing then of another. Nor are the Royalists Royous, Suleaus, Peltiers, forgotten; "Acts of the Apostles," "King's Friend," nor "Crowing of the Cock:" these, indeed, are more sparingly administered; but at the right time, as is promised, we shall have more. In a word, it may be said of this "Histoire Parlementaire," that the wide promise held out in its title page is really, in some respectable measure, fulfilled. With a fit index to wind it up, (which index ought to be not good only but excellent, so much depends on it here,) this work bids fair to be one of the most important yet published on the History of the Revolution. No library, that professes to have a collection in this sort, can dispense with it. A "Histoire Parlementaire" is precisely the house, or say, rather, the unbuilt city, of which the single brick can form a specimen. In so rich a variety the only difficulty is where to choose. We have scenes of tragedy, of comedy, of farce, of farce-tragedy, oftenest of all; there is eloquence, gravity; there is bluster, bombast, and absurdity: scenes tender, scenes barbarous, spirit-stirring, and then flatly wearisome: a thing waste, incoherent, wild to look upon; but great with the greatness of reality; for the thing exhibited is no vision, but a fact. Let us, as the first excerpt, tribunals.' 'No, no,' replied the people, 'judge selin, clerk. A king's Attorney.' 'Let it be M. Duveyrier.' 'Of what crime is M. Foulon accused?' asked Duveyrier. He wished to harass the people; he said he would make them eat grass; he was in the plot; he was for national bankruptcy; he bought up corn.' The two curates then rose, and declared that they refused to judge; the laws of the church not permitting them. They are right,' said some; they are cozening us,' said others, and the prisoner all the while is making his escape.' At these words there rose a frightful tumult in the Hall. Messieurs,' said an Elector, 'name four of yourselves to guard him.' Four men accordingly were chosen; sent into the neighbouring apartment, where Foulon was. But will you judge then?' cried the crowd. Messieurs, you see there are two judges wanting.' 'We name M. Bailly and M. Lafayette.' But M. Lafayette is absent; one must either wait for him, or name some other.' 'Well, then, name directly, and do it yourself.' "At length the Électors agreed to proceed to judgment; Foulon was again brought in. The foremost part of the crowd joined hands, and formed a chain several ranks deep, in the middle of which he was received. At this moment M. Lafayette came in; went and took his place at the board among the electors, and then addressed to the people a discourse, of which the Ami du Roi and the Records of the Town-hall, the two authorities we borrow from here, give different reports." Lafayette's speech, according to both versions, is to the effect that Foulon is guilty: but that he doubtless has accomplices; that he must be taken to the Abbaye prison, and investigated there. "Yes, yes, to prison! Off with him, off!" cried the crowd. The Deux Amis add another not insignificant circumstance, that poor Foulon himself, hearing this conclusion of Lafayette's, clapped hands; whereupon the crowd said, "See! they are both in a story!" Our editors continue and conclude: "At this moment there rose a great clamour in the square. It is the Palais Royal coming,' said one; It is the Faubourg Saint Antoine,' said another. Then a well dressed person (homme bien mis) advanced towards the board, and said, Vouz vous moquez: what is the use of judging a man who has been judged these thirty years? At this word, Foulon was clutched; hurled out to the square; and finally tied to the fatal rope, which hung from the Lanterne at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie. The rope was afterwards cut; the head was put on a pike, and paraded,”—with “grass" in the mouth of it, they might have added!—Vol. ii. p. 148. From the "Revolution de France et de Brabant," Camille Desmoulin's newspaper furnishes numerous extracts, in the earlier volumes; always of a remarkable kind. This Procureur Général de la Lanterne has a place of his own in the history of the Revolution; there are not many notabler persons in it than he. A light, harmless creature, as he says of himself; "a man born to write verses," but whom destiny had directed to overthrow bastilles, and go to the guillotine for doing that. How such a man will comport himself in a French Revolution, as he from time to time turns up there, is worth seeing. Of loose, headlong character; a man stuttering in speech; stuttering, infirm, in conduct too, till one huge idea laid hold of him: a man for whom art, fortune, or himself, would never do much, but to whom Nature had been very kind! One meets him always with a sort of forgiveness, almost of underhand love, as for a prodigal rubbish and produce out of it, in small neat compass, a "Life and Remains" of this poor Camille. We pick up three light fractions, illustrative of him and of the things he moved in; they relate to the famous Fifth of October, (1789,) when the women rose in insurrection The Palais Royal and Marquis Saint-Huruge have been busy on the King's veto, and Lally Tollendall's proposal of an upper house : "Was the Palais Royal so far wrong," says Camille, "to cry out against such things! I know that the Palais Royal promenade is strangely miscellaneous; that pickpockets frequently employ the liberty of the press there, and many a zealous patriot has lost his handkerchief in the fire of debate. But for all that I must bear honourable testimony to the promenaders in this Lyceum and Stoa. The Palais Royal garden is the focus of patriotism: there do the chosen patriots rendezvous, who have left their hearths and their provinces to witness this magnificent spectacle of the Revolution of 1789, and not to witness without aiding in it. They are Frenchmen; they have an interest in the Constitution, and a right to concur in it. How many Parisians too, instead of going to their Districts, find it shorter to come at once to the Palais Royal. Here you have no need to ask a President if you may speak, and wait two hours till your turn comes. You propose your motion; if it find supporters, they set you on a chair: if you are applauded, you proceed to the redaction: if you are hissed, you go your ways. It is very much the mode the Romans followed; their Forum and our Palais Royal resemble one another."-Vol. ii. p. 414. Then a few days further on-the celebrated military dinner at Versailles, with the white cockades, black cockades, and “O Richard! O mon Roi!" having been transacted: "Paris, Sunday, 4th October. The king's wife had been so gratified with it, that this brotherly repast of Thursday must needs be repeated. It was so on the Saturday, and with aggrava tions. Our patience was worn out: you may suppose whatever patriot observers there were at Versailles hastened to Paris with the news, or at least sent off despatches containing them. That same day (Saturday evening) all Paris set itself astir. It was a lady, first, who, seeing that her husband was not listened to at his District, came to the bar of the Cafe de Foi, to denounce the anti-national cockades. M. Marat flies to Versailles; returns like lightning; makes a noise like the four blasts of doom, crying to us-Awake, ye Dead! Danton, on his side, sounds the alarm in the Cordeliers. On Sunday this immortal Cordeliers' District posts its manifesto; and that very day they would have gone to Versailles, had not M. Crevecœur, their commandant, stood in the way. People seek out their arms however; sally out to the streets in chase of anti-national cockades. The law of reprisals is in force; these cockades are torn off, trampled under foot, with menace of the Lanterne in case of relapse. A military gentleman, picking up his cockade, is for fastening it on again; a hundred canes start into the air, saying veto. The whole Sunday passes in hunting down like waters through a broken dike, the floods of the multitude inundate the Hotel de Ville. 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 quais. At the doors of the coffee houses there arise free conferences between the Upper House, of the coats that are within, and the Lower House, of jackets and wool-caps, assembled extra muros. It is agreed upon that the audacity of the aristocrats increases rapidly; that Madame Villepatour and the queen's women are distributing enormous white cock ades to all comers in the Eil-de-Bouf; that M. Lecointre, having refused to take one from their hands, has all but been assassinated. It is agreed upon that we have not a moment to lose; that the boat which used to bring us fiour from Corbeil, morning and evening, now comes only once in two days:-do they plan 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. "It is a picture interesting to paint, and one of the greatest in the Revolution, this same army of ten thousand Judiths setting forth to cut off the head of Holofernes; forcing the Hotel de Ville; arming themselves with whatever they can lay hands on; some tying ropes to the cannon-trains, arresting carts, loading them with artillery, with powder and balls for the Versailles National Guard, which is left without ammunition; others driving on the horses, or seated on cannon, holding the redoubtable match; seeking for their generalissimo, not aristocrats with epaulettes, but Conquerors of the Bastille !"—Vol. iii. p. 110. 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. Two are sacrificed on alighting; ten succeed in entering. The committee had not had time to put the slightest question, when a multitude, armed with pikes, sabres, swords, and bayonets, dashes in; seizes the accused, and kills them. One prisoner, already much wounded, kept hanging by the skirts of a Committee-member, and still struggled against death. "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: "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 resentment is just. Open war to the enemies of the common good; neither truce nor mercy; it is a war to the death! I feel like you that they must all perish; and yet, if you are good citizens, 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 the villains in this prison, whom other villains outside will open the doors to, shall go and kill my wife and children in the meanwhile! I have three boys, who I hope will be usefuller to their country one day than these rascals you want to save. Any way you have but to send them out; we will give them arms, and fight 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. "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! Touching the political and metaphysical speculations of our two editors, we shall say little. They are of the sort we lamented in Mignet, and generally in Frenchmen of this day-a jingling of formulas; unfruitful as that Kalmuck prayer! Perhaps the strangestlooking particular doctrine we have noticed is this: that the French Revolution was at bot tom 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 MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT. trine du Progrès, Exploitations, le Christ, the Verbe, and what not; written in a vein of deep, even of intense seriousness; but profitable, In this one would think, to no man or woman. 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 We wish our two French friends all speed MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT.* [LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.] O Fenimore what farther ocular survey you find useful, and an instinctive speech is not needed at all. Cooper, it is most true there is 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; Foolish world, what went ye not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man. 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? 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 thoroughTo see dear Mrs. fares, Whither so fast? 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 And yet, at bottom, it is not merely our gre grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. garious sheep-like quality, but something better, For which reason it has been suggested, with an and indeed best; what has been called "the Not the gilt eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-soirées, perpetual fact of hero-worship;" our inborn Might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, sincere love of great men! as wine-decanters are? Let him carry, slung farthing, for its own sake, do even fools covet; round him, in such ornamental manner as but the gold guinea which they mistake it for. seemed good, his silver label with name en-Veneration of great men is perennial in the graved; you lift his label, and read it, with Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. 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 |