are sacrificed on alighting; ten succeed in en- the villains in this prison, whom other villain tering. The committee had not had time to outside will open the doors to, shall go and 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."

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, aud 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 gueur lo. 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 peoAbbé Sicard, as is well known, survived; ple, and ends thus: 'People, thou art sacrificand the narrative which he also published ex-ing thy enemies; thou art in thy duty.' This isis-sufficient to prove, among other things, cannibal speech lends them new animation. that "Félémhesi" had but two eyes, and his The killers blaze up, cry louder than ever for own share of sagacity and heart; that he has new victims:-how to staunch this new thirst mis-seen, miscounted, and, knowingly or un- of blood? A voice speaks from beside Billaud; knowingly, misstated not a little,-as one poor it was Maillard's voice: There is nothing man, in these circumstances, might. Félémhe- more to do here; let us to the Carmes! They Si continues, we only inverting his arrange-run thither: in five minutes more I saw them ment somewhat:

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, things on the corpses, washes their blood-smeared faces, turns them over, and seems at last to ascertain that the Abbé Len fant 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 Vendemiaire 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 that Kalmuck prayer! Perhaps the strangest of you but would shudder at the notion of looking particular doctrine we have noticed is shedding innocent blood.' Yes, yes!' reply this: that the French Revolution was at bot the people. Well, then, I ask of you if, with- tom an attempt to realize Christianity, and out inquiry or investigation, you fling your- fairly put it in action, in our world. For eigh selves like mad tigers on your fellow-men- -?' teen centuries (it is not denied) men had been Here the speaker was interrupted by one of doing more or less that way; but they set the crowd, who, with a bloody sabre in his their shoulder rightly to the wheel, and gave hand, his eyes glancing with rage, cleaves the a dead-lift, for the first time then. Good M. press, and refutes him in these terms: Tell us, Roux! and yet the good Roux does mean Monsieur le Citoyen, explain to us then, would so nething by this; and even something true. the sucres gueux of Prussians and Austrians, if Bu: a marginal annotator has written on our they were at Paris, investigate for the guilty? copy-“For the love of Heaven, Messieurs, Would they not cut right and left, as the Swiss humez vos formules:" make away with your on the Tenth of August did? Well, I am no formulas; take off your facetted spectacles; speaker, I can stuff the ears of no one; but open your eyes a little and look! There is, I tell you I have a wife and five children, whom indeed, here and there, considerable rumbling I leave with my section here while I go and of the rotatory calabash, which rattles and rum. fight the enemy: but it is not my bargain that bles concerning Progress of the Species, De

rise du Progrès, Exploitations, le Crist, 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 cpen 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 smai.. Whoever wants t form for himself an image of the actual state of French Meditation, and under what sur prising 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 inte rest in that subject.

MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT.*

[LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.]

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!

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 For the rest, we will call it a most valuasight? The man about to be hanged is in a ble tendency this; indispensable to mankind. distinguished situation. Men crowd to such Without it where were star-and-garter, and extent, that Greenacre's is not the only life significance of rank; where were all ambition, choked out there. Again, ask of these leathern money-getting, respectability of gig or no gig; vehicles, cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men and, in a word, the main impetus by which and women in them, that scour all thorough-society moves, the main force by which it fares, Whither so fast? To see dear Mrs. hangs together? A tendency, we say, of maniRigmarole, the distinguished female! Great fold results: of manifold origin, not ridiculous Mr. Rigmarole, the distinguished male. Or, only, but sublime;-which some incline to consider the crowuing phenomenon, and sum- deduce from the mere gregarious purblind mary of modern civilization, a scirée of lions. nature of man, prompting him to run, "as dimGlittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; eyed animals do, towards any glittering object, bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde were it but a scoured tankard, and mistake it gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling for a solar luminary," or even," sheep-like, to on all faces; for behold there also flow the run and crowd because many have already lions, hovering distinguished: oracles of the rum!" It is, indeed, curious to consider how age, of one sort or another. Oracles really men do make the gods that themselves worship. pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go For the most famed man, round whom all the and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, world rapturously huzzahs, and venerates as depart rather and be thankful. For your lion-if his like were not, is the same man whom all wirée admits not of speech; there lies the speciality of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civilization gene) 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

Menoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. Vol. 1.-vi Cadell. Edinburgh, 1837.

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

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 mankind; 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 oelieved 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.

evil or to do no evil; will depend not cz 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 it at this opening of the year. Perhaps it is 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, indeed, 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. Be it as the peremptory editorial powers require.

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 work manlike 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 "Odys observed 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 There is a great discovery still to be made 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 brecent reviewer will follow a multitude to do

in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write. Nav, 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, be spouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this world-old truth were altogether strange !-Such we say is the rule, acted on or

The

not, recognised or not; and he who departs | time be composed, if necessary, by whosoever from it, what can he do but spread himself has call to that. As it is, as it was meant to into breadth and length, into superficiality and be, we repeat, the work is vigorously done. saleability; and, except as filigree, become Sagacity, decision, candour, diligence, good comparatively useless? One thinks, had but sense: these qualities are throughout observathe hogshead of thin wash, which sours in a ble. The dates, calculations, statements, we week ready for the kennels, been distilled, been suppose to be accurate; much laborious inecncentrated! Our dear Fenimore Cooper, quiry, some of it impossible for another whom we started with, might, in that way, man, has been gone into, the results of which have given us one Natty Leatherstocking, one are imparted with due brevity. Scott's letters, zelodious synopsis of man and nature in the not interesting generally, yet never absolutely West, (for it lay in him to do it,) almost as a without interest, are copiously given; copiously, Saint Pierre did for the islands of the East; but with selection; the answers to them still and the hundred incoherences, cobbled hastily more select. Narrative, delineation, and at together by order of Colburn and Company, length personal reminiscences, occasionly of bad slumbered in Chaos, as all incoherences much merit, of a certain rough force, sincerity, ought if possible to do. Verily this same ge- and picturesqueness, duly intervene. rius of diffuse-writing, of diffuse-acting, is a scattered members of Scott's Life do lie here, Moloch; and souls pass through the fire to and could be disentangled. In a word, this tim more than enough. Surely if ever disco- compilation is the work of a mauful, clearvery was valuable and needful, it were that seeing, conclusive man, and has been executed store indicated, of paying by the work not vi- with the faculty and combination of faculties sibly done!—Which needful discovery we will the public had a right to expect from the name give the whole projecting, railwaying, know- attached to it. ledge-diffusing, march-of-intellect, and otherwise promotive and locomotive societies in the Old and New World, any required length of centuries to make. Once made, such discovery once made, we too will fling cap into the air, and shout lo Paan, the Devil is conquered; and in the meanwhile study to think it nothing miraculous that seven biographical volumes are given where one had been better; and that several other things happen, very much as they from of old were known to do, and are like to continue doing.

One thing we hear greatly blamed in Mr. Lockhart: that he has been too communicative, indiscreet, and has recorded much that ought to have lain suppressed. Persons are mentioned, and circumstances, not always of an ornamental sort. It would appear there is far less reticence than was looked for! Various persons, name and surname, have "received pain:" nay, the very hero of the biography is rendered unheroic; unornamenta! facts of him, and of those he had to do with, being set forth in plain English: hence "perMr. Lockhart's aim, we take it, was not that sonality," "indiscretion," or worse, sanctities of producing any such highflown work of art of private life," &c. &c. How delicate, decent as we hint at: or indeed to do much other than is English biography, bless its mealy mouth! to print, intelligibly bound together by order of A Damocles' sword of Respectability hangs for time, and some requisite intercalary exposition, ever over the poor English life-writer, (as it all such letters, documents, and notices about does over poor English life in general,) and Scott as he found lying suitable, and as it reduces him to the verge of paralysis. Thus seemed likely the world would undertake to it has been said," there are no English lives read. His work, accordingly, is not so much worth reading except those of Players, who by a composition, as what we may call a compila- the nature of the case have bidden Respectabinen well done. Neither is this a task of no dif- lity good day." The English biographer has ficulty; this too is a task that may be performed long felt that if in writing his Man's Biography, with extremely various degrees of talent: from | he wrote down any thing that could by possi the "Life and Correspondence of Hannah bility offend any man, he had written wrong. More," for instance, up to this "Life of Scott," there is a wide range indeed! Let us take the ven volumes, and be thankful that they are genuine in their kind. Nay, as to that of their being seven and not one, it is right to say that the public so required it. To have done other would have shown little policy in an author. Had Mr. Lockhart laboriously compressed himself, and instead of well-done compilation, brought out the well-done composition in one volume instead of seven, which not many men in England are better qualified to do, there can be no doubt that his readers for the time had been immeasurably. fewer. If the praise of magnanimity be denied him, that of prudence must be conceded, which perhaps he values

more.

The truth is, the work, done in this manner, 00, was good to have: Scott's Biography, if uncomposed, lies printed and indestructible here, in the elementary state, and can at any

The plain consequence was that, properly speaking, no biography whatever could be produced. The poor biographer, having the fear not of God before his eyes, was obliged to retire as it were into vacuum; and write in the most melancholy, straitened manner, with only vacuum for a result. Vain that he wrote, and that we kept reading volume on volume; there was no biography, but some vague ghost of a biography, white, stainless; without feature or substance; vacuum, as we say, and wind and shadow,-which indeed the material of it was.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving of fence. His life is a battle, in so far as it is an entity at all. The very oyster, we suppose, comes in collision with oysters: undoubtedly enough it does come in collision with Neces. sity and Difficulty; and helps itself through, not as a perfect ideal oyster, but as an imper

fect real one. Some kind of remorse must be fore his eyes, and no other fear what re known to the oyster; certain hatreds, certain Censure the biographer's prudence; disseRİ pusillanimities. But as for man, his conflict from the computation he made, or agree with is continual with the spirit of contradiction, it; be all malice of his, be all falsehood, nay that is without and within; with the evil spirit, be all offensive avoidable inaccuracy, con (or call it with the weak, most necessitous, demned and consumed; but know that by this pitiable spirit,) that is in others and in him- plan only, executed as was possible, could he self. His walk, like all walking, (say the me- biographer hope to make a biography: and chanicians,) is a series of falls. To paint blame him not that he did what it had beca man's life is to represent these things. Let the worst fault not to do. them be represented, fitly, with dignity and measure; but above all, let them be represented. No tragedy of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted by particular desire! No ghost of a Biography, let the Damocles' sword of Respectability (which after all is but a pasteboard one) threaten as it will! One hopes that the public taste is much mended in this matter! that vacuum-biographies, with a good many other vacuities related to them, are withdrawn or withdrawing into vacuum. Probably it was Mr. Lockhart's feeling of what the great public would approve that led him, open-eyed, into this offence against the small criticising public; we joyfully accept the

omen.

As to the accuracy or error of these state ments about the Ballantynes and other persons aggrieved, which are questions much mooted at present in some places, we know nothing at all. If they are inaccurate, let them be corrected; if the inaccuracy was avoidable, let the author bear rebuke and punishment for it. We can only say, these things carry no look of inaccuracy on the face of them; neither is anywhere the smallest trace of illwill or unjust feeling discernible. Decidedly the probabilities are, and till better evidence arise, the fair conclusion is, that the matter stands very much as it ought to do. Let the clatter of censure, therefore, propagate self as far as it can. For Mr. Lockhart it virtually amounts to this very considerable praise, that, standing full in the face of the public, he has set at naught, and been among the first to do it, a public piece of cant; one of the com monest we have, and closely allied to many others of the fellest sort, as smooth as it looks.

66

Perhaps then, of all the praises copiously bestowed on his work, there is none in reality so creditable to him as this same censure, which has also been pretty copious. It is a censure better than a good many praises. He is found guilty of having said this and that, calculated not to be entirely pleasant to this man and that; in other words, calculated to give him the thing he worked in a living set of features, not leave him vague, in the white beatified ghost condition. Several men, as we hear, cry out, "See, there is something written not entirely pleasant to me! Good friend, it is pity: but who can help it? They that will orowd about bonfires may, sometimes very fairly, get their beards singed; it is the price they pay for such illumination; natural twilight is safe and free to all. For our part, we hope all manner of biographies that are written in England will henceforth be written so. If it is fit that they be written otherwise, then it is still fitter that they be not written at all: to produce not things, but ghosts of things, can never be the duty of man. The biographer has this problem set before him to delineate a likeness of the earthly pilgrimage of a man. He will compute well what profit is in it, and what disprofit; under which latter head this of offending any of his fellow-creatures will surely not be forgotten. Nay, this may so swell the disprofit side of his account, that many an enterprise of biography, otherwise promising, shall require to be renounced. But once taken up, the rule above all rules is to do it, not to do the ghost of it. In speaking of the man and men he has to deal with, he will of course keep all his charities about him, but also all his eyes open. Far be it from him to set down aught untrue; nay, not to abstain from, and leave in oblivion, much nat is true. But having found a thing or things essential for his subject and well computed the for and against, he will in very deed thesis, let expressive silence be the un'y at ret down such thing or things, nothing doubt-swer. ing,-having, we may say, the fear of God be-I

The other censure, of Scott being made unheroic, springs from the same stem; and is, perhaps, a still more wonderful flower of i Your true hero must have no features, but be white, stainless, an impersonal ghost-hero! But connected with this, there is a hypothesis now current, due probably to some man of name, for its own force would not carry it far; That Mr. Lockhart at heart has a dislike to Scott, and has done his best in an underhand treacherous manner to dishero him! Such hypothesis is actually current: he that has ears may hear it now and then. On wh.ca astonishing hypothesis, if a word must be said, it can only be an apology for silence, that there are things at which one stands struck silent, as at first sight of the Infinite." For if Mr. Lockhart is fairly chargeable with any radical defect, if on any.side his insizat entirely fails him, it seems even to be in this, that Scott is altogether lovely to him; that Scott's greatness spreads out for him on all hands beyond reach of eye; that his very faults become beautiful, his vulgar world's nesses are solid prudences, proprieties; and of his worth there is no measure. the patient biographer dwell on his Abbots, I'v rates, and hasty theatrical scene-paintings: affectionately analyzing them, as if they wer Raphael pictures, time-defying Hamlets, O he?! The novel-manufactory, with his £15,000. vear, is sacred to him as creation of a genants, which carries the noble victor up to heaven Scott is to Lockhart the unparalleled of the time; an object spreading out before him like a sea without shore. Of that astonishing hypo

Does not

And so in sum, with regard to "Lockhart's