the power of refusing to do. I believe after | der, and sigh forgotten by him. For this Mira this manner: punish the enemy of peace! beau too the career at last opens. "But you, ministers of a God of peace, who At last! Does not the benevolent Reader, are ordained to bless and not to curse, and yet though never so unambitious, sympathize a have launched your anathema on me, without little with this poor brother mortal in such a even the attempt at enlightening me, at rea- case? Victory is always joyful; but to think soning with me! And you, 'friends of peace,' of such a man, in the hour when, after twelve who denounce to the people, with all vehe- Hercules' Labours, he does finally triumph! mence of hatred, the one defender it has yet So long he fought with the many-headed coil found, out of its own ranks;-who, to bring of Lernean serpents; and, panting, wrestled about concord, are filling capital and province and wrang with it for life or death,-forty long with placards calculated to arm the rural dis-stern years; and now he has it under his tricts against the towns, if your deeds did not heel! The mountain tops are scaled, are refute your writings;-who, to prepare ways scaled; where the man climbed, on sharp of conciliation, protest against the royal Re- flinty precipices, slippery, abysmal; in darkgulation for convoking the States-General, ness, seen by no kind eye,-amid the brood because it grants the people as many deputies of dragons; and the heart, many times, was as both the other orders, and against all that like to fail within him, in his loneliness, in his the coming National Assembly shall do, unless extreme need: yet he climbed, and climbed, its laws secure the triumph of your preten-glueing his footsteps in his blood; and now, sions, the eternity of your privileges! Disin- behold, Hyperion-like he has scaled it, and on terested 'friends of peace!' I have appealed the summit shakes his glittering shafts of war! to your honour, and summon you to state what expressions of mine have offended against either the respect we owe to the royal authority or to the nation's right? Nobles of Provence, Europe is attentive; weigh well your answer. Men of God, beware; God hears you! "And if you do not answer, but keep silence, shutting yourselves up in the vague declamations you have hurled at me, then allow me to add one word. "In all countries, in all times, aristocrats have implacably persecuted the people's friends; and if, by some singular combination of fortune, there chanced to arise such a one in their own circle, it was he above all whom they struck at, eager to inspire wider terror by the elevation of their victim. Thus perished the last of the Gracchi by the hands of the patricians; but, being struck with the mortal stab, he flung dust towards Heaven, and called on the Avenging Deities; and from this dust sprang Marius,-Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Noblesse!" What a scene and new kingdom for him; all bathed in auroral radiance of Hope; farstretching, solemn, joyful: what wild Memnon's music, from the depths of Nature, comes toning through the soul raised suddenly out of strangling death into victory and life! The very bystander, we think, might weep, with this Mirabeau, tears of joy. Which, alas, will become tears of sorrow! For know, O Son of Adam, (and Son of Lucifer, with that accursed ambition of thine,) that they are all a delusion and piece of demonic necromancy, these same auroral splendours, enchantments and Memnon's tones! The thing thou as mortal wantest is equili brium, (what is called rest or peace;) which, God knows, thou wilt never get so. Happy they that find it without such searching. But in some twenty-three months more, of blazing solar splendour and conflagration, this Mirabeau will be ashes; and lie opaque, in the Pantheon of great men (or say, French-Pantheon of considerable, or even of considered, and small-noisy men,)—at rest nowhere, save There goes some foolish story of Mirabeau on the lap of his mother earth. There are to having now opened a cloth-shop in Marseilles, whom the gods, in their bounty, give glory: to ingratiate himself with the Third Estate; but far oftener it is given in wrath, as a curse whereat we have often laughed. The image and a poison; disturbing the whole inner of Mirabeau measuring out drapery to man-health and industry of the man; leading onkind, and deftly snipping at tailors' measures, has something pleasant for the mind. So, that though there is not a shadow of truth in this story, the very lie may justly sustain itself for a while, in the character of lie. Far other-head, and sudden unreasonable oblivion were wise was the reality there: "voluntary guard of a hundred men" Provence crowding by the ten thousand round his chariot wheels; explosions of rejoicing musketry, heavenrending acclamation; "people paying two louis for a place at the window!" Hunger itself (very considerable in those days) he can pacify by speech. Violent meal mobs at Marseilles and at Aix, unmanageable by fire-arms and governors, he smooths down by the word of his mouth; the governor soliciting him, though unloved. It is as a Roman Triumph, and more. He is chosen deputy for two places; has to decline Marseilles, and honour Aix. Let his enemies look and won ward through dizzy staggerings and tarantula jiggings,-towards no saint's shrine. Truly, if Death did not intervene; or still more happily, if Life and the Public were not a block not to follow that sudden unreasonable glory, and beneficently, though most painfully, damp it down,-one sees not where many a poor glorious man, still more many a poor glorious woman, (for it falls harder on the distinguished-female,) could terminate,—far short of Bedlam. On the 4th day of May, 1789, Madame de Staël, looking from a window in the main street of Versailles, amid an assembled world, as the Deputies walked in procession from the church of Nôtre-Dame to that of Saint Louis, to hear High Mass, and be constituted States. General, saw this: "Among these Nobles whe is in him the faculty of a king. For, indeed, have we not seen how assiduously Destiny had shaped him all along, as with an express eye to the work now in hand? O crabbed old Friend of Men, whilst thou wert bolting this man into Isles of Rhé, Castles of If, and training him so sharply to be thyself, not himself,— how little knewest thou what thou wert doing! Let us add, that the brave old Marquis lived to see his son's victory over Fate and men, and rejoiced in it; and rebuked Barrel Mira beau for controverting such a Brother Gabriel. In the invalid chimney-nook at Argenteuil, near Paris, he sat raying out curious observa|tions to the last; and died three days before the Bastille fell, precisely when the Culbute Générale was bursting out. nad been deputed to the Third Estate, above charmed with him," when it comes to tha all others, the Comte de Mirabeau. The opi- He is the man of the Revolution, while he nion men had of his genius was singularly lives; king of it; and only with life, as we augmented by the fear entertained of his im- compute, would have quitted his kingship of morality; and yet it was this very immorality it. Alone of all these Twelve Hundred, there which straitened the influence his astonishing faculties were to secure him. You could not but look long at this man, when once you had noticed him his immense black head of hair distinguished him among them all; you would have said his force depended on it, like that of Samson: his face borrowed new expression from its very ugliness; his whole person gave you the idea of an irregular power, but a power such as you would figure in a Tribune of the People." Mirabeau's history through the first twenty-three months of the Revolution falls not to be written here: yet it is well worth writing somewhere. The Constituent Assembly, when his name was first read out, received it with murmurs; not knowing what they murmured at! This honourable member they were murmuring over was the member But finally, the twenty-three allotted months of all members; the august Constituent, with- are over. Madame de Staël, on the 4th of May, out him, were no Constituent at all. Very 1789, saw the Roman Tribune of the People, notable, truly, is his procedure in this section and Samson with his long black hair: and on of world-history: by far the notablest single the 4th of April, 1791, there is a Funeral Proelement there: none like to him, or second to cession extending four miles: king's ministers, him. Once he is seen visibly to have saved, senators, national guards, and all Paris,— as with his own force, the existence of the torchlight, wail of trombones and music, and Constituent Assembly; to have turned the the tears of men; mourning of a whole people, whole tide of things: in one of those moments-such mourning as no modern people ever which are cardinal; decisive for centuries. saw for one man. This Mirabeau's work then The royal Declaration of the Twenty-third of is done. He sleeps with the primeval giants. June is promulgated: there is military force He has gone over to the majority: Abiit aa enough; there is then the king's express order | to disperse, to meet as separate Third Estate on the morrow. Bastilles and scaffolds may In the way of eulogy and dyslogy, and sumbe the penalty for disobeying. Mirabeau dis-ming up of character, there many doubtless be obeys; lifts his voice to encourage others, all a great many things set forth concerning this pallid, panic-stricken, to disobey. Supreme Mirabeau; as already there has been much Usher De Brézé enters, with the king's re-discussion and arguing about him, better and newed order to depart. "Messieurs," said De Brézé, "you heard the king's order?" The Swallower of Formulas bellows out these words, that have become memorable: "Yes, Monsieur, we heard what the king was advised to say; and you, who cannot be interpreter of his meaning to the States-General; you, who Moral reflection first,—that, in these centuries have neither vote nor seat, nor right of speech men are not born demi-gods and perfect chahere, you are not the man to remind us of it. racters, but imperfect ones, and mere blamable Go, Monsieur, tell those who sent you that we men, namely, environed with such short-comare here by will of the Nation; and that no-ing and confusion of their own, and then with thing but the force of bayonets can drive us hence!" And poor De Brézé vanishes,back foremost, the Fils Adoptif says. But this, cardinal moment though it be, is perhaps intrinsically among his smaller feats. In general, we would say once more with emphasis, He has "humé toutes les formules." He goes through the Revolution like a substance and a force, not like a formula of one. While innumerable barren Sièyeses and Constitutionpedants are building, with such hammering and troweling, their august paper constitution, (which endured eleven months,) this man looks not at cobwebs and Social-Contracts, but at things and men; discerning what is to be done,-proceeding straight to do it. He shivers out Usher De Brézé, back foremost, when that is the problem. "Marie Antoinette is plures. worse: which is proper surely; as about all manner of new things, were they much less questionable than this new giant is. The present reviewer, meanwhile, finds it suitabler to restrict himself and his exhausted readers to the three following moral reflections. such adscititious scandal and misjudgment Moral reflection second,-however, that probably men were never born demi-gods in any century, but precisely god-devils as we see; certain of whom do become a kind of demigods! How many are the men, not censured, misjudged, calumniated only, but tortured, crucified, hung on gibbets,-not as god-devils even, but as devils proper; who have never theless grown to seem respectable, or infinitely respectable! For the thing which was not they, which was not any thing, has fallen away piecemeal; and become avowedly babble and confused shadow, and no-thing: the thing, which | able grim bronze-figure, though it is yet only was they, remains. Depend on it, Harmodius a century and half since; of whom England and Aristogiton, as clear as they now look, seems proud rather than otherwise? had illegal plottings, conclaves at the Jacobins' Church (of Athens); and very intemperate things were spoken, and also done. Thus too, Marcus Brutus and the elder Junius, are they not palpable Heroes? Their praise is in all Debating Societies; but didst thou read what the Morning Papers said of those transactions of theirs, the week after? Nay, Old Noll, whose bones were dug up and hung in chains. here at home, as the just emblem of himself and his deserts, (the offal of Creation, at that time,) has not he too got to be a very respect-him to fare as he can. Moral reflection third, and last,-that neither thou nor we, good Reader, had any hand in the making of this Mirabeau;-else who knows but we had objected, in our wisdom? But it was the Upper Powers that made him, without once consulting us; they and not we, so and not otherwise! To endeavour to understand a little what manner of Mirabeau he, so made, might be: this we, according to opportunity, have done; and therefore do now, with a lively satisfaction, take farewell of him, and leave PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FRENCH [LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1857.] It appears to be, if not stated in words, yet tacitly felt and understood everywhere, that the event of these modern ages is the French Revolution. A huge explosion bursting through all formulas and customs; confounding into wreck and chaos the ordered arrangements of earthly life; blotting out, one may say, the very firmament and skyey load-stars,-though only for a season. Once in the fifteen hundred years such a thing was ordained to come. To those who stood present in the actual midst of that smoke and thunder, the effect might well be too violent: blinding and deafening, into confused exasperation, almost into madness. These on-lookers have played their part, were it with the printing-press or with the battle-cannon, and are departed: their work, such as it was, remaining behind them;where the French Revolution also remains. And now, for us who have receded to the distance of some half-century, the explosion becomes a thing visible, surveyable: we see its flame and sulphur-smoke blend with the clear air, (far under the stars;) and hear its uproar as part of the sick noise of life,-loud indeed, yet imbosomed too, as all noise is, in the infinite of silence. It is an event which can be looked on; which may still be execrated, still Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française, ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales depuis 1789 jusqu'en 1815; contenant la Narration des Evénemens, les Débats, &c. &c. (Parliamentary History of the French Revo lution, or Journal of the National Assemblies from 1789 to 1815 containing a Narrative of the Occurrences; Debates of the Assemblies; Discussions in the chief Popular Societies, especially in that of the Jacobins; Records of the Commune of Paris; Sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal; Reports of the leading Political Trials; Detail of the Annual Budgets; Picture of the Moral Movement, extracted from the Newspapers, Pamphlets, &c., of each Period; preceded by an Introduction on the History of France till the Convocation of the States-General.) By P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux. (Tomes ler-23me et seq.-Paris, 1833-1836.) be celebrated and psalmodied; but which it were better now to begin understanding. Really there are innumerable reasons why we ought to know this same French Revolution as it was: of which reasons (apart altogether from that of "Philosophy teaching by Experi ence," and so forth) is there not the best summary in this one reason, that we so wish to know it? Considering the qualities of the matter, one may perhaps reasonably feel that since the time of the Crusades, or earlier, there is no chapter of history so well worth studying. Stated or not, we say, this persuasion is tacitly admitted, and acted upon. In these days everywhere you find it one of the most pressing duties for the writing guild, to produce history on history of the French Revolu tion. In France it would almost seem as if the young author felt that he must make this his proof-shot, and evidence of craftsmanship: accordingly they do fire off Histoires, Précis of Histoires, Annales, Fastes, (to say nothing of Historical Novels, Gil Blasses, Dantons, Earnaves, Grangeneuves,) in rapid succession, with or without effect. At all events it is curious to look upon: curious to contrast the picturing of the same fact by the men of this generation and position with the picturing of it by the men of the last. From Barruel and Fantin Desodoards to Thiers and Mignet there is a distance! Each individual takes up the Phenomenon according to his own point of vision, to the structure of his optic organs;-gives, consciously, some poor crotchetty picture of several things; unconsciously some picture of himself at least. And the Phenomenon, for its part, subsists there, all the while, unaltered; waiting to be pictured as often as you like, its entire meaning not to be compressed into any picture drawn by man. Thiers's History, in ten volumes foolscap-| by the latter. The multitude would never octavo, contains, if we remember rightly, one have become supreme, had not civil war and reference; and that to a book, not the page or the coalition of foreign states rendered its inchapter of a book. It has, for these last seven tervention and help indispensable. To defend or eight years, a wide or even high reputa- the country the multitude required to have the tion; which latter it is as far as possible from governing of it: thereupon (alors) it made its meriting. A superficial air of order, of clear-revolution, as the middle class had made its. ness, calm candour, is spread over the work; but inwardly, it is waste, inorganic: no human head that honestly tries can conceive the French Revolution so. A critic of our acquaintance undertook, by way of bet, to find four errors per hour in Thiers: he won amply on the first trial or two. And yet, readers (we must add) taking all this along with them, may peruse Thiers with comfort in certain circumstances, nay, even with profit; for he is a brisk man of his sort; and does tell you much, if you knew nothing. The multitude too had its Fourteenth of July, which was the Tenth of August; its Constituent, which was the Convention; its Government, which was the Committee of Solut Public; but, as we shall see," &c. (Chap. iv., vol. I., p. 271.) Or thus; for there is the like at the end of every chapter: "But royalty had virtually fallen, on the Tenth of August; that day was the insurrec tion of the multitude against the middle class and constitutional throne, as the Fourteenth Mignet's, again, is a much more honestly of July had been the insurrection of the midwritten book; yet also an eminently unsatis-dle classes against the privileged classes and factory one. His two volumes contain far more meditation and investigation in them than Thiers's ten: their degree of preferability therefore is very high; for it has been said, "Call a book diffuse, and you call it in all senses bad; the writer could not find the right word to say, and so said many more or less wrong ones; did not hit the nail on the head, only smote and bungled about it and about it." Mignet's book has a compactness, a rigour, as if rivetted with iron rods: this also is an image of what symmetry it has;-symmetry, if not of a living earth-born Tree, yet of a firm wellmanufactured Gridiron. Without life, without colour or verdure: that is to say, Mignet's genius is heartily prosaic; you are too happy that he is not a quack as well! It is very mortifying also to study his philosophical reflections: how he jingles and rumbles a quantity of mere abstractions and dead logical formulas, and calls it Thinking;-rumbles and rumbles, till he judges there may be enough; then begins again narrating. As thus: "The Constitution of 1791 was made on such principles as had resulted from the ideas and the situation of France. It was the work of the middle class, which chanced to be the strongest then; for, as is well known, what ever force has the lead will fashion the institutions according to its own aims. Now this force, when it belongs to one, is despotism; when to several, it is privilege; when to all, it is right: which latter state is the ultimatum of society, as it was its beginning. France had finally arrived thither, after passing through feudalism, which is the aristocratic institution; and then through absolutism, which is the monarchic one. "The work of the Constituent Assembly perished not so much by its own defects as by the assaults of factions. Standing between the aristocracy and the multitude, it was attacked by the former, and stormed and won "Notables consented with eagerness,' (Vol. I.,p. 10;) whereas they properly did not consent at all; 'Parliament recalled on the 10th of September,' (for the 15th ;) and then Seance Royale took place on the 20th of the same month, (19th of quite a different month, not the same, nor next to the same :) D'Espremenil, a young Counsellor' (of forty and odd ;) 'Duport, a young man,' (turned of sixty,) &c., &c. an absolute throne. The Tenth of August witnessed the commencement of the dictatorial and arbitrary epoch of the Revolution. Circumstances becoming more and more diföjcult, there arose a vast war, which required increased energy; and this energy, unregulated, inasmuch as it was popular, rendered the sway of the lower class an unquiet, oppressive, and cruel sway." "It was not any way possible that the Bourgeoisie, (middle class,) which had been strong enough to strike down the old government and the privileged classes, but which had taken to repose after this victory, could repulse the Emigration and united Europe. There was needed for that a new shock, a new faith; there was needed for that a new Class, numerous, ardent, not yet fatigued, and which loved its Tenth of August, as the Burgherhood loved its Fourteenth of," &c., &c. (Ch. v., vol. I., p. 371.) So uncommonly lively are these Abstractions (at bottom only occurrences, similitudes, days of the months, and such like) as rumble here in the historical head! Abstractions really of the most lively, insurrectionary character; nay, which produce offspring, and indeed are oftenest parricidally devoured thereby such is the jingling and rumbling which calls itself Thinking. Nearly so, though with greater effect, might algebraical r's go rumbling in some Pascal's or Babbage's mill. Just so, indeed, do the Kalmuck people pray: quantities of written prayers are put in some rotary pipkin or calabash, (hung on a tree, or going like the small barrel-churn of agricultural districts;) this the devotee has only to whirl and churn; so long as he whirls, it is prayer; when he ceases whirling, the prayer is done. Alas! this is a sore error, very generally, among French thinkers of the present time. One ought to add that Mignet takes his place at the head of that brotherhood of his; that his little book, though abounding too in errors of detail, better deserves what place it has than any other of recent date. The older Desodoards, Barruels, Lacretelles, and such like, exist, but will hardly profit much. Toulongeon, a man of talent and in tegrity, is very vague; often incorrect for an eyewitness: his military details used to be reckoned valuable; but, we suppose, Jomini index: parliamentary speeches, reports, &c, has eclipsed them now. The Abbé Mont- are furnished in abundance; complete illus gaillard has shrewdness, decision, insight; tration of all that this Senatorial province abounds in anecdotes, strange facts and re- (rather a wearisome one) can illustrate. ports of facts: his book, being written in the Thirdly, we have to name the " Collection of form of Annals, is convenient for consulting. Memoirs," completed several years ago, in For the rest, he is acrid, exaggerated, occa- above a hundred volumes. Booksellers Bausionally altogether perverse; and, with his douin, Editors Berville and Barrière, have hastes and his hatreds, falls into the strangest done their utmost; adding notes, explanations, ballucination;-as, for example, when he rectifications, with portraits also if you like: coolly records that " Madame de Staël, Neck- Louvet, Riouffe, and the two volumes of "Meer's daughter, was seen (on vit) distributing moirs on the Prisons" are the most attractive brandy to the Gardes Françaises in their bar- pieces. This Baudouin Collection, therefore, racks;" that D'Orleans Egalitéè had "a pair of joins itself to that of Petitot, as a natural sequel. man-skin breeches," leather breeches, of human skin, such as they did prepare in the tannery of Meudon, but too late for D'Orleans. The history by Deux Amis de Liberté (if the reader secure the original edition) is, perhaps, worth all the others, and offers (at least till 1792, after which it becomes convulsive, semifatuous, in the remaining dozen volumes) the best, correctest, most picturesque narrative yet published. It is very correct, very picturesque; wants only fore-shortening, shadow, and compression; a work of decided merit: the authors of it, what is singular, appear not to be known. Finally, our English histories do likewise abound: copious if not in facts, yet in reflections on facts. They will prove to the most incredulous that this French Revolution was, as Chamfort said, no "rose-water Revolution;" that the universal insurrectionary abrogation of law and custom was managed in a most unlawful, uncustomary manner. He who wishes to know how a solid Custos roʻulorum, speculating over his port after dinner, interprets the phenomena of contemporary universal history, may look in these books: he who does not wish that, need not look. And now a fourth work, which follows in the train of these, and deserves to be reckoned along with them, is this "Histoire Parlementaire" of Messieurs Buchez and Roux. The authors are men of ability and repute: Buchez, if we mistake not, is Dr. Buchez, and practises medicine with acceptance; Roux is known as an essayist and journalist: they once listened a little to Saint Simon, but it was before Saint Simonism called itself "a religion," and vanished in Bedlam. We have understood there is a certain bibliomaniac military gentleman in Paris, who in the course of years has amassed the most astonishing collection of revolutionary ware: books, pamphlets, newspapers, even sheets and handbills, ephemeral printings and paintings, such as the day brought them forth, lie there without end. Into this warehouse (as into all manner of other repositories) Messrs. Buchez and Roux have happily found access: the Histoire Parlementaire" is the fruit of their labours there. A number (two forming a volume) is published every fortnight: we have the first twenty-two volumes before us, which bring down the narrative to January, 1793; there must be several other volumes On the whole, after all these writings and out, which we have not yet seen. Conceive printings, the weight of which would sink an a judicious compilation with such resources. Indiaman, there are, perhaps, only some three Parliamentary Debates, in summary, or (where publications hitherto that can be considered the occasion warrants it) given at large; this as forwarding essentially a right knowledge is by no means the most interesting part of of this matter. The first of these is the the matter we have excerpts, notices, hints "Analyse du Moniteur," (complete expository of all imaginable sorts; of newspapers, of Index, and Syllabus of the Moniteur news- pamphlets, of Sectionary and Municipal repaper from 1789 to 1799;) a work carrying cords, of the Jacobins' club, of placard-jourits significance in its title;-provided it be mals, nay, of placards and caricatures. No faithfully executed; which it is well known to livelier emblem of the time, in its actual movebe. Along with this we may mention the ment and tumult, could be presented. The series of portraits, a hundred in number, pub-editors connect these fragments by expositions lished with the original edition of it: many of them understood to be accurate likenesses. The natural face of a man is often worth more than several biographies of him, as biographies are written. These hundred portraits have been copied into a book called "Scènes de la Revolution," (which contains other pictures, of small value, and some not useless writing by Chamfort;) and are often to be found in libraries. A republication of Vernet's Caricatures would be a most acceptable service, but has not been thought of hitherto, The second work to be counted here is the Choix des Rapports, Opinions, et Discours," in some twenty volumes, with an excellent See Mercier's Nouveau Paris, vol. iv. p. 254. such as are needful; so that a reader coming unprepared to the work can still know what he is about. Their expositions, as we can testify, are handsomely done: but altogether apart from these, the excerpts themselves are the valuable thing. The scissors, in such a It is generally known that a similar collection, perhaps still larger and more curious, lies (buried) in the British Museum here-inaccessible for want of a proper catalogue. Some eighteen months ago, the respectable sub-librarian seemed to be working at such a thing: by respectful application to him, you could gain access to ders, and reading the outside titles of his books, which his room, and have the satisfaction of mounting on ladwas a great help. Otherwise you could not in many weeks ascertain so much as the table of contents of this repository; and, after days of weary waiting, dusty rummaging, and sickness of hope deferred, gave up the enterprise as a "game not worth the candle." |