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 tribunals.' 'No, no,' replied the people, 'judge of Brissot, all is welcomed with a cold gravity him just now.' 'Since you will not have the and brevity; all is illustrative, if not of one common judges,' said M. Osselin, 'it is indisthing then of another. Nor are the Royalists pensable to appoint others.' 'Well, judge Royous, Suleaus, Peltiers, forgotten; "Acts of him yourselves. We have no right either the Apostles," "King's Friend," nor "Crow-to judge or to create judges; name them your ing of the Cock:" these, indeed, are more selves. Well,' cried the people, 'M. le Cure sparingly administered; but at the right time, of Saint Etienne then, and M. le Cure of as is promised, we shall have more. In a Saint-Andre.' Osselin :-Two judges are not word, it may be said of this "Histoire Parle- enough; there needs seven.' Thereupon the mentaire," that the wide promise held out in people named Messrs. Quatremere, Varangue, its title page is really, in some respectable &c. Here are seven judges indeed,' said Os measure, fulfilled. With a fit index to wind selin, but we still want a clerk.' 'Be you it up, (which index ought to be not good only clerk.' A king's Attorney.' 'Let it be M. but excellent, so much depends on it here,) Duveyrier.' 'Of what crime is M. Foulon ac• this work bids fair to be one of the most im-cused?' asked Duveyrier. He wished to portant 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 fatly wearisome: a thing waste, incoherent, wid to look upon; but great with the great ness of reality; for the thing exhibited is no vision but a fact Let us, as the first excerpt, harass the people; he said he would make Lafayette is absent; one must either wait for him, or name some other.' 'Well, then, name directly, and do it yourself.' "At length the Electors 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: rubbish and produce out of it, in small neat "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! 0 mon Roi!" having been transacted: 66 "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 Paris, Sunday, 4th October. The king's wife furnishes numerous extracts, in the earlier had been so gratified with it, that this brotherly volumes; always of a remarkable kind. This repast of Thursday must needs be repeated. It Procureur Général de la Lanterne has a place of was so on the Saturday, and with aggravahis own in the history of the Revolution; tions. Our patience was worn out: you may there are not many notabler persons in it than suppose whatever patriot observers there were he. A light, harmless creature, as he says of at Versailles hastened to Paris with the news, himself; "a man born to write verses," but or at least sent off despatches containing them. whom destiny had directed to overthrow bas-That same day (Saturday evening) all Paris tilles, and go to the guillotine for doing that. set itself astir. It was a lady, first, who, How such a man will comport himself in a seeing that her husband was not listened to at French Revolution, as he from time to time his District, came to the bar of the Cafe de turns up there, is worth seeing. Of loose, head- Foi, to denounce the anti-national cockades. long character; a man stuttering in speech; M. Marat flies to Versailles; returns like stuttering, infirm, in conduct too, till one huge lightning; makes a noise like the four blasts idea laid hold of him: a man for whom art, of doom, crying to us-Awake, ye Deal! fortune, or himself, would never do much, but Danton, on his side, sounds the alarm in the to whom Nature had been very kind! One Cordeliers. On Sunday this immortal Cordemeets him always with a sort of forgiveness, liers' District posts its manifesto⚫ and that almost of underhand love, as for a prodigal very day they would have gone t: Versailles, son. He has good gifts, and even acquire- had not M. Crevecœur, their commandant, ments elegant law-scholarship, quick sense, stood in the way. People seek out their arms the freest joyful heart: a fellow of endless wit, however; sally out to the streets in chase of clearness, soft lambent brilliancy; on any anti-national cockades. The law of reprisals subject you can listen to him, if without ap- is in force; these cockades are torn off, trampled proving, yet without yawning As a writer, in under foot, with menace of the Lanterne in case fact, there is nothing French that we have of relapse. A military gentleman, picking up heard of superior or equal to him for these his cockade, is for fastening it on again; a fifty years. Probably some French editor, hundred canes start into the air, saying veto. some day or other, will sift that journalistic The whole Sunday passes in hunting down 1 the white and the black cockades; in holding | Guards, already getting saluted with stones, council at the Palais Royal, over the Faubourg think it reasonablest to open a passage; and, Saint Antoine, at the end of bridges, on the like waters through a broken dike, the floods quais. At the doors of the coffee houses there of the multitude inundate the Hotel de Vilie. 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 cockades 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 flour 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. ii. 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 dif ferent 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 Coinmune, had just been interrogating them at the Hotel de Ville; and now they were proceeding towards the Abbaye, to be provisionally detained there. A crowd is gathering; the cries and hisses redouble: one of the prisoners, doubtless out of his senses, takes fire at these murmurs, puts his arm over the coachdoor, gives one of the Fédéré's a stroke over the head with his cane. The Fédéré, in a rage, draws his sabre, springs on the carriagesteps, and plunges it thrice over into the heart of his aggressor. I saw the blood come out in Once arrived on the Place de Grêve, these great jets. Kill every one of them; they are women piously begin letting down the Lan-scoundrels, aristocrats!' cry the people. The terne; as, in great calamities, you let down the Fédéré's all draw their sabres, and instantly shrine of Saint Genevieve. Next they are for kill the three companions of the one who had mounting into the Hotel de Ville. The Com- just perished. I saw, at this moment, a young mandant had been forewarned of this move- man in a white nightgown stretch himself out ment: he knew that all insurrections have of that same carriage: his countenance, exbegun by women, whose maternal bosom the pressive, but pale and worn, indicated that he bayonet of the satellites of despotism respects. was very sick; he had gathered his staggering Four thousand soldiers presented a front strength, and, though already wounded, was bristling with bayonets; kept them back from crying still, Grace, grace, pardon!' but in vain the step: but behind these women there rose-a mortal stroke united him to the lot of the and grew every moment a nucleus of men, armed with pikes, axes, bills; blood is about to flow on the place; the presence of these Sabine women hindered it. The National Guard, which is not purely a machine, as the Minister of War would have the soldier be, makes use of its reason. It discerns that these women, now for Versailles, are going to the root of the mischief. The four thousand others. "This coach, which was the hindmost, now held nothing but corses; it had not stopped during the carnage, which lasted about the space of two minutes. The crowd increases, crescit eundo: the yells redouble. The coaches are at the Abbaye. The corpses are hurled into the court; the twelve living prisoners dismount to enter the committee-room. Tw are sacrificed on alighting; ten succeed in en- the villains in this prison, whom other villains tering. The committee had not had time to outside will open the doors to, shall go and put the slightest question, when a multitude, kill my wife and children in the meanwhile! armed with pikes, sabres, swords, and bayonets, | I have three boys, who I hope will be usefuller dashes in; seizes the accused, and kills them. to their country one day than these rascals you One prisoner, already much wounded, kept want to save. Any way you have but to send hanging by the skirts of a Committee-member, 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: 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 car. casses, 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 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 strangestof 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 eighselves 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 something by this; and even something true. the sacres gueux of Prussians and Austrians, if But 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 spectacies; 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, consi lerable 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, Des trine du Progrès, Exploitations, le Christ, the Verbe, and what not; written in a vein of deep, even of intense seriousness; but profitable, one would think, to no man or woman. In this style M. Roux (for it is he, we understand) painfully composes a preface to each volume, and has even given a whole introductory history of France: we read some seven or eight of his first prefaces, hoping always to get some nourishment; but seldom or never cut him open now. Fighting in that way, behind cover, he is comparatively harmless; merely wasting vou so many pence per number: happily the space he takes is small. Whoever wants to form for himself an image of the actual state of French Meditation, and under what surprising shackles a French thinking man of these days finds himself gyved, and mechanized, and reduced to the verge of zero, may open M. Roux's Prefaces, and see it as in an expressive summary. We wish our two French friends all speed in their business; and do again honestly recommend this "Histoire Parlementaire" to any and all of our English friends who take inte rest in that subject. MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SCOTT." [LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.] what farther ocular survey you find useful, and For the rest, we will call it a most valua Without it where were star-and-garter, and 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 able tendency this; indispensable to mankind. distinguished situation. Men crowd to such extent, that Greenacre's is not the only life choked out there. Again, ask of these leathern vehicles, cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men and women in them, that scour all thoroughfares, Whither so fast? To see dear Mrs. Rigmarole, the distinguished female! Great Mr. Rigmarole, the distinguished male. Or, consider the crowning phenomenon, and summary of modern civilization, a soirée of lions. Glittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished: oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thankful. For your lionsoirée admits not of speech; there lies the speciality of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civilization gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dispensed with in it. Utterance there is not: nay, there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. For which reason it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-oirées, Might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wiue-decanters are? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good, his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. fol. i.-vi. Cadell. Edinburgh, 1837. Foolish world, what went ye 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 |