the revolution, shrank at the deadly wound inflicted | accessible record, (in which case the authenticity or on their feelings and their cause by what they had value of the statement could have been tested,) but deemed a friendly hand. The Christian poet simply on that of private documents, which the seemed to carry away religion and sentiment from their ranks into those of their opponents. The adherents of the revolution hailed with joy and gratitude the unexpected accession of a new and potent ally. Discountenanced by conservative opinion, and denounced by his old friends of the Fauxbourg, M. de Lamartine has been rewarded by the general acknowledgments with which his countrymen have received his vindication of the national character, and his justification of the spirit which the revolution has made the spirit of the French people.

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reader has no means of examining for himself— of conversations with unnamed individuals, the trustworthiness as well as the effect of whose evidence we are obliged to take entirely on credit from our author. We have not the slightest distrust of M. de Lamartine's assurance that he has made a most scrupulous investigation into the statements from which his narrative has been prepared. "Although," he says, we have not encumbered the narrative with notes, with references, and with pièces justificatives, there is not one of our statements which is not authorized either by authentic memoirs, or by unpublished memoirs, or by autograph correspondence, which the families of the principal personages have been pleased to confide to us, or by oral and trustworthy information collected from the lips of the last survivors of this great epoch." The consequence of this indisposition to encumber the story with the ordinary proofs of historical accuracy is, that when we get beyond the most familiar incidents, we never know the value of a single statement that is made; for instance, whether it is derived from most intelligent and impartial witnesses, or from the most discredited and heated partisans; whether it is capable of being supported by a reference to some indisputable and acknowledged authority, or rests entirely on the private conversation or letter of some survivor of the revolution, whose good faith or judgment it is possible that particular circumstances may have led M. de Lamartine to over

Independently, however, of these adventitious causes of a momentary notoriety, the History of the Girondins is a work that possesses solid claims to a more durable and extensive reputation. We cannot receive it as a satisfactory history of the period of which it treats. In fact the author, though he has given it the name of a "history," is content that it should be classed in a humbler category. "As for the title of this book," he says in his preface, we have only adopted it for want of any other word to designate a narrative. This book has none of the pretensions of history, and must not assume its dignity. It is an intermediate work between history and memoirs. Events occupy in it a subordinate place to men and ideas. It is full of personal details. These details are the physiognomy of characters: it is through them that the latter impress themselves on the imagination. Great writers have already written the chronicles of this memorable epoch. estimate. This is a fault peculiarly to be regretted Others will ere long write them. It will be doing us injustice to compare us with them. They have produced, or will produce, the history of an age: we have produced nothing but a study of a group of men, and of some months of the revolution."

With this scheme of his work before him, M. de Lamartine has not thought it necessary to give a detailed record of all the events of the period. He assumes that his reader has already acquired this knowledge from other sources. Relying on this he has not, as he tells us, scrupled in some instances to heighten the effect by neglecting the exact order of time. It is much to be regretted, however, that such omissions and inversions are accompanied by more serious defects, which impair our confidence in the accuracy of the narrative, and consequently in the justice of the views based upon it. The intermediate position between history and memoirs which the author would assume for his work is one which, unfortunately, possesses the claims of neither, as an authority concerning matters of fact. Its statements are not given, as in memoirs, on the author's personal knowledge; nor are they drawn, as in a trustworthy history, from original accounts of a known and authentic charac

in an author, whose poetical reputation lays him open to the imputation of not being much in the habit of investigating closely, or weighing accurately, the evidences of historical facts; and the very character of whose work suggests the suspicion that he may have been ready to take on insufficient evidence any striking statement that would heighten the effect of his narrative, or bear out the view which he has formed of the character of some remarkable individual. M. de Lamartine promises that, after a while, in case any of his statements should be assailed, he will support them by a mass of proof. We would impress on him that this is a duty, which, even without any call of self-defence, it is incumbent on him to discharge, in order to stamp on the very face of his history those outward and visible signs of conscientious and laborious truthfulness, which can alone invest it with permanent utility and reputation.

But accuracy, unfortunately, is not one of M. de Lamartine's qualifications for writing history. Those who are most conversant with the events of the revolution accuse him of frequent exaggeration. Imitating a habit of the ancient historians, which is not permitted by the present canons of historical propriety, he does not scruple to embody his own conception of the feelings of the various personages of his narrative in imaginary speeches, which he puts into their mouths. In some in

stances an ordinary acquaintance with the history | accurately be described as the "

The narrative of this period is prefaced by a review of the state of affairs at its commencement, and an account of some events which immediately preceded the adoption of the constitution of 1791, and determined its fate, even before it came into being. The death of Mirabeau in the April of that year deprived France of the only statesman who possessed the capacity to guide his country through the revolution, and enjoyed the amount of public confidence, which is an equally necessary condition for success. We cannot concur with M. de Lamartine, that the energies and utility of Mirabeau were exhausted; and that his efforts to give stability to the new institutions of his country must have failed. Whatever may be said of pop

History of the of the revolution exposes inaccuracies which are Rise of the French Republic." It comprises the not to be attributed to any bias or misconception, period commencing with the establishment of the but to sheer carelessness. But even with these constitution of 1791; continuing through the varivery serious defects, this work remains a most val-ous occurrences that led to the downfall of that uable contribution to our knowledge of the revolu- constitution, the foundation of a republic in its tion. Imperfect as a history, it is a striking and place, the struggles of factions in the Convention, instructive historical study. It brings before us the gradual consolidation of power in the hands of that most stirring and important period with a the committee of public safety; and closing with clearness and vividness that all previous descrip- the fall of Robespierre. After this begins the sections, except some of Carlyle's, have failed to ond period; which may properly be designated as realize it presents us on the same page with dis- that of the decline and fall of the republic. tinct, highly-finished sketches of the principal actors, and with a careful and deliberate judgment on the causes, the nature, and consequences of the events. These are the objects at which the author has evidently aimed; and he has, in our opinion, attained them with greater success than any other writer on the revolution. Skill and power in the representation of remarkable scenes and incidents was an excellence which M. de Lamartine's descriptive powers gave us reason to anticipate; and he has combined this excellence with more discrimination and justice in his estimate of characters and events than we were prepared for. Though occasionally too apt to judge one man somewhat too harshly, or to elevate another into a species of imaginary hero-though often bewildered by the vastness of ular fickleness and of the ephemeral nature of revthe subject, or misled by his own ardent tempera-olutionary reputations, the first want of the public ment-M. de Lamartine seems to us on the whole to have brought to the consideration of the revolution a more candid spirit and more wholesome sympathies, than any preceding writer. It is a great and rare merit in a Frenchman writing on that subject in the present day, to be able on the one hand to appreciate the grandeur and justice of the revolution without silencing the suggestions of human feeling and the simple dictates of morality; and on the other to give full scope to pity and justice towards individuals without allowing those sentiments to abate the ardor of his sympathy with that succession of efforts by which, at an immense cost of personal suffering and wrong, the safety and happiness of a great people were secured.

The period comprised in these eight volumes is the most eventful period of the revolution. The author selected an incorrect designation when he called his work a "History of the Girondins." The characters and fortunes of the particular body of men known by that appellation in no respect form the sole or even principal subject of the work. No especial pains are devoted to the elucidation of their policy and position. Instead of being brought into a more prominent position than that which they have occupied in previous histories, or being invested with any peculiar interest, they are thrown rather more into the background, and, if anything, deprived of their real importance and consideration. The existence of their party does not even mark the chronological limits of the work. The narrative commences before their rise, and is continued long after their disappearance. It might with much more propriety be called a History or Robespierre than of the Girondins; but it would most

is a leader; and, when a man of Mirabeau's genius had actually been accepted by the people as its habitual leader, a moral power had been created which might, perhaps, have arrested or diverted even the movement of the French revolution. His death left the Assembly in a state of disorganization, which continued during the remaining months of its existence. Among the various subordinate orators to whom the removal of their chief gave a momentary superiority, the foremost place fell to the amiable and pure-minded Barnave, who, without any of the qualities of a statesman, possessed the merit of a clear and effective style of speaking.

"Still in the shade and in the rear of the leaders began to bestir himself, moved by unquiet thoughts of the National Assembly, a man almost unknown that seemed to forbid him silence and repose; on every occasion he tried to speak, and attacked every speaker indifferently, even Mirabeau. Hurled from the tribune, he mounted it again the next day; humbled by sarcasms, stifled by murmurs, disavowed by all parties, lost to sight amid the great athletes who wearied. You might have said that some secret fixed the public attention, he was ever beaten, never and prophetic genius revealed to him beforehand the vanity of all these talents, the omnipotence of will and patience, and that a voice heard by him alone whispered to him in his soul, These men who despise thee are thine; all the windings of this revolution, which does not choose to look at thee, will end in thee; for thou art placed in its path as the inevitable extreme in which every impulse ends.' That man was Robespierre."

Nothing in Robespierre's exterior gave any indication of the superiority which he was destined to command; there was nothing even to attract

the attention of the observer. His appearance is place himself at the head of that portion of his described as that of a short, slight, ill-made man, army which was least well-affected to the revoluwith awkward and affected gestures a harsh, tion, and in the position in which he could most mouthing, monotonous tone of voice-a small, easily avail himself of the support of the foreign rather handsome forehead, swelling out above the powers and emigrants. In all this they naturally temples, as if pressed out by force of eager thought, saw proofs of his irreconcilable repugnance to the -deep-set blue eyes, of a somewhat gentle but changes which were taking place, and a readiness unsteady expression, half hidden under his eyelids to resist them, even at the cost of civil war and -a small nose and open nostrils-a large mouth, foreign intervention. Thenceforth the avenues to with thin contracted lips-and an unhealthy yellow public confidence were closed on him; and he complexion. The expression of his face was mild, became by inevitable consequence incapable of with something of a serious calmness, and a sar-retaining to any useful end the position of a concastic smile. But the predominant characteristic stitutional monarch. of his countenance was the constant, eager tension Happy had it been for both king and people of his features, as if all the energies of his whole had the former accomplished his purpose, and sucsoul and frame were always vehemently bent on ceeded in reaching the camp of Bouillé. The some one object. And this was the fact. For, spirit of the French army at that period negatives passionately devoted to the system of Rousseau, the supposition that the king could have detached Robespierre had ever before him, from the outset, any considerable portion of it from the national to the end of his career, one constant purpose-cause, or maintained his ground in any part of the resolution of realizing the ideas of social and France. He would have been compelled to quit political change, which that daring speculator had his dominions; and when once a fugitive, the forshadowed forth. To this the ultimate limit of the feiture of his crown would have been admitted by revolution, and of the then thoughts of men, he all the world to be a matter of obvious necessity; steadily looked, and steadily advanced without ever the Duke of Brunswick's army, instead of deriving swerving, pausing, or faltering. His character strength from his presence, would have had in his was not of the kind that enabled him actively to weakness merely an additional element of confupropel the movement in any of its various stages; sion in councils not very vigorous at their best; still, no step was taken in advance, but he was while the new executive government of France seen moving yet further onwards, and urging the would have been relieved from all trammels and public mind to some more distant point. At the all suspicions. The jealousies and conflicts of the period of which we now speak, he was only begin- following year would, in this case, have had no ning to be of importance. He and Petion, another existence. The populace would never have been disciple of the "Contrat Social," an unsuccessful unloosed and organized for successful revolt. At lawyer, but vigorous, sincere, and of a handsome any rate, its barbarous vengeance would not have exterior, and fitted to play the part of a popular been infuriated by the blood of royal victims, and leader, were at the head of a small group of ex- France would have been spared all the disgrace and treme politicians: though without influence in the all the disorder that flowed from the fountain of Assembly, they were already in possession of con- that useless crime. siderable strength from their credit with the Jacobins and the mob.

The flight of the royal family to Varennes followed the death of Mirabeau, and was probably occasioned, or at any rate accelerated, by it. The various details of this interesting story are narrated with exciting circumstantiality; and the attention of the reader is not unwisely riveted on an incident second in importance to none of the strange events by which it is surrounded. The flight to Varennes exercised the most direct and serious influence on the subsequent course of the revolution. The attempt, its failure, and the mistaken course adopted with respect to it by the Assembly, were fatal alike to constitutional monarchy, and to the peaceful establishment of republican institutions. As regarded the king personally, the whole transaction was justly destructive of all further trust in him. How far the precariousness of the position in which his family were placed excuses the step on private grounds, it is unnecessary to inquire. These were not points which the people of France could appreciate. They saw the king, in the midst of professions of attachment to the new order of things, suddenly quit his capital, and endeavor to

Unfortunately, the adverse fates-the unlucky blunders of the Duc de Choiseul, and the perverse acuteness and energy of Drouet, frustrated these desirable results. All might have been well if the royal carriage had completed two more stages in security. Indeed, the Constituent Assembly, had it then been equal to the crisis, would have deliberately secured the results which had been missed by chance. Instead of bringing back the king to Paris, and disguising the real character of his flight, by pretending to consider it as an abduction, they should have preferred the fiction, which was consecrated by the example of the English revolution on the absconding of James the Second—they should have treated the flight as an abdication— compelled the royal family to leave the countryand proceeded to provide for the vacancy of the throne. They might, as M. de Lamartine thinks they should have done, have established the republic at once :

lished by the Assembly acting in the exercise of its "The republic, had it then been legally estabrights, and in full possession of power, would have been quite other than the republic which nine months afterwards was the perfidious and atrocious conquest

of the insurrection of the 10th of August. It would | course taken by the Assembly was the very worst have been exposed, no doubt, to the agitation insep- of all that lay before it. To confer the royal prearable from the birth of a new order of things. It rogative on a king who had just declared, by his would not have escaped the disasters natural to a words and acts, his entire alienation from his peocountry in its first movements, when frenzied by the very magnitude of its dangers. But it would have ple, and his disaffection to free institutions, was been the child of law, instead of sedition; of right, simply to render monarchy and the new constitution instead of violence; of deliberation instead of insur- impossible. The step, though dictated by some rection. This alone would have changed the un-surviving respect and regard for Louis, was, in toward conditions of its existence and its future. It truth, the most cruel act that could have been done must have been stirring; but it might have remained towards him. "It crowned him," says our author, "with suspicion and insult—it nailed him to the throne, and made that throne the instrument of his torture, and finally of his death." On the other hand, at this period the king might yet have saved himself. "On his return from Varennes, he should have abdicated. The revolution would have adopted his son, and brought him up in its own

pure.

likeness.

He did not abdicate-he submitted to

"See what an entire change would have been made by the one fact of its having been legally and deliberately proclaimed. There would have been no 10th of August; the fraud and tyranny of the commune of Paris, the massacre of the guards, the attack on the palace, the king's flight to the Assembly, the outrages with which he was there loaded, and lastly, his imprisonment in the temple, would all have been avoided. The republic would not have killed a king, a queen, an innocent child, and receive a pardon from his people-he swore to exa virtuous princess. It would have had no massa-ecute a constitution from which he had run away cres of September, that St. Bartholomew of the he was a pardoned king. Europe looked on people, which forever stains the robe of liberty. It him thenceforth only as a fugitive from the throne would not have been baptized with the blood of brought back to his punishment-the nation as a 300,000 victims. It would not have placed the traitor-and the revolution as a puppet." people's axe in the hands of a revolutionary tribunal, to be used by it to immolate an entire generation, Brought back a prisoner, amid the execrations in order to make room for an idea. The Girondins, of his people, the king, after some weeks of concoming pure into power, would have had much finement in his palace, and an entire abeyance of more strength to combat the demagogues. The his prerogatives, was restored to liberty, in order republic, calmly established, would have awed to enable him to give a free assent to the constiEurope in a very different manner from a riot, tution. He gave that assent, figured in the cereauthorized by murder and assassination.

War

might have been avoided; or, if inevitable, would mony of the inauguration, swore to the constitution, have been more unanimous and triumphant. Our and was immediately placed in the unrestricted generals would not have been massacred by their exercise of all the powers it vested in him. Under soldiers amid cries of treachery. The popular spirit would everywhere have fought on our side, and the horror excited by our days of August, September, and January, would not have repelled from our standards the nations attracted to them by our doctrines; and thus would a single change in the origin of the republic have changed the fate of the revolution."—(Vol. i., p. 320.)

these circumstances, the Constituent Assembly separated; and the Legislative Assembly, composed of an entirely fresh set of men, utterly inexperienced in public affairs, entered, in conjunction with this incapable, discredited, and alienated king, on the management of affairs, and the government of France.

Among the new characters who now appeared Undoubtedly, if the experiment of a republic on the political stage, there was one particular body were a matter of necessity, it would have been far of men, which had been preceded by a great, though better that it should have been tried under the cir- vague reputation, for ability. These were the cumstances desired by M. de Lamartine. But it deputies of the department of the Gironde, chiefly seems to us that the Assembly, by boldly declaring young lawyers from the city of Bordeaux, which the throne vacant on the occasion of the king's its commercial wealth, the legal body attached to flight to Varennes, might have given the constitu- its parliament, and the influence of its successive tion of 1791 a fair chance of stability. If the eminent writers, had combined to render the centre young dauphin had been placed on the throne, of considerable refinement, intelligence, and activity. the popular leaders might have wielded the execu- On arriving at Paris, they naturally formed the active power under the name of a regency, and have quaintance of other deputies of similar opinions, gradually fashioned the monarchy to work harmo- and were eagerly sought out by public men who niously under the new constitution. Or the crown aspired to consideration. Buzot, Petion, Brissot, might have been transferred to the younger branch and other ardent advocates of republican doctrines, of the royal family; and in this case the undoubted already constituted a circle, which three or four popular sympathies of the Duke of Orleans would times every week collected round Roland and his probably have rendered his exercise of the consti- distinguished wife. To this society the deputies tutional powers of the monarchy endurable to the of the Gironde attached themselves; and similarpeople, because compatible with the maintenance ity of opinions and social communication speedily of the changes effected by the revolution. formed out of these materials the nucleus of a political party, to which the eminence of these deputies gave the name of Girondins. Of this party Brissot was the statesman who directed its general

Which of these courses would have commanded the public assent can now only be matter of speculation. We agree with M. de Lamartine, that the

policy; while Petion, who had now attained the influential office of Mayor of Paris, was its man of action and practical experience.

most brilliant of all the orators of the revolution. In this respect the admiration of those who belonged to his party is supported by the opinion of Madame de Stael, a most competent judge, whose political opinions were adverse to the Girondins, and is justified by the reports of his speeches that have reached us.

M. de Lamartine has evidently no great opinion of Brissot, whom he describes as a needy literary adventurer, who had not passed quite unsoiled through the necessities and intrigues of his early life. But the vague imputations which are thus cast on the integrity of Brissot, are repelled by the respect which was felt for him by the purest of his party, and which Madame Roland expresses in her memoirs as the result of an intimate knowledge of him; and by the steadiness and honesty of his conduct throughout the period during which it was most exposed to the public eye. He was well-informed, industrious, and bold. Nevertheless, though a respectable member, he was a very weak head of a party. His views were confused, his system ill-little linen sent him in the cheapest manner. considered and incomplete, his conduct singularly unskilful, and the influence which he undoubtedly possessed in his party was one of the first and surest presages and causes of its ill-success.

"Obscure, unknown, modest, without any presentiment of his own greatness, he lodged with three of his colleagues from the south in a little lodging of the Rue des Jeuneurs, and afterwards in a retired house in a suburb surrounded by the gardens of Tivoli. His letters to his family are filled with the humblest details of domestic management. He can scarcely contrive to live. He watches his least exhe has asked of his sister, appear a sum sufficient penses with a strict economy. A few louis, which to support him a long time. He writes to have a

Another striking member of the new party was Fauchet, the constitutional bishop of Calvados. M. de Lamartine is eloquent is his description of the true and generous character and commanding aspect of the republican, who, in his zeal for his political creed, never swerved from his Christian faith. Isnard, one of the deputies of Provence, was one of

the most brilliant of the orators of the new Assembly, and certainly one of the least wise. "He had ever in his mind the ideal of a Gracchus; he had the courage of one in his heart, and the tone in his voice. Still very young, his eloquence boiled like his blood; his speech was the fire of passion, colored by the imagination of the south; his words burst out like quick throbbings of impatience. He was the ardor of the revolution personified. The Assembly followed him out of breath, and reached his excitement before it arrived at his conclusions. His speeches were magnificent odes, which elevated discussion into poetry, and enthusiasm into convulsion; his gestures belonged rather to the tripod than the tribune: he was the Danton, as Vergniaud was the Mirabeau, of the Gironde."-(Vol. i., p. 271.)

The famous triumvirate of the Gironde, as they were called, were three young advocates who had been elected deputies of Bordeaux.

The least conspicuous and effective, as an orator, was Gensonné, to whose calm, just frame of mind, and patient industry, his party were in the habit of confiding the task of drawing up reports and similar documents. "An unbending logic, a bitter and cutting irony, were the two characteristics of Gensonné's talents." A far more effective speaker was Gaudet, who, at a very early age, had acquired a high position in his profession. His vehement eloquence carried away the Assembly; of all his party he was the most dreaded by the Court and the Mountain. But the renown of these competitors was at once eclipsed by the indisputable superiority of Vergniaud, whom the unanimous opinion of his contemporaries recognized as the

He

never thinks of fortune, not even of glory. He goes to the post to which duty calls him. In his patriotic simplicity, he is terrified by the mission which Bordeaux imposes on him. An antique probity breaks forth in the confidential épanchements of this correspondence with his friends. His family have some claims to press on the ministers: he refuses to ask anything for them, for fear that asking justice should appear in his mouth to be extorting a favor. I have tied myself down in this respect to the utmost nicety; I have made myself a law,' he says to his brother-in-law, M. Alluaud of Limoges, who had been a second father to him.

"All these private communications between Vergniaud, his sister, and his brother-in-law, breathe simplicity, tenderness of heart, and home. The roots of the public man spring out of a soil of pure morality. No trace of factious feeling, of republican fanaticism, of hatred to the king, discover themselves in the innermost feelings of Vergniaud. He speaks of the queen with tenderness, of Louis XVI. with pity. The equivocal conduct of the king,' he writes in June, 1792, increases our danger and his own. They assure me that he comes to-day to the Assembly. If he does not pronounce himself in a decisive manner he is bringing himself to some sad catastrophe. Many an effort will have to be made looked on as so many treasons.' And a little further, to plunge in oblivion so many false steps, which are descending from his pity for the king to his own domestic situation, I have no money,' he writes; 'my old creditors in Paris dun me; I pay them a little every month; rents are high; it is impossible for me to pay for everything.' This young man, who with a gesture crushed a throne, searce knew where to lay his head in the empire which he was shaking."

He had been brought up at a Jesuit college, at the expense of Turgot, who was then Intendant of the Limousin; had been intended for the church, from which he shrunk at the last moment, and went to Bordeaux to study the law, at the expense of his brother-in-law and the president Dupaty, who became his zealous patron. His early efforts were crowned with success.

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Scarcely has he made a little by his profession, when he strips himself of it, and sells the little inheritance which he had got from his mother, to pay the debts of his late father. By the sacrifice of all he possesses he redeems his father's memory: he