"You, at least," addressing himself to the Assembly, "you have it always in your power to show your hatred to despotism, and to give to courage an exaltation that will render success certain. You may be worthy of the generous people of whom you are the representatives; you may imitate the Spartans who died at Thermopyle, and the Roman senators who would have died at their post. And suppose not that you will want avengers. The day that sees the earth dyed with your blood, will see tyranny, with all its arrogance, its defenders, its palaces, and its satellites, swept away and dispersed for ever from the sight by the omnipotence of the nation; and if it is indeed to be a sorrow, which is to poison the last moments of your existence, that you have not made your country happy, you will at least bear away with you the consolation, that your death will precipitate the downfall of the oppressors of the people, and that by your devotion liberty will be saved."

"The emotion," says Thiers, was general."

It had been all along, you see, taken for granted by Vergniaud, that the king was the real instigator of the war, and wished the allied sovereigns entire success. His endeavour to modify the nature of the war by the mission of Mallet du Pan was possibly not known, was certainly not acknowledged by Vergniaud. The effect of the speech was of the most powerful nature.

"The tribunes," says Thiers, "the côté-gauche, the côtédroit, all the Assembly, united in their applauses; every one pressed round the orator as he descended from the tribune."

"The reiterated applauses," says Bertrand de Moleville, “bestowed on the speaker by a great part of the Assembly, and by all in the galleries, showed beforehand who were to be his future accomplices. M. Dumas, although interrupted at almost every sentence by murmurs, clamours, or insolent questions, refuted all Vergniaud's arguments with as much energy as solidity, and with as great effect as it was possible to have, in respect to all his hearers over whom truth and justice preserved any empire." "M. Dumas," says Thiers, was desirous to answer Vergniaud, and instantly attempted to follow him; but he addressed himself to those who were already too much occupied with the speech they had just heard, and had neither silence nor attention to bestow upon any speaker that succeeded." This account of Thiers can readily be supposed by any one who has ever witnessed the effect of a great orator on a public assembly, when the subject itself is interesting to their feelings. On this occasion, M. Dumas,

a Constitutionalist, seems to have said all that was reasonable (his speech is given at great length in the Moniteur), all that was fitted to have influence on those over whom, as Bertrand de Moleville observes, truth and justice preserved any empire. But what were truth and justice after the speech of Vergniaud had just been heard? Suspicion (the very passion of the French people), and terror, and the sentiment of national honour, and indignation, and every domestic feeling of the heart, and the enthusiasm of freedom, had been excited, and what were reasoning and logic now? M. Dumas was pouring oil, as if upon the waters of a crystal lake, while it was a wild ocean by which he was surrounded, where the billows had been rolled into mountains by the tempest that had passed over them.

I have given you these extracts, not only from M. de Campan, that you may comprehend in some degree the situation and sufferings of the king and royal family, but I have also given you these large quotations from the speech of Vergniaud, that you may at the same time comprehend in some degree what were also the irritations and suspicions of the popular party. You yourselves know how far there was a real occasion for them. You can readily conceive how great would be the impatience, the apprehension, the fury, that would be necessarily produced; the speeches of violence, exaggeration, and menace, that must

ensue.

You are not to suppose the popular party without good reasons of distrust and of alarm for their liberties; this is not the question now: the question is, how far, from the first, of late, and even now, they conducted themselves while under the influence of such sentiments, like wise and good men; and this is to make the best of their case.

You will continue to observe the history, and if you can but succeed in placing yourselves in the scene before you, ignorant of the future, and sympathizing with all the hopes and fears of those who were engaged in it; if, by this happy power of the imagination, you can but for a time forget all reality, and identify yourselves with those whose story you read, no period in the history of mankind, for uncertainty and importance, was ever like this month of July and beginning of August; the period now before you.

LECTURE XXIX.

BEFORE TENTH OF AUGUST.

In the last lecture an allusion was made to the state of Paris during the month of July, 1792, and beginning of August; but how little can this state of Paris and of the French nation be now conceived! Think of a people of their sensitive, electric, theatric nature; think of such a people being roused from a state of servility and ignorance, told of their sovereignty, and indulged in the lawless and often bloody exercise of it now for three years together; think of every needy man of talents now with a prospect of elevation in the state, of affluence, and honours, and, above all, of fame and the gaze of the multitude, if he could but overpower and depress those who were already above him; think of the new opinions, what they at the time were; think of the sacred flame of liberty and the cause of the rights of man, how worthy to animate, how fitted to betray into excess, not only the feelings of the daring and the lawless, but the understandings of the wisest and the best; and in the mean time think of foreign armies approaching, united evidently in wishes and opinions with the king and royal family, openly even denouncing and coming professedly to destroy a certain portion of the popular party; think of the king surrounded by confidential servants, in whom the speakers and leaders in and out of the Assembly placed no confidence, but the reverse; while the French armies were all this time not successful, and while the armies ranged against them were the regular troops of the first military powers of Europe.

This was a situation fitted to excite and exasperate a people like this (a military nation, too,) into a state of perfect frenzy ; and even the events that followed, appalling as they were, can convey to us no adequate apprehension of the scene that existed, at this particular period, in this revolutionized kingdom, and more especially in its revolutionized metropolis.

And now I must digress for a moment, to mention a particular circumstance that occurred. I have represented to you the state of awful uncertainty in which every thing was now placed; and I have intimated to you that this uncertainty, great as it would be, whoever had been the actors, is rendered even still greater by the very sensitive and electric nature of the French people. It is for the purpose of turning your attention to an instance of this last kind, that I am now digressing.

Can you conceive it possible, that the very next scene you are to remark, after what you have just had described to you of the situation of the country and of its different parties and interests, is the opposite leaders and members of the Legislative Assembly rushing into the arms of each other, all distinctions of parties and opinions at an end, the right side and the left side confused and mixed together, and all this, merely because the Abbé Lamourette had on a sudden appealed to the good feelings of the Assembly, and had made a sort of petition, expostulation, and remonstrance with all and every person and party before him? "Who," he called aloud, "who is there for a republic, and who for the two chambers? There is no one," he cried, "there can be no one. What cause, therefore, for our dissensions? He who unites us, is the vanquisher of Austria and Coblentz. Let us devote to execration both the republic and the two chambers. One hope, one sentiment,-eternal fraternity,—and our country is saved."

A few words of this kind were all the magic he had used; and the Assembly had started up as I have intimated, and eternal fraternity had been sworn, and the provinces were to be informed, and the army, and the king, of this new oblivion of everything but the interests of the country; and the king was sent for, and he and the Assembly dissolved in the interchange of their expressions of sympathy and joy, their sentiments of affection and respect, and their mutual felicitations on the future happiness of France.

This is really one of the facts of the history; and design, contrivance, hypocrisy, all suppositions of this kind, are quite out of the question.

Brissot was obliged to alter his intended speech on account of what had passed, and a man of genius (if Louis had been of this temperament), it is quite to be believed, might have now put himself at the head of the general emotion, and, by persuading the allied sovereigns to withdraw their armies, or even marching himself against them, might yet, it was possible (for anything was possible in such a country), might yet have saved his crown and dignity, and given freedom and happiness to his people.

But the genius, the electric flashes, the high and sudden resolve, the daring, the impetuous, the elevated, the sublime, whatever was fitted to affect a nation of mere feeling and impulse like the French nation, everything of this kind was always found, if found at all, on the popular side, and never seemed for a moment to have reached the court, or visited the cold region

of its counsels. But how soon was this happy amnesty, this generous effusion of kindness and forgiveness, this pleasing dawn of brightening and of better days, how soon was it to disappear! It scarcely lasted to the next sitting.

"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the colly'd night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up."

Only two days after this oath of union and peace had been taken with so much unanimity and enthusiasm, the Girondist party returned to the charge, and Brissot delivered the speech which he had adjourned, and which had little appearance of having been moderated by the author and cleared of its violent passages. It lasted three hours, and nothing can be more violent than several of the sentences extracted from it and given in the Mercure. He numbered up the enemies of France, described the neutrality of other powers; then pictured the situation of kings; that it was between them and the Revolution a war of life and death; that the courts knew well that the Jacobins were no constituted power, and had neither money nor means, nor even emissaries: but that they had assemblies, which were volcanoes that never ceased to shower down lava on the heads of tyrants; that poniards they had none, but they had the gospel of their constitution, and that it was with that they fought, and could make more proselytes than ever tyrants could.

"But our country," he continued, "must be declared in danger; extraordinary measures must be resorted to; the nation must rise, as one man, if the executive power refuse to unite with you. Here I pause. The good of the people will inspire you. I have well reflected on these measures. Silence would in me be a crime. I will picture the executive power-the evil that it hath done. Men change not their natures in a day: I should consider myself as a traitor if I believed so unheard-of a conversion. Strike the court and the Tuileries, and you will strike all the traitors at once. The abscess is in the head."

Brissot then proceeded (according to the account in the Mercure) to propose various decrees of a revolutionary nature.

The same speech is given in a more regular form by Bertrand de Moleville, but it is not less hostile to the king; on the contrary, it is more distinct and more immediately directed to procure his overthrow. "Our country is in danger; our strength