and wishes of the country. In the early part of 1858, Great Britain claimed the right of search on the high seas, and her cruisers had actually exercised it, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the case of several American vessels. It is true that Great Britain claimed this right of search only where the vessels were suspected to be slavers. Whilst Congress and the newspaper press were discussing her pretensions, our Government had already sent to the Gulf a formidable force, with orders to the commanders of the various vessels to resist to the end any such pretension, and at every hazard to prevent the exercise of any such police of the sea, as that claimed by Great Britain. The high ground assumed by Mr. Buchanan's administration on this question, and the promptness of Gov. Toucey in despatching a sufficient force, not only to assert, but enforce our rights, was as effectual as the diplomacy which, fortunately for the peace of the two countries and the world, finally disposed of this delicate and vexed question.

At no period of our history has the navy been more efficient than the present. There are more vessels in commission on foreign stations than we have ever had before, and the several squadrons are in a condition of which the country may justly be proud. Heretofore the vessels composing the squadron on the coast of Africa, which is kept up in compliance with treaty stipulations with Great Britain, have been of a description not well adapted for the object in view. A new squadron has just been organized, consisting of four sailing vessels and four steamers, two of which are of light draught, with the ability to ascend the rivers on the coast. This class of vessels will be most serviceable in putting a check, if not an entire stop to the slave trade. There are four small steamers also about to sail for the waters of Cuba, so that if the slavers should elude the vigilance of our cruisers on the African coast, they will be caught by those off the shores of Cuba. This policy is important in more than one way. Our Government is under a treaty stipulation to put a stop to the slave trade in American vessels, and if we succeed, the question presents itself, whether Spain will continue to find Cuba a source of revenue, if the island is deprived of its annual supply of labor from the coast of Africa? In the contingency that Spain does not find it a source of revenue, and it is demonstrable that she cannot, will not the United States be able to acquire the sovereignty of the island at a much more moderate rate than that recently proposed by distinguished southern statesmen? This is a matter for consideration, and may not the system inaugurated by Gov. Toucey lead to a result so much desired by the country generally, and especially the southern portion?

In connexion with his policy in regard to the African squadron, Gov. Toucey has directed the depôt of provisions and coal to be removed from Porto Praya to St. Paul de Loando, a Portuguese settlement on the main land in 8° south latitude. This point is known to be a healthy position, of easy access, and in the immediate vicinity of the cruising ground of the squadron. The vessels heretofore have been compelled to spend too much time at Madeira and other places, remote from the theatre of operation. These points will only be visited by the vessels for occasional refreshment and recruit of the health of their crews. A glance at the map will at once show the change of depôt to be a most judicious measure.

Governor Toucey, in his present position, has fully justified the anticipations of his most ardent and cherished friends; and judging of the future from the past, it is not hazarding too much to say, that when he retires from the department, he will leave our naval marine in a condition of efficiency it has never before attained under any administration.

VICE AND VIRTUE IN THE HOUR OF DEATHMADAME DU BARRY AND MADAME ROLAND.

HISTORY is the instructive record of human folly kept for the warning and improvement of mankind,-were it not for its undeniable authenticity we should often doubt that human nature could enact such cruelties as are there proved to have taken place, and a constant review of its pages can alone account for many of the peculiarities of nations. Though so many years have elapsed since the great French Revolution, yet the memory of its horrors, still fresh in the minds of the nation, acts powerfully in inducing the people to submit to any government which will guarantee them against a repetition of such scenes. Amidst the catalogue of judicial murders which disgraced that period, we find the names of two women, cut off about the same time, who, under different forms of government, and holding directly opposite ideas, had been both powerful for evil, yet she who was reared in vice and personified immorality pitied the illustrious couple who exchanged a throne for a scaffold, whilst she whose private character was purity itself, trained and encouraged in the intimacy of the

family circle, those who brought about the worst cruelties, and who, as a retribution, were at the head of the government when she herself became a victim, yet extended no friendly hand to save her. The manner in which each met her fate was as different as had been their careers. Madame du Barry had commenced as a child the commerce of her charms, and such was her beauty that she was thought worthy to be raised to the rank of a royal mistress, a position which the etiquette of vice had before her time confined to those of noble birth. When Louis XV., her royal lover, ended his long career of sin, Madame du Barry was still young, and in her splendid retreat of Luciennes, near Paris, possessed of immense wealth, lived like a retired sovereign. The Duke de Brissac, one of those splendid roués whose polished manners went far to pardon their immoralities, continued to pay that homage to her beauty, which others had only yielded to her rank. When the Revolution had become so extended that France was no longer habitable for those who had anything to lose, and the unfortunate Brissac had paid at Versailles the penalty of loyalty, Madame du Barry retreated to London, wore mourning for her murdered king, and employed part of her fortune in solacing the miseries of the noble exiles whose estates had been confiscated. The chief part of her fortune, however, had been buried by her and the Duke on a remote portion of her estate, and unwilling to confide the secret to others, she returned to France for the purpose of bringing it herself to London. "She had," says Lamartine, to whose splendid history of the Girondins the world is indebted for the most interesting account of the Revolution, and whom we translate, claiming no merit but fidelity, "confided in her absence the care and control of Luciennes to a young negro named Zamore, whom she had brought up from a child by a feminine caprice, as one raises a domestic animal. She caused herself to be painted by the side of this negro in order to resemble in her portrait, by contrast of features and color, the Venetian courtesans of Titian-for this negro she had evinced the tenderness of a mother. Zamore was cruel and ungrateful, he was intoxicated with revolutionary liberty, he had caught the fever of the people. Ingratitude appeared to him the virtue of the oppressed. He betrayed his benefactress, he disclosed her treasures, he gave her up to the revolutionary tribunal of Luciennes, of which he was a member. Madame du Barry, elevated and enriched by favoritism, perished by her own favorite. Tried and condemned without discussion, shown to the people as one of the impurities of the throne, of which the air of the Republic had to be purged, she was dragged to death amidst the cries of the populace and the contempt

of the indifferent. Still in the full bloom of her beauty, that beauty when given to the scaffold formed her crime in the eyes of the mob. She was clothed in white, her black hair shorn behind her head by the scissors of the executioner exposed her beautiful neck, whilst the curls in front, which he had spared, covered her eyes and cheeks, she shook her head to cast them back hoping that a face which had charmed a king would excite the pity of the mob; she continued invoking that pity in terms the most abject. Torrents of tears fell from her eyes upon her breast, and her heartrending cries drowned the noise of the wheels and the murmurs of the people. It might be said that the knife, striking this wretched woman by anticipation, killed her a thousand times. "Life! Life!” she cried, "I will purchase life by entire repentance, I will devote it all to the republic, I will give all my riches to the nation." The people laughed, shrugged their shoulders, and pointed to the pillow of the guillotine, on which this charming head was soon to fall asleep. The whole progress of the courtesan to the scaffold was one long, piercing cry, continuing even under the fatal blade. "She alone," says the historian, "of all the female victims of the revolution, died like a coward, for she died not for an opinion, a virtue, or a love. She perished for a vice, and dishonored the scaffold as she had dishonored the throne."

The rigid moralist, who with poetic justice will declare that this woman perished overtaken by a just fate, will with difficulty reconcile to the same rule the sad termination of the career of the beautiful, learned, and high-minded Madame Roland. The name of Madame Roland could not long escape the resentment of the people. This name was a party of itself. Soul of the Gironde, this woman might become its avenging deity, if left to survive the illustrious friends who had preceded her to the tomb. Some still lived-it was necessary to discourage them by humiliating their idol. Others were deadit was necessary to humiliate their memory by associating with it the popular execration which a woman odious to the people and a source of suspicion to liberty inspired. Such were the motives which caused alike the communes and the Jacobins to demand the trial of Madame Roland.

The Committee of Public Safety-a medium sometimes effectual, but always complaisant for carrying out the will of the people-inscribed the name of Madame Roland upon the list which was handed each evening to Fouquier Tinville. When Robespierre signed this list, remorse was plainly written on his countenance. During the early part of his sojourn at Paris, the Deputy of Arras, then an obscure individual, had frequented this lady's house. At the time when the Consti

tuent Assembly humiliated the pride, and disdained listening to the voice of Robespierre, Madame Roland had already divined his genius, honored his perseverance, and encouraged his unappreciated eloquence. This souvenir weighed upon the hand of the member of the Committee of Public Safety at the moment when he signed an order for trial, which was equivalent to an order for execution. Madame Roland and Robespierre had together commenced the Revolution. That Revolution had conducted the one to the height of power, the other to the depths of adversity. Perhaps Robespierre owed to the encouragement of this woman that empire over public opinion which gave him the right to save or destroy her. Any man of generosity would have allowed himself to be moved by this connexion of circumstances, by these memories of the past. Robespierre was simply a stoic. He mistook inflexibility for strength, obstinacy for force of will. He would have torn out his own heart, had it been capable of advising him to an act of weakness. In him system had destroyed nature. In crushing humanity within himself, he considered himself more than a man. The more he suffered from this violence, so much the more just did he consider himself. He had arrived at that extremity of sophistry, and that exaggeration of false virtue which causes a man to despise all his good impulses. Madame Roland had been confined in the prison of the Abbey since the 13th May. There are minds whose trials posterity contemplates with more curiosity and interest than the fate of empires, since they concentrate in their situation, in their sensibility, in their grandeur, and in their fall, all the vicissitudes, all the catastrophes, all the glories, and all the misfortunes of their time. Such a mind was that of Madame Roland. In its expansion, in its illusions, in its martyrdom, in its temporal discouragements, and also in its immortal hopes, it personified in the depths of a prison the entire Revolution. Isolated from the rest of the world, torn from a father, a husband, and a daughter, she drowned in a sea of restrained tears the embers of a burning imagination, which clung like the flame to the perishing ruin. As far as the walls of a prison permitted their so doing, the jailors alleviated her captivity. There are persons who can only be persecuted at a distance, and whose beauty softens everything at its approach. They gave her, without permitting it to be known by the commissioners, a room cheered by the sunlight. Flowers also were brought to her. In the days of her prosperity she delighted to surround herself with them, as the most divine and cheapest of luxuries. They decked with thick and climbing plants the bars of her window, hoping, by hiding the iron gratings, to leave to her