vigorous for her age, the blow was as unexpected as it was overwhelming. His one resource was to be found in his old pursuits and he writes to a geological friend a few months after the sad event: 'I endeavour by daily work at my favourite science to forget as far as possible the dreadful change that has been made in my existence.' But, as he adds, at my age of nearly seventy-six the separation cannot be very long.'* He was still able to make a short geological tour in his native Forfarshire in the summer of 1874; and he found pleasure in visiting some of his earliest haunts, and verifying his geological observations of fifty years before. On the 5th of November in the same year he was present at a dinner in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Geological Club, of which he had been a member from its foundation, and made a short speech with a vigour that surprised all his friends who were present. But his strength was already almost exhausted, and he now sank rapidly. In February 1875 he sustained a fresh bereavement by the sudden death of his brother, Colonel Lyell, who had been almost daily with him up to the time of his own fatal illness. Charles Lyell followed his younger brother within a fortnight, on the 22nd of February. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in accordance with a requisition numerously signed by eminent men of science; but few, very few, of those who followed him to his grave belonged to the distinguished circle that had witnessed his early progress, or been his associates or opponents in the Geological Society. The first generation of geologists-the men who had made the Society what it afterwards became: Buckland, Conybeare, Greenough, Sedgwick, Murchison, De la Bêche, Phillips-all had passed away, and Lyell, the most distinguished of them all, was the last survivor. His name would ever have held a prominent position in the annals of science; but it was not till the publication of the present work that the public at large had any means of estimating the variety of his attainments both in science and literature, or of tracing in detail the progress and development of those views by which he earned an unrivalled position as a geologist. Mrs. Lyell has furnished an important contribution to the history of science, at the same time that she has presented to the world an admirable picture of a singularly amiable as well as highly gifted man. * A beautiful tribute to her memory, written by Mr. Hillard of Boston, for publication in an American newspaper, has been inserted by Mrs. Lyell in the Appendix to her work, and is thus made for the first time accessible to the British public. ART. IV.-1. Les Origines de la France contemporaine. Par 3. Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris. Par H. Wallon. 5 vols. Paris, 1880. 4. Tableaux de la Révolution Française, publiés sur les papiers inédits du département de la Police secrète de Paris. Par Adolphe Schmidt. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1867–69. 5. Histoire de la Terreur, 1792-1794, d'après des documents authentiques et inédits. Par M. Mortimer-Terneaux. 7 vols. Paris, 1862-1869. Vol. VIII. Paris, 1881. 6. Correspondance diplomatique du Baron de Staël-Holstein et du Baron Brinckman; documents inédits sur la Révolution ; 1783-1799. Recueillis aux archives royales de Suède. Par L. Louzon-le-Duc. Paris, 1881. THE HE history of the French Revolution has been told a hundred times, and will be told a hundred times more. It is the one great human 'Story without an end.' Judging from the number and importance of the works still issuing from the press, the materials are far from being exhausted-the interest in them never can be. Not even the lesser repetitions of the same drama, enacted in our time, have obscured the proportions of the tremendous phenomenon of 1789, which only looms in more solitary grandeur the further we recede from it. There is indeed nothing which it more concerns modern society to lay bare to sight, than the foundations on which such an appalling structure was raised. With all law, order, humanity, and even common sanity, abrogated-with demons reigning in the shape of men, who pronounced Evil to be their Good-the moral Government of the Almighty Himself would almost seem to have been suspended. But there was no real suspension here. His long outraged laws were rather vindicated than suspended-The curse causeless cannot come.' There are two modes of bringing a country to misery-by weakening every member of it, and by dividing all its parts. The first is done by a Despotism, the second by that which naturally accompanies that form of government-a numerous and dependent noblesse. Madame de Staël defined despotis as le plus grand fléau de l'espèce humaine.' That of the later French monarchs was one of the most cruel, unnatural, and complete that Christian Europe has known. The French Revolu tion accordingly has characteristics of its own, which in great measure account for the course it ran. All insurrections have the same prompting cause in tyranny continued beyond endurance-but they vary in other respects. To ensure the sympathy of the world, the yoke which a people are anxious to throw off must be that of an alien-and, for the hope of success, the nation which rises must be united as one man. In the Poland of our day, for instance, the first condition existed, and still exists. The Despot was of foreign race; but the second condition did not exist; the nation was not united. The class that rose was that of the so-called and in some measure self-styled noblesse-a caste only; themselves the real oppressors of the Polish people; whom, with all their vaunted patriotism, they were far from including in the national claims for liberty, and who now find even the Russian rule more humane than that of their former masters. In Italy, on the other hand, the country had been oppressed by foreign rulers, but the aims and interests of all classes were the same: there never had been a chasm between them; and their union was the chief weapon by which they effected their emancipation. In France, the elements of discord were simply parricidal, fratricidal, and suicidal. The absolute monarchs who ruled, the noblesse who oppressed, and the people who suffered, were all of one blood; and in France only did that bitter hatred explode, which is engendered by tyranny and injustice between members of the same family. Thus the despotism which prevailed in France outraged the very laws of nature in its system: it made it the interest of the higher-born brother to oppress, and the instinct of the lower-born to detest. It exasperated the one beyond all power of control, and it left the other without any means of defence. For it is the fatal effect of absolute power to give its subjects-high and low-a false education; equally productive in both cases of evil to the community; by the tyranny and misery it first engenders, and by the helplessness and lawlessness it finally leaves behind. No cause is seen so universally and persistently in action, from the first outburst of the Revolution, as the want of those larger and sounder principles, which are especially needed in the higher classes of a great country. There was no political knowledge -no power of organization-no habits of administrationexcept, as regards the last, in a mechanical routine, which in the time of danger only increased the evil. We see throughout an ignorance equally stupid in obstructing the right and helpless in resisting the wrong. Even Good seemed only only doomed to minister to Evil. For it is almost as trying to read of the saintly virtues in wrong time and place, as of the hideous vices under false names and pretences. The pain with which we trace the course of the French Revolution has one of its chief sources in the conviction, that its headlong career could have been often and easily arrested by the commonest exertion of manly judgment and co-operation. To the absence of these sources of strength the unimpeded course of the devastating torrent can alone be assigned; and in the long reign of an unparalleled despotism the causes of such absence can alone be found. We dwell the more on this fact, because upon it the whole Revolution turned. The direction of affairs was ever slipping from the hands of the well-disposed and ignorant, into those of the evil-disposed and equally or more ignorant; till at last it remained with that ruthless party, which could alone organize a 'Reign of Terror.' To understand such ignorance, we have only to look into some of the most cherished institutions of the monarchy, and into some of the most highly prized privileges of the noblesse. Of the crimes of the revolutionary epoch there can be but one opinion; no time can alter the horror they inspire. We now know what the demon and the wild beast latent in human nature can bring us to-'what man has done to man.' With such atrocities we would fain believe we have nothing to do from such monsters nothing to apprehend-though the state of a neighbouring island is somewhat calculated to rouse us from such security. But it is different when we consider the daily habits of a class belonging to one of the most gifted nations in the world-beings whom we can understand; the polite and intellectual of the earth-yet who found the chief glory of their lives in things which simply inspire us with contempt and disgust. We must briefly illustrate our meaning. Under the modest title of 'La Maison du Roi' an institution had arisen, which grew and grew until it overshadowed the whole land. The master of the establishment was an absolute king, and his retinue a needy noblesse. The King remained one and indivisible, but his retinue perpetually increased. Every office in the 'Maison du Roi'-even such as we should consider of a menial kind—was given or sold to some noble with the requisite quarterings; and, when every customary office was filled, old ones had to be multiplied or new ones invented. Louis XI. had had but one barber. Louis XVI., who is known to have been shaved only on alternate days, required no less than five barbers; or rather five barbers required required him. Still the maison, with its legion of functionaries, failed to supply places for all the candidates, and, in order to meet the increasing demands, the King had at length to give himself. His hunger supplied so many charges-his thirst so many more-his dressing and undressing were divided into as many offices as there were articles of attire. Every hour of his day, every part of his person, and every movement of his limbs, belonged to somebody. If he went into the gardens or court of the palace, one set of officers took possession of him. If he mounted his horse, he became the property of another; and when he hunted, he passed into the custody of a third. Unfortunately this multiplied vassallage, however capriciously instituted, could not be as capriciously dismissed. The King's person was a corporation of closely-vested interests. The noble who enjoyed the privilege of wiping the royal toothpick, or of presenting the bouillon when his Majesty had taken medicine, had purchased the office from some highlyplaced monopolist for hard money: his rank, his position in society, the more or less advantageous marriages of his daughters, depended on its retention, and he could no more be deprived of it than the equally nobly-born Colonel could of his regiment. Especially did the highest born in the land compete for the honour of witnessing the King's proceedings at those times when a man is not generally supposed to be a hero, even to his valet de chambre. The lever and coucher of the monarch were the crowning embodiment of that étiquette, which had become as irrevocable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. More particularly was the lever the great event for which the sun was supposed to rise. It set in action a body as numerous and as magnificent, as the opening of our Parliament or a Lord Mayor's Show. It seems incredible now that any man should have consented to lie in bed while several hundreds of persons of the first rank in the kingdom, splendidly apparelled, flocked into his bedroom in a succession of entrées. We fail to understand how a manly mind could enjoy the dignity of having his right slipper, when he did get up, put on by one page and his left by another his right leg stockinged and gartered by one gentleman and his left by another-one sleeve of his camisole drawn off by the Master of the Wardrobe and the other by the first valet de chambre-his dayshirt, wrapt in a piece of white taffetas, presented by a prince of the blood-his bed, whether he was in or out of it, bowed to by gentlemen, and even by marshals and ambassadors, and courtesied to by ladies, and even by royal princesses; and further, that all this ignoble nonsense should have been settled by royal edicts solemnly passed in council |