"that the constituted authorities of the department of the com. mune of Paris accompany to the bar the bishop of Paris, Gobel, the vicars and many of the curés of Paris, and that they demand an audience." Gobel then comes forward and makes his declaration: "But now," says he, "that the end of the Revolution approaches, now that there is no need of any national worship but that of liberty and equality, I renounce my functions of minister of the Catholic religion, my vicars do the same; and ve place on your bureau our letters of ordination: may the example consolidate the empire of liberty and equality. Vive la république !'" These cries were loudly encored by the members and the spectators. Then came different curés. The president assures them that they are worthy of the republic, as they came to abjure error, and deposit on the altar of their country the ensigns of superstition, and as they are no longer desirous of preaching anything but the practice of the social and moral virtues, a worship most worthy of the Supreme Being, and that they are worthy of Him. The president and the ministers go on interchanging speeches of this kind. "I have for twenty years," says one of them, "exercised the functions of Protestant minister; I declare that I will profess them no longer; that I will hereafter have no other temple but the sanctuary of the laws; no other divinity but liberty; no other worship but that of my country; no other gospel but that of the republican constitution." The speech continued in this strain, and was followed by loud applauses; and in subsequent Moniteurs come addresses from different bishops and ministers, in different parts of the kingdom, to the same effect, accompanied by the same applauses. In the Moniteur of the 13th of November appears a Hymn to Liberty, to be sung when the metropolitan church was to be converted into the Temple of Reason:

"Descend, Liberty, daughter of Nature,

The people has reconquered its power immortal," &c. &c. And in the middle of the said Moniteur it is voted, that the metropolitan church of Notre Dame shall be hereafter called "the Temple of Reason." The motion is carried. The Goddess of Reason is brought into the Convention, seated by the side of the president, &c. &c., amidst the loudest applauses; a speech is made by Chaumette: " Fanaticism," he says, "has let go its hold; the people (he says) have cried, 'No more priests, no more gods, but those whom Nature offers,""&c.; and the scene ends by the Convention marching in a body mixed with the people, in the midst of the transports and acclamations of an

universal joy, to chaunt the Hymn of Liberty in the church of Notre Dame, now the Temple of Reason. But this is not all. In the Moniteur of the 19th of November appears the sitting of the 27th Brumaire, in which may be found a speech from Anacharsis Clootz, who declares, that he preached aloud, that there was no other God but nature; no other sovereign but the human race; that the people is the Deity-le peuple, Dieu. The speech is almost a column and a half long, and the Convention orders it to be printed, and sent to the departments.

Facts of the above kind, but with long enumeration of attendant ceremonies and circumstances, appear on the face even of the Moniteurs; so that what we have heard of the public abolition of Christianity and of all religion was quite true; and in the historians you will see the particulars regularly given. I stop to mention, as I leave the subject, that this order of things was effected by Hébert and others, the lowest and wildest of the Jacobin party. It continued in force for several months; but you will have afterwards to observe a very remarkable turn that was made on this subject by Robespierre, when this party was destroyed by him, and its leaders executed. But of this subject I shall speak in a subsequent lecture.

I will now advert, in the last place, to the imprisonments and executions of this Reign of Terror, from October, 1793, to the end of July, 1794, the period of the fall of Robespierre. The number of the prisoners gradually increased. In the Moniteurs I observed the following notices. The number of the prisoners in Paris was:

Think of such a number as four, five, six, and seven thousand people confined in different places of security in Paris, through the first half of the year 1794; while such numbers were every day taken to the guillotine, more, I believe, than the Moniteurs mention. In the spring of 1794 the executions had become very dreadful.

Again. The articles of accusation were always of the most vague nature. In the Moniteur of the 1st of November, 1793,

VOL. II.

X

for instance, appears only the following notice: "Paris, 10 de Brumaire. Yesterday, at eleven o'clock in the evening, the trial of Brissot and his accomplices (the Gironde party) was terminated. The jury, having declared itself sufficiently informed, has unanimously answered to the questions proposed by this president, that there has existed a conspiracy against the unity and indivisibility of the republic, against the liberty and safety of the French people." Brissot and Vergniaud, Gensonné and other Girondists, in all to the number of twenty-one, are then named, and ordered to execution; nothing more. On other occasions the words are as follows: "convicted of a plot against the people, tending to the destruction of the republic, in holding criminal intelligence with the enemy, furnishing them with succours of money," &c. &c.; or "convicted of plots tending to dissolve the national representation, and re-establish royalty;" or, "convicted of conspiracy against the people, tending to favour the success of the party of the late king, Louis XVI.; to cause the re-establishment of royalty by counter-revolutionary cries; holding correspondencies with emigrants." 13 Prairial, nine were condemned to death, "convicted of having conspired against the people, either in concealing money in the ground, to have it ready for the enemy, or to keep it from the researches of the nation, or of maintaining an intelligence with the enemy to succour them: or in holding discourses tending to vilify and dissolve the national representation." Again," accused of having endeavoured to destroy the republic, dissolve the representation, restore royalty, of having held counter-revolutionary principles."

In these terms are drawn up the accusations that I observed in the different Moniteurs of the different people executed. On the 5th of Floreal (April) 1794, forty-five were condemned, four acquitted; on the 9th, thirty-three condemned, and five acquitted; on the 11th, twenty condemned; on the 16th, thirteen; on the 17th, twenty-four; on the 18th, ten; on the 19th, eighteen, the celebrated chymist, Lavoisier, included. On the 20th Prairial, Robespierre makes his speech on the subject of religion, acknowledges the existence of the Deity, the immortality of the soul, presides at a fête to the Supreme Being, this on the 20th; but on the 15th are executed thirty-two; on the 16th, sixteen; on the 17th, six; on the 18th, twenty-one; on the 19th, twentyone; on the 20th, the day of the fête, there seems to have been a pause, and on the 21st, are executed twenty-three; on the 23rd, twenty-two; on the 24th, seventeen; on the 25th, twenty

two; on the 27th, eighteen; and on the 28th, forty-two; on the 29th, sixty-one; on the 1st Messidor, eighteen, and so on; on the 25th, thirty-eight, and on the 27th, thirty of every condition and of every age. Thus on this 25th of Messidor, with respect to the ages, I observed them to be thus: fifty-seven, eighteen; forty-nine, twenty-six; twenty-three, fifty-one; fortyseven, sixty-five; fifty-three, twenty-two; twenty-two, fortyfive; forty-four, seventy-five. On the 21st, when twenty-five were condemned, among them appears "Anne-Elizabeth Capet, aged thirty, born at Versailles, sister to the last tyrant." In the meantime, along with these executions, always appears in the next column a list of ten or twelve places of public amusement. On the 5th Thermidor, a few days before the fall of Robespierre, there is seen in the Moniteur, of the 18th, a long list of fifty-nine people put to death; on the 6th, another of thirty-six, and one more condemned; on the 7th, thirty-eight; on the 8th, fifty-three, forty-five on the 9th; and then at length and at last the list for the 10th of Thermidor begins with the horrible name of Robespierre, aged only thirty-five; and this is followed by the names of Couthon, Henriot-Dumas, ex-president of the revolutionary tribunal, and St. Just, the demon of the Revolution, only second to Robespierre, and only twenty-six.

Such are some of the particulars I observed in the Moniteurs from January 1793, to the fall of Robespierre. Now the question is, when such particulars can be presented to you, merely as a sort of slight extract from the whole, what are you to think of scenes that were really taking place in Paris and in France at the time-what of the people-what of the Jacobins-what of the state to which the new opinions had in their progress at last advanced? Orators may exaggerate, party writers may misrepresent, but I have been quoting and referring to the common daily paper, to the official gazette of the country; and I must again repeat to you, that from want of time, I so mutilate and abridge in every way these most extraordinary documents, that I do no proper justice to them; and whatever impression they may have made on your minds, no adequate impression can have been possibly produced upon you, as yet, or ever will, unless you cast your eye over these columns, as I have done, and suffer your imagination and reflection to follow up into their legitimate consequences the simple, undeniable facts, that appear before you. I say nothing, if they are such to read, what they must have been to witness.

x 2

LECTURE XLI.

REIGN OF TERROR.

SOME further notice of this singular period, and of the effects produced by the system of terror, may be collected from different publications that appeared about the time. I shall proceed in this lecture to allude to some of them. The historians, however, have availed themselves of such memoirs, pamphlets, and other political writings, as were fitted to illustrate their subject; and you will be presented with many incidents of this nature while you are reading the accounts they give.

I will allude in the first place to a few of the particulars that have been given relative to the behaviour of these victims of the Reign of Terror during their confinement in different prisons, while expecting every day a summons for their trial, or rather their sentence of death.

These particulars are very descriptive of the French character, and very alien from our own; our own, sober, pensive and dull; even in our hours of social intercourse and festivity, little disposed to be entertained, and still less to entertain; and though bearing afflictions and calamities with proper fortitude, from a sense of duty and religion, never inclined in the least to underestimate them; always fully asserting our right, whenever we have it, to be out of spirits and disagreeable, and certainly little comprehending that happy facility with which the Frenchman can conform to his situation; that eternal gaiety, which seems never to desert him, be the scene what it may-a disastrous campaign, a field of battle, the privations of poverty, the horrors of a prison, even the impending stroke of the guillotine.

Among the papers of Mallet du Pan was found a note which he had taken of a conversation that had passed between himself and M. Portalis. It has been communicated to me by his son, and I will read it to you, as not only in itself curious, but as it will contribute to give a greater authority to similar accounts, which you will read in the historians.

M. Portalis and his son had been confined for fourteen months in the Maison de Santé (House of Recovery) of Bel Homme, in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine at Paris, which had been converted into a prison: certain facilities were given in these houses which could not be had in the common prisons, and it was a sort of favour to be admitted there. Among the persons con