Madame Du Deffand, “of all the people whom I Paris. Madame Du Deffand, in a letter to Hoknow, even those with whom I daily live, who are race Walpole, thus mentions the event: "Lally called my friends, there is not one man or woman was executed yesterday. The people who has the least good will for me, nor have I for clapped their hands during the execution." Mr. them. There is even among those whom I see Walpole replies: "Ah! madame, madame! what oftenest, a jealousy-an envy; the effects and pro- horrors do you relate to me! Let no one say gress of which I am constantly occupied in arrest- the English are hard and ferocious; truly, they are ing. Vanity and pretensions render most people the French who are so. Yes, you are the savaunsociable. Am I wrong to discover it is a mise- ges-the Iroquois! Many persons have been slaughrable thing to be born ?"(16) "Bless heaven," she tered among us; but has any one ever seen hands says again, “and applaud yourself that you are clapped, when a poor unfortunate was put to deathsufficient for yourself.”(17) a general officer, who had languished during two This lady was well qualified to give, as she has years in prison-a man indeed so sensible to here done, a faithful picture of the state of feeling honor, that he was unwilling to save himself— incident to such manners, where sensibility is so touched by disgrace, that he sought to swallow worn out in the pursuit of pleasure, capacity for en- the grating of his prison rather than be exposed to joyment destroyed, and dissatisfaction, disgust and public ignominy? It was precisely this honorable ennui, springing up in their room. Such, doubt-shame that occasioned him to be drawn on a tumless, was the condition of many among the Ro-bril, and to have a gag placed in his mouth, as one mans; whose manners remind one, in many respects, of the most wicked. My God! I am happy to of modern Paris. We find in both the same eager have quitted Paris before this horrible scene! I pursuit of selfish pleasures, the same straining of the should have had myself torn in pieces, or been senses to excess, to obtain enjoyment for exhausted sent to the Bastile. Our population at least comappetites; and in both, the same heartless phi- passionates the 'miserable, who are given them as losophy, alike fatal to generous sentiment in this a spectacle.' "(19) life, or to the hope of a better.

At the execution of the Rochelle conspirators 1819, a spectator of the scene says: "The peo(19) In the year 1805, being then in Paris, I was told one morning by the porter of the hotel where I lodged, as a matter well worth seeing, that there was to be an execution that day by the guillotine. Having a curiosity to see the instrument, which I had never then seen, I repaired to the The Roman enjoyed the combat of gladiators spot where it was erected. Whilst there, a hollow square forced to shed their blood for his amusement, and of troops was formed around the place, and no one was althe Parisian greeted the instrument of public exe-lowed to pass in or out. There was no alternative but to cution with noisy acclamations. (18) remain until the execution was over; and to get out of the

When we see people of similar manners display-in ing, not indifference but pleasure, at the sight of human blood and slaughter, it seems a fair inference that the same state of moral feeling exists in

both cases.

The violent death of a human being is a moving crowd, I sought a balcony, that overlooked the guillotine, where seats were hired for the time for a small compensaincident to the spectators of every country; but tion. A company of men were already assembled there, where they have any humanity, they always show who were cheerfully conversing. In a short time, a large sympathy for the sufferer. When a criminal is to fat woman, her face flushed with emotion, came hastily be publicly executed in the United States, people into the balcony, and asked eagerly-'Gentlemen, has it of both sexes frequently go considerable distances begun yet?' 'No, madame,' was the reply. 'Oh, how happy. I to witness it; but at the moment when the tragedy her snuff-box, and invited those around her to partake. An am!' said she. She then called for a bottle of beer, opened occurs, they manifest tokens of sorrow and sympa-animated conversation ensued among them, when suddenly thy; and but for the necessity of obeying the law, the fatal tumbril arrived with the victims. One was placed and guarding society, whose rights the sufferer has on the platform of the guillotine. In an instant all were outraged, there would be every disposition to at- silent in the balcony, and looking intently on the scene of tempt a rescue. At Paris, on the contrary, sym- elapsed before another was brought forward. A lively conpathy has rarely been shown for any sufferer, ex-versation took place again, similar to what is usual at the cept from a small portion of the spectators; nor theatre between one act and another. But when a fresh has this hard-heartedness been confined to the pe- victim was prepared for execution, there was the same siriod of the revolution, when political feeling might, in many instances, have been supposed to influence manners on such occasions: it existed both before and since. In the year 1760, the unfortunate Lally, who had been an officer of high rank in the East Indies, was executed, it is said unjustly, at

execution. That victim suffered, and a short interval

lence, and the same eager attention as at first; and this was repeated, alternating with conversation, until all the criminals, five in number, were beheaded. During the scene, a genteel looking young man leant against the wall, as pale as horror could make him, often repeating the words 'The poor unfortunates!' (Les pauvres malhereux.) One of the talking party at length had his attention attracted by his expressions, and asked him where are you from?' I am from the country,' said the young man. 'Ah-ah!' said the other shrugging his shoulders, as if that at once accounted for his difference of manner. The persons who suffered were condemned for coining false money. M.

ple were crowding towards the place of execution. The party called the Mountain, composed of No symptoms of sympathy for the miserable struck Jacobins, and who furnished the dreadful triumvimy eye. The only persons allowed to rate-Robespierre, Danton and Marat-rested on remain near the guillotine, except the executioner the Parisian mob for support. It was through it and his assistants, were the people who crowded their power was sustained, and the crimes they or the footway by the front of it; on the edge of dered were committed. The horrors of that pewhich, and within two yards of the scaffold, sat a number of women, although made aware that they would be deluged with the blood of the condemned at the moment of execution."(20.)

This horrible appetite for blood, was fed to satiety during the shocking period of the reign of terror; for, after making every allowance for the various motives of a political nature which mingled in these dreadful tragedies, there is still an immense mass of crime that cannot be charged to any motives of ambition, policy, or revenge, and could not have been permitted among any people not dead to human sorrow.

It was during the reign of the Jacobins that these horrors were most abundant, and the Jacobins were sustained in power by the mob of Paris. The mob ruled in Paris, and Paris governed France. "You know," said Danton,-in a speech delivered in the Convention at a period of great public danger," that France lies in Paris: if you abandon the capital to our invaders, you give up yourselves, and you give up France to them.”(21)

The attempt afterwards made by the Girondists to array the departments against Paris, failed of success, and showed how vast the influence of the capital was in France. The party in the Convention called the Mountain, so awfully known in the history of that period, was composed of the Deputies of Paris, who had been elected under the influence of the Commune of the 10th of August, and some addition of decided revolutionists from the Provinces.(22)

The Mountain reigned absolute in Paris; the Commune was devoted to it, and that had contrived to make itself the first authority in the State.(23)

riod must be ascribed to the passions of that fearful populace, relieved from every restraint. It is by no means probable, that any other portion of the people of France would have sustained or tolerated such deeds, if they had had the power to prevent them. But the habit of obedience to the metropo lis, and the want of concert, prevented any effectual resistance. Among us, living under political institutions of a different character, and unaccustomed to implicit obedience to any one source of power, it is certain that if the young, the beautiful and the innocent, were daily led to execution in any of our cities, by any power that might obtain a momentary ascendency, the people would rise from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico to crush the miscreants; if such a mighty effort were necessary to effect it.

On a theatre of such vast power as France afforded at the epoch now referred to, all the strong passions incident to humanity were loosened from their moorings. The bad ones prowled like "bloodhounds from the slip;" and, although love of liberty, however mistaken, mingled with hatred of past oppression, might have influenced many, love of power and plunder, and, in a more eminent degree, a tiger's thirst for blood, characterized the most prominent actors. This last quality has forced itself upon the attention of the French writers themselves, however anxious they may be to hide the defects of their countrymen. M. Matter, in his treatise on the Influence of Manners upon Laws, (De L'influence Des Mœurs sur les Lois.) ob serves: "It has been said that the spectacle of bloody executions, still commanded by our laws, and the preparations which precede them, are a source of great evils; that in a moral point of view, the spectacle, far from inspiring horror, in itself enchains by a species of emotions, which it is so much more dangerous to produce in the people, that they seem to taste them with pleasure, and in no instance are inspired either with the fear of crime or that of punishment; but on the contrary in brutalizing the sentiments of some, and exciting those of others, in giving to all a sort of ferocity, which in the most gross and brutal nature scarcely developes itself, this spectacle becomes the cause of frightful perversity."(24)

The influence of Paris was, probably, owing to the force of habit. It had been for ages the seat of government, and the residence of powerful and despotic monarchs. All orders had emanated from thence, and every eye had been turned in that direction; for, it was not only the seat of power, but the residence of all distinguished in France. It presented the model for imitation in the manners of the gay, and the opinions of the learned. After the monarchy was destroyed, that city retained its influence, which was manifested through every change; and was found capable of sealing the fate The revolution is crowded with examples of the of Bonaparte himself, when taken possession of by pleasure which the spectacles of blood afforded the the Allies in 1814; which the loss of half the mob. kingdom could not have effected.

When the eloquent and beautiful Madame Roland was brought before the revolu tionary tribunal, she afforded them a scene of more than ordinary (24) Matter sur L'influence, &e, p. 107.

interest.

"That remarkable woman," says Sir persons at the various prisons who were confined Walter Scott, "happy if her high talents had, in under the pretext of political suspicion had been youth, fallen under the direction of those who murdered, the assassins attacked the Bicetre-a could better have cultivated them, made before the place of confinement for those charged with offenrevolutionary tribunal, a defence more manly than ces against the ordinary police, and having no the most eloquent of the Girondins. The by- connection whatever with politics. These poor standers, who had become amateurs in cruelty, wretches, unlike the others who were led patiently were as much delighted with her deportment, as to the slaughter, endeavored to defend their lives. the hunter with the pulling down a noble stag. Their resistance was obstinate, and cannon were 'What sense,' they said, 'what wit, what courage! employed to reduce them. "The thirst of blood," What a magnificent spectacle it will be to behold says M. Thiers, " urged on the multitude. The such a woman upon the scaffold!' She met her fury of fighting and murdering had superseded podeath with great firmness; and as she passed the litical fanaticism, and it killed for the sake of kilStatue of Liberty on her road to execution, she exclaimed-'Ah, Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name.' "(25)

ling."(34)

Jouve Jourdan, one of the monsters of this period, was entitled the "Beheader!" He was remarkable for wearing a long beard, which was often besprinkled with blood. (35)

The habit of going to the place of execution during this period, resembled that of visiting the theatre.(26) These are enough, perhaps more than enough, of Places were sold on carts and on tables around the horrible incidents of the reign of Jacobinism, the scaffold, at the execution of Roussin, Cloots and Hebert, whilst the populace followed the latter, repeating in derision the cries of the hawkers of his paper-"Il est b- -t encolere Le Pere Duchesue."(27)

The instrument of death was called the Holy Guillotine; and around the scaffold were placed rows of chairs, which the passengers hired, as at other places of public amusement, to witness its operations.(28)

Not less than thirty innocent victims were daily led to the place of execution.(29)

The female sex made itself shockingly conspicuous in these dreadful scenes. Women sat daily at their needle-work around the scaffold. (30) Some were designated as the furies of the guillotine, on account of their deportment at the place of execution.(31)

66

to show that a thirst for blood, independent of other considerations, prevailed among many of those who were then active agents at Paris. Political feeling could not in any way have influenced a large part-for in the case of the Bicetre, the occupants were there for causes unconnected with politics.

But there is another class of facts that require insertion here, which occurred at the same period, and which seem at first view to present a singular inconsistency in human character. I will use the language of the historians who have related them. Describing the September massacres, Sir Walter Scott observes: "Yet there were occasions when they showed some transient gleams of humanity, and it is not unimportant to remark that boldness had more influence on them than any appeal to mercy or compassion. Another trait of

"The first murders," says M. Thiers, com- a singular nature is exhibited by the fact, that two mitted in 1793, proceeded from a real irritation of the ruffians who were appointed to guard one of caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; these intended victims home in safety, as a man the republic was victorious; people now slaugh- acquitted, insisted upon seeing his meeting with tered, not from indignation, but from the atrocious habit which they had contracted."(32)

Of Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, it is said: His whole recreation was to behold his victims perish on the scaffold. He confessed that that object had great attractions for him. Nothing roused him from his general apparent apathy but the prospect of inflicting death, and then his countenance became radiant with expression. (33) In the massacres of September, after all the

(25) Life of Napoleon-vol. 2, p. 204. (26) Hazlett's Life of Napoleon.

his family; seemed to share in the transports of the moment; and on taking leave, shook the hand of their late prisoner, while their own were clotted with the gore of his friends, and had been just raised to shed his own. Few indeed and brief were these symptoms of relenting."(36)

M. Thiers says: "Amidst this carnage, however, they spared some victims, and manifested inconceivable joy in giving them their lives. A young man claimed by a section and declared pure from aristocracy, was acquitted with shouts of Vive la Nation! and borne in triumph in the bloody arms

(27) Thiers' History of the French Revolution-vol. 2, p. of the executioners. The venerable Sombrevil,

210.

governor of the Invalides, was brought forward in
his turn and sentenced to be transferred to La

(34) Thiers' French Revolution-vol. 1, p. 305.
(35) Biographic Moderne, per Editor of Thiers.
(36) Life of Napoleon-vol. 2, p. 43.

The author of "A Year in Spain," has given an impressive description of the difference between reality and fiction in his narrative of the Spanish bull-fights-an amusement similar in character to those of the ancient Roman amphitheatre:

"The bull-fight," he observes, "is the great national amusement of Spain-an amusement which, though it may be stigmatized as cruel and brutalizing, is nevertheless unequalled in deep and anxious interest. As for the drama, it owes every thing to

Force. His daughter perceived him from the pri- |cise, afford pleasure; or the theatre would be at son, rushed out among pikes and swords, clasped once deserted. her father in her arms, clung to him with such tenacity, besought his murderers with such a flood of tears and in such piteous accents, that even their fury was suspended. Then, as if to subject that sensibility which overpowered them to a fresh trial, 'Drink,' said they to this dutiful daughter, 'drink the blood of the aristocrats; and they handed to her a pot full of blood. She drank—and her father was saved! The daughter of Cazotte also instinctively clasped her father in her arms. She too implored for mercy, and proved as irresistible deception, and it is only when we are most cheated as the generous Sombrevil; but more fortunate that we are most amused. I have seen Talma than the latter, she saved her father's life without having any horrible condition imposed upon her affection. Tears trickled from the eyes of the murderers and yet, in a moment after, away they went in quest of fresh victims."(37)

stand alone upon the stage and describe the execntion of Mary Stewart, as it advances in the hall adjoining. He shows you each motion of the vietim. She ascends the scaffold under the pious reviling of the English dean; prepares her neck to meet the instrument of the executioner; takes an affectionate leave of her followers. Presently the hollow sounding stroke of the axe calls forth a piercing shriek and deprives him of sensibility; the audience is convulsed with horror. I have seen the same wonderful man and Mademoiselle Mars, All the passions excite in a manner peculiar to in Kotzebue's drama of the Stranger. The heartthemselves. The representation of love between broken husband and the unhappy wife have come the sexes does not produce the impression that pa- together to take a last farewell; forgiveness has rental love does, nor heroism that of patriotism, been asked and granted, and the hard, the fatal word. nor the latter that of devoted fidelity to a friend, is already uttered. They turn to depart, and are nor any of them the effect that arises from the met by their children. They pause, embrace these sight of death, and its attendant emotions. Yet dear pledges of a still lingering love, turn again to they all strongly act on the human bosom. We look, then fall upon the necks of each other. I are affected by whatever presents to us a copy of saw this and wept until I was ashamed of myself; the emotions implanted by nature in ourselves. but this dramatic interest, though more grateful to "If it is natural, they must feel it," (38) said one who our best sensibilities, more worthy of a feeling was skilled in producing the manifestations of feel-heart, is far less powerful than that which is exing arising from the drama; and he expressed what cited by the real dangers of the arena."(39) experience taught him was true.

Notwithstanding tears trickled from the eyes of the murderers, there could have been no real sympathy for the sufferers, or the horrible condition would not have been imposed upon the daughter of Sombrevil, nor would the assassins have gone immediately in quest of fresh victims.

The same observations apply to the case of At the theatre we behold a deep tragedy repre- Mary Stewart and Kotzebue's drama, that arise sented. Othello, for instance. We mark the weav- from the consideration of Othello. The scenes are ing of the net of villainy prepared for the ruin of made deeply tragic, that they may produce feelings that gallant soldier. We see the fate of Desde- in the audience of an attractive character, however mona approaching. We sympathize too with Cas- mournful in appearance. The audience neither sio, who "hath a daily beauty in his life" that desires the execution of Mary Stewart to be stopmakes Iago ugly. But as the catastrophe advan-ped, or the heartbroken husband and wife to be ces, should a spectator leap upon the stage and restored to happiness: if they were to go off the put an end to the scene by knocking Iago down, stage rejoicing, the performance would be ridieuwould the audience thank him? No certainly, for lous and disgusting. Why is this so? Because we there is a secret consciousness throughout, that it feel the scene to be fictitious! If it were real. is a fiction, however well performed. The feeling another chord of the human heart would be touched. of love which impels to relief, and could not bear and the aspect of things would be totally changed. it if it were real, is untouched. No uncorrupted But, in the absence of a conviction of reality, the audience would allow such a tragedy in real life to deepest tragedies of the drama excite less than a pass before them. Iago would be destroyed. But contest between a bull and a worthless Picador, in the drama, the delusion is just sufficient to excite inferior in dignity to the beast with which he fights, the various emotions the scene calls forth, and no Let us apply the principles we have endeavored And these emotions, in their various exer- to make apparent, to the tragedies of real life. Suppose the feeling of love towards human nature

more.

300. P.

(37) History of the French Revolution--vol 1,
(38) Tyrone Power: Impressions of America—vol. 1, p. 48.

(39) A Year in Spain-vol. 1, p. 201 and 2.

greatly weakened or extinguished, acting no more | founded. When the upper classes are vicious, the than it does in the drama, then the most direful lower orders of large cities acquire not only their afflictions in real life would produce the same vices, but many in addition peculiar to themselves; kind of impressions that the fictions of the stage and which "knot and gender" in the lanes and do. They would afford pleasure; and the more alleys and dark cellars of the haunts of vice. worthy the sufferer, the more the pleasure. We Paris has often been called modern Rome; and may then understand how the bystanders felt at to those who have examined the subject, even suthe trial of Madame Roland, when they exclaimed-perficially, the comparison must have appeared What sense, what wit, what courage! What a striking. Both contained a great multitude occumagnificent spectacle it will be to behold such a pied in the pursuit of pleasure, or ministering to woman upon the scaffold!" Her brilliant qualities the wants of those who did,-with no more of only enhancing in their estimation the piquancy of commerce or any other useful industry than their the scene. own immediate wants required. In both, bread and shows were the demand of the people; and, both, constituted the anxious care of the Government. Voltaire, in describing Paris, under the name of Babylon, says of a large class of the inhabitants, they "were governed like children, who were loaded with playthings to prevent them from crying. The pleasures of society, gaiety and frivolity, were their important and only business."(41)

The devoted filial affections of the noble daughters of Sombrevil and Cazotte, presented the murderers at the prison with an example of the pathetic, which agreeably diversified the scene, but no more. The two ruffians who escorted the released prisoner home, wished to see his meeting with his family for the same reason.

To this class of facts belong those related of Robespierre, that "he was fond of attracting the notice of the women, and had them imprisoned for the sole pleasure of restoring them their liberty. He made them shed tears, in order to wipe them from their cheeks."(40)

A wretch who could thus torture for pleasure, was dead to compassion. And it is not surprising his career was most bloody.

The sensual and selfish pleasures, as has been already remarked, in relation to Rome, present themselves as the first objects of attraction to such a people; and the sanctity of married life is at once invaded. The looseness of that tie among the Parisians, is known to all persons having any knowledge of France; and when the liberty of divorce, in the progress of the revolution, became unrestrained, the number of separations between married persons in that manner, made the fragility of matrimonial love more manifest. "The divorces in Paris in the first three months of 1792, were

Fortunately for humanity, there are noble examples of virtue everywhere, even in societies the most corrupt. Many such were exhibited in Paris at this period. When the domiciliary visits were in progress for the arrest of the prisoners of Sep-562, while the marriages were only 1,785,—a protember, M. Peltier, in describing the scene, says: "Men tremble, but they do not shed tears; the heart shivers, the eye is dull, and the breast contracted. Women on this occasion display prodigies of tenderness and intrepidity. It was by them that most of the men were concealed."

portion probably unexampled among mankind! The consequence soon became apparent. Before the era of the Consulate, one-half of the whole births in Paris were illegitimate."(42) Where the ties between the parents are so slight, the children are at once the victims.

Nor was the male sex destitute of instances of This subject forcibly presented itself to the exalted merit-among whom Malesherbes, the in-mind of Dr. Franklin when in Paris, who, in a lettrepid defender of Louis XVI, will be entitled to ter to George Wheatley, dated Passy, May 23, the reverence of the latest posterity. 1785, observes: "I return your note of children Although in societies ordinarily virtuous, indi-received in the foundling hospital at Paris from vidual monsters may be found destitute of the 1741 to 1755 inclusive, and I have added the years common attributes of humanity, and in societies succeeding, down to 1770. Those since that peextremely corrupt, instances occur of great virtues; riod I have not been able to obtain. I have noted yet the general character of any class of persons in the margin the gradual increase, viz: from will be found to be materially influenced by the in- every tenth child so thrown upon the public, until stitutions under which they live, and the habits it comes to every third! Fifteen years have that are prevalent around them. Amongst these, passed since the last account, and probably it may we regard those of the conjugal and parental rela-now amount to one-half. Is it right to encourage tions as infinitely the most important. The latter this monstrous deficiency of natural affection? A of these depend on the first; and wherever they surgeon I met with here excused the women of cease to be respected, sensual and selfish vices of Paris, by saying seriously they could not give other kinds are also abundant; and they all con- suck-Car,' said he, 'ils n'ont point des tetous.' spire to weaken that class of generous sentiments, He assured me it was à fact, and bade me look at on which self-denial and the love of mankind is (41) Romans de Voltaire-vol. 2, p. 250. (40) Annual Register, 1794: quoted by Editor of Thiers. (42) Editor of Thiers'-vol. 2,.p. 158.

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