partments, and exercised their influence there in opposition to the Convention. The Royalists embraced the occasion, also, to raise the standard of revolt in various places; and civil war seemed to menace the destruction of the Repub. lic. At this period it was that the heroine Charlotte Corday rid the world of the monster Marat, by stabbing him in his bath. A wonderful exaltation occupied the minds of all persons, of whatever condition or sex. At first, the victorious Mountain were taken by surprise, at the accumulation of public dangers upon the frontiers and in the Departments. Immediately after the 2nd of June, the Convention had proceeded to complete a Constitution for the Republic, wholly democratic in its principle, of course. While discussing the Constitution, the Mountain became aware of its danger, and it then gave practical proof of the effica cious energy of its principles. The Constitution, so soon as adopted, was suspended, and the revolutionary government declared to be in permanence until a general peace. Nor was this all. Decrees were past for the arrest of all suspected persons and a general levy of the people. The Republic, said Barrère, is a great city besieged: France must become one vast camp. In a short time, this was literally true. The nation was divided into prisoners and soldiers. The Republic had twelve hundred thousand men under arms at once, and the prisons became filled with thousands of the proscribed, whether Royalists or moderate Republicans. A revolutionary army, of 7000 men, overawed the Departments. A daily allowance of forty sous was made to each poor citizen, that he might have no care of his subsistence, and be free to attend the meetings of the Sections. In short, the Mountain, governing by the Committee of Public Safety, organized those extraordinary efforts at home and abroad, which have made the name of the Convention forever terrible.

First, as to foreign affairs. The Convention rendered France military, and after cutting off all hope of arrange

ment by the execution of Louis, boldly made war on all Europe, and thus rendered the continued succession of victories a necessity of state. Out of the strong emotions of the time, it raised up a passionate sentiment of national independence and love of liberty, which impelled the whole nation as it were into the career of arms. Faction might

reign at Paris, but in the camp the French thought of nothing but the honor of their country, except as the occasional defection or displacement of generals indicated some change of party in the Convention. After the fall of the Gironde, Carnot, in the bureaus of the Committee of Public Safety, organized victory for the armies of Hoche, Moreau, Pichegru, Jourdan, chiefs nominated by the Jacobins, and imbued with a congenial spirit. Rank was gained on the field of battle. Raw levies, half clad, without baggage, but filled with a boiling valor which atoned for all wants, threw themselves impetuously upon the astonished Allies, as if launched forth by some mighty engine, and taught the world a new theory of conquest. Every where, the French assumed the offensive, extending the frontiers of the Republic in the Netherlands, on the Rhine, and at the Alps.

Secondly, as to domestic affairs. In La Vendée, the Convention was completely victorious, notwithstanding the stupendous efforts of Lescure, Bonchamps, D’Elbée, Charrette, and Larochejaquelein; and at length twelve 'infernal columns' wasted the country with fire and sword, in pursuance of a decree that the male population, the houses, woods, and harvests of La Vendée, should be destroyed, and the women and children transported into the interior. The insurgent cities in other parts of France suffered the direst extremity of punishment. Lyons had been the centre of a royalist insurrection. It was taken after a desperate siege; and Collot-d'Herbois, Fouché, and Couthon were sent to demolish its buildings and butcher its inhabitants with cannon, the Committee of Public Safety declaring, through Barrère, that Lyons should cease to exist, and a new city,

to be called Ville-Affranchie, rise upon its ruins. Similar vengeance was visited upon the people of Toulon for a like cause; and Caen, Marseilles, and Bordeaux felt, although in less degree, the edge of the revolutionary axe. In Paris, the executioner was never idle. Marie Antoinette,Bailly, Barnave, Duport, Custine, the Duke of Orleans, most of the great names of the Gironde, such as Vergniaud, Brissot, Gensonné, Guadet, Barbaroux, Madame Roland, the celebrated wife of the Girondist Minister, Roland, - were among the victims of a single season. They all died fimly and nobly, in the stoicism of spirit, which belonged to the times. The boy, titular Louis XVII, perished by clandestine means in the hands of his keepers. Some of the most eminent Girondists, such as Pétion, Buzot, Condorcet, and Roland, committed suicide; seventy three of them remained in prison; and a small number awaited, in secure retreat, the end of the Reign of Terror.

In splendor of talents, in generosity of intentions, no party, of any age, ever surpassed that of the Gironde, embracing, as it did, those who combined benevolence of feeling with republican principles. They perished, illustrious in their end as in their lives, because they could not sully themselves with crimes, indispensable to their continuing in control of the Republic. Unfortunate as they were by their very virtues, their career constitutes a brilliant, but melancholy, passage in the history of the Revolution.

At this period, all the power of the government was lodged in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, each composed of twelve members, reeligible every three months. Robespierre ruled in the Committee of Public Safety, and through that in the Convention and in France. His immediate associates were Saint Just, Couthon, Collotd'Herbois, and Billaud-Varennes. This Committee appointed generals, ministers, and judges; it attacked the different factions; it originated all measures; and through rep

resentative commissioners, designated by itself, it exercised unlimited control in the armies and in the Departments. By the law of the suspected, it was despotic over the persons,by the Revolutionary Tribunal over the lives, by forced requisitions and prices over the fortunes, of the whole nation.

The loi des suspects subjected to arrest all persons, who, either by their conduct, their relations, or their conversation, or their writings had shown themselves the partizans of tyranny or federation, or the enemies of freedom; all persons who had not discharged their debt to the country; all nobles, the husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers, sisters, or agents of emigrants, who had not incessantly manifested their devotion to the Revolution. After the enactment of this law, there was, of course, no safety, but in professing the most violent revolutionary principles. The lowest of the people, being already interested in the Revolution by the appointment of revolutionary committees for the execution of the loi des suspects. No less than fifty thousand of such committees, embracing half a million of men at a stipend of three francs a day, diffused the dominion of terror info every corner of France. In fine, the Committes of Public Safety was a dictatorship, more absolute than ever governed Rome in the worst days of her greatest perils or fiercest factions.

This epoch it is, which witnessed the abolition of Christian worship. The Convention began by instituting a new ealendar, commencing with September 22nd, 1792, the first day of the Republic. They divided the year into twelve months, Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire, for the autumn, -Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, for the winter, Germinal, Floréal, Prairial, for the spring, and Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, for the summer, each of thirty days, and thus leaving five intercalary days appropriated for public festivals, and called Sans-culottides. Instead of weeks, the month was divided into three decades, the tenth day being designated for rest and recreation. These profane follies

were poorly redeemed by the general reformation of weights, measures, and coinage, which belongs to the same school of philosophic innovators.

Nor was the deepest darkness of this Egyptian night of the Revolution, lowering in tempests and horrors, yet come. To confer on Marat apotheosis in the Pantheon, - to erect the bust or statue of this monster in every city and village, might have passed off, as it did, like other delirations of the moment. But then came the spoliations of the royal tombs of Saint Denis, by decree of the Convention, followed by the general violation of the sepulchres and other monuments of antiquity, all over France. Remains of the heroes and patriots of past times, Du Guesclin, Turenne even, did not escape the sentence of desecration, which, harmless to the immortal great, poured eternal infamy upon the obscure heads of the base miscreants, thus revelling in their country's degradation. But the Commune of Paris, which drove the otherwise omnipotent Convention to these excesses, had in reserve a still worse ignominy to inflict on the nation and the age. Pache, Mayor of Paris, Hébert, and Chaumette, the public accuser, compelled Gobet, Bishop of Paris, to appear at the bar of the Convention, and abjure Christianity. The Sections of Paris followed the example, and after plundering the churches, prepared for the closing scene of blasphemy. A Parisian opera-girl, named Saunier, — of great beauty, but of such notorious impurity that, on occasion of some new ballet, she had required of the painter, David, to invent for her dress more indecent than nakedness, was selected for their purpose by Chaumette and Hébert. Clad in blue drapery, she was carried into the Convention, received the salutations of the President, and was then conducted to the cathedral of Notre Dame to be adored there as the goddess of Reason.-Religious services were universally abandoned, the churches were closed, baptisms and the burial service ceased, the marriage tie was converted into an ordinary civil engagement to be dissolved at plea

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