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LITERARY.
JNO. It. THOMPSON, Editor.
SATURDAY, JUNE 2, I 860!
to correspondents.
We hare received, daring the week, the following con
tributions, in prose and poetry:
A Thrilling Incident, by James M. Thompson.
Good Bye , by H. A. C. Respectfully declined. In
reply to the reqneat of the author, that we should criti
cise this effort, we can only say that It seems to us to be
smooth verse, but not poetry. The thoughts arc com
mon-place, and there is a single rhyme repeated four
times in llvo stanzas, a fault which good versifiers avoid.
If he would know whether or not he Is a poet, let him
not write another line until he cannot help ft, and then
let the verse be simply the medlnm of the thought If
he desires only to acquire the habit of easy and elegant
versification, bis musical car will enable him in time to
do so, if he will study patiently and closely the best
models.
The Spirit Nuptial», by N.
Thai Young Tarter, by Klutz.
The Dream of an Hour, and Twilight at the Went
Window , by Mrs. Mary E. Bryan. We shall avail our
selves of the earliest opportunity of publishing these
two contributions.
A Poem, by Annie K. Blount
——— 4..
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
A large aud admirably printed volume has
just been laid upon our table by Messrs. Pritch
ard, Abbot & Loomis, of Augusta, the publish
ers, which embraces nearly all the more elabo
rate treatises on the subject of slavery, in sup
port of tho institution. The well-known Essay
of Mr. Christy, entitled “ Cotton is King," the
poworful argument of Professor Bledsoe, the
presentation of the Scriptural defence so ably
made by the Rev. Dr. String fellow, tho ex
amination of tho Social Aspects of Slavery, by
Chancellor Harper, the polished aud scholarly
letters of Senator Hammond to Thomas Clark
son, Dr. Carwrioiit’s Ethnological Inquiry, the
Dred Scott Decision, and the Rev. Dr. Hodge's
rebuke of tho Abolitionists, based upon tho Bi
ble—all these aro comprised in the volume, and
together they constitute an atiswer to the at
tacks of the Anti-Slavery party, botli at home
and abroad, as triumphant as it is complete. Wo
may safely rest tho institution upon the founda
tions of truth and justice herein established,
with tho assurance that it will vindicate its wis
dom and humanity before the world in the lapse
of timo. This volume should be in the library
of evory gentleman in the Southern States.
mount* Vernon. »
Our acknowledgments are duo to Mrs,
clea Edgeworth Eve, the accomplished Vice Re
gent of tho Mount Vernon A ssociatlon for the
State of Georgia, for a copy of the Mount Ver
non Record of the April issue, in which we find
much interesting information connected with
the patriotic enterprise to which tho energies of
the Association liavc been devoted. The Homo
of Washington lias been purchased and paid for
—the groat purpoßO lias, indeed, been effected—r
but much yot remains to bo done in providing
tho moans for rescuing the mansion and tho
tomb from the “effacing flngors "of decay. No
man or woman of sensibility can havo visited,
of late years, that “ modest homestead on the
banks of tho Potomac, whore lived Georgo
Washington and Martha, his loving wife,” with
out being pained by the dilapidation of tho build
ing and the general neglect of tho grounds.
Though Mount Vernon, in its architectural fea
tures, was nover an imposing country-sent, it
nmy be doubted whether a spot could have been
found in the original thirteen States, where Na
ture, kindly assisted by Art, so blessed the eye
with her loveliest manifestations. Hill and
lawn, wood aud stream, flowers and foliage—all
combined in smiling beauty to delight tho sum
mer visitor. Tho courtly Do Chastellux, ac
customed to the clipped and formal alleys of
Versailles, could not but gaze with satisfaction,
through tho pensile brandies of tho unpruned,
embowering elms and across on oxpanso of lux
uriant greensward, upon a river which stretched
away towards the sea, in a volume and with a
majesty unequalled by the Rhone or the Loire.
The English naval officer, ascending the Poto
mac as an invader of the country, years after
the dust of the Pater Patrice had hallowed the
soil forever, in paying tho homage of his in
voluntary respect to tho memory of its former
occupant, could not fail to be struck with the
gentlemanly repose which pervaded the whole es
tablishment, and the taste which yet lingered in
every walk and around evory knoll. Tho house
itself, of wood and presenting in front a modest
portico, harmonized well with the surroundings,
though, in looking at it now, our wonder is not
that it lias fallou to pieces so much, but that the
injury it has suffered has been jso little. Time
and the elements would seem to have dealt ten
derly with the dwelling of Washington, as we
are told that inanimate Nature colebrates tho
obsequies of the poet. So we may imagine
that for him the rain descended in gentler
showers, arid the roses bloomod with a deeper
tint and richer fragrance. Certainly the garden
yet shows a wealth of roses at Mount Vernon
in their season which can be exceeded by no oth
er bed in the land. Still the ravages of time
in the house and the grounds are painful. One
column of the portico has quite rotted away.
The tiles of its pavement aro loose and some of
them are broken. Here and there a timber of
tfie structure seems about to yield. Weeds have
grown,up in tho ancient paths and intruding
undergrowth obstructs the vistas. To repair
these ravages, to restore the place ns nearly as
possible to the condition in vhich Washington
left it, and to keep it so, such is now the aim of
the Mount Vernon Association. To this end
Edward Everett yet dedicates his unrivalled
tmm wmm MM3 raminis.
oratory. And, surely, if in the opinion of
Charles V., the stone spire of Antwerp Cathedral
deserved to be kept in a glass case, if Loretto's
Chapel was thought worthy of a stately shelter
to preserve it from ruin, we ought to regard the
efforts to renovate the mansion of Washington
and to furnish a sufficient protection for his tomb,
with the deepest interest. We observe, from the
number of the Record before us, that tho ladies
of Georgia are still working with zeal in the
cause, and we consider it as by no means tho
least happy result of this excellent movement,
that it has brought into association and corres
pondence many of the most intellectual women
of the Union, living at remote points and here
tofore wholly unknown to each other.
i»i
HUMBOLDT.
Tbe posthumous publication of Humboldt’s
letters to Varnhagen Von Ense has excited a
great deal of discussion on both sides of tbe
Atlantic. Was Friiulein Ludmilla Assing, the
neiceof Von Ense, justifiable in laying them be
fore the public 1 did she not thereby dishonor
the illustrious dead ? is tho illustrious dead any
longer illustrious in the tomb since the appear
ance of this volume ? was it not an outrage on
many distinguished living persons referred to
in no complimentary terms by the writers ?
these are questions which rise naturally out of
tho subject, aud to which various answers will
be given aocording to the opinions of the parties
considering them. Wo confess we have read
few books of late years with greater sorrow,
we had almost said disgust. There is not a
page which has not for us a cruel disenchant
ment. The revelations of these letters, if we
accept them for truth, not only strip majesty of
its externals and make it, according to the old
play upon the word, a jest, but they work a ruin
of reputations and of characters which, in com
mon with all the world, wo had learned to re
spect. We had not, indeed, wasted much ad
miration on the King and Court of Prussia, tho
maudlin monarch in whoso service Humboldt
officiated as grand Chamberlain, and tbe dukes
and dignitaries that surrounded him, but we
had formed a favorable estimate of Bunsen, we
had conceived some regard for Niebuhr (in Bpito
of his ruthless treatment of tho poetic legends
of Rome), we had given credit for nous to Rau
mer and Lord Aberdeen. Aocording to Baron
Humboldt, however, these eminent men of sci
ence and diplomacy must be thought either very
stupid or vory mean persons. As for theOourt,
nothing save Lord Horvoy’s Memoirs of the
Reign of George 11., of England, or tho recent
Life of Catherine 11., of Rossis* can compare
with these letters, in tho .disparaging view
wherein arc presented Ki«*» dod Princes aud
Grand-dukes and all the appendages of royalty.
They are constantly charged with petty mean
nesses, they are made frequently to contradict
themselves and each other, and they aro re
ported as paying left-handed compliments all
round when in the presence of third parties—
all which it must be exceedingly oomfortablo
and ploasant for tho survivors to learn from the
Friiulein Ludmilla Assing’s publication. Wo
can imagine that the society of the Court will
be rendered vastly more agreoablo in conse
quence of tho knowledge each Sereno Kil'ul
geucy possesses of what every other Serene
Kffulgeuey really thinks of him.
But the most mournful wreck of character
made by tho appearance of tliese letters is that
of Humboldt himself. Perhaps if tho suffrage of
the educated class in all the enlightened coun
tries in the world could have been taken, three
years ago, by common consent to Humboldt
would have been assigned the most enviable
place iu tho world’s esteem and affection. A
tranquil old ago, an immense fume, tho honor
of all conditions of men, the immediate homage
of the greatest and wisest of his fellow citizens,
theso were bis, and the modesty and content
ment which seemed to mark his demeanor, tho
honest poverty which contrasted so well vi ith
his intellectual wealth, impressed all sensible
minds as tho accompaniments of real greatness.
But since wo have been permitted to look at
Humboldt as he actually was, we discover him
to have been a vain, exacting, envious, conceit
ed old man, as dogmatical as Dr. Johnson,
though happily without a Boswoll, as fond of
frivolous epistolary composition as Wilkins Mi
cawber, though somewhat, inferior in felicity
of expression to that dirty but delightful indi
vidual.
Among his most prominent characteristics
was, it would seem, au iutenso hatred of rank.
With King Clicquot of Prussia before him this
was, perhaps, sufficiently natural. But it ap
pears to have beon enough for Humboldt that
a man was a born Prince, Herzog or Margraf,
to consider him a blockhead or a scoundrel.
Always, be it understood in his letters to Varn
hagen Von Ense, and never, so far as wo know,
in the presence of these unfortunate royal muffs
and scamps themselves. To the very men
whom lie satirized in his correspondence he
manifested an exemplary courtesy of manner,
and it is certain that had ho betrayed to the
King or tho Prince at any timo his real opinion
of either of them, tho world-famous Chamber
lain would have received n peremptory dismis
sal, nor could Kosmos itself have saved him.
The hypocrisy involved in liis service at the
Court of Prussia consists but little with the
greatness and singlenoss of soul which we have
heretofore attributed to Humboldt.
The churlishness exhibited in many of those
letters is still less in keeping with elevation of
character. Prince Albert meets Humboldt at
Stolzenfels on the Rhine, and begs of him a copy
of the Ko'smos. The book is presented to the
Prince, and on his return to England, he sits
down at Windsor Castle and writes a gentle
mau-like letter to Humboldt, thanking him for
the pleasure afforded by the volume, and begging
the Baron's acceptance of a copy of “ Cather
wood’s Views in Central America.” Humboldt’s
answer to the Prince is not given, but in his let
ters to Ynmhagen lie ridicules the Prince’s style,
snubs his offering and avows his dislike of the
man. The accident of Royal birth or Royal
marriage docs not shut one out of the pale of
common politeness. Prince Albert's title and
position did not indeed demand for him any un
usual amount of civility at the hands of Hum
boldt, but surely they should not have excluded
him from the ordinary courtesies of life. It is
one tbiDg to be a toady. But to escape toady
ism, one need not be a churl.
We have yet to refer to what we consider the
worst feature of the volume. It is the mockery
of the Christian religion which runs through
this correspondence. Let us not be misunder
stood. If Humboldt’B superior attainments in
science led him to reject a faith to which the
greatest aDd wisest intellects of the world have
bowed, we would not have him pretend to be
lieve it. But there is no hypocrisy in treating
the religious convictions of others with respect.
A German resident of the State of Ohio writes
to the great savant a letter, fulsome in its per
sonal flatteries indeed, but expressing a kind,
even affectionate interest in his spiritual wel
fare and tho hope that he would yet embrace
the creed of Christ. Few men, we think, would
have not been affected by such a letter to grate
ful emotions. We know how that splendid re
probate, Lord Byron, felt,when a pious lady wrote
to him in a similar strain, for we have his reply
in which he thanks her for her intercession, ad
mits that after all Christianity may be right,
aud that those who embrace it adopt the course
of wisdom. But tho great Humboldt treats the
letter with levity and laments to Varnhagen
that“ among the inconveniences of old age is
that of liability to attempts at conversion!”
The fact would seem to be that the adulations
of men and the scientific triumphs he had
aehjpved, had turned the head of Humboldt,
who fancied himself not only above all princes
and potentates, wherein he may not have been
fur wrong, but superior to all systems and
creeds, wherein he little resembled that simple
minded and reverential student who solved the
problem of tho universe. To Humboldt the
Truth Kternal was something grand, indeed, and
glorious, which he perfectly well understood; to
Newton it was a mighty and mysterious ocean,
dimly discerned and stretching away into infin
itude, on whose margin he had been permitted
only to pick up a few pebbles.
But we must bring these cursory remarks to
a close. We have doue with the volume and
have not a word to say of Humboldt’s falso
views of American Slavery or of his slurs at
our gpverumenU-ffitken, ultomlier, these let
ters have go far nrafir]*4 the estimate of Hum
boldt generally siwrtsuned at the time of his
decease, that tho wWld will probably havs cause
hereafter to regret, f considering hie character,
that another of thejgreatest must be reckoned
among the meauest of mankind.
OUB PARIS CORRESPONDENCE.
Garibaldi in Bicilv—Significance of this single fact ae
bearing on the Insurrection and in a diplomatic point
of view—Victor Emmanuel and Naples—Lying Nca-
Sjlitan bulletins concerning the Sicilian struggle
ear of Uuribald! aiM»mr Bomba's troops—Literature
—M. de Cussagnao uA tfce French ({evolution of 'BD
Startling corrections of received historical verities—
The Banquet in the Coneiergerie a fiction—He-
Bponsibilily of tho Girondists for tho maasacres of
September—Discovery of the documents of the Con
scription— Cussognao and Michelet compared—New
lights upon French great men—Francis the First and
Louis the Fourteenth—The Emperor Nicholas shorn
of his splendor— The Truth about Ruttiia by Prince
Dolgoroukow.
Paris, May 11, ISfiO.
The great news of the day is that Garibaldi
actually did embark from some point between
Genoa and Spezzia, some time between Suuday
night and Monday morning last, and ia probably
by this time landed in Sicily. What forces he
took with him is not accurately known. The
London Moi ning Post states that he left Genoa
with three thousand men. Other journals give
a detailed account of his troops, cannon, and
vessels; ho left, they say, with three vessels,
a fourth was to join him from Leghorn, and still
three others from other ports were to meet him
at sea. They cleared for Malta, where they
have, of course, nothing to do, and steered for
Sicily, where they are likely to do a very se
rious business. They are reported to bo well
supplied with arms, provisions, tents, and money.
A part of ttie money, at least, is supposed to
have been furnished from Italian refugees and
friends of tho cause in England. Money has,
also, doubtless been raisod for the expedition in
Upper Italy, where subscriptions arc still going
on for the benefit of the Sicilian insurrection
—the mode of its application not being osten
tatiously published.
Now, as to tho numbers of men and vessels
that accompany Garibaldi, there is, doubtless, in
the accounts above referred to, some, probably
a great deal of, exaggeration. But that one ves
sel, at least, with Garibaldi on board, did leave
a Piedmontese port five days ago, is certain. As
bold and skillful n sailor as partizan, it is not at
all probable that the Sardinian cruisers (if they
would), or the Neapolitan State vessels have
been able to intercept his arrival or prevent his
landing on the coasts of Sicily. An extremely
important event is this expedition, not only in
its direct bearing upon tho Sicilian insurrection,
but in its significance regarded from an interna
tional or diplomatic point of view.
Let us look at it in this last mentioned aspect
first.
Here is an expedition consisting of at least one,
probably more, possibly as many as six or seven
vessels,departing from the ports of the kingdom of
Italy, to make an armed descent upon the shores
of a neighboring kingdom, with which the first
is at peace. The theory of course is that Victor
Emmanuel’s government has done its utmost to
prevent such an expedition from organizing on
his territory, and going thence to aid an insur
rection against the authority of a friendly mon
arch. This is the theory, and it may be the
fact. We are not to forget that Walker fre
quently escaped the extremely eodscientious
aDd vigilant efforts at restriction of our United
States government. Be that as it may, the note
of preparation for the expedition was sounded
loud enough and long enough beforehand, to
have made it the theme of common talk through
out Europe, and of diplomatic representations to
the cabinet of Turin any time the last thrA
weeks. No one mistook the meaning of Gari
baldi’s resignation of his rank in the Sardinian
army. There were other abundant signs and
tokens, more patent, if possible, of his purpose.
Theoretically and in diplomatic notes, Victor
Emmanuel must disapprove all this; but as king,
as Italian, and as a man—ambitious, patriotic,
and brave, he must approve it The personal
relations between the royal Zcuave and the un
crowned partisan have been singularly cordial,
more like those betweeu two soldiers than such
as usually exist between monarch and subject
Each seems to honor, esteem, and appreciate the
other. Garibaldi’s motto to-day is “Italy and
Victor Emmanuel." It is easy to see what um
brage Naples will take, what accusations of
complicity she will bring against Sardinia in this
matter. What is Victor Emmanuel to do ? If
he attempt to satisfy Napies with anything more
than diplomatic phrases, he will meet with resis
tance at home. There is a strong sympathy
with the insurgent Sicilians revealing itself
among his subjects in something better tlian
words, in money subscriptions and solid material
aid. For the leader of Italian Nationality to
suppress these manifestations too severely, would
be to sacrifice his Italian popularity which makes
his Btrengtb, and to abdicate as it were the
leadership of the common Italian cause. He is
not a man like to do that. What will he do?
The answer at present could be but conjecture.
Let us wait a week, at least, before attempting
one.
As for what is going on in Sicily: it is diffe
rent to attain to nearly accurate knowledge.—
The Neapolitan government, which probably is
better informal than all other parties, together
has a constitutional aversion to telling the truth
on any subject (the only constitutional quality
in that government), and a perfect horror to tell
ing it on this. If we were to believe the offi
cial journal of Naples, there has been no insur
rection, and it is' uttorly suppressed. A late
number of that journal prints such complicate
falsehoods as these—l translate literally: “An
hour does not pass without bringing us from all
parts of Sicily pacific news. * * * * We
shall not repeat them here: we should need to
invent new words,to discover phrases to describe
a condition of things everywhere and constantly
the same. Let us enjoy the peace that reigns
in all parts of the State, and shut our ears to
absurd reports,” etc., etc. Now, it is a fact,
known well enough, of course, to the writer of
this foolish fiction, that the insurrection holds
its ground a month after its outbreak against a
force of 30.000 drilled troops. The information
that readies the public from private sources is
partial and imperfect. But taken altogether,
compared, weighed, and sifted, the result of tho
last news is decidedly favorable to the insur
gents.
The coming among them of Garibaldi, suppos
ing he do not bring a man nor a musket, a bis
cuit nor a penny with him. will be an immense
accession to their strength. Not only docs lie
bring to them his courage and skill and fertility
of resource, his boldness of conception and vig
orous rapidity of execution —in fine, every desi
rable quality of a military man and the confi
dence and hope inspired oy his presence; but
he brings against their and his enemies, the Ne
apolitan troops, a peculiar moral force. These
last, not tho best of soldiers under any circum
' stances, and now already partly demoralized,
are terribly afraid of Garibaldi. To them he is
something almost more than mortal, a Captain
whom it iapdle to resist A' regimeut of a thou
sand men would be likely to disperse in paaiffl
lear at the advanco of a hundred partisans head-1
ed by Garibaldi. This is not exaggeration.—
But for Garibaldi's doings, as for Victor Emman
uel's, we may as well defer conjecture for a
week. Perhaps, by thßt time, facts will enlight
en us. Meantime, as the rest of Europe will
also “ keep ” till next week, let us glance qt a
book or two.
Tho French Revolution is a theme of inex
haustible interest. It was the greatest European
movement since the Reformation, of which, in
deed, it was but the continuation in another or
der of ideas; and it was full of “death's doings".
After all, there is uothing so interesting to com
mon minds and philosophical minds as a murder.
Macbeth is read twice and performed in tho
theatres twenty times whore the Tempest is read
or performed once. It is not strange, then, that
any tolerably well-written new recital of tho
eveDts of the Reign of Terror should enchain
the attention. But the Histoirc des Girondins
et des Massacres de Septembre (History of the
Girondins and of the September Massacres) has
other claims to notice than are to be found in tho
general nature of its theme and in its nervous,
effective style. It is really a new book on a subject
about which a whole library lias been written.
The author, M. Granier de Cassagnac, is a noto
riously zealous, not to say violent, political par
tisan, more celebrated for his ability than his
scrupulousness in his character as publicist.
He is not a man to inspire one with confidence.
His octavos breathe much the same spirit as
his newspaper articles; he is not a mere faith
ful chronicler, still less a calm profound philoso
pher ; he is rather a pamphleteer, as after all
most historians are who are not mere chroni
clers. On the other hand he is never dull, never
confused. If he is an advocate, rather than a
magistrate, lie is an eloquent one; and just be
cause he is so frankly an advocate, he puts the
reader on his guard to observe the distinction
between bis arguments and his facts. It is for
these last that his book is singularly valuable;
it will be enough to say of the former that their
whole drift is to show that all revolution runs
logically to reign of terror and streams of blood,
that all revolutionists begin, go on, and end in the
wrong. His reasoning is bad and his conclusion
false; his premises are solidly based on facts,
many of which are now first brought to light,
and some of which are os startling as curious.
For example he proves, past dispute, that the
famous Last Banquet of the Girondins, in the
Coneiergerie, the night before their execution—
a banquet which Thiers recorded, which Charles
Nodier ingeniously enlarged upon, which La
martine set forth with all the charms of poeti
cal imagination and pathos and heroism, which
Paul Delaroche reproduced more ingeniously,
more pathetically and heroically, in all the real
ity of form and color, on canvass; a banquet
which with all its personages and furnishings,
exalted sentiments and sparkling wines and
scenic effects, has existed not merely in popular
legend and in the imagination of the vulgar, but
in grave history, and in all men’s belief, as an
unquestioned, unquestionable reality—M. Cas
sagnac proves, with the documents in his
hands, that this banquet never was spread, that
the eloquent sentiments inspired by heroism and
the love of liberty, were never uttered ; nay,
that several of the eminent speakers were not
imprisoned in the Coneiergerie.
Lamartine, in his admirable and absorbingly
interesting History of the Girondins, devotes
one of his finest chapters to the inscriptions
written by some of the Girondins on the walls
of the Cramelite Convent, where they were im
prisoned. He attributes this patriotic sentiment
to this, that heroic sentiment to that noble
martyr liberty, supporting the respective
attributions with all the confidence of an ex
pert, on the characteristic hand-writing of their
authors. Cassagnac here again shows, to demon
stration, that the supposititious authors of these
mural inscriptions, were never within the
sublimely eloquent walls of the Cramelite Con
vent
The connection presented on the title page—
“the Girondins and the Massacres of Septem.
ber” between those whom we have been ac
customed to regard as the purest and most dis
interested of the ardent revolutionists and the
foulest of the revolutionary horrors, strikes all
readers, and must revolt most readers at first
sight. With all his good will, Cassagnac does
not succeed in proving the connection to be as
close as he would infer. And, by the way, I
must do him the justice to say here that he re
cognizes, with many restrictions, the moral and
intellectual worth of many of the Girondins, as
individuals. It is as a political party, greedy of
power, inspired by unlawful ambition, that he
lays to their charge the human butchery in the
prisons in the days of September, 1193, over
the recital of which humanity still shudders.
But if the Girordins did not devise and actively
abet this wholesale assassination of political
prisoners—old men, helpless women, venerable
priests, and finally, of the very idiots and mad
men in the public charitable asylums, to the
number of some 1500 —it appears now too sadly
certain that they were at least silent accomplices
of the assassins, taking no active, vigorous mea
sures to check their bloody work 'while it was
goiogon, making no qflNfct, beyond a little timid,
idle talk, to have them punished when it was
over.
The reasons, supported by documentary evi
dence, which Cassagnac brings forward to prove
that the massacres were not the result of a
sudden wild popular effervescence of fear and
rage against tho royalists, but of a plan prede
termined and carefully arranged by the ruling
authorities of the day, without being as com
prehensive as he would represent them, are ter
ribly damaging to the reputations, not of such
men as Robespierre and Marat, whose infamy
is past increase, but of such men as Vergniaud
and Brissot and Petion.
The novel and important feature in M. de
Cassagnac's book is not in its reasoning, but in
its facts. With an industry and perseverance
deserving of great praise, he has turned over a
mass of old papers preserved in the archives of
the Hotel de Ville and of the prefecture of po
lice, overlooked by pi evions historians of the
revolution, and found among them jail registers,
records of revolutionary tribunals and commit
tees, orders and receipts of revolutionary com
mittees and of their agents and employes, writ
ten in gall and blood. The extracts from these
are extremely curious—giving the very form
and pressure of the time in its crude, fearful
reality. Thus he presents a complete list of the
names of all the assassins—of the butchers
themselves, and each individual mock judge and
juryman—of the September massacres, and an
equally complete list of names and social rank
of their victims. Strange 1 how this bare cata
logue of names of long dead, silent men, of
butchers and butchered, enchains, absorbs the
mader —provoking the imagination, these dry
word skeletons, till they start out from the white
dage clothed in flesh and blood, fierce, brutal
fprms, wan, ghostly forms, drenched with blood,
touting blood, men turned fiends, growing evej*»
■ladder with the fumes of slaughter and of
nine, heaps of corpses, worse insulted after
i With than in the manner of their death, young
|*PL> tenderly nurtured drinking blood in full
women of the people, mothers and
rives looking applausive with greedy pleasure
at the sight—the world gone mad, nature’s
kindly instincts all distorted, and hell’s horrors
on earth!
Horrors and reigns of terror and streams of
blood flowing from unresisting, slaughtered men
and women, are unhappily no invention of the
French revolution. Read in proof the last vol
ume of Michelet’s History of France—a far
higher order of historian than M. de Cassagnac,
although, like him, something of a pamphleteer
and an ardent advocate. But he is the gener
ous advoeato of humanity and justice and right.
Gasseguac is a political partisan, enrolled in the
cause of a present, definite policy, his passions
and his interests directly enlisted in the present
contest, seeking and pressing out of past history
auxiliaries to his party. Michelet rises above
the aims of transient parties to immutable prin
ciples. Cassagnac is a retained advocate;
Michelet an inspired apostle. The latter is as
superior to the former in his rhetoric as in his
purpose and motive. Not a fatalist, realist nar
rator like Thiers, nor a strictly philosophical his
torian like Guizot, he is as industrious in re
search as the one, as heedful of the subtle and
profound relations of causes and effects as the
other; with more than Thiers’vivacity and none
of his wearisome diffuseness, with much of
the comprehwnsiue reach of Guizot, and none
o£ his hard, colorless dryness. You seem to
hear him rather than read him ; his thoughts
breathe and his words burn with vivid light out
from.the silent page into your mind. In sever
al respects he reminds the English reader of
Carlyle. He has a similar earnestness, an al
most passionate manner, and seems, like the
fervid Scotchman, to be speaking at you, striv
ing with you as you read. More fairly minded
than Carlyle, little given to hero worship, pay
ing his devotions at the altar of humanity, not
at the shrine of any man’s reputation, he has
the same impatience of shams, and takes an al
most malicious pleasure in stripping off the false
royalty of the kings of the earth. He then
loves to hold them up in their nakedness to the
jeering but just condemnation of the world and
to the confusion of the traditional admirers of
their historico-scenic trappings. He shows them
to have been not only bare forked radishes, but
very badly diseased, ill-grown forked radishes.
In one of his former volumes the gallant, chival
ric, art-loving Francis I. was exposed « coward
ly, base, offensively gross, low debauche —the
wretched man as he was made by nature and
his own foul passions. The divinity that doth
hedge a king, is no obstacle to Michelet; with a
trenchant phrase he cuts through it, making a
passage for the common herd of readers to the
royal presence, who, seeing there royalty near
at hand, are surprised to find that it is not only
mere humanity, but often enough a very poor
specimen of humanity. What an undoing of
royalty is his use of a shameful malady of the
king as an historical date in his reign. All roy
alty, dignity and divinity is quashed by the sin
gle, simple and wofully apt phrase. I do not
care to quote it here, and any substitute must
be a feeble one. Bu* suppose a case: We are
speaking of this or that grave event in the reign
of Franjois premier, and, to fix its date, say it
happened so long before or after his majesty's
being dead drunk.
In the present volume, Louis XIY. takes his
turn, nere we see that consummate actor off
the stage, behind the curtain, where the mimic
grand monarque, brutal and feeble, vain to ex
ess, arrogant to excess, superstitious to excess,
acrificed honor and religion to lust, then would
atone for gratification of lust by sacrifices te
false honor and false religion. The hook is *
argely taken up with the history of the rtvoca