was a torment. I don't know what was the exact philosophy that Confucius taught, but it is to be hoped that poor John in his persecution is still able to detect the conscious hate and fear with which inferiority always regards the possibility of even-handed justice, and which is the key-note to the vulgar clamour about servile and degraded races. WILLIAM BLACK. WILLIAM BLACK, a native of Glasgow, born in 1841, has produced several original and highly successful novels. In 1868 appeared In Silk Attire; in 1871, A Daughter of Heth; in 1872, The Strange Adventures of a Phaton; in 1873, Kilmeny and Princess of Thule; in 1875, The Maid of Killeena and Three Feathers; in 1876, Lady Silverdale's Sweetheart, and other Stories; Madcap Violet, &c. Scene in the Hebrides.-From 'Princess of Thule.' On a small headland of the distant island of Lewis, an old man stood looking out on a desolate waste of rain-beaten sea. It was a wild and a wet day. From out of the louring south-west, fierce gusts of wind were driving up volumes and flying rags of cloud, and sweeping onward at the same time the gathering waves that fell hissing and thundering on the shore. Far as the eye could reach, the sea and the air and the sky seemed to be one indistinguishable mass of whirling and hurrying vapour-as if beyond this point there were no more land, but only wind and water, and the confused and awful voices of their strife. The short, thick-set powerfully built man who stood on this solitary point, paid little attention to the rain that ran off the peak of his sailor's cap, or to the gusts of wind that blew about his bushy gray beard. He was still following, with an eye accustomed to pick out objects far at sea, one speck of purple that was now fading into the gray mist of the rain; and the longer he looked the less it became, until the mingled sea and sky shewed only the smoke that the great steamer left in its wake. As he stood there, motionless and regardless of everything around him, did he cling to the fancy that he could still trace out the path of the vanished ship? A little while before, it had passed almost close to him. He had watched it steam out of Stornoway harbour. As the sound of the engines came nearer, and the big boat went by, so that he could have almost called to it, there was no sign of emotion on the hard and stern face-except, perhaps, that the lips were held firm, and a sort of frown appeared over the eyes. He saw a tiny white handkerchief being waved to him from the deck of the vessel; and he said, almost as though he were addressing some one there: 'My good little girl!' But in the midst of that roaring of the sea and the wind, how could any such message be delivered? And already the steamer was away from the land, standing out to the lonely plain of waters, and the sound of the engines had ceased, and the figures on the deck had grown faint and visionary. But still there was that one speck of white visible; and the man knew that a pair of eyes that had many a time looked into his own-as if with a faith that such intercommunion could never be broken-were now trying, through overflowing and blinding tears, to send him a last look of farewell. The gray mists of the rain gathered within their folds the big vessel, and all the beating hearts it contained; and the fluttering of that little token disappeared with it. All that remained was the sea whitened by the rushing of the wind, and the thunder of waves on the beach. The man who had been gazing so long down into the south-east, turned his face landward, and set out to walk over a tract of wet grass and sand towards a road that ran near by. There was a large wagonette 564 of varnished oak, and a pair of small powerful horses waiting for him there; and having dismissed the boy who had been in charge, he took the reins and got up. But even yet the fascination of the sea and of that sad farewell was upon him; and he turned once more as if, now that sight could yield him no further tidings, he would send her one more word of good-bye. 'My poor little Sheila !' that was all he said; and then he turned to the horses, and sent them on, with his head down to escape the rain, and a look on his face like that of a dead man. As he drove through the town of Stornoway, the children playing within the shelter of the cottage doors, called to each other in a whisper, and said: That is the King of Borva.' But the elderly people said to each other, with a shake of the head: It is a bad day, this day, for Mr Mackenzie, that he will be going home to an empty house. And it will be a ferry bad thing for the poor folk of Borva, and they will know a great difference, now that Miss Sheila is gone away, and there is nobody-not anybody at all-left in the island to tek the side of the poor folk.' He looked neither to the right nor to the left, though he was known to many of the people-as he drove away from the town into the heart of the lonely and desolate land. The wind had so far died down, and the rain had considerably lessened; but the gloom of the sky was deepened by the drawing on of the afternoon, and lay heavily over the dreary wastes of moor and hill. What a wild and dismal country was that which lay before and all around him, now that the last traces of human occupation were passed! There was not a cottage, not a stone wall, not a fence to break the monotony of the long undulations of moorland which, in the distance, rose into a series of hills that were black under the darkened sky. Down from these mountains, ages ago, glaciers had slowly crept to eat out hollows in the plains below; and now in those hollows were lonely lakes, with not a tree to break the line of their melancholy shores. Everywhere around were the traces of the glacier drift-great gray boulders of gneiss fixed fast into the black peat-moss, or set amid the browns and greens of the heather. The only sound to be heard in this wilderness of rock and morass, was the rushing of various streams, rain-swollen and turbid, that plunged down their narrow channels to the sea. The rain now ceased altogether; but the mountains in the far south had grown still darker; and to the fisherman passing by the coast, it must have seemed as though the black peaks were holding converse with the louring clouds, and that the silent moorland beneath was waiting for the first roll of the thunder. The man who was driving along the lonely route sometimes cast a glance down towards this threatening of a storm; but he paid little heed to it. The reins lay loose on the backs of the horses; and at their own pace they followed, hour after hour, the rising and falling road that led through the moorland and past the gloomy lakes. He may have recalled mechanically the names of those stretches of water-the Lake of the Sheiling, the Lake of the Oars, the Lake of the Fine Sand, and so forthto measure the distance he had traversed; but he seemed to pay little attention to the objects around him, and it was with a glance of surprise that he suddenly found himself overlooking that great sea-loch on the western side of the island in which was his home. He drove down the hill to the solitary little inn of Garra-na-hina. At the door, muffled up in a warm woollen plaid, stood a young girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and diffident in look. 'Mr Mackenzie,' she said, with that peculiar and pleasant intonation that marks the speech of the Hebridean who has been taught English in the schools; 'it was Miss Sheila wrote to me to Suainabost, and she said I might come down from Suainabost and see if I can be of any help to you in the house.' 'Ay, my good lass,' he said, putting his hand gently But here on her head, and it was Sheila wrote to you?' 'Yes, Edinburgh on a Summer Night. Her principal works are-The Story of Elizabeth, The Village on the Cliff, Old Kensington, Miss Angel; To Esther, and other Sketches; Toilers and &c. Miss Thackeray is a consummate artist. She Spinsters, Five Old Friends, Bluebeard's Keys, makes no pretension to deep plot or sensation. Her novels are studies of character within rather confined limits, and with a certain kind of teaching or moralising which may have been derived from her gifted father, but is modified in passing In the gathering darkness we approach Edinburgh. through a truly womanly temperament. She is How long the way seemed on this the last night of our a student: you see the influence of books, and driving! The clear twilight faded away, and the skies can follow her methods and see them repeated overhead began to shew faint throbbings of the stars. A so exactly that you can predict the results. pale yellow glow on the horizon told us where the lights This was apparent in The Village on the Cliff, of Edinburgh were afire. The road grew almost indis- notwithstanding that Reine was original in tinguishable; but overhead the great worlds became conception; and it characterises her novel, Old more visible in the deep vault of blue. In a perfect Kensington, which is a resetting of the story silence we drove along the still highway, between the of Angelica Kauffmann, the unfortunate painter, dark hedges; and clearer and more clear became the the friend of Reynolds and the rest of the diswhite constellations trembling in the dark. There lay tinguished people of that day, to many of whom King Charles's wain as we had often regarded it from a we are here introduced. boat at sea, as we lay idly on the lapping waves. Miss Thackeray has The jewels on Cassiopeia's chair glimmered faint and pale; succeeded remarkably in serious yet half-playful and all the brilliant stars of the Dragon's hide trembled restorations of the old nursery tales, bringing out in the dark. The one bright star of the Swan recalled their purpose and moral by means of present-day many an evening in the olden times; and here, nearer characters skilfully chosen. Some of these have at hand, Capella shone, and there Cepheus looked over been collected into a volume under the title of to the pole-star as from the distance of another universe. Five Old Friends with a New Face. As her first Somehow it seemed to us that, under the great and work, The Story of Elizabeth, had appeared in the throbbing vault, the sea ought to be lying clear and Cornhill Magazine, and was republished in book dark; but there were other masses we saw before us, form in 1863-the year of her father's death-she where the crags of Arthur's Seat rose sharp and black into the sky. We ran in almost under the shadow of may be said to have just made her advent in literature as he passed away from among us. The that silent mass of hill. We drew nearer to the town; and then we saw before us long and waving lines of red careful and exquisite finish of her works-even the fire-the gas-lamps of a mighty street. We left the slightest of them-is likely to render them lasting majesty of the night outside, and were soon in the as well as popular. heart of the great city. Our journey was at an end. We sat down at the window of a Princes Street hotel. What in all the journey was there to equal the magic sight that lay before us? Beyond a gulf of blackness the old town of Edinburgh rose with a thousand points of fire into the clear sky of a summer night. The tall houses, with their eight or nine stories, had their innumerable windows ablaze; and the points of orange light shone in the still blue shadow until they seemed to form part of some splendid and enchanted palace built on the slopes of a lofty hill. And then beyond that we could see the great crags of the castle looming dark in the starlight, and we knew, rather than saw, that there were walls and turrets up there, cold and distant, looking down on the yellow glare of the city beneath. What was Cologne, and the coloured lamps of its steamers-as you see them cross the yellow waters of the Rhine when a full moon shines over the houses of Deutz-or what was Prague with its countless spires piercing the starlight, and its great bridge crossing over to the wooded heights of the Hradschin-compared to this magnificent spectacle in the noblest city of the world? The lights of the distant houses went out one by one. The streets became silent. Even the stars grew paler, but why was that? A faint light, golden and soft, began to steal along the Castle-hill; and the slow mild radiance touched the sharp slopes, the trees, and the great gray walls above, which were under the stars. 'Oh, my dear,' says Tita, quite gently to Bell, 'we have seen nothing like that, not even in your own country of the Lakes!' ANNE ISABELLA THACKERAY. MISS THACKERAY, eldest and only surviving daughter of the great novelist, has distinguished herself in the same department of literature. An English Country Sunday. The ideal Sunday should be spent at a country-house not many miles from London. We will call it Pleasance. You should come to it through fresh country lanes and commons, and across broad fields where the cows are which the garden might shew, and from which the doors browsing. Pleasance should have a great hall through should lead into a library, a dining-room, a drawingroom, all with windows looking across the lawns and fields and green distant slopes and acres far away, gently rising and falling. There should be scattered here and there flocks and herds to give life and animation to the green pastures and the still waters, and close at hand a few great trees under which one or two people are strolling and enjoying the early spring. All the mists and shadows of London life are left behind, and lie in wait for them when they cross the river; here is only a bright winter's morning, the song of birds piping among the bare branches and bushes, with sudden notes and house there should be a farm-yard, with live toys for cadences of exceeding sweetness. In the ideal countrygrown-up children: cocks that crow, hens sitting with their little bead-eyed yellow brood nestling round them. There should be cows that moo and shake their heads, them in the meadow; or stand meekly in their stalls and crop the grass with a pleasant crunch as you watch when milking-time has come, with their names, such as Cowslip, Daisy, Bluebell, painted over each pair of horns. In the morning, instead of hurrying through the streets and past the closed shops and gin-palaces, to a crowded church with high square pews and dingy windows and dust, and a fierce-looking pew-opener in a front, you wend your way quietly across the fields, where the air is sweet with coming spring, and you pass by narrow swinging gates and under the elm-trees to the church door. As you enter, though it seems dim at off many and many a landmark and memory. Last year only the old church was standing in its iron cage at the junction of the thoroughfares. There was the old painting of the lion and the unicorn hanging from the gallery; the light streaming through the brown saints over the communion-table. In after-life, the children may have seen other saints more glorious in crimson and in purple, nobler piles and arches, but none of them have ever seemed so near to heaven as the old Queen Anne building; and the wooden pew with its high stools, through which elbows of straw were protruding, where they used to kneel on either side of their aunt, watching with awestricken faces the tears as they came falling from the widow's sad eyes. . . . The sing-song of the hymn would flood the old church with its homely cadence: Prepare your glad voices; sang the little charity children; poor little Israelites, with blue stockings and funny woollen knobs to their fustian caps, rejoicing though their pastures were not green as yet, nor was their land overflowing with milk and honey. However, they sang praises for others, as all people do at times, thanks be to the merciful dispensation that allows us to weep, to work, to be comforted, and to rejoice with one another's hearts, consciously or unconsciously, as long as life exists. Fishing Village in Normandy. You cross the fields again on your way back to Pleasance. The cows have scarcely moved. A huge pig that was grazing under a tree has shifted a little, and instead of a side-view now presents its tail. The farm-yard, as you pass on your way to the house, is all alive in the mid-day sunshine. The Cochin-china cocks and hens, looking like enchanted princes and princesses, come ambling up to meet you, shaking out their soft golden plumage. The Spanish population, and the crève-cours, black robed, with crimson crests, are all in their respective countries, with beautiful sunset tints, purple, violet, green, and golden shewing among their feathers in the sunshine. There is great discussion going on among the Poles. Gallant generals, with spurs and cocked-hat and feathers, impatiently pace their confines; fiery young captains and aides-decamp seem to be laying down the law; while the ladies, who also look very important, and are dressed in a semi-military costume, evidently join in the pro-ness and vividness does not appear to wear out with ceedings with the keenest interest. As for the white ducks, what do they care for anything that is going on? Their Sunday is spent squatting on the grass in the field with the young Alderney calves. They see both sides of the world at once with their bright eyes, and do not trouble themselves for anybody. Some people like to go to church a second time; some go for a long walk in the afternoon; they have only to choose. Park, and lawn, and common, hills, and dales, lie before them; and though the distance begins to fade into the soft gray mist of an English March, yet even the mist is gentle and beautiful, and the air is moist and refreshing, and the brown turf yields under foot with a delightful spring. Old Kensington. We have all of us, in the course of life's journeys, sometimes lived for a little while in places which were wearisome and monotonous to us at the time; which had little to attract or to interest; we may have left them without regret, never even wishing to return. But yet, as we have travelled away, we may have found that, through some subtle and unconscious attraction, sights, sounds, and peculiarities which we thought we had scarcely noticed, seem to be haunting us, as though unwilling to let us escape. And this peculiar distinctivetime and distance. The pictures are like those of a magic lantern, and come suddenly out of the dimness and darkness, starting into life when the lamp is lighted by some chance association; so clearly and sharply defined and coloured, that we can scarcely believe that they are only reflections from old slides which have been lying in our store for years past. Petiport in Normandy, a dull little fishing-town upon the coast, stands almost opposite to Ryde in the Isle of Wight. The place is quite uninteresting, the district is not beautiful, but broad and fertile, and sad and pleasant together. The country-folks are high-spirited and some times gay, but usually grave, as people are who live ty the sea. They are a well-grown stately race, goodmannered, ready and shrewd in their talk and their dealings; they are willing to make friends, but they are at the same time reserved and careful of what they say. English people are little known at Petiport-one or two A quarter of a century ago the shabby tide of progress had stayed at the Château de Tracy 'dans le temps,' they had not spread to the quiet old suburb where Lady told me. But the strangers who came to lodge in the Sarah Francis's brown house was standing, with its many place for the sake of the sea-bathing and the fine sands, windows dazzling as the sun travelled across the old-were from Caen and Bayeux for the most part, and only fashioned house-tops to set into a distant sea of tenements remained during a week or two. and echoing life. The roar did not reach the old house. The children could listen to the cawing of the rooks, to the echo of the hours, as they struck on from one day to another, vibrating from the old brown tower of the church. At night the strokes seemed to ring more slowly than in the day. The church clock is silent now, but the rooks caw on undisturbed from one spring to another in the old Kensington suburb. There are tranquil corners still, and sunny silent nooks, and ivy wreaths growing in the western sun; and jessamines and vinetrees, planted by a former generation, spreading along the old garden walls. But every year the shabby stream of progress rises and engulfs one relic or another, carrying Except just on fête-days and while the bathing time lasted, everything was very still at Petiport. Sometimes all the men would go away together in their boats, leaving the women and children alone in the village. I was there after the bathing season was over, and before the first fishing fleet left. The fishermen's wives were all busy preparing provisions, making ready, sewing at warm clothes, and helping to mend the nets before their husbands' departure. I could see them hard at work through the open doors, as I walked up the steep little village street. Five o'clock on a fine Sunday-western light streaming along the shore, low cliffs stretching away on either side, with tufted grasses and thin straggling flowers growing from the loose arid soil, far-away promontories, flashing and distant shores, which the tides have not yet overlapped, all shining in the sun. The waves swell steadily inwards, the foam sparkles when the ripples meet the sands. The horizon is solemn dark blue, but a great streak of light crosses the sea; three white sails gleam, so do the white caps of the peasant women and the wings of the sea-gulls as they go swimming through the air. Holiday people are out in their Sunday clothes. They go strolling along the shore, or bathing and screaming to each other in the waters. The countrymen wear their blue smocks of a darker blue than the sea, and they walk by their wives and sweethearts in their gaycoloured Sunday petticoats. A priest goes by; a grand lady in frills, yellow shoes, red jacket, fly-away hat, and a cane. Her husband is also in scarlet and yellow. Then come more women and Normandy caps flapping, gossiping together, and baskets, and babies, and huge umbrellas. M. LOCKHART, late captain 92d Highlanders, has written two popular novels-Doubles and Quits and Fair to See. JOHN SAUNDERS is author of Guy Waterman, One Against the World, and Israel Mort, Overman. The last has a rough strength and force which fixes the attention of the reader : Israel Mort is a miner, who raises himself to be successively overman, manager, and owner of a mine. MR JAMES PAYN has written several excellent works of fiction-Lost Sir Massingberd, At Her Mercy, The Best of Husbands, Walter's Word, Fallen Fortunes, By Proxy, &c. MR R. FRANCILLON is author of Olympia, Pearl and Emerald, A Dog and his Shadow. AUGUSTUS GEORGE SALA-EDWARD JENKINS- One of the best imitators of Dickens was GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA (born in London in MRS MACQUOID-HESBA STRETTON. 1828), whose contributions to Household Words MRS KATHARINE S. MACQUOID has written were highly amusing, and scarcely distinguishable many novels, but never surpassed her first, Hester from those of his model. As special correspondKirton, a story containing fine sketches of char-ent for the Daily Telegraph, Mr Sala has thrown acter. Her other works are-Diane, The Evil Eye, Petty, My Story, Lost Rose, &c.; also a pleasant volume, Through Normandy (1874).— HESBA STRETTON is author of several tales-The Doctor's Dilemma, Hester Morley's Promise, &c., and some excellent stories for children. off innumerable sketches of life and public events in foreign countries-in France, Italy, Spain, Russia, and America. A series of papers in the Cornhill Magazine (since published in one volume) on Hogarth, display familiarity with art as well as with history and general literature, and constitute perhaps the most finished of Mr FLORENCE MARRYAT—ELIZABETH WETHERELL Sala's works. He is emphatically a ready writer -SARAH TYTLER-C. C. FRASER-TYTLER- &c. ELIZABETH WETHERELL has written a and traveller, at home in most countries and most phases of life. The written with a moral purpose-Ginx's Baby, Two stories by MR EDWARD JENKINS were 1870; and The Devil's Chain, 1875. former exposes some of the defects in our social and charitable institutions, while the latter assails the demon of intemperance, but is overcharged with horrors and painful incidents. Mr Jenkins from Canada about fifteen years ago. He is now is the son of a clergyman who came to London one of the members of parliament for Dundee— an active and liberal public man. littérateurs-poet, novelist, art-critic, traveller, One of the most versatile and indefatigable WALTER THORNBURY (1828-1876), son of a biographer, &c.-between 1845 and 1876, was MR London solicitor. His poetical works were-Lays and Legends of the New World, 1851; Songs of Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1857; and Legendary and Historic Ballads, 1875. His novels form 1858; True as Steel, 1863; Wildfire, 1864; a longer list: Every Man his own Trumpeter, Haunted London, 1865; Tales for the Marines, 1865; Greatheart, 1866; The Vicar's Courtship, 1869; and tales and sketches contributed to Chambers's Journal, Household Words, and All the Year Round. For some years Mr Thornbury was art-critic to the Athenæum, and he produced two volumes of sketches of British Artists from Hogarth to Turner, besides a Life of Turner, in two volumes, written under the supervision of Mr Ruskin. His productions as a tourist and traveller consist of two volumes entitled Art and Nature at Home and Abroad, Life in Turkey, Among the most successful portrayers of actual Life in Spain, and Experiences in the United life is MR RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE, States. In general literature, besides innumerable author of The Maid of Sker, Lorna Doone, Alice light articles, he wrote Monarchs of the Main, Lorraine, Cripps the Carrier, &c. LAWRENCE W. I three volumes, being a history of the Buccaneers; R. D. BLACKMORE-L. W. M. LOCKHART-JOHN Shakspere's England during the Reign of Elizabeth, &c. He worked on till within a few days of his death, which came suddenly; the result,' adds the Athenæum, ' of over-brainwork.' Another victim to excessive literary labour and anxiety was MR MORTIMER COLLINS, who died in 1876 at the early age of forty-nine. He was author of several novels-Sweet Anne Page, 1868; The Ivory Gate, 1869; Vivian Romance, 1870; Marquis and Merchant, 1871; &c. He published also a volume of Poems, and latterly was a regular and popular contributor to Punch. HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS. SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON. At the close of the French revolutionary war, countless multitudes were drawn from every part of Europe to Paris to witness the meeting of the allied sovereigns in 1814. Among them was 'one young man who had watched with intense interest the progress of the war from his earliest years, and who, having hurried from his paternal roof in Edinburgh on the first cessation of hostilities, then conceived the first idea of narrating its events, and amidst its wonders inhaled that ardent spirit, that deep enthusiasm which, sustaining him through fifteen subsequent years of travel and study, and fifteen more of composition, has at length realised itself in the present history.' The work thus characteristically referred to by its author, MR (afterwards SIR) ARCHIBALD ALISON, is The History of Europe, from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, ten volumes, 1839-42, and which has since, in various forms, gone through nine editions. It has been translated into all European languages, and even into Arabic and Hindustani. A work so popular must have substantial merits, or must supply a want universally felt. Having visited most of the localities described, many interesting minute touches and graphic illustrations have been added by the historian from personal observation, or the statements of eye-witnesses on the spot; and he appears to have been diligent and conscientious in consulting written authorities. The defects of the work are, however, considerable. The style is often careless, turgid, and obscure; and the high Tory prejudices of the author, with certain opinions on the currency question-the influence of which he greatly exaggerates-render him often a tedious as well as unsafe guide. His moral reflections and deductions are mostly superfluous, and quite unworthy of the author of the narrative portions of the history.* In a few instances he has been accused by his own Conservative friends of extracting military details from questionable sources, and forming rash judgments on questions of strategy. Thus he maintains that, in the great campaign of 1815, Napoleon 'surprised, out-manœuvred, and out-generaled' both Wellington and Blucher-a position which does not seem well supported, but which at least * Mr Disraeli touches sarcastically on these defects: 'Finally, Mr Rigby impressed on Coningsby to read the Quarterly Review with great attention; and to make himself master of Mr Wordy's History of the Late War in twenty volumes, a capital work, which proves that Providence was on the side of the Tories.'Coningsby, Book III. c. 2. evinces the historian's determination to think for himself, and not to sacrifice his convictions to party. In describing the causes which led to the French Revolution, he also enumerates fairly the enormous wrongs and oppressions under which the people laboured; but with singular inconsistency he adds, that the immediate source of the convulsion was the spirit of innovation which overspread France. Carlyle more correctly assigns famine as the 'immediate' cause the unprecedented scarcity and dearness of provisions; but, of course, a variety of other elements entered into the formation of that great convulsion. Some of the features of the Revolution are well drawn by Alison. The small number of persons who perpetrated the atrocities in Paris, and the apathy of the great body of the citizens, he thus describes : The French Revolutionary Assassins. The small number of those who perpetrated these murders in the French capital under the eyes of the legis lature, is one of the most instructive facts in the history of revolutions. Marat had long before said, that with two hundred assassins at a louis a day, he would govern France, and cause three hundred thousand heads to fall; and the events of the 2d September seemed to justify the opinion. The number of those actually engaged in the massacres did not exceed three hundred; and twice as many more witnessed and encouraged their proceedings; yet this handful of men governed Paris thousand armed warriors afterwards strove in vain to and France, with a despotism which three hundred effect. The immense majority of the well-disposed citizens, divided in opinion, irresolute in conduct, and dispersed in different quarters, were incapable of arresting a band of assassins, engaged in the most atrocious cruelties of which modern Europe has yet afforded an example-an important warning to the strenuous and the good in every succeeding age, to combine for defence the moment that the aspiring and the desperate have begun to agitate the public mind, and never to trust that mere smallness of numbers can be relied on for preventing is not less worthy of observation, that these atrocious reckless ambition from destroying irresolute virtue. It fifty thousand men were enrolled in the National Guard, massacres took place in the heart of a city where above and had arms in their hands; a force specifically destined to prevent insurrectionary movements, and support, under all changes, the majesty of the law. They were so divided in opinion, and the revolutionists composed so large a part of their number, that nothing whatever was done by them, either on the 10th August, when the king was dethroned, or the 2d September, when the prisoners were massacred. This puts in a forcible point of view the weakness of such a force, which, being composed of citizens, is distracted by their feelings, and actuated by their passions. In ordinary times, it may exhibit an imposing array, and be adequate to the repression of the smaller disorders; but it is paralysed generally fails at the decisive moment when its aid is by the events which throw society into convulsions, and most required. Another specimen of the author's style of summary and reflection may be given : The Reign of Terror. Thus terminated the Reign of Terror, a period fraught with greater political instruction than any of equal duration which has existed since the beginning of the world. In no former period had the efforts of the people so completely triumphed, or the higher orders been so thoroughly crushed by the lower. The throne had been |