HOW ESOP BROUGHT BACK HIS MASTER'S WIFE. HE wife of Xanthus was well born and wealthy, but so proud and domineering withal as if her fortune and her extraction had entitled her to the breeches. She was horribly bold, meddling and expensive, as that sort of women commonly are; easily put off the hooks, and monstrous hard to be pleased again; perpetually chattering at her husband, and upon all occasions of controversy threatening him to be gone. It came to this at last-that, Xanthus's stock of patience being quite spent, he took up a resolution of going another way to work with her, and of trying a course of severity, since there was nothing to be done with her by kindness. But this experiment, instead of mending the matter, made it worse, for upon harder usage the woman grew desperate and went away from him in earnest. She was as bad, 'tis true, as bad might well be, and yet Xanthus had a kind of hankering for her still; besides that, there was matter of interest in the case; and a pestilent tongue she had that the poor husband dreaded above all things under the sun. But the man was willing, however, to make the best of a bad game, and so his wits and his friends were set at work, in the fairest manner that might be, to get her home again. But there was no good to be done in it, it seems; and Xanthus was so visibly out of humor upon it that Esop in pure pity bethought himself immediately how to comfort him. "Come, master," says he; "pluck up a good heart, for I have a project in my noddle that shall bring my mistress to you back again with as good a will as ever she went from you.' What does my Æsop but away immediately to the market, among the butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, confectioners, etc., for the best of everything that was in season. Nay, he takes private people in his way too, and chops into the very house of his mistress's relations as by mistake. This way of proceeding set the whole town agog to know the meaning of all this bustle, and Esop innocently told everybody that his master's wife was run away from him and he had married another; his friends up and down were all invited to come and make merry with him, and this was to be the wedding-feast. The news flew like lightning, and happy were they that could carry the first tidings of it to the runaway lady; for everybody knew Esop to be a servant in that family. It gathered in the rolling, as all other stories do in the telling, especially where women's tongues and passions have the spreading of them. The wife, that was in her nature violent and unsteady, ordered her chariot to be made ready immediately, and away she posts back to her husband, falls upon him with outrages of looks and language, and | How the dirt right and left o'er the hedges And hark to the dirge that the sad driver You bumpkin who stare at your brother sings: "Rattle his bones over the stones; conveyed, Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid, He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns !" And be joyful to think when by death you're To the grave with his carcase as fast as you But a truce to this strain, for my soul it is can! "Rattle his bones over the stones; sad To think that a heart in humanity clad He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns !" Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end, What a jolting and creaking and splashing And depart from the light without leaving a THE REIGN OF TERROR. FROM THE DEATH OF DANTON TO THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (APRIL 10 TO JULY 29, 1794). FROM THE HISTORY OF EUROPE." HE professed object of the de- ! cemvirs was to establish a republic in France after the model of the ancients-to change the manners, the habits, the public spirit, of the country. Sovereignty in the people, magistrates without pride, citizens without vice, simplicity of manners, fraternity of relations, austerity of character, such were the basis on which their institutions were to rest. There was one objection to them-that they were utterly impracticable, from the character of the great body of mankind. To accomplish this object, it was indispensable to destroy the whole superior classes of society, to cut off all those who were pre-eminent among their neighbors either for fortune, rank, talent or acquirement. This was the end accordingly proposed in the indiscriminate massacres which they put in execution. And what would have been its consequence if completely carried into effect? To sink the whole human race to the level of the lowest classes and destroy everything which dignifies or adorns human nature. Such was the chimera which they followed through these oceans of blood. Politicians have no right, after such proceedings, to reproach religious enthusiasm with the reign of the saints or the approach of the millennium. In pursuance of these views, St. Just made a labored report on the general police of the commonwealth, in which he recapitulated all the fabulous stories of conspiracies against the republic, explaining them as efforts of every species of vice against the austere rule of the people, and concluding with holding out the necessity of the government striking without intermission till it had cut off all those whose corruption opposed itself to the establishment of virtue. "The foundation of all great institutions," said he, "is terror. Where would now have been an indulgent republic? We have opposed the sword to the sword, and its power is in consequence established. It has emerged from the storm, and its origin is like that of the earth out of the confusion of chaos, and of man who weeps in the hour of nativity." As a consequence of these principles, he proposed a general measure of proscription against all the nobles as the irreconcilable opponents of the Revolution. You will never," said he, satisfy the enemies of the people till you have re-established tyranny in all its horrors. They can never be at peace with you: you do not speak the same language; you will never understand each other. Banish them by an inexorable law: the universe may receive them, and the public safety is our justification." 66 He then proposed a decree which banished all the ex-nobles, all strangers, from Paris, the fortified towns and seaports of France, and declared outlawed whoever did not yield | organ of government in regulating public opin obedience in ten hours to the order. It was received with applause by the Convention, and passed, as all the decrees of government at that time, by acclamation. The Committee of Public Safety, now confident in its own strength and strong in the universal submission of France, decreed the disbanding of the revolutionary army raised to overawe the capital. At the same time, the situations of the different ministers were abolished and twelve committees appointed to carry on the details of government. These commissions, entirely appointed by the Committee of Public Safety and dependent on their will, were, in fact, nothing but the of fices in which they exercised their mighty and despotic powers. Shortly after, steps were taken to extinguish all the popular societies which did not immediately depend on the great parent club of the Jacobins. It was resolved at that society that they would no longer receive any deputation from bodies formed since the 10th of August or keep up any correspondence with them, and that a committee should be appointed to consider whether it should be maintained with those which were formed before that event. This measure, directed in an especial manner against the club of the Cordeliers, the centre of the influence of Danton, soon produced the desired effect. Intimidated by the destruction of the leaders of that great society, the whole other clubs in France, to avoid the coming storm, dissolved themselves; and in less than ten days after the promulgation of this resolution there remained no secondary club in France but those which were affiliated with the Jacobins at Paris, which thenceforward became the sole ion. It was next proposed to close the sittings of the Cordeliers, but this was unnecessary that club, once so terrible, rapidly declined, and soon died a natural death. The Jacobins, swayed with absolute power by the Committee of Public Safety, with their affiliated societies, alone remained of all the innumerable clubs which had sprung up in France. Thus on all sides the anarchy of revolution was destroying itself, and out of its ruins the stern and relentless despotism of a few political fanatics was wringing out of the heart's blood of France the last remnants of democratic fervor. Robespierre was the leader of this sect of fanatics, but he was associated in the committee with zealots more unpitiable or less disinterested than himself. These were St. Just and Couthon. The former exhibited the true features of gloomy fanaticism; a regular visage, dark and lank hair, a penetrating and severe look, a melancholy expression of countenance, revived the image of those desperate Scottish enthusiasts of whom modern genius has drawn so graphic a picture. Simple and unostentatious in his habits, austere in private and indefatigable in public, he was at twenty-five the most resolute because the most sincere of the decemvirs. A warm admirer of the republic, he was ever at his post in the committees and never wanting in resolution during his missions to the armies; enthusiastic in his passion for the multitude, he disdained, like Hebert, to imitate its vices or pander to its desires; steeled against every sentiment of pity, he demanded the execution of victims in the same manner as the supply of the armies. Proscriptions, like vic |