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My growing senseless of oth'rs woes,
My disregard for young or old,
All whisper, as the long days close,
I'm growing cold.

My growing love of filthy lucre,

My growing skeptical and wise, My growing fond of whist and eucre, My growing scorn of love-lit eyes: My growing hate of loveliness,

My growing love of stocks and gold,
Teach me that I'm growing hard-yes,
I'm growing cold.

My growing love of winter weather;
My distaste for summer flowers;
My hate of two in bed together;
My love of solitary hours;
My growing ap'thy for an heir;
My growing reckless and bold,
Tell me, alas! too plainly-ah!

I'm growing cold.

I see it in the way I scan,

den down whenever their precarious propping gives way. Revolution is a genuine leveler: "small and great" meet on equal terms in its wide grave; and persons, whose names would otherwise have never met in any other document than a directory, are coupled together continually, divide influence, have their respective partisans, and require the stern alembic of death to separate them, and to settle their true positions in the general history of the nation and the world.

Nothing, indeed, has tended to deceive and mystify the public mind more than the arbitrary conjunction of names. The yok. ing together of men in this manner has produced often. a lamentable confusion as to their respective intellects and characteristics. Sometimes a mediocrist and a man of genius are thus coupled together; and what is lost by the one is gained by the

My lover's face when oaths she'd give; other, while the credit of the whole firm

I feel it in my pulseless hand,

When e'er for me, she vows to live; I see it in my cold adieus,

While yet her hand in mine I hold; I see it in my stoic views,

I'm growing cold.

Ah, me! my shattered hopes breathe,.
The tale, alas! is true, too true!
The Future, has nothing to bequeath.
The Past, has given all to you.
E'en Flattery's honeyed words declare,
The secret she would fain withhold,
And tells me in "How warm you are,"
I'm growing cold.
P. OF P.

DECEMBER, 1863.

is essentially impaired. Sometimes men of equal, though most dissimilar intellect, are, in defiance of criticism, clashed into as awkward a pair as ever stood up together on the floor of a country dancingschool. Sometimes, for purposes of moral or critical condemnation, two of quite different degrees of criminality are tied neck and heels together, as in the dread undistinguishing "marriages of the Loire." Sometimes the conjunction of unequal names is owing to the artifice of friends, who, by perpetually naming one favorite author along with another of established fame, hope to convince th unwary public that they are on a level. Sometimes they are produced by the pride of ambition, or by the carelessness of caprice, of the men or authors themselves. Sometimes they are the deliberate result of a shallow, though pretentious criticism, which sees and specifies resemblances, One obvious effect of the upheavings of where, in reality, there are none. a revolution is to develope latent power, times they spring from the purest accidents and to deliver into light and influence of common circumstances, common cause cast down and crushed giants, such as or common abode, as if a crow and a Danton. But another result is the undue thrush must be kindred because seated prominence given by convulsion and anar- on one hedge. From these, and similar, chy to essentially small and meagre spirits, causes, have arisen such combinations as who, like little men lifted up from their Dryden and Pope, Voltaire and Rousseau, feet, in the pressure of a crowd, are sur Cromwell and Napoleon, Southey and Coleprised into sudden exaltation, to be trod-ridge, Rogers and Campbell, Hunt and

[From Hogg's Instructor.]

THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS, MARAT, ROBESPIERRE, AND DANTON.

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

Some

Hazlitt, Hall and Foster, Paine and Cob-, him. The wild beast, when full, sleeps; bett, Byron and Shelley, or Robespierre but Marat was never full-the cry from and Danton.

the "worm that dieth not," within him being still, "Give, give," and the flame in his bosom coming from that fire which is "never to be quenched."

In the first histories of the French RevoJution, the names of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton, occur continually together as a triumvirate of terror, and the impression If, as Carlyle seems sometimes to inis left that the three were of one order, sinuate, earnestness be in itself a divine each a curious compound of the maniac quality, then should Marat haye a high and the monster. They walk on, linked place in the gallery of heroes; for if an in chains to common execution; although earnest angel be admirable, chiefly for his it were as fair to tie up John Ings, Judge earnestness, should not an earnest imp be Jeffreys, and Hercules Furens. A some-admirable, too? If a tiger be respectable what severer discrimination has of late from his unflinching oneness of object, unloosed Marat from the other two, and should not a toad, whose sole purpose is -permitted Robespierre and Danton to walk to spit sincere venoni, crawl amid general in couples, simply for the purpose of consideration, too? If a conflagration of pointing more strongly the contrast be- infernal fire be on the whole a useful and tween the straight-laced demonism of the splendid spectacle, why not honour one of one, and the fierce and infuriated man-its bluest and most lurid flames, licking, hood of the other. At least, it is for this with peculiar pertinacity, at some proud purpose that we have ranked their names city "sham?" But we suspect, that over together. Carlyle's imagination the quality of great Of Marat, too, however, we are temptedness exerts more power than tha of earto say a single word-" Marah," might he nestness. A great regal-seeming ruffian better have been called, for he was a water fascinates him, while the petty scoundrel of bitterness. He reminds us of one of is trampled on. His soul rises to mate those small, narrow, inky pools we have with the tiger in his power, but his foot seen in the wilderness, which seem fitted kicks the toad before it, as it is lazily to the size of a suicide, and waiting in dragging its loathsomeness through the gloomy expectation of his advent. John wet garden beds. The devils, much adFoster remarked, of some small "malig-mired as they stood on the burning marl, nant" or other, that he had never seen so lose cast with him when, entering the palmuch of the "essence of devil in so little a ace of Pandemonium, they shrink into compass." Marat was a still more com- miniatures of their former selves. Mirapact concentration of that essence. He beau, with Carlyle, is a cracked angel was the prussic acid among the family of Marat, a lame and limping fiend. poisons. His unclean face, his tiny figure, Some one has remarked how singular his gibbering form, his acute but narrow it is that all the heroes of the French soul, were all possessed by an infernal Revolution were ugly. It seems as curious unity and clearness of purpose. On the to us that they were either very large or great clock of Revolution-while Danton very little persons. Danton was a Titan; struck the reverberating hours-while Mirabeau, though not so tall, was large, Robespierre crept cautiously but surely, and carried a huge head on his shoulders; like the minute-hand, to his object-Marat whereas Marat and Napoleon were both was the everlasting "tick-tick" of the small men. But the French found their smaller hand, counting, like a death characteristic love of extremes gratified watch, the quick seconds of murder. He in all of them. Even vice and cruelty never rested; he never slumbered, or they will not admire, unless sauced by walked through his part; he fed but to some piquant oddity, and served up in refresh himself for revolutionary action; some extraordinary dish. A little, lean he slept but to breath himself for fresh corporal, like Napoleon conquering the displays of revolutionary fury. Milder Brobdignagian marshals and emperors of mood, or lucid interval, there was none in Europe, and issuing from his nut-like fist

the laws of nations; a grinning death's) Yet, even to Marat, let us be merciful, if head, like Voltaire, frightening Christen- we must also be just. A monster he was dom from its propriety, were stimulating to not, nor even a madman; but a mannikin, intoxication. But their talent was gigantic, of some energy and acuteness, soured and though their persons were not; whereas, crazed to a preternatural degree, and whose Marat's mind was as mean, and his habits fury was aggravated by pure fright. He as low, as his stature was small, and his was such a man as the apothecary in looks disgustful. Here, then, was the "Romeo and Juliet" would have become requisite French ragout in all its putrid in a revolution; but he, instead of dealing perfection. A scarecrow, suddenly fleshed, out small doses of death to love-sick but with the heart omitted-his rags flut-tailors and world-wearied seamstresses, tering, and his arms vibrating, in a furious rose by the force of desperation to the wind, with inflamed noddle, and small, summit of revolutionary power, cried out keen, blood-shot eyes-became, for a season, the idol of the most refined and enlightened capital in Europe.

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for 80,000 heads, and died of the assaults of a lovely patriotic maiden, as of a sunstroke. And yet Shakspeare has a deHad we traced, as with a lover's eye, cided penchant for the caitiff wretch he so the path of some beautiful flash of light graphically paints, and has advertised his ning, passing in its terrible loveliness over shop to the ends of the earth. So let us the still landscape, and seen it omitting pity the poor vial of prussic acid dashed the church spire, which seemed proudly down so suddenly, and by so noble a hand, pointing to it as it passed-sparing the old whom mortals call Marat. Nature refuses oak, which was bending his sacrificial not to appropriate to her bosom her spilt head before its coming-tonching not the poisons, any more than her shed blooms tall pine into a column of torch-like flame, -appropriates, however, only to mix them but darting its arrow of wrath upon the with kindlier elements, and to turn them scare-crow, in the midst of a bean-field, to nobler account. So let us, in humble and, by the one glare of grandeur, reveal-imitation, collect, and use medicinally, the ing its "looped and ragged similitude to a scattered drops of poor acrid Marat. man, its aspiring beggary, and contorted weakness-it would have presented us with a fit though faint image of the beautiful avenger, the holy homicide, the daughter of Nemesis by Apollo-Charlotte Corday-smiting the aniserable Marat. Shaft from heaven's inmost quiver, why wert thou spent upon such a work? Beautiful, broad-winged bird of Jove, why didst thou light on such a quarry? Why not have ranged over Europe, in search of more potent and pernicious tyrants, or, at least, have run thy beak into the dark heart of Robespierre? Why did a steel, as sharp and bright as that of Brutus, when he rose "refulgent from the stroke," pierce only a vile insect on the hem of a mantle, and not at once a mantle and a man? Such questions are vain; for not by chance, but by decree, it came about that a death from a hand by which a demi-god would have desired to die, befell a demi-man, and that now this strange birth of nature shines on Robespierre reminds us much of one of us forever, in the light of Charlotte Cor-the old Covenanters. Let not our readers day's dagger and last triumphant smile. startle at this seemingly strange assertion.

Marat was essentially of the canaillebad and exaggerated specimen of the class, whom his imperfect education only contributed to harden and spoil. Robespierre and Danton belong, by birth and training, by feelings and habits, to the middle rank-Robespierre sinking, in the end, below it, through his fanaticism, and Danton rising above it, through his genius and power. Both were "limbs of the law," though the one might be called a great toe, and the other a huge Briarean arm; and, without specifying other resemblances, while Marat lost his temper and almost his reason in the mélée of the Revolution, both Robespierre and Danton preserved to the last their self-possession, their courage, and the full command of their intellectual faculties, amidst the reelings of the wildest of revolutionary earthquakes, and the thick darkness of the deepest canopy of revolutionary night.

We mean, the worst species of the old,

That Robespierre had at the first any

Covenantor a specimen of whom is faith-appetite for blood, is not now asserted by fully drawn by Sir Walter in Burley, and his bitterest foe. That he ever even acin our illustrious clansman-the "gifted quired such a monstrous thirst, seems to Gilfillan." Such beings there did exist, us very unlikely. His only thought would and probably exist still, who united a firm be, at the tidings of another death, “ Anbelief in certain religious dogmas to the other sacrifice to my idea; another obstacle most woful want of moral principle and lifted out of its way." Nero's wish that human feeling, and were ready to fight his enemies had but "one neck,” was, we what they deemed God's cause with the think, comparatively a humane wish. It weapons of the devil. Their cruelties showed that he had no delight in the diswere cool and systematic; they asked a gusting details, but only in the secure result blessing on their assassinations, as though of their destruction. He is the unnatural savages were to begin and end their can- monster who protracts the fierce luxury→ nibal meals with prayer. Such men were who sips his deep cup of blood linger hopelessly steeled against every sentiment ingly, that he may know the separate of humanity. Mercy to their enemies flavor of every separate drop, and who, seemed to them treason against God No like the Cyclops in the cave, leaves some adversary could escape from them. A select victim to the last, as a bonne bouche tiger may feed to repletion, or be disarmed to his sated appetite-"Noman shall be the by drowsiness; but who could hope to aplast to be devoured." Robespierre, no pease the ghost of a tiger, did such walk? more than Nero, was up to such delicately Ghosts of tigers, never slumbering, never infernal cruelty. sleeping, cold in their eternal hunger, pursuing relentlessly their devouring way, were the religious fanatics-the Dalziels and Claverhouses, as well as the Burleys and Mucklewraths, of the seventeenth century.

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Carlyle frequently admits Robespierre's sincerity, and yet rates him as little other than a sham. We account for this as we did in the case of Marat. He is regarded as a SMALL sincerity; and the sincerity of a small man contracts, to Carlyle's eye, To the same order of men belonged something of the ludicrous air in which a Robespierre, modified of course, in char Lilliputian warrior, shouldering his straw. acter and belief, by the influences of his sized musket, and firing his lead-drop bul period. The miscalled creed of the phi- lets, seemed to Gulliver. Bravo, my little losophers of France in the eighteenth hero!" shouts the Titan, with a loud laugh, century, which, with many of themselves, as he sees him, with "sky-blue breeches," was a mere divertisement to their intel-patronizing the houseless idea of a divine Lects, or a painted screen for their vices, sunk deep into the heart of Robespierre, and became a conviction and a reality with him. So far it was well; but, alas! the creed was heartless and immoral, as well as false. Laying down a wide object, it permitted every license of vice or cruelty in the paths through which it was to be gained. Robespierre became, accordingly, the worst of all sinners—a sinner upon system-a political Antinomian, glorying in his shame, to whom blood itself became at last an abstraction and a shadow; the guillotine only a tremendous shuttle, weaving a well-ordered political web; and the tidings of the fall of a thousand heads agreeably indifferent, as to the farmer the news of a cleared hay or harvest field.

being, "pop away at the tottering heavens, with that new nine-pin of thine; but why is there not rather a little nice doll of an image in those showy inexpressibles, to draw out, and complete the conversion of thy people? and why not say, 'These be thy gods, 0 toy and toad-worshiping France!" To bring him to respect, while he admits, the sincerity, we would need to disprove the smallness of our Arras advocate. Now, compared to truly great men, such as Cromwell-or to extraordinary men, such as Napoleon, Mirabeau, and Danton-Robespierre was small enough. But surely it was no pigmy, whose voicecalm, dispassioned, and articulate-ruled lunatic France; who preserved an icy cool. ness amid a land of lava; who mastered,

though it was only for a moment, a steed (" eye," like a shield of sight, broad, pierclike the Revolution; and who threw from ing, and looking straight forward. His his pedestal, though it was by assailing in intellect was clear, intuitive, commanding, an unguarded hour, a statue so colossal as incapable of the theoretical, and abhorrent Danton's. Rigid, Roman-like purpose of the visionary. He was practical in keen, if uninspired, vision-the thousand mind, although passionate in temperament, eyes of an Argus, if not the head of a Jove, and figurative in speech. His creed was or the fist of a Hercules-perseverance, atheism, not apparently wrought out by honesty, and first-rate business qualities-personal investigation, or even sought for we must allow to Robespierre, unless we as an opiate to conscience, but carelessly account for his influence by Satanic pos- accepted, as the one he found fashionable session, and say-either no dunce aut Dia- at the time. His conduct, too, was merely bolus. Carlyle attributes his defeat and the common licentiousness of his country, downfall to his pertinacious pursuit of a taking a larger shape from his larger conshallow logic to its utmost consequences. stitution and stronger passions. His politis Probably he thus expresses, in his own cal faith was less definite and strict, but way, the view we have already sought to more progressive and practical, and more indicate. Robespierre was the sincere, accommodated to circumstances than consistent, unclean apostle of an unclean Robespierre's. His patriotism was as sinsystem-a system of deism in theology-cere as Robespierre's, but hung about him of libertineism in morals-of mobocracy in more voluminous folds. It was a toga in politics-of a "gospel according to Jean- not a tunic. A sort of lazy greatness, Jacques"-a gospel of "liberty, equality, which seemed, at a distance, criminal infraternity”—a liberty ending in general difference, characterized him when in rebondage, an equality terminating in the pose. His cupidity was as Cyclopean as despotism of unprincipled talent, a frater- his capacity. Nothing less than a large nity dipping its ties in blood. With faith-bribe could fill such a hand. No common ful, unfaltering footstep, through good re- goblet could satisfy such a maw. Greedy port and bad report, he followed the of money, for money's sake, he was not. genius of revolution in all her devious, He merely wished to live, and all Paris dark, dangerous, or triumphant paths, till she at last turned round in anger, like a dogged fiend, and rent him in pieces.

office of Camille Desmoulins," would have saved this vast needy patriot-this "giant worm of fire," from the disgrace of taking supplies from Louis, and then laughing a wild laughter at his provider, as he gnawed on at the foundations of his

knew what he meant by living. And with all the royal sops to Cerberus, he remained Cerberus still. Never had he made the In dealing with Robespierre, we feel, pretensions of a Lord Russell, or Algernon more than with Marat, that we are in con- Sidney, and we know how they were subtact with an intelligent human being, not sidized. His "poverty but not his will an oddity, and mere splinter of a man. consented." Had he lived in our days, a His idea led and at last dragged him, but public subscription-a "Danton testimodid not devour nor possess him. His nial, all subscriptions to be handed in to the cruelty was more a policy, and less a raging passion; and his great moral error lay in permitting a theory, opposed to his original nature. to overbear his moral sense, to drain him of humanity, and to precipitate him to his doom. If he had resisted the devil, he would have fled from him. In rising from Robespierre to Danton, In fact, careless greatness, without prinwe feel like one coming up from the lower ciple, was the key to Danton's merits and plains of Sicily into its western coast-the faults-his power and weakness. Well country of the Cyclopes, with their one did Madame Roland call him "Sardanaeye and gigantic stature; their courage, palus." When he found a clover field, he toil, ferocity, impiety, and power. Danton rolled in it. When he had nothing to do, did tower Titanically above his fellows, he did nothing; when he saw the neces and, with little of the divine, was the sity of doing something immediately, strongest of the earth-born. He had an he could condense ages of action into a

throne.

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