in the progressing movements of the times. His first attempts to make himself known, and to obtain a prominent position, were to a certain extent unsuccessful; and the rebuffs which he is said to have met with would have daunted the courage of many bolder men, and had the effect of driving them into a hopeless state either of mediocrity if not of insignificance.

took a most active part, and was alive to every movement which might serve to maintain and increase his reputation with a demoralized and savage people. He pronounced positively his opinion that the king ought to suffer death, that prison and exile were not sufficient punishments to meet his case, and that therefore he denounced him as a traitor to the French, and an enemy to humanity, and, as such, that he ought instantly to be condemned. He was, in fact, amongst the most violent and active of the revolutionary characters who had determined to sacrifice the monarch to the passions of the people, which he had, with them, striven to excite to a pitch closely akin to madness. At the close of the trial of Louis XVI., Robespierre accompanied his vote for the death of the king with a long comment, in which he said, he "demanded the death of a tyrant, and in him the death of all royalty."

On the occasion of a deputation of the citizens of the United States, then residing in Paris, having waited upon the national assembly, to request that they might be allowed to have places reserved for them at the great festival of federation, in the year 1790, Robespierre took part in the debate which this application occasioned; but the assembly would not listen to his oration, and he was put down by incessant uproar. This disgrace, instead of crushing him, only served to render him more determined to rise to a lofty though disgraceful emi- Within the limits of this brief narrative of the nence, and he took accurate note of all those life and career of Robespierre it is impossible to who had been the most strenuous in opposing relate all the events, during the "reign of terror," him; and bitterly did he make them feel in which he was actively engaged, and how cruel their conduct towards him in after time, when and vindictive was his revenge whilst he had the he had the opportunities and the facilities opened power to retaliate on those who had ever offended to him for gratifying his revengeful disposition. him: suffice it to say, that pity never visited his heart, Even after this event he scarcely ever attempted that he sacrificed all that he had the power to visit to address the assembly without being interrupted; with the punishment of death, and that during his yet he struggled on, and never slackened either ascendancy it is scarcely possible to enumerate the in zeal or boldness. But, notwithstanding all his number of the victims who were slain under the preexertions, little or no success attended them tence of establishing equality and liberty. But in whilst Mirabeau lived; but no sooner had death 1794 his race was run: the tide of popular favour removed him, than Robespierre seized the oppor- turned against him, his unsparing cruelty recoiled tunity to make one more effort to rise into popu- upon himself, and, though he struggled as a larity; and he was at length successful. During drowning man to avert the doom that hung the time that he had been kept in the background, over him, and for a brief interval almost flathe had been improving the supposition which had tered himself that he should weather the storm, got abroad that he was perfectly disinterested in yet his enemies prevailed. The Hotel de Ville, to his opinions and dealings, and that he was so which he had been carried in triumph, was atthoroughly incorruptible that no offer could pur- tacked by the men whom his enemies had excited chase him off from the purposes upon which his against him, who, shouting "Long live the conmind was bent. At this moment he turned this vention," pressed on to take Robespierre and supposition into a general feeling of certainty, several of his associates as their captives. Finding and acted in such a manner as to lead the people that all was now lost, this unhappy man, who had of France to believe that he was sincere in his in- through life violated every law of God and man, tention to promote their welfare. He became now attempted to close his career by his own an active and leading member of the infamous hand: "he put a pistol into his mouth to blow Jacobin club, which overawed the proceedings of out his brains; but in pulling the trigger he the national assembly, and in the end produced changed the direction of the piece, and the ball all the frightful calamities which overwhelmed broke his under jaw, without touching any vital France. Recommending continually, in his pub-part." Having undergone the form of a mock lic addresses, disinterestedness and a philosophical calmness, he so wormed himself into the good opinion of the democratic faction, that they looked up to him as their leader and head, and swore to defend his life with their own lives, if it should become endangered. Although, however, his popularity had thus become established, he had yet to contend against many difficulties, and to encounter the opposition of several of the most prominent revolutionary parties; but, possessed of considerable tact, and bringing his legal acuteness to bear continually upon the circumstances which were most calculated to work a disastrous effect upon his ambitious views, he resisted them one and all, and laughed to scorn the denunciations and the threatenings of his most violent opponents. The course of events which hurried on the murder of Louis XVI. were unparalleled in the history of crime; but in those events Robespierre

trial, he suffered, with twenty others, by the same guillotine which he had caused to fall upon the necks of so many of his victims, on the following day, amidst the execrations of the assembled populace; and in his last hours he suffered the most excruciating tortures, from the wound in his face, which he had himself inflicted, and which was cruelly aggravated by the brutality of his executioner, before the fatal blow terminated his career in this world, and ushered him into the presence of his God.

No character of the French revolution has obtained a greater notoriety than the subject of this memoir. He was a man stained with the deepest crimes, the avowed enemy of God and man. Religion he set at nought; and, though at one time he avowed his belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, yet he appeared to glory in doing despite to his will, and in insulting his high and holy

name. History has to speak of but few such men as Robespierre; but all and every one who lived as he lived, without reference to salvation or to eternity, have ever been persecutors of their race, and shew to posterity that a man without the fear of God is never the benefactor of his fellow-men, and that knowledge without religion is only a power for evil, and merely calculated to aid the evil passions of mankind in their progress towards the furtherance and completion of the designs of Satan, the master-spirit of men.

AVALANCHES OF THE JUNGFRAU*.

X.

avalanche down thunders. Another fall of still greater depth ensues, over a second similar castellated ridge or reef in the face of the mountain, with an awful majestic slowness, and a tremendous crash, in its concussion awakening again the reverberating peals of thunder. Then the torrent roars on to another smaller fall, till at length it reaches a mighty groove of snow and ice, like the slide down the Pilatus, of which Playfair has given so powerfully graphic a description. Here its progress is slower, and last of all you listen to the roar of the falling fragments, as they drop, out of sight, with a dead weight into the bottom of the gulf, to rest there for ever. Now, figure to yourself a cataract like that of Niagara (for I should judge the volume of one of ORDINARILY, in a sunny day at noon, the ava- these avalanches to be probably every way supelanches are falling on the Jungfrau about every rior in bulk to the whole of the Horse-shoe fall) ten minutes, with the roar of thunder; but they poured in foaming grandeur, not merely over one are much more seldom visible, and sometimes the great precipice of two hundred feet, but over the traveller crosses the Wengern Alp without wit- successive ridgy precipices of two or three thounessing them at all. But we were so very sand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand highly favoured as to see two of the grandest feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering avalanches possible in the course of about an down, with a continuous din of far greater subhour, between twelve o'clock and two. One limity than the sound of the grandest cataract. cannot command any language to convey an ade- Placed on the slope of the Wengern Alp, right quate idea of their magnificence. You are stand-opposite the whole visible side of the Jungfrau, ing far below, gazing up to where the great disc we have enjoyed two of these mighty spectacles, of the glittering Alp cuts the heavens, and drink-at about an hour's interval between them. The ing in the influence of the silent scene around. first was the most sublime, the second the most Suddenly an enormous mass of snow and ice, in beautiful. The roar of the falling mass begins to itself a mountain, seems to move: it breaks from be heard the moment it is loosened from the the toppling outmost mountain-ridge of snow, mountain: it pours on with the sound of a vast where it is hundreds of feet in depth, and in its body of rushing water: then comes the first great first fall, of perhaps two thousand feet, is broken concussion, a booming crash of thunders, breakinto millions of fragments. As you first see the ing on the still air in mid heaven: your breath is flash of distant artillery by night, then hear the suspended, as you listen and look: the mighty roar, so here you may see the white flashing mass glittering mass shoots headlong over the main premajestically bowing, then hear the astounding din. cipice; and the fall is so great, that it produces to A cloud of dusty, misty, dry snow rises into the the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness, air from the concussion, forming a white volume of which I have spoken, though it is doubtless of fleecy smoke, or misty light, from the bosom more rapid than Niagara. But, if you should see of which thunders forth the icy torrent in its the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five second prodigious fall over the rocky battlements. thousand feet above you in the air, there would The eye follows it, delighted, as it ploughs through be the same impression. The image remains in the the path which preceding avalanches have worn, mind, and can never fade from it: it is as if you till it comes to the brink of a vast ridge of bare had seen an alabaster cataract from heaven. rock, perhaps more than two thousand feet perpendicular. Then pours the whole cataract over the gulf, with a still louder roar of echoing thunder, to which nothing but the noise of Niagara in its sublimity is comparable. Nevertheless, you may think of the tramp of an army of elephants; of the roar of multitudinous cavalry marching to battle; of the whirlwind-tread of ten thousand bisons sweeping across the prairie; of the tempestsurf of ocean beating and shaking the continent; of the sound of torrent-floods, or of a numerous host; or of the voice of the trumpet on Sinai, exceeding loud, and waxing louder and louder, so that all the people in the camp trembled; or of the rolling orbs of that fierce chariot described by

Milton:

"Under whose burning wheels
The stedfast empyrea shook throughout."

It is with such a mighty shaking tramp that the

From "The Pilgrim in the Shadow of the Jungfrau Alp."

By G. B. Cheever, D.D. New York and London: Wiley nd
Putnam. 1846.

CONFIRMATION.

WE specially invite the attention of our clerical brethren to the following "Hints." They will be particularly useful at the present period, when so many bishops are engaged in confirming. We all find that there is danger-as in every other religious exercise-lest the mere act of confirmation be considered enough, lest the solemn obligations extending over the whole of life be practically neglected. And, therefore, ministers must take pains to press on their young people the binding nature of the vows they have ratified, and to show them that their life-long they are to seek to yield themselves the faithful servants of their gracious Master. Among other means devised for this purpose, we have been greatly pleased hands of every confirmed person, by the rev. R. with the following paper, printed and placed in the C. Savage, vicar of Nuneaton. These hints wore

(Mont Blanc.)