dred cut-throats, and he proposed that they should sever him. It was remembered that he had received the first two hundred thousand heads. In a journal which he pub-constitution with reluctance, and with the avowed resolished, named 'L'Ami du Peuple' (The Friend of the People'), he broached propositions equally horrible; and though in charity to mankind he must be supposed to have been insane, the Girondists resolved to bring him to trial. They failed; the more violent of the deputies -called 'the Mountain,' from the lofty seats they occupied on the legislative benches-having come to his aid; and he resumed his old habits more unbridled than ever, till a young female, named Charlotte Corday, whose lover he had sent to the guillotine, rid the world of his presence, and of her own, by stabbing him in a bath-a crime which only accelerated the doom of the Girondists, whose tool she was supposed to be.

lution, as his intercepted papers now proved, of setting it aside on the first opportunity. The insurrection of the 20th of June had been caused by his refusal to sanction two decrees against the emigrants and nonjuring priests, as those of the clergy were termed who refused to take oath to the new constitution; and all the horrors of the 10th of August had mainly originated from a proclamation denouncing fire and sword to all who declined submission to the ancient order of things, which the Duke of Brunswick had imprudently published on advancing into France, and of which Louis was now proved to have been cognizant, though he had attempted to mitigate its harshness. Success, too, had inflamed their passions. The splendid army of the allies had wasted away under the exhausting influence of famine and disease; and after one indecisive action with the disorganized French at Valmy-another, more important, in which they were defeated, at Jemappes-had regained the frontiers in disorder and dismay. A result such as this, instead of allaying the feelings of the Jacobins, as might have been anticipated, only increased their audacity and resentment. They now remembered that Louis had with the utmost reluctance proclaimed war against the allies, and that some troops in his confidence had thrown down their arms and fled from the invaders without even a shadow of resistance. The recent seizure of the king's papers showed that, if this were not done by his orders, he maintained a secret correspondence with the enemy, capable of being construed into treason to France. They resolved, accordingly, to bring him to a trial; and the Girondists could save him only by appearing to acquiesce, hoping in the course of the proceedings to devise some expedient for saving his life by banishing him from the country.

The evil consequences of Lafayette's interruption of the royal flight, when,' to quote the words of Napoleon, they might have got rid of a king without the odium of

Robespierre came off equally triumphant. He was a man of a deeper and more mysterious character. Originally a barrister in the provinces, where he acquired small distinction, he had been sent as a member to the states-general; but here, beyond one or two wretched attempts, in which the most meagre thoughts were with difficulty delivered in the poorest language, he had never ventured to raise his voice, after a withering denunciation from Mirabeau. But, indefatigable, he worked in secret; and his power gradually became so great, that, through his influence with the Jacobin Club, he was able at last to thwart the measures of that fiery statesman. By the aid of this celebrated club, which originally consisted of a few philosophers assembled for scientific pursuits, but had now grown into the most powerful political engine in the state, he had ultimately become one of the most important personages in Paris, and with Danton, his associate, swayed the fierce passions of the populace at his will. He possessed even more influence than the others; for though Danton, by his Herculean figure, sonorous voice, and coarse ready eloquence, was so well qualified for the post of popular leader as to be styled the 'Mirabeau of the mob,' his power was diminished by his open profligacy and sordid patriotism, while Robespierre's re-regicide,' were quickly perceived; and bitterly, perhaps, ceived additional weight from his outward propriety and inaccessibility to pecuniary corruption. The proposal to impeach him accordingly created the most intense excitement in the capital; and Paris was then, as it has always been, the controlling voice of France. Vergniaud was the accuser, and he stood on no such ceremonious ground as Louvet in his impeachment of Marat, when the orator, after a long denunciation, in which he shrunk in apparent horror from pronouncing even the culprit's name, exclaimed, on inadvertently dropping the obnoxious word, 'Gods! I have named him!" but, in a long, vigorous, and convincing speech, arraigned him of aspiring to a dictatorship in the comnionwealth. The effect was powerful, and Robespierre trembled. His associates were in dismay; and his brother, the less able but better man of the two, even implored them, in imitation of the ancient Roman fashion, to wreathe chaplets for the victim whom the morrow was to consign to the scaffold. But the Jacobins came in overwhelming force and fury to his aid; and the convention was so overawed that he was acquitted, to gain new strength from his foes, and pursue them with implacable hostility till death removed them from the fierceness of his revenge.

were they then lamented by their injudicious author, who himself was shortly afterwards obliged to flee from the country to save his own life. All efforts failed to save the king. Early in January, 1793, he was arraigned at his subjects' bar-the second monarch who, since the distant era of Agis the Lacedemonian, had presented such a spectacle. He was accused of plotting the destruction of the constitution as well as causing all the evils which had lately distracted the country; and under the designation of Louis Capet' he was summoned to plead to the charge. That is not my name; it was the name of one of my ancestors,' replied the unhappy monarch-destitute of active, but great in passive courage; and in feeling accents he disclaimed the imputation of designing the ruin of his country, adding, "God knows I had no such intention.' The reaction and commiseration excited by his conduct and his helplessness were so great, that, had an immediate verdict been asked, he would in all probability have been acquitted, or at least have escaped with his life; and the Jacobins, therefore, readily complied with a demand for eight days' delay, which he made to prepare his defence. The interval was busily employed by his friends, and still more busily by his foes. On the Another trial drew nigh, of a different nature and re-elapse of the allotted time he again made his appearance sult-that of the unfortunate king. Shortly after his resort to the legislative hall on the 10th of August, the assembly had pronounced his deposition, and declared that the monarchy was henceforth abolished; but beyond confining him with his family within the precincts of the Temple (a sort of state prison), no measure had been resorted to against him. In proportion, however, as the republicans increased in strength, they increased also in resentment; and some proofs of Louis's complicity with the emigrants and the allies, who had advanced, under the Duke of Brunswick, against France, having then been discovered in the archives of the Tuilleries, his infuriated subjects resolved to bring him to a trial. The Girondists, influenced by nobler motives, in vain interposed to save

at the bar, with Malesherbes, a patriotic nobleman, who had opposed him in better days, but generously rushed to his aid now, and Dezeze, an eloquent barrister, for his counsel. His attitude was still dignified, his defence was not inglorious; and Dezeze concluded a glowing speech with an impressive epitome of the royal prisoner's career. 'Louis XVI.,' he said, 'is in the thirty-sixth year of his age-eighteen of which he passed in private, eighteen in promoting the weal of his subjects.' He vowed that he had never had a thought but for their welfare, and concluded with a gorgeous appeal to posterity: History,' he said, 'will sit in judgment on your verdict, and its sentence will be the sentence of centuries!'

provoked by her own inconsiderate conduct. But her beauty and her misfortunes must throw a halo around the faults of Marie Antoinette, as they have done over those of Mary Stuart. Circumstances of unusual horror attended her trial, and she had previously been subjected to sufferings which rendered death a relief. For many months she had been confined in a cheerless room, deprived of the society of her children, except at distant intervals, and so divested of all regal state that she was indebted, it is said, to an English lady in Paris for a gown, and obliged even to patch her own stockings. When arraigned at the bar of the revolutionary tribunal, the most horrifying crimes were alleged against | her; and Hebert-a disgusting wretch who acted as prosecutor, and shortly afterwards died on the same scaffold-even attempted to insinuate that she had corrupted her son, until he was stopped by the indignant voice of Robespierre, who protested against this cruelty, and by the queen's own more elegant appeal to every woman in the assembly, whether a mother could be guilty of such a charge.' This raised in her favour a temporary emotion; but her foes were too powerful, and the part she had taken in the government of the kingdom too conspicuous, for her to escape. She was accordingly condemned, and died with the same undaunted fortitude she had displayed through life. Her charms, however, were wholly gone, and when she appeared on the scaffold it was found that her hair was already grey with sorrow. She was no longer, as the Irish orator represented, that bright morning star that scarcely seemed to belong to the earth she adorned;' and fierce acclamations disturbed the dying hours of one, to resent the slightest insult to whom,' Burke eloquently said, 'a thousand swords would, a few years before, have leapt from their scabbards.' Her sister-in-law, the late king's sister, experienced a like fate, on what grounds it is now difficult to determine. Their hapless son, the young Dauphin, a boy of tender years, died of maltreatment in the Temple, and of all their family, a daughter, the future Duchess D'Angouleme, alone survived, to experience in another era the misfortunes and expatriation of her house. The convention, which had sent these and many other victims to the scaffold, concluded its career in ignominy, which it only at the last feebly palliated when its less sanguinary members, in danger of being guillotined in their turn, consigned to the scaffold the authors of so much bloodshed.

But his eloquence was exerted in vain: a few days were allowed to elapse between the trial and the verdict, and the Jacobins in the interval had been busy. Every resource was, in the mean time, employed to inflame popular fury, and so successfully, that the Duke of Orleans, the first prince of the blood, to the horror of the bystanders, voted on the final day for his kinsman's conviction and death. The Girondists attempted to save Louis by proposing banishment; but a large majority decided on a fatal sentence, and, on the evening of the 19th of January, the unfortunate monarch was informed that he must prepare for death in two days, without appeal. He received the intelligence with calmness, for Louis, when called to suffer, could suffer bravely. He was destitute of that active courage which sustains the hero in the field, but he possessed, in an eminent degree, that passive fortitude which supports the martyr on the scaffold. He was sitting in an obscure closet, with his elbows on a table, and his head resting between his hands, when the information reached him: 'I have been considering,' he said, 'whether during the whole course of my reign I have ever knowingly done an act injurious to my subjects, and my conscience acquits me of the imputation; and he received, unmoved, notice to prepare for death from his counsel Malesherbes. A brief and painful interval elapsed, during which, amidst a scene of heart-rending agony, he took leave of his wife and family. The spectacle was so touching as to affect even the stern hearts of his jailers. On entering the chamber, his wife threw herself upon her knees, to implore pardon of him for any negligence of which she might, in the earlier part of their reign, have been guilty, and for any injudicious counsel which she might latterly have given. He raised her up, and tenderly embraced her, while his children, a boy and girl of tender years, grasped his knees, and his sister hung upon his neck with a kiss which she swooned in giving. In sighs and sobs three hours were thus passed, and a still more agonizing scene was witnessed when the hour. of final parting drew nigh. They were with difficulty torn from his embrace then, and only by his promise that he would revisit them on the morrow. But that promise he never intended to keep it was only an amiable device to relieve their sufferings until he knew that all should be over. He appointed to see them again next day at noon; but before that period he knew that he should have ceased to live. With this he left the apartment, and, on re-entering his own, he soon recovered his wonted tranquillity. On the morning of the 21st of January, in view of his own palace, after a brief but vain dispute with the executioners on the scaf-IN the following paper, we purpose to state some of the fold, as his confessor, the Abbé Edgeworth, exclaimed, Son of St Louis, ascend to heaven! the descent of the axe relieved this hapless king from his regal care and earthly sorrows. A terrible scene ensued both before and after the execution. During the procession to the scaffold, which lasted upwards of two hours, most of the spectators were plunged in gloomy sorrow, but a few of the mob attempted to insult his dying hours by coarse exclamations. On reaching the scaffold, which was erected in the large square formerly named the Place Louis XV., but then bearing the designation of the Place de la Revolution, as it has since borne that of Place de la Concorde, he attempted to address the multitude, and a few touching words had already made some impression on their giddy minds, when the sound of the drums interrupted his voice, the executioners seized his person, and in a few minutes all had ceased; leaving the greater part of the spectators plunged in sorrow, while others, and those of the basest order, set off with their fierce exclamations of frantic joy to the Temple, and thus gave his wife and family within, the first intelligence of the late sovereign's fate.

Louis, though not destitute of faults, was possessed of

many virtues, while his vices were rather those of his position and the system. In a few months his highminded queen followed him to the scaffold, her own fate and that of her husband having been in no small degree

THE ADVANTAGES OF READING.*

advantages which result from judicious and well digested reading.

1. Judicious reading brings down the science, art, and improvement of preceding ages, to the present or cotemporaneous age of the reader.

Without the reading of books, there could be little or no progression in society. Mere traditional knowledge is very uncertain, and by trusting to this, many arts of hand, are the registers of the past attainments, disthe ancients have been entirely lost. Books, on the other coveries, and triumphs of mind. By means of books, the goal of our ancestors, in knowledge, becomes the starting knowledge of a preceding age becomes the platform from post of their posterity. By means of books, the recorded which the succeeding one climbs to higher eminences, and scales loftier positions in the upward march of mind. By reading books, we bridge over different ages, and thus science passes across from Chaldea to Egypt, from Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, and from Rome to the various states of modern Europe. Without this contrivance, every age, or every individual of every age, is insulated; he stands by himself, he is an uninstructed and

the Advantages of Reading, from an early volume of the Christian

*We extract, with a slight abridgment, this admirable paper on South College Street Church, Edinburgh. Journal. It is from the pen of the Rev. John French, minister of

of man cease to enslave and brutalize the character. If Newton, in the midst of his heaven-rapt calculations, had not even appetite for food, and forgot to take his accustomed meal, we may perceive, from this fact, to what advantage reading and intellectual pursuits may be turned, in resisting the grovelling tendencies of our animal nature. Some men of learning and genius may have been debauched and dissipated, but we believe their proportion will be small in comparison with the countless multitudes who run into sensual pleasures merely because they have no better expedient for giving themselves a fleeting temporary importance. Their minds are a blank; they cannot exchange an idea with their fellows, and to escape from perfect vacancy of mind-to get rid of the consciousness of their own insignificance, they seek the excitement of grovelling pleasure, because, by the neglect of their powers, they are susceptible of no better.

it avail the linguist, that he can speak so many languages —talk so many tongues-and travel from pole to pole without guide and interpreter, if he knows nothing of the language of the heavenly Canaan; if he has never used the language of devotion, and called God his father, or the language of faith, and called Christ his Saviour. The learning of such a person is but another form of that ignorance that leads down to the darkness of eternal death.

Nor is this the mere theory of the preacher. Those persons who have climbed the heights of learning and science, have stamped their authority upon this sentiment. Henry Kirke White declared that those academic honours which he purchased with his life, were nothing but a death's head under a mask of beauty;' and Henry Martyn admitted that, in seeking and obtaining, as he did, the highest university fame, he had grasped a phantom.' Oh the moral madness of those who pay far less attention to their own immortal welfare than to the relations of a triangle, the wings of an insect, or the filaments of a weed!

A third great source of temptation is the prodigality, the luxury, and excess of refinement peculiar to the age in which we live. We may not all be able to go to the same lengths in fine houses, fine furniture, fine dress, and high living: but we can all, at least, catch the spirit of the Let all men remember that there is a gulf in the soul age, and expend our utmost farthing in treading upon which nothing can fill but God and religion. It is rethe heels of those who are above us in rank or in circum-ligion alone that can give full development to the mind, stances. And what is the consequence to many, when ample range to the intellect, and expansive play to the adversity comes ? Insolvency, poverty, beggary, disgrace, heart and the affections. The duty, then, of the enruin; these necessarily follow each other with downhill lightened Christian, is not, like Goth or Vandal, to derapidity. Now, to counteract this temptation also, what spise, to condemn, or to oppose, the acquisition of human so well calculated as giving our taste an intellectual learning, but to keep it in its place; to give it its due share turn, a spiritual range, withdrawing it from the poor, of time and attention; to make it bear upon religion; to paltry, mindless competition, as to which of us shall be make it secondary and auxiliary to that which is prebest dressed, best lodged, best fed, and best carried; and eminent and superior. Human learning would thus be rather letting it be a more generous and noble rivalry as sublimed and sanctified. It would resemble a substance to which of us shall be best informed, which of us shall placed in the midst of precious odours, where it cannot he first in his profession, which best at his trade, which long remain without bearing away with it some portion foremost in the career of improvement, who best main- of the fragrance. Religious knowledge, like sunshine tains his place in the van of all that is enlightened, and beaming upon the highest mountain ranges, would bathe, benevolent, and humane? Reading and study are happily with the moral grandeur of its celestial light, all your fitted to resist the allurements of fashion, to produce other attainments; religious knowledge, like a species of simplicity of taste, and to awaken a more generous alchemy, would convert all your other information into gold. rivalry than that which turns upon houses, equipages, and The more you know of God's works, as a philosopher, the attendants. The Christian, like the diamond, should more you would love him as a Christian. The profounder shine by his own internal light-by the central fires of your acquaintance with the laws of nature, the more his own mind-and not like the foil, dark in itself, and elastic would be the vault of your mind, when you atderiving all its brilliancy from the reflection of other tempted to spring the gulf which separates earth from substances. heaven. Religious knowledge should thus ever be the gem, and human learning but the setting. Religious knowledge should be the statue which we venerate and admire; and human learning but the pedestal on which it stands. Religious knowledge should be regarded as the true education of the mind; and human learning but the elementary training preparing us for it, and lending it a heightening charm.

MARGARET LAMBRUN.

AN HISTORICAL ANECDOTE OF 1588.

A fourth source of temptation arises from ignorance of the world. Where we have not had an opportunity of being regularly schooled into a knowledge of the hackneyed ways of men, by dint of dear-bought experience, we are often made a prey to the crafty and designing. Books supply, to a certain extent, this deficiency; the recorded experience of others here comes to our aid. We enter society with the experience of others, as the feeler which we employ to secure our own safety. Books tell us how others suffered and how others fared; what company destroyed this young man; what expensive follies and criminal pleasures squandered the fortune and ruined the soul of that. A single volume, thus recording the ONE fine summer afternoon in the year 1588, a stranger history and experience of others, may save us loss of cha-youth made his appearance in the Royal Gardens at Whiteracter, loss of property, loss of peace, and loss of life. hall. He was dressed in the costume usually worn by the These persons have passed the rapids of life before us, better sort of noblemen's retainers and citizens of the and by reading of their voyage, we make choice of a safer period; but his clothes were those of one in deep mourning, channel, and reach the port undamaged. and his rather handsome features wore an expression of settled melancholy. He paced the principal mall of the garden slowly, every now and then casting a glance in the direction of that part by which the Queen, the majestic Elizabeth, usually entered for her afternoon walk. The guards who attended in these royal precincts were scattered idly about, as was customary with them when the Queen was not present. There were no other persons in the garden, and long and patiently did the stranger 'pace his lonely round,' as if upon guard himself. One would have thought, to look at him, that a natural feeling of curiosity had brought him there, to behold that countenance whose haughty glance awed the world, and kept her courtiers in continual fear: or. rather, perhaps, from the pensive

6. Judicious reading is one of the most valuable means of advancing our spiritual and eternal interests.

While it ought candidly to be admitted that truths of every kind constitute mental food, and must impart a certain pleasure in the acquisition, yet it ought ever to be remembered that, however splendid these attainments may be they will in the end be no farther substantially useful than as they have tended to promote the eternal welfare of the soul. What will it avail the astronomer, who has lifted his eyes to the stars, and taken the magnitude and the distance of all those bright orbs that burn in the sky, if after all, by the neglect of his soul, he shall find himself an inhabitant of the pit of hell? What shall