l: Marie Antoinette was doomed to die upon the scaffold.

The expression of her countenance, as she passed to the place of
execution, awed the bloodthirsty populace; but the once matchless
beauty of that noble countenance was gone forever. One unacquainted
with the ravages of grief could not believe that the haggard and
forsaken being whom they led to sacrifice, was the same young queen,
who, a short time before, held in thrall the chivalry of France, by
her exquisite loveliness, her winning grace, and sportive gayety.
Antoinette cast back a long, last look at the Tuileries--a look which
told of sorrowful remembrance and of agonizing emotion; then, with an
air of dignified resignation, she ascended the scaffold. "My God,"
cried she, as she kneeled on that fatal platform, "enlighten and
affect my executioner! Adieu, my children, my beloved ones: I am
going to your father!" Thus she perished, in her thirty-eighth year,
October 16th, 1793.

In the gayety of youth and the sunshine of prosperity, Marie
Antoinette had exhibited some foibles amid many virtues. In the
beginning of her trials, she displayed, as well as those around her,
serious mistakes of judgment; but in the dark hour of adversity, she
exhibited a spectacle of truth, firmness, and dignity, hardly less
than sublime. When confined with her family in the prison of the
Temple, with only a glimmering ray of light stealing through the iron
bars, she displayed the utmost calmness, cheered all around with her
counsel and example, and taught them to disregard privation, sickness,
and suffering.

When her husband told her that he was condemned to the scaffold, she
congratulated him upon the speedy termination of an existence so
painful, and the unperishing reward that should crown it. Before the
Revolutionary Tribunal she was unabashed, and, when accused of a
horrid crime, she put her traducers to shame by exclaiming, "I appeal
to every mother here whether such an act be possible!" In solitude,
and in the depths of a damp and loathsome dungeon, where she was
confined for weeks, she was still serene and uncomplaining. In parting
with her son; in taking a last adieu of the palace which had witnessed
her triumphs; in facing the scaffold, and the wretches around it; and
in bidding a final farewell to life,--Marie Antoinette evinced that
patient, deep, and touching heroism which a woman and a Christian
alone can display.

MADAME ROLAND.

When, in May, 1793, Ro