d
monarchy. Mirabeau, that prodigy of genius and vice, was believed to
have been of this number. The virtuous Lafayette certainly was, and
so was a host of others of the brightest names in France. But the ball
had rolled beyond their reach, and had acquired a _momentum_ which
they could no longer control. A set of unprincipled men, engendered
by the slow progress of the revolution, had, by their flatteries and
appeals to the worst passions of the populace, worked themselves up
to the head of affairs and drove on the revolution before the storm,
without any fixed object on their own part.

These infamous men infused suspicions into the minds of the people
against their best friends, and even Lafayette had to defend himself
against their accusations.

In 1792 the king was tried, condemned and deposed, and a republic was
established; but it was a republic of bedlamites. The revolution now
assumed a most dreadful form. France, delivered up, at once, to the
fury of a foreign and a civil war, and at the same time rent asunder
by the most frightful anarchy, exhibited a picture which the heart
quails to contemplate even at this distance of time. All was chaos and
confusion, and Lafayette perceiving that the great object for which
he had contended was lost, retired from the kingdom, and was doomed
to mourn, for years, in an Austrian dungeon, the disappointment of his
patriot hopes.

In 1793 the amiable and unfortunate king was torn from his family,
and bade adieu, on the scaffold, to all the troubles of life; and
thenceforth the guillotine streamed with the blood of the best
patriots of France. No confidence existed any where. Every one was
distrusted. Generals, whose victories had shed the highest glory upon
their country, were called from the head of their armies to perish
in disgrace. Denunciation and massacre were the order of the day.
Suspicion became full proof, and every accusation was fatal. To
consummate the horror of the scene, the christian religion was
formally abolished, and a sort of heathen worship was substituted in
its place. The republic was dissolved, the government was declared to
be revolutionary, and a dictatorship was established, compared with
which those of Marius and Sylla formed a golden age. Terror, death,
and rapine walked abroad in triumph, and the diabolical spirits which
had set the mischief afoot, hovered over the bloody spectacle and
mocked at the misery which they had created.

In 1794 th