ng enough against God.

VIII.

It was on the 5th of August, 1791, the first anniversary of the famous
night of the 4th of August, 1790, when feudality crumbled to atoms, that
the National Assembly commenced the revision of the constitution. It was
a solemn and imposing act, was this comprehensive _coup d'oeil_ cast
by legislators at the end of their career, over the ruins they had
scattered, and the foundations they had laid in their course. But how
different at this moment was the disposition of their mind from what
they felt in commencing this mighty work! They had begun it with an
enthusiasm of the ideal, they now contemplated it with the misgivings
and the sadness of reality. The National Assembly was opened amidst the
acclamations of a people unanimous in their hopes, and was about to
close amidst the clamorous recriminations of all parties.

The king was captive, the princes emigrants, the clergy at feud, the
nobility in flight, the people seditious; Necker's popularity had
vanished, Mirabeau was dead, Maury silenced, Cazales, Lally, Mounier had
deserted from their work. Two years had carried off more men and things
than a generation removes in ordinary times. The great voices of '89,
inspired with philosophy and vast hopes, no longer resounded beneath
those vaults. The foremost ranks had fallen. The men of second order
were now to contend in their stead. Intimidated, discouraged, repentant,
they had neither the spirit to yield to the impulse of the people nor
the power to resist it. Barnave had recovered his virtue in his
sensibility; but virtue which comes late is like the experience which
follows the act, and only enables us to measure the extent of our
errors. In revolutions there is no repentance--there is only expiation.
Barnave, who might have saved the monarchy, had he only united with
Mirabeau, was just commencing his expiatory sentence. Robespierre was to
Barnave what Barnave had been to Mirabeau; but Robespierre, more
powerful than Barnave, instead of acting on the impulse of a passion as
fluctuating as jealousy, acted under the influence of a fixed idea, and
an unalterable theory. Robespierre had the whole people at his back.

IX.

From the opening of the sittings Barnave attempted to consolidate around
the constitution the opinions so fiercely shaken by Robespierre and his
friends. He did it with a caution which bespoke but too well the
weakness of his position, notwithstanding the boldness o