eign of two years, and on
heaps of ruins, bequeaths the sceptre to anarchy. The king _could_ reign
no longer, the nation _would not_. Thus faction reigned, and the
Revolution perished; not because it had gone too far, but because it had
not been sufficiently bold. So true is it that the timidity of nations
is not less disastrous than the weakness of kings; and that a people who
knows not how to seize and guard all that which pertains to it, falls at
once into tyranny and anarchy. The Assembly dared to do every thing save
to reign: the reign of the Revolution was nought but a republic: and the
Assembly left this name to factions, and this form to terror. Such was
its fault--it expiated it: and the expiation is not yet ended for
France.

BOOK VIII.

I.

Whilst the king, isolated at the summit of the constitution, sought
support, sometimes by hazardous negotiations with foreigners, sometimes
by rash attempts at corruption in the capital, a body, some Girondists
and other Jacobins, but as yet confounded under the common denomination
of patriots, began to unite and form the nucleus of a great republican
idea: they were Petion, Robespierre, Brissot, Buzot, Vergniaud, Guadet,
Gensonne, Carra, Louvet, Ducos, Fonfrede, Duperret, Sillery-Genlis, and
many others, whose names have scarcely emerged from obscurity. The home
of a young woman, daughter of an engraver of the Quai des Orfevres, was
the meeting place of this union. It was there that the two great parties
of the _Gironde_ and the _Montagne_ assembled, united, separated, and
after having acquired power, and overturned the monarchy in company,
tore the bosom of their country with their dissensions, and destroyed
liberty whilst they destroyed each other. It was neither ambition, nor
fortune, nor celebrity which had successively attracted these men to
this woman's residence, then without credit, name, or comforts: it was
conformity of opinion; it was that devoted worship which chosen spirits
like to render in secret as in public to a new truth which promises
happiness to mankind; it was the invisible attraction of a common faith,
that communion of the first neophytes in the religion of philosophy,
where the necessity for souls to unite before they associate by deeds,
is felt. So long as the thoughts common to political men have not
reached that point where they become fruitful, and are organised by
contact, nothing is accomplished. Revolutions are ideas, and it is t