evolutionary principles, by the third estate of Artois, to a
seat in the Constituent Assembly. We shall not follow him in detail in
that assembly: we shall simply remark, that he spoke much without
obtaining any particular influence and evinced himself constantly the
enthusiastic champion of the people. Robespierre, in all his harangues,
appears to foresee events. The avowed enemy of royalty, we behold him on
the side of republicanism, of which he ventured to alter the name on the
day when the Assembly decreed the French government monarchical. We
behold him again, after the arrest of the king at Varennes, resuming his
projects for the destruction of that monarch, preparing the movements
which took place at the Champ-de-Mars, on July 14, 16, 17, 1791, and
attacking, on the 14th, in the Assembly, the principle of the
inviolability of the sovereign, in the hope of having him arraigned; but
at the end of the sitting, finding his opinion rejected, he began to
tremble for his temerity, and required that they should not provoke the
ruin of persons who had engaged in that affair.

If Robespierre was unable to distinguish himself among the orators of
the Constituent Assembly; if his principles appeared obnoxious to the
innovators acting from sentiment in 1789; if they often drew upon him
the indignation of his colleagues; they were the means of his acquiring
among the Jacobins that reputation and favor which, daily increasing,
rendered him at last the idol of the people and the ruler of the
government. He was called "The Incorruptible." The day of the closing of
the Assembly, the populace surrounded him on his coming out of the hall,
put a crown of oak upon his head, placed him in a carriage, and, taking
out the horses, dragged him to his house, exclaiming as they moved,
"Behold the friend of the people, the great defender of Liberty!"
Robespierre was fully sensible of the advantages which might result from
his alliance with the Jacobins. He devoted himself entirely to the
direction of a club bearing that name, and refused, in order to give up
his whole time to the objects they had in view, the office of accuser in
the criminal tribunal at Paris, to which he had been appointed. Until
his election to a seat in the Convention, he was never seen personally
to engage in those insurrections which produced the atrocious attack
upon the king, nor in the horrible massacres which, in 1792, covered
Paris with murder and blood, and the Fre