more
eloquently or instructively described than in Lord Grenville's words.

"What first occurred? the whole nation was inundated with inflammatory
and poisonous publications. Its very soil was deluged with sedition and
blasphemy. No effort was omitted of base and disgusting mockery, of
sordid and unblushing calumny, which could vilify and degrade whatever
the people had been most accustomed to love and venerate. * * * * * * *
And when, at last, by the unremitted effect of all this seduction,
considerable portions of the multitude had been deeply tainted, their
minds prepared for acts of desperation, and familiarized with the
thought of crimes, at the bare mention of which they would before have
revolted, then it was that they were encouraged to collect together in
large and tumultuous bodies; then it was that they were invited to feel
their own strength, to estimate and display their numerical force, and
to manifest in the face of day their inveterate hostility to all the
institutions of their country, and their open defiance of all its
authorities."

[Footnote 7: Vide Cooke's Views.]

[Footnote 8: Collot d'Herbois.]

A vivid description this, and strikingly applicable to the operations of
that evil spirit which is still at work, with less excuse and
provocation than France could plead for her atrocities. Such are the
first and second acts of the drama of modern sedition; the fifth is well
delineated in a tract by M. Delandine, the public librarian of Lyons in
1793, as introduced in Miss Plumtre's Tour in France. This interesting
narrative, intitled "An Account of the State of the Prisons at Lyons
during the Reign of Terror," bears a character of truth and feeling,
which bespeaks him an eye-witness of the horrors he describes. Torn from
his family without any assignable cause, and imprisoned in the hourly
expectation of death, his own apprehensions seem at no time to have
absorbed his interest in the fate of his suffering friends; and to their
merit and misfortunes he does justice in the verses before alluded to.
The following is a free translation of them.

Oft, Lyonnese, your tears renew
To those who died upon this spot;
Their valour's fame descends to you,
In life, in death, forget them not.

Here calm they drew their parting breath,
Soul-weary of their country's woes,
Here, fearless, in the stroke of death
Met honour,--victory,--repose.

Pilgrim, revere their dust, and