ugh with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He
all."
FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU.

The great impulse of the French Revolution was not confined by
geographical boundaries. Flashing hope into the dark places of the
earth, far down among the poor and long oppressed, or startling the
oppressor in his guarded chambers like that mountain of fire which fell
into the sea at the sound of the apocalyptic trumpet, it agitated the
world.

The arguments of Condorcet, the battle-words of Mirabeau, the fierce zeal
of St. Just, the iron energy of Danton, the caustic wit of Camille
Desmoulins, and the sweet eloquence of Vergniaud found echoes in all
lands, and nowhere more readily than in Great Britain, the ancient foe
and rival of France. The celebrated Dr. Price, of London, and the still
more distinguished Priestley, of Birmingham, spoke out boldly in defence
of the great principles of the Revolution. A London club of reformers,
reckoning among its members such men as Sir William Jones, Earl Grey,
Samuel Whitbread, and Sir James Mackintosh, was established for the
purpose of disseminating liberal appeals and arguments throughout the
United Kingdom.

In Scotland an auxiliary society was formed, under the name of Friends of
the People. Thomas Muir, young in years, yet an elder in the Scottish
kirk, a successful advocate at the bar, talented, affable, eloquent, and
distinguished for the purity of his life and his enthusiasm in the cause
of freedom, was its principal originator. In the twelfth month of 1792 a
convention of reformers was held at Edinburgh. The government became
alarmed, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Muir. He escaped to
France; but soon after, venturing to return to his native land, was
recognized and imprisoned. He was tried upon the charge of lending books
of republican tendency, and reading an address from Theobald Wolfe Tone
and the United Irishmen before the society of which he was a member. He
defended himself in a long and eloquent address, which concluded in the
following manly strain:--

"What, then, has been my crime? Not the lending to a relation a copy of
Thomas Paine's works,--not the giving away to another a few numbers of an
innocent and constitutional publication; but my crime is, for having
dared to be, according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a strenuous
and an active advocate for an equal representation of the people in the
House of