mies; and the timid, the doubtful, or
indifferent, for the most part, determine in favour of whatever wears the
appearance of established authority. The people, indeed, remained
perfectly neuter; but the Jacobins, the Committees of the Sections, and
their dependents, might have composed a force more than sufficient to
oppose the few guards which surrounded the National Palace, had not the
publication of this summary outlawry at once paralyzed all their hopes
and efforts.--They had seen multitudes hurried to the Guillotine, because
they were "hors de la loi;" and this impression now operated so forcibly,
that the cannoneers, the national guard, and those who before were most
devoted to the cause, laid down their arms, and precipitately abandoned
their chiefs to the fate which awaited them. Robespierre was taken at
the Hotel de Ville, after being severely wounded in the face; his brother
broke his thigh, in attempting to escape from a window; Henriot was
dragged from concealment, deprived of an eye; and Couthon, whom nature
had before rendered a cripple, now exhibited a most hideous spectacle,
from an ineffectual effort to shoot himself.--Their wounds were dressed
to prolong their suffering, and their sentence being contained in the
decree that outlawed them, their persons were identified by the same
tribunal which had been the instrument of their crimes.
--On the night of the tenth they were conveyed to the scaffold, amidst
the insults and execrations of a mob, which a few hours before beheld
them with trembling and adoration.--Lebas, also a member of the
convention, and a principal agent of Robespierre, fell by his own hand;
and Couthon, St. Just, and seventeen others, suffered with the two
Robespierres.--The municipality of Paris, &c. to the number of
seventy-two, were guillotined the succeeding day, and about twelve
more the day after.

The fate of these men may be ranked as one of the most dreadful of those
examples which history vainly transmits to discourage the pursuits of
ambition. The tyrant who perishes amidst the imposing fallaciousness of
military glory, mingles admiration with abhorrence, and rescues his
memory from contempt, if not from hatred. Even he who expiates his
crimes on the scaffold, if he die with fortitude, becomes the object of
involuntary compassion, and the award of justice is not often rendered
more terrible by popular outrage. But the fall of Robespierre and his
accomplices was accompan