a young foreign nobleman, disguised as a coachman. The King im mediately joined them. But the Queen, who had gone out accompanied by a garde-du-corps, gave them all the utmost alarm. Nei ther she nor her guide knew the way they lost it, and did not get to the Petit Carrousel till an hour afterwards. On arriving there she met the carriage of M. de Lafayette, whose servants carried torches. She concealed herself under the gateway of the Louvre; and, escaping this danger, reached the carriage where she was so anxiously waited for. Thus reunited, the family set out. After a long drive, and a second loss of their way, they arrived at the Porte St. Martin, and got into a berline with six horses, which was waiting to receive them. Madame de Tournel, under the assumed name of Madame Kroff, was to pass for a mother travelling with her children; the King was to personate her valet-de-chambre, and three gardes-du-corps, in disguise, were to precede the carriage as couriers, or follow it as servants. length they got clear of Paris, accompanied by the prayers of M. de Fersen, who returned to Paris, in order to take the road to Brussels."

At

The circumstances attending the arrest of the royal family at Varennes are too well known to require repetition. The King, it would appear, brought this misfortune upon himself by constantly putting his head out of the carriage-window. In consequence of this imprudence, he was recognised at Chalons; but the person who made the discovery, and who was at first disposed to reveal it, was persuaded by the mayor, a zealous royalist, to say nothing. When the travellers got to St. Mene. hould, the King, still with his head out at the window, was recognized by young Drouet, the postmaster's son, who immediately set off full full speed to Varennes, the next stage, where he arrived before the King, and took measures to stop his further progress. In this extremity the Queen took the lead, and displayed so much energy in insisting on being allowed to proceed, that she seems at one time to have almost succeeded. The King at first wished to preserve his incognito, and a warm altercation took place; one of the municipal officers maintaining that he knew him to be the King. "Since you recognise him for your King, then," said the Queen, "address him with the respect which you owe him!"

"On Wednesday, the 22d." says the King in his diary, "left Varennes at five or six in the morning." And he proceeds, on that and the three following days, to chronicle his journey back to Paris, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, instead of being full of deep and even tragical interest.

About six in the morning, M. Romeuf, an aide-de-camp of La. fayette, who had been sent after the fugitives, bearing a decree of the National Assembly for their arrest, arrived at Varennes, and found the carriage and six in readiness, and the horses' heads turned towards Paris. Romeuf, with an air of grief, handed the decree to the King. The whole family joined in exclaiming against Lafayette : Romeuf said that his general and himself had only done their duty in pursuing them, but had hoped they should not have come up with them. The Queen seized the decree, and threw it on her children's bed, and then snatched it up, and threw it away, saying it would sully them. "Madam," said Romeuf, who was devoted to her, "would you choose that any other than I should witness this violence ?" The Queen instantly recovered herself, and resumed her wonted dig. nity.

Some details of the journey of the captive monarch and his family back to Paris, are given by Madame Campan, who had them from the mouth of the Queen herself. They left Varennes amid the shouts and yells of an outrageous multitude, who during the night had assembled from all quarters. One of the most strange phenomena, we may remark, in the French Revolution, was, the sudden and general exhibition of ferocity throughout the population of that great country. It was not merely in Paris and other great towns, where the people were most immediately accessible to the influence of political agitation, that this dreadful spirit displayed itself. It was everywhere-in the most remote and secluded rural districts; and, even the hitherto light-hearted, goodhumoured, inoffensive peasantry seemed, by some devilish spell, transformed into swarms of blood-thirsty cannibals. To what shall we ascribe such a change in the aspect of the national character ?-was this ferocity generated, or was it a dormant quality merely awakened and developed by the circumstances of the time? We fear that the latter supposition is the true one, and that Voltaire's description of a Frenchman as being a compound of the monkey and the tiger, was founded on a penetrating observation of the character of his countrymen. This lamentable change, too, took place long before the quarrel between the sovereign and the representatives of the people had reached a desperate height; before the destruction of the monarchy was avowedly the object of any political party, and when the only question was the extent of the limitations to be imposed on the constitutional power of the Crown. The bloody and atrocious scenes which took place at Versailles in October, 1789, and diffused their baleful influence with the rapidity of a pestilence all over the kingdom, had no justification on the ground of the violence of public convulsion: nor can it be believed for a moment, (and, indeed, there is ample experience to the contrary,) that such a degree of political agitation as then existed in France, would have driven an English multitude, even of the poorest and most ignorant classes, to the perpetration of such cold-blooded horrors as those which, on the 4th, 5th, and 6th of October, 1789, disgraced the name af France. "The English populace," says Sir Walter Scott, "will huzza, swear, threaten, break windows, and throw stones at the life-guards engaged in dispersing them; but, if a soldier should fall from his horse, the rabble, after enjoying a laugh at his expense, would lend a hand to lift him to his saddle again. A French mob would tear him limb from limb, and parade the fragments in triumph upon their pikes."

No sooner had the cavalcade got out of Varennes, than the Chevalier de Dampierre, a gentleman of the neighbourhood, and one of the King's faithful adherents, was seized by the surrounding multitude, and savagely murdered close beside the carriage, and before the eyes of its unfortunate occupants. A few leagues further on, a poor village curate had the rashness to approach the carriage, for the purpose of speaking to the King. The mob, who still surrounded the carriage, flew upon him, threw him down, and trampled upon him; and, had it not been for the interposition of Barnare, the commissioner of the National As. sembly, who was in the carriage with the royal family, and whose in. dignant exclamations arrested the fury of the multitude, the clergyman would have been instantly torn to pieces.

Barnare, and Petion the notorious Mayor of Paris, had been sent

by the National Assembly to meet the fugitives, and bring them back to Paris. They took their places in the carriage, along with the King and his family. Barnare sat on one side, between the King and Queen; Petion on the other, between Madame Elizabeth and the young princess. The Dauphin rested alternately on the knees of his parents and his aunt. Barnare, a member of the moderate party, and a man of worth and talent, was polite and gentlemanlike in his behaviour, while Petion conducted himself with true republican rudeness, "He ate and drank," says Madame Campan, "in the most slovenly manner, tossing his chicken-bones out of the windows, at the risk of throwing them in the King's face; and, raising his glass, without saying a word, when Madame Elizabeth helped him to wine, by way of showing that he had enough. This offensive conduct was adopted on purpose, because Petion was a man of education. The King entered into conversation with Petion on the situation of France, and the motives of his own conduct, which were founded on the necessity of giving the executive power a degree of strength necessary for the support of the constitution itself, because France could not be a republic. Not yet, indeed," said Petion, "because the French are not quite ripe for it.' This audacious and brutal answer put an end to the conversation, and the King remained silent all the way to Paris. Petion, while talking, was holding the little Dauphin on his knees, and amusing himself with twisting the child's fair curls round his fingers. In the heat of his discourse he pulled the poor boy's hair so hard as to make him cry out. "Give me my son," said the Queen; "he is used to care and attention which indispose him for these familiarities."

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Thiers, and some other authorities say, that the journey from Va. rennes to Paris took eight days; and this, at first, threw suspicion on the genuineness of the King's diary, according to which he left Varennes on the morning of Wednesday, the 22d, and arrived at Paris on the morning of Saturday, the 25th; three days in all. But this is correct, according to Thiers himself, who afterwards says, "The effect of the journey to Varennes was to destroy all respect for the King, to accustom the public to the idea of doing without him, and to produce the desire for a republic. On the very morning of his arrival (Saturday, the 25th of June), the Assembly had provided for everything by a decree, whereby Louis XVI. was suspended from his functions, and a guard placed over his person, and those of the Queen and the Dauphin.-Sentinels," adds this historian, "watched continually at their door, and never lost sight of them. One day the King, wishing to ascertain whether he was actually a prisoner, appeared at the door; the sentinel opposed his passage. "Do you know me?" said the King."Yes, sire," answered the soldier. The King was allowed merely to walk in the Tuileries in the morning, before the garden was open to the public.

The following month-July, 1791,-is comprehensively disposed of in the diary by the words, "Nothing the whole month. Mass in the gallery.' This month, however, was a momentous one for the King. The republican spirit now displayed itself, and the cry of "No King!" became for the first time, general in the capital. On the 16th of July, the commissioners appointed by the Assembly to inquire into the affair of Varennes, presented their report, exculpating the King, and declaring the inviolability of his person. This

report produced a violent commotion among the Jacobin party, head. ed by Robespierre, Petion, and others; and a petition against it was exhibited upon an altar in the Champ de Mars, to be signed by all who chose it. A great tumult ensued: Lafayette arrived, at the head of a body of military, who fired upon the people, and dispersed them with great slaughter, though not till they had torn to pieces two or three soldiers. This sanguinary scene, arising out of a question involving the King's personal safety, is the "affair of the Champ de Mars," noted in the diary on the 17th of July, and is one of the occurrences comprised under the general entry of " Nothing the whole month. Mass in the gallery!"

There are only two occasions on which the King mentions his wife and children, (we do not speak of the entries of money paid the Queen's jeweller,) and quits his habitual conciseness to indulge in ampler details. There are accounts of the Queen's accouchements, more resembling the official reports of a court chamberlain than the narrative of an anxious husband and father. They are in precisely the same style ; and, it is sufficient, therefore, to give that of the birth of the Dauphin ;-not that poor boy whose fate it makes one's heart bleed to think of, but the King's eldest-born, a child of extraordinary promise, who had the happiness to die in infancy.

"Accouchement of the Queen, 22d October, 1781.

"The Queen passed the night of the 21st-22d October, very well. She felt some slight pains when she awoke, which did not prevent her from taking the bath. I gave no orders for the shooting. party, which I was to have at Saclé, till noon. Between twelve and half-past twelve her pains increased; and, at a quarter-past one she was delivered very favourably of a boy. During the labour, the only persons in the chamber were Madame de Lamballe, Monsieur the Count de Artois, my aunts, Madame de Chimay, Madame de Mailly, Madame d'Ossun, Madame de Tavannes, and Madame de Guéménée, who went alternately into the adjoining room, which had been left empty. In the great closet there were my household and the Queen's; and the persons having the grandes entrées, and the sous-gouvernantes, who entered towards the end, kept themselves at the bottom of the room, without intercepting the air.

"Of all the princes to whom Madame de Lamballe had given notice, the Duke d'Orleans only arrived before the accouchement. He remained in the chamber, or in that adjoining. The Prince of Condé, M. de Penthievre, the Duc de Chartres, the Princess of Condé, and Mademoiselle de Condé arrived after the Queen was delivered, the Duke de Bourbon in the evening, and the Prince de Conti next day. The Queen saw all these princes next day, one after the other. After the accouchement was over, my son was carried into the great closet, where I saw him dressed, and delivered him into the hands of Mad. de Guéménée, his governess. I announced to the Queen that it was a boy, and he was put upon her bed, and, after she had seen him for a little while, everybody retired. I signed letters for the Emperor, the King of Spain, and the Prince of Piedmont, and gave orders for the despatch of the others which I had already signed. At three o'clock I was at chapel, where my son was baptized by Cardinal de Rohan, and held at the font by the Emperor and the Princess of Piedmont, represented by Monsieur and my sister Elizabeth. He was named Louis Joseph Xavier

François. My brothers, my sisters, my aunts, the Duke d'Orleans, the Duke de Chartres, the Prince de Condé, and M. de Penthievre signed the act of baptism. After the ceremony, I heard the Te Deum performed with music, the princesses not having had time to dress in the evening.

"While I was looking at the fireworks on the parade, the Chief President of the Chamber of Accounts came to pay me his compli ments. The others, who were not at Paris, came the day following. Next day, at my levée, the ambassadors came to pay their respects, with the nuncio at their head. At six I received the salutations of a hundred and twenty-five ladies; my brothers, sisters, aunts, and the princesses were in the apartment.

"On the 29th, the Chapter of Notre Dame came to compliment me; as did the judges, the company of arqubusiers, and the 'Dames de la Halle.* For nine days all the trades and professions came into the marble court with violins, and everything they could imagine to testify their joy. I had about twelve thousand livres distributed among them. After my son's baptism, M. de Vergennes, grand treasurer of the order of the Holy Spirit, brought him the blue riband, and M. de Segur the cross of St. Louis. The Queen saw her ladies on the 29th, the princes and princesses on the 30th, my household on the 3d, and the rest in succession. On Sunday, the 4th of November, there was a Te Deum at the parish church of Versailles, and an illumination throughout the city."

There is a good deal more to the same purpose, and the whole is as cold, stiff, and formal as a bulletin drawn up by the court newsman. Such, however, is the only way in which the monarch ever mentions his wife or his children. He never makes the slightest allusion to any of those little family incidents which, it might be supposed, would occupy the mind of a husband and a parent, and would naturally have a prominent place in a private record of domestic occurrences. The total silence of his diary on such subjects is a proof of the extreme coldness of Louis's nature, and accords with the strange and unaccountable indifference with which he treated the beautiful princess, to whom he was married in the very flower of his age. Her charms, her graces, her talents, her accom. plishments, made no impression on her youthful husband. mained for years a stranger to her society and to her bed; and it was more to his taste to spend his days in hunting and lock-making, than to share in her elegant and intellectual pastimes. Gradually, however, she acquired the influence of a strong mind over a weak one; his indolence, vacillation, and timidity found resources in her courage, energy and decision; and his original indifference, and even aversion, was at length succeeded by unbounded deference and submission, and by a degree of passive acquiescence in the dictates of her proud and impetuous spirit, which probably hastened the ruin

of both.

But "sweet are the uses of adversity;" and the effect of calamity has never been more apparent in exalting and purifying the character, than in the instances of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen. Their latter days have thrown a radiance over their memory. Had the

* The market-women of Paris, who by ancient custom were admitted to take a prominent part in public rejoicings.