COLD ABROAD FOR WARMTH AT HOME. room and the warm stove. The father will be come in from the barn and the byre. The evening meal will be set out, and the talk of the day's doings had over it; and then the mother will bring forward her spinning wheel, and the father will take from the shelf the book of wonders, and the children will place their stools behind the stove, and listen with all their ears. That is the hour of the peasant's felicity; that is the warmth and the paradise that have made all the long day's cold, and the wading through snows in the valley, and the dreary chill of the wood tolerable. "" 66 them ever new. In France, Germany, Denmark, and WHAT an amount of endurance of one of these conditions there is in this world, for the enjoyment of the other. For this the traveller drives over the bleak heath with frost in his veins, and the hissing east-wind in his teeth, and cheers himself on with the imagination of the blazing fire, the warm supper, his pipe and his glass at the well-known inn-his home for the time. For this the shepherd treads the crunching snows and beats his fingers on his sides, on the wintry downs; for Then are all the simple souls entranced and rapt this the labourer spends his eight or ten hours over his away into a land of loveliest enchantment and romance. monotonous task in field and wood; the sailor mounts The good old times of simplest faith and chivalthe top-mast while the icy rain glazes the ropes as he rous adventure have come down to the peasantry of the ascends and glues his aching hands to them, and sits out continent in a literature of their own, to which they his turn amid the midnight blast, and the roar of dark-cling with an unconquerable affection, and which is to some seas. For this fifty thousand wretches in the streets of London alone, suffer cold, and hunger, and contempt; -their homes being the purchased threepenny lodging where they warm themselves by huddling together in heaps like sheep in a winter's pen. For this thousands of shivering children stand or trudge on through daily miseries, the impotent and passive ministers of their elders. It is theirs to "stand and wait." To hold hammers, hand nails, watch gates, guard open shops, sit in deathly lobbies expecting answers to messages, doing anything, or what is worse, doing nothing at the bidding of better clothed, fed, and warmed individuals. For this they offer flowers that nobody wants, pencils that nobody has faith in, and lucifers that nobody notices, and freeze against great bare walls, and at wind-whistling corners, half into statues, and half into crouching miseries. Yet for them there is some dismal nook of some dismal place where a bag of shavings or a heap of matting, presents a paradise of comparative warmth through a few dark hours, if they can only carry thither the sum which opens the inexorable door. Immense is the amount of daily wretchedness throughout the world in winter, that is cheerfully endured for the warmth at home. In England the abundance of With these are mixed up the horrors of "The Three coal renders unnecessary the prowling and hacking in Miller's Daughters," a dreadful Blue-Beard story; the forest and on waste for fuel which is so common to the wild tale of the inestimable Lock in the African cave, poor in most other countries. Here the fire like the Xaxa; or they laugh at the simplicity of the Schildbread must be sternly worked for; but in most other burgers, or mingle a little modern marvel with the old countries the forest supplies the necessary fuel, and the-the Cruelties of the Turks towards the Greeks, or poor must out and gather it. We may see a little of the Wars of Buonaparte. this in those parts of our own country where coal is Such are the hours of domestic warmth and intellecscarce, and commons are not wholly despoiled of their tual enjoyment with which a good Providence recomtrees, but abroad, the supply of the fuel is generally penses the simple dwellers of foreign woods and wilds the work of the women and the children. Woods ex- for the out-door cold and cares of the day. The wolf cept far from the towns and villages are no solitudes. may howl amid the winds at the door; the dark forest At all hours of the day and all seasons, you find in them may frown around, snow may bury the valleys, and the the peasant women and children, raking up the fallen icy blasts sweep the wastes, but within there is light leaves for the bedding of their cattle, and gathering and comfort, and a world of wonder in which the imasticks and dead wood for their fires. Down every path gination roams as on the sun-bright plains of heaven. of the mountains you see them descending with their Where poverty presses hardly come too letters from new large bundles of long boughs, or you see the scratch-lands beyond the Atlantic, where their kindred have esings in the snow that are made by their trailing these after them. tablished themselves in new homes, and invite them to plenty and independence. The artist has seized a group of these in some one of It is in our own wealthy country, and especially in his rambles and given it to us in a masterly manner, our most wealthy cities, and above all, in our unrias we have given it to day to our readers. Behold the valled metropolis, that those who suffer the fiercest dreary, wintry edge of the forest. Behold the mother pangs of cold abroad enjoy the least of the warmth at assailing in the absence of the wood-police, the bough home. The wretched street haunter of London, where of an outstanding tree, and yet fearing to cut too much. is his or her home? The Gin-Palace alone invites them See the fine attitude which a shape too graceful to be in to a warmth that scorches, and a blaze that kills. wholly concealed by the peasant's attire, and the ear- The dreary lodging-house admits them to what ?—to nestness of the act gives to the mother. See the watch-scenes of the most revolting filth, discomfort, and deing and waiting children. What patience in the girl, what cold in the boy. It is cold petrified, rather than personified. But anon, the turn of the youngsters shall come. Both shall receive their loads, and trudge home full of glee, dreaming inwardly of the warm pravity. In these, human creatures herd together in the rudeness of beasts and the infamy of devils. No songs of the olden time; no romance of beauty and grace, of tenderness and exalted love, breaks through the darkness of their spirits, and soothes them into vir tue. Degradation the most hideous, vulgarity the most revolting; theft, and cunning, and murder, and brutal violence crowd and crouch together, and dream only of more successful lies, more adroit robberies, more subtle infamies for the morrow. Such is the grand triumph of our civilization, such the result of our wealth, such the blessing of our Christianity! Who would not prefer to this the peasant's fate? Cold abroad but warmth at home, The blazing fire, the assembled family, and the book that has in its pages worlds of fresh beauty, and the soul of Paradise? whilst despoiling it. There was at once a violent repulsion and a violent attraction between these two doctrines. They recognised each other in the combat, and aspired after a yet more complete recognition when the struggle should cease by the triumph of liberty. Three things were thus evident to reflecting minds after the month of April 1791. First, that the revolutionary movement already commenced would march on from point to point, until it had obtained the complete restoration of all the rights of humanity, that it would pursue tyranny, privilege, inequality, and egotism, not alone on the throne, but in civil law, in administration, in the legal distribution of property, in the conditions of commerce, labour, and domestic relations, in fact, in every SCENES AND CHARACTERS FROM THE FRENCH relation of man with man, and of man with woman. REVOLUTION. Translated for "Howitt's Journal,” FROM LAMARTINE'S "HISTOIRE DES GIRONDINS." THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Secondly, that this philosophical and social democratic movement would seek its natural form in a government analagous to its principles and nature. And thirdly, that this social and political emancipation would bring along with it an intellectual and religious emancipation to the human mind; that the liberty of thinking, of speaking, and of acting, would not stop at the liberty of belief. That the idea of God confined within sancTHERE are objects in nature whose form you can only tuaries would issue forth to shine in every free consciclearly distinguish by withdrawing to a distance. Prox-ence with the light of liberty itself; and that this lightimity as well as distance prevents perfect vision. Thus revelation for some, reason for others,-would exhibit it is in great events. The hand of God is visible in hu- more and more gloriously truth and justice, which flow man things, but this hand itself casts a shadow which from God upon earth. conceals what it accomplishes. Thus in the French Revolution we perceive, even at its commencement, the announcement of the grandest thing in the world: the advent of a new idea in the human mind, the democratic idea, and later a democratic government. This idea is the product of Christianity. Christianity finding men enslaved and degraded throughout the whole earth, arose at the fall of the Roman Empire as vengeance, but under the form of resignation. It proclaimed the three words which two thousand years later were repeated by French philosophy: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! For a time this dogma lay buried in the souls of Christians. At first too feeble to attack civil laws, it said to the powerful: "I still for a little while leave you the political world, and confine myself to the moral. Continue if you can to enchain, to break into classes, to enslave, to profane the nations. I emancipate souls. Perhaps I may employ two thousand years in vivifying souls, before I burst forth in your institutions. But a day will arrive when my doctrine will escape from the temple and enter the councils of nations. That day the social world shall be renewed." This day had arrived. A century of philosophy, sceptical in appearance, but in reality believing had prepared the way for it. The scepticism of the eighteenth century only attacked the external forms and supernatural dogmas of Christianity: it adopted with passion the morality of Christianity and its social meaning. That which Christianity called revelation, philosophy called reason. The words were different, the sense was the same. The emancipation of individuals, of castes, of people, was equally derived from it. The sole difference consisted in this, that the arcient world had emancipated itself in the name of Christ, the modern in the name of those rights which all creatures receive from God. The political philosophy of the Revolution could not, however, invent a truer, a more complete, or divine word than Christianity had already done, by which to reveal itself to Europe, and it had adopted the dogma and word of fraternity. The Revolution only attacked the exterior form of the reigning religion, because this religion had encrusted itself in the monarchic, theocratic, and aristocratic forms of government which it wished to destroy. Thus is explained that apparent contradiction in the spirit of the eighteenth century, which borrows all from Christianity, yet denies it MIRABEAU. Poets tell us clouds take the forms of the countries over which they pass, that moulding themselves upon the valleys, upon the plains, or the mountains, they preserve their impress, and thus bear them across the heavens. This is the image of certain men, whose collective genius, so to say, moulds itself upon their era, and in themselves embody all the individuality of a nation. Mirabeau was one of these men. He did not originate the revolution, he manifested it. Without him, perhaps, it would have remained a mere idea or tendency. He was born, and in him it found form, passion, language, that which causes a crowd to exclaim; "Behold here is the thing itself! He was born a gentleman, of an old family, originally from Italy, but refugees and established in Provence. This family was one of those which Florence had repulsed from her bosom during the tempestuous times of her liberty, and for whose exile and persecution Dante so severely reproaches his country. The blood of Machiavelli and the restless genius of the Italian republics shewed themselves in all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls are above their destiny. Vices, passions, virtues, all are beyond the common line. The women are angelic or wicked, the men sublime or depraved, their very language is emphatic and grand like their characters. Even in their most familiar correspondence there are the colouring and vibration of the heroic tongues of Italy. Mirabeau's ancestors speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of the quarrels of Marius and Sylla, of Cæsar and Pompey. You feel that they are great men lost amidst ignoble things. Mirabeau from his cradle was filled with this domestic majesty and this manhood. The source of genius is often in the race, and the family is sometimes the prophecy of destiny. Mirabeau's education was rude and cold, like the hand of his father, who was called the Friend of Men, but whose restless spirit and selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of his children. Honour was the only virtue taught him. That was the name then given to that parade virtue which was often only the exterior of probity and the elegance of vice. Entering the military service early, he only contracted a taste for dissipation and character, his acts, or his thoughts, with an immortal sign. Had he believed in God he might have died a martyr, but he would have left behind him the religion of reason, and the reign of democracy. In a word, Mirabeau was the intellect of a people-yet that is not after all being the faith of a people! PORTRAIT OF LOUIS XVI. play. His youth being passed in state prisons, his passions there exasperated themselves, his genius whetted itself on the chains of his dungeon, and his soul lost that modesty which rarely survives these precocious chastisements. Removed from prison to attempt, at the desire of his father and forming a connexion with Mademoiselle de Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the great families of Provence, he practised himself in cunning and audacious scheming on this little stage of Aix. Louis was at this time thirty-seven; his features He displayed cunning, seduction, bravado, all the rewere those of his race, rendered rather more heavy by sources of his nature to gain success; and he did suc- the German blood of his mother, a princess of the ceed; but scarcely had he married before he is pursued house of Saxony. He had blue eyes much open, rather by fresh persecutions, and the strong castle of Pontar- clear than dazzling, a round retreating forehead, a lier opens to receive him. A love, which the "Letters Roman nose, deprived somewhat of the usual energy to Sophie" have rendered immortal, once more open of the aquiline form, by the nostrils being soft the gates for him. He carries off Madame de Monnier and heavy; a mouth smiling and gracious in its exfrom her old husband. The happy lovers take refuge pression, thick lips, but well cut; a fine skin, a for some months in Holland. They are overtaken, are rich and bright complexion although somewhat flaccid. separated, are placed in confinement, one in the convent, His stature was short, his figure stout, attitude timid, the other in the dungeon of Vincennes. Love, which gait uncertain. In repose an uneasy balancing of himlike fire in the veins of the earth, always shews itself self, first on one hip, then on the other, it might be in some recess of a great man's destiny, kindles into a movement contracted by him in the impatience which one ardent flame all the passions of Mirabeau. In his seizes princes forced to give long audiences, or a physivengeance, it is outraged love which he satisfies; in li-cal sign of the perpetual balancing of his undecided berty, it is love which he again wins and rescues; in mind. In his whole person an expression of goodstudy, it is also love which he makes illustrious. En-humour, more vulgar than royal, exciting at the first tering obscure into his dungeon, he leaves it a writer, an orator, a statesman; but perverted, ready for anything, even to sell himself for fortune and celebrity. The drama of his life has been conceived in his brain; a stage is alone wanting, and that time prepares for him. In the interval of the few years which passed between the time of his quitting the fortress of Vincennes, and his entering the National Assembly, he accomplished a mass of polemical work, which would have wearied any other man, but which only kept him in breath. The Bank of St. Charles, the Institutions of Holland, the work on Prussia, his encounter with Beaumarchais, his style and the part he had to sustain, those grand pleadings upon questions of war, of the balance of European powers, of finance; those biting invectives, those word-duels with the ministers and popular men of the time, already recalled the Roman Forum at the time of Clodius and Cicero. You feel the antique spirit in these modern controversies. You already believe you hear the first roaring of those popular tumults, which are soon to burst forth, and which his voice is destined to govern. At the first election of Aix, rejected with scorn by the nobility, he throws himself on the mercies of the people, sure to make the balance fall on that side on which he bestows the weight of his audacity and genius. Marseilles disputes with Aix the possession of the great plebeian. His two elections, the discourses which he delivers there, the addresses which he draws up, and the energy which he displays, occupy the attention of all France. His echoing words became proverbs of the revolution. From the moment of his entrance into the National Assembly, he alone occupied it; he in his own person is the entire people. His gestures are commands. He places himself on a level with the throne. His very vices cannot prevail over the clearness and sincerity of his intellect. At the foot of the rostrum he is a man without shame and virtue, at the rostrum he is an honest man. Yet the people are no religion to him, only an instrument. His God is glory; his faith posterity; his conscience only in his intellect, the fanaticism of his idea is entirely human; the cold materialism of the age deprives his soul of the motive and the strength given by imperishable things. He dies, exclaiming, "Cover me with perfumes and crown me with flowers, that I may enter into the eternal sleep." He is of time alone; he has imprinted nothing of the infinite on his work. He has not sanctified, either his moment rather mockery than veneration, and which was seized upon by his enemies with a wicked perversethose vices which they desired to immolate in royalty. ness and exhibited to the people as a symbol of In short, a certain resemblance to the imperial physiog nomy of the last Caesars at the time of the decay of their race and the empire; the gentleness of Antoninus, with the heavy corpulency of Vitellius; such was the man! The young prince had been brought up at Meudon, in complete seclusion from the court of Louis XV. That evil atmosphere which had infected the age, had not penetrated to the heir of the throne. The soul of Fénéon seemed to have revisited this Palace of Meudon, where he had educated the Duke of Burgundy, to watch over the education of his descendant. That which was most nearly related to enthroned vice, was perhaps the purest thing in France. Had not the age been as dissolute as the king, it would have lavished all its affection upon him. But the age had reached that point of corruption when purity appears ridiculous, and when modesty is derided. Married at twenty to a daughter of Maria Theresa, he continued till he ascended the throne, his life of domestic seclusion and study. The horror inspired by his grandfather, formed his only popularity. For a few days he enjoyed the esteem of his people, but never their favour. Honest and well-informed he was, but spite of his feeling the necessity of reform, he had not the soul of a reformer; he had neither the genius nor the boldness necessary. He accumulated tempests without giving them impulse. MARIE-ANTOINETTE. The Queen seemed to have been created by nature, as a contrast to the King, and to excite for ages, interest and compassion in one of those state dramas, which are incomplete without the sufferings of a woman. Daughter of Maria Theresa, her life had commenced amidst the storms of the Austrian monarchy. She was one of those children which the Empress held by the hand when presenting herself as a suppliant before her faithful Hungarian subjects, they exclaimed, "Let us die for our King Maria Theresa!" Her daughter also had the heart of a king. At her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom; this beauty was still in all its splendour. She was of a tall, graceful figure; a true daughter of the Tyrol. The two children she had presented to the throne, lent to her person that character of maternal majesty which suits so well the mother of a nation. The presentiments of her misfortunes, and the anxieties of each day had only somewhat paled her first freshness. The natural majesty of her carriage destroyed none of the grace of her movements; her neck rising freely from her shoulders, had those grand bendings which give such expression to attitudes. You felt the woman beneath the queen, the tenderness of her heart under the majesty of her destiny. Her light brown hair was long and silky; her forehead high and slightly swelling; her eyes of that clear blue which recalls northern skies, or the waters of the Danube; her nose aquiline, the nostrils open and distended with emotion, a sign of courage; her mouth large, the teeth dazzling, Austrian lip, that is to say, prominent and full; the contour of her countenance oval, her physiognomy changing, expressive, full of emotion. Her whole countenance clothed with that indescribable splendour, which sparkles in the glance, glows in the shadows and reflexions of the flesh, and surrounds all with a halo similar to the warm and coloured vapour in which objects bathed with sunshine seem to swim; the highest expression of beauty which gives to it the ideal, renders it living and changes it into attraction. Together with all these charms, a soul thirsting for affection, a heart easily moved and only asking for a resting place; and a smile pensive and intelligent.-Such was Mariè-Antoinette as the woman. was This was enough to make the happiness of a man, and the ornament of a court. To inspire an undecided king, and be the salvation of a state more needed. Genius for government was needed; and this the Queen had not. Received with a mad intoxication by a corrupt court, and ardent nation, she was likely to believe in the eternity of their sentiments. She had let herself be lulled to rest amidst the dissipations of Trianon. She had heard the first mutterings of the tempest without believing in the danger. The court was become importunate, the nation hostile. An instrument of the court intrigues upon the heart of the King, she had at first favoured, then combated all those reforms which would have prevented or delayed the crisis. Her name became to the people the phantom of the counter-revolution. We are ready to calumniate what we fear. She was painted as a Messalina. The most infamous pamphlets were circulated; the most scandalous anecdotes believed. She might be accused of tenderness; of depravity, never. Beautiful, young, and adored; if her heart did not remain insensible, her secret sentiments, innocent perhaps, never justly gave room for scandal. History has her modesty; and this we will not violate. On these memorable days, the 5th and 6th of October, the Queen perceived only too late the enmity of the people. Emigration commenced, and she regarded it with favour. She was accused of plotting the destruction of the nation. Her name was sung aloud in the anger of the people. One woman became the enemy of an entire nation. Her pride disdained to deceive the people. She shut herself up in her resentment, and her terror. Imprisoned in the Tuileries she could not shew her face at the window without provoking outrage, and hearing insult. Every noise in the city made her fear an insurrection. Her days were desolate, her nights agitated. Her martyrdom was each hour throughout two long years, and multiplied in her heart by her love for her two children, and her uneasiness about the King. Her servants were spies. She caused much evil to the king; endowed with more mind, more soul, more character than he, her superiority only served to inspire him with confidence in her fatal counsel. She was at once the consolation of his woes, and the genius of his destruction; step by step she led him towards the scaffold; but she mounted it with him. VILLAGE PASTORALS. BY RICHARD HOWITT. WHAT pile is that, I pray you tell, Gothic and dark, with a monkish bell, A place where the flock is fleeced right well, Stranger. I see how it is-I do not doubt it- A merciful God must be their boot, Or fearful thoughts we must have for them; For where there's rottenness at the root, But little good can come of the stem. Stranger. But teaches he not-has he no school Yes! yes! he canes the head of the fool, The flock is ruined by such as he- Strong with musk and proud gentility; And able to preach with neat ability. Good friend-good friend-time out of mind, Pastors were fat, and sleek and rich: And it seems "the blind will lead the blind"Till Church and Priest fall into the ditch. 2nd. THE OLD PRIEST AND THE NEW. I passed through this village oft seasons ago, The Free-school long empty, a different place, The village throughout has a pleasanter air: Villager. tion invariably prevails as the chief rule of punishment; whilst, as a state advances in civilization, this principle of retaliation as invariably becomes discarded. This seems a proof, as plain as it is universal, that the principle of retaliation is simply a savage one, existing only in the mind of man before he has been instructed in morality. I admit that there is a natural desire in the breasts of all men to see crime punished with its like: but I at the same time maintain that this vindictive passion is a senseless and barbarous one, and always gives place to a higher and better sentiment as men are cultivated. Consider it. Retaliation rejects all discrimination in inflicting punishment. It is indeed, as Lord Bacon aptly describes it, "a wild kind of justice." The simple homicide and the wilful murderer receive the like award. Blood for blood requires that they should. Proare alike put out of sight by it, and one remorseless unvocation, incitement, temptation, infatuation, frenzy, varying doom is dealt to the sinner of every degree. That this blind vengeance has any title to be called morality, none, I presume, will pretend. If the term modoor-rality have any meaning at all, it is meant to distinguish between absolute good and evil; and consequently a punishment which falls on good and evil alike, can never be called a moral one. : In only one thing is the difference found- Cold, cold in his earth-bed the old Vicar lies!- Stranger. Good, good! I your Church now must pause to admire! CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. BY FREDERIC ROWTON, Honorary Secretary to the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. No. IX. THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH IMMORAL BECAUSE VINDICTIVE AND REMORSELESS. REFORM A NECESSARY END OF PUNISHMENT. THE PATERNAL MIND. THERE can be very little doubt that the doctrine which affirms the murderer to be deserving of death, has its origin in the vindictive passions of our nature: in that wild desire to retaliate upon an injurer which Barbarism enjoins, and Christianity condemns. We find that in a savage state the principle of retalia The principle of vindictiveness is quite irreconcileable with the fair administration of human justice. Suppose a man with two eyes deprive a man who has of an eye for an eye," the culprit would lose one of only one eye of his sight. Upon the retaliatory theory his own eyes for the one he had injured. Now, would this be a just and sufficient punishment? The culprit deprives his victim of sight altogether, and only loses part of his sight in return. It cannot be urged that he should be deprived of both his eyes, for this would exceed the law, and then the principle would be given up. Or again: suppose a rich man injure a poor man to the extent of five pounds-the poor man's all: would it be a fair and satisfactory punishment, to mulct the rich man only to the same extent! Such a proceeding would be manifestly most absurd. In fact, the principle of retaliation is totally inapplicable in a community. It never can be satisfactorily carried out. How could retaliation be inflicted upon Slave-stealing? upon Piracy? upon Coining? upon Desertion? upon Forgery? upon Arson? upon Riot? upon High Treason? upon Burglary? upon Bigamy? upon, indeed, almost every crime that can be named? It is absolutely impossible; for there are no punishments analagous to the offences. When it is said that the law of Retaliation is a moral law; that it is right for the perpetrator of evil to suffer evil-it is surely forgotten that the punishment falls upon the body, whilst the sin was in the motive of the soul. When you kill a man for the wilful murder of another, you punish the instrument that performed the act, but have no power over the thought of malice that conceived it. Do you call this morality-to punish the hand for the heart-the body for the soul? The proceeding is ridiculous. It resembles the act of a child who beats the table against which it has struck its head. The murderer who gloats and glories over his terrible act of revenge-what is it to him that you kill his body! It is precisely as we grow more and more moralized, that physical punishments become more and more unjust. Whilst the Physical predominates in a nation's mind, then crime is more animal than mental in its nature, and requires Physical, rather than Moral, coercion. But as the Moral becomes stronger than the Physical, then crime becomes more and more mental in character, and demands mental, instead of physical, restraints. If a savage be stubborn, vicious, and brutal, you will affect him most by brutal punishment, and the Lex Tali |