philosophical experiment. The Vandals had no time to pause in their career of blood, for the pursuits of philosophy, and sent him away, observing that the republic had no longer any need of che mists. Chamfort, a member of the French academy, and an enthusiastic advocate for the revolu tion, with feelings too keen to bear the horrors by which so noble a cause had been stained, hid them from his sight by a voluntary death. La Harpe was thrown into prison, and was destined to perish on the scaffold. The author of the Travels of the younger Anacharsis, notwithstanding his advanced age, was the object of continual persecution. Florian, who was himself imprisoned, and condemned to see his dearest friends perish, had not sufficient fortitude to sustain such trials. His charming pen had displayed the most soothing images of happiness and virtue, and when he beheld, around him only misery and crimes, his disordered imagination hastened his death. Vicq d'Azyr died of a broken heart. Bailly, the first mayor of Paris, whose astronomical researches have placed him in the highest rank of science, was murdered with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. He was to have been executed in the Champ de Mars; but from the caprice of the sanguinary mob, he was compelled to wait two or three hours at the place of execution, while the scaffold was removed to a field adjoining, where he stood drenched in rain, in the midst of winter, and, which was more difficult to bear than the pelting of the pitiless storm," exposed to the insults and injuries of an execrable set of wretches who usually attended these horrid spectacles. The red flag was burned before his eyes, and he was compelled to set fire to the pile that consumed it, while the ruffians plunged his head into the smoke for their farther amusement. He submitted to all that was inflicted on him with the serenity of a philosopher, and only requested with mildness, that his sufferings might be terminated. One of the barbarians by whom he was tormented, said to him, in a tone of savage mockery, "Tu trembles, Bailly." Mon ami, c'est de froid," replied the sage. At length, after having made him drink the cup of bitterness to the very dregs, they permitted him to die. I am, &c. Miss Williams to a Friend, relating the unhappy Catastrophe of a Family in the South of France. THE cities of Paris and Lyons, and the extensive department of the Vendée, were not the only scenes of horror which France exhibited during the tyranny of Robespierre; alas, there was scarcely a valley of that desolated country," whose flowers were not bruised with the tread of hostile paces Robespierre could not have so long maintained his iron sceptre, had he not found, to use the words of Shakespeare, "Slaves that took his humours for a warrant "To understand a law." יין While Carrier ravaged the country of the west, and Collot d'Herbois laid the opulent city of the east in ashes, Le Bon hung like a destroying vulture over the north, feasting his savage soul with the sight of mangled carcases; and Maignet consumed the lovely villages of the south in the flames of a general conflagration. The scene of Maignet's proconsolate was the departments of Vaucluse, and the "You tremble, Bailly."" It is with cold, my friend.” mouth mouth of the Rhone-those celebrated regions for ever dear to the lovers of the elegant arts, where, chearing the gloom of gothic barbarism, to use the language, of Ossian, "the light of the song arose;" where the Troubadours strung their early harps, and where the immortal Petrarch poured forth his impassioned strains. Divine poet! no more shall the unhappy lover seek for consolation in shedding delicious tears on the brink of that fountain where thou hast wept for Laura!--no more shall he haunt with pensive enthusiasm that solitary valley, those craggy rocks, those hanging woods, and torrent streams, where thou hast wandered with congenial feelings, and to which thy tender complaints have given everlasting renown! those enchanting dreams, those dear illusions have for ever vanished-that delicious country, the pride of France, the garden of Europe, the classical haunt of Petrarch, no longer presents the delightful images of beauty, of poetry, of passion; the magical spell is broken, the soothing charın is dissolved; the fairy scenes have been polluted, the wizard bowers profaned; the orange groves are despoiled of their aromatic sweetness; the waters are tinged with blood; the hollow moans of calamity issue from the caverns, and the shrieks of despair re-echo from the cliffs; the guillotine has arisen amidst those consecrated shades where love alone had reared its altars!-no longer with the name of Vaucluse is associated the idea of Petrarch that of Maignet, the destroying Maignet, presents itself to the shuddering imagination, and the astonished soul starts back with horror "I see, where late the verdant landscape smil'd, Pale are the meads, and all their blossoms dead; And nature wears a veil of deadly bue." i One of the first acts of Maignet, upon his arrival in the department of Vaucluse, was the destruction of the village of Bedouin, situated in a country of the most romantic beauty," and where the benign climate fosters all the rich productions of summer, and forms a striking contrast to the eternal snows which cover the mountains of Ventoux, at the foot of which the village is placed. A small tree of liberty which had been planted on a solitary spot near Bedouin, was, during the night, torn from the ground by some wretches who knew that this incident would furnish a pretext for pillage and devastation. At break of day the very persons who were the perpetrators of this act, one of whom was the president of the popular society, sounded a general alarm, and accused the guiltless inhabitants of Bedouin of the sacrilege committed against the hallowed symbol of freedom. Revolutionary troops were instantly summoned to carry fire and sword through the village and territory of Bedouin. A municipal commission was immediately organized by Maignet, which presented itself wherever there was the hope of spoil, spreading every where desolation and death. Five hundred habitations were delivered to the flames; the fruits of the harvest were consumed, and the mandate of Maignet, fatal as the fabled wand of an evil magician, struck the rich and luxuriant soil with sudden sterility. The flourishing manufactures of Bedouin shared the fate of its desolated. fields, and all that was saved from the general wreck were the treasures spread by the fruitful silk worm upon the tops of the trees by which it is nourished. A tribunal of blood was formed by the order of Maignet; every day the destined number of victims were marked by the public accuser; and the inhabitants who were unable to name the guilty persons, were all involved in one proscription. Those Those who escaped the knife of the guillotine sought for shelter in the depths of caverns, after the conflagration of their habitations, on the ruins of which placards were fixed, forbidding any person to approach the spot. The hollow cliffs re-echoed the moans of the widow and the orphan. Two hundred and eighty young men of Bedouin who had flown to the frontier even before the requisition in order to defend their country, in vain dispatch successive letters, enquiring with fond solicitude after their parents. Those gallant young soldiers will return to their native village, their brows bound with the laurels of valour.. Alas! they will find their native village but one sad heap of ruins!—in vain they will call upon the tender names of father, of mother, of sister-a melancholy voice will seem to issue from the earth that covers them, and sigh, they are no more! For those victorious warriors no car of triumph is prepared; no mother's tears of transport shall hail the blessed moment of their return; no father shall clasp them to his bosom with exulting joy, proud of their heroic deeds.. Ah, no! their toils, their dangers, and their gener rous sacrifices shall find no recompence in the sweetness of domestic affection, in the soothing bliss which, after absence belongs to home!—alas! their homes are levelled with the ground; they will find no spot upon which to repose their -wearied limbs, but the graves of their murdered parents. The village of Bedouin was too confined a sphere for the destroying genius of Maignet. His thirst of blood was not yet allayed, his taste for desolation was not yet gratifieds A wider scene of ruin fired his imagination, and his creative genius furnished the committee of public safety with a model for the law of the 220 of Prairial, which banished all: judicial forms from the revolutionary tribunal of. Paris, N 3. |