their fellow Jacobins. But Collot d'Herbois still lived, and his power nearly equalled Robespierre's. On the 6th of January, 1794, Chénier was arrested. The immediate and ostensible cause of his arrest was a visit to a suspected lady at Passy. The proceeding was utterly illegal, even according to such scanty remains of law as the Terrorists had preserved for themselves, for Chénier was not under the local jurisdiction of the man who seized him, and had a safe conduct and certificate of good citizenship from the authorities of his quartier. Indeed the gaoler of the Luxemburg prison refused to receive him, but the functionary at St. Lazare was less scrupulous. As Joseph Chénier had been an influential Jacobin and a member of the Convention, there were not wanting persons afterwards to assert that he had neglected to save his brother's life when it was in his power to do so; nay, some even charged him with having contributed to his condemnation. This imputation his friends have indignantly repelled. They maintain that, on the contrary, it was chiefly through his influence that André had remained unmolested for the sixteen months preceding. They affirm, moreover, that Joseph had been for some time virtually disconnected with the Jacobins, having grown wiser as they grew more frantic; that he was then a suspected if not a denounced man, and would himself have shared the fate of André, had the rule of Robespierre lasted a fortnight longer. The two pleas are not perfectly cousistent, and we think that generally the editors and biographers of the brothers have erred in trying to prove too much, and in giving to the accusation a greater importance than it deserved. For our own part, we do not believe one syllable of it. The Chéniers had that strong family attachment which all families ought to have, and it is absurd to suppose that if Joseph regarded the wishes of his relatives, when the question was only about breaking off a paper war with his brother, he would have disregarded them when that Especially do we think M. Arnault to blame, for seriously confuting, in a narration of two pages, a scandalous story of Madame de Genlis, about Mademoiselle Dumesnil's reception of Joseph Chénier; as if a French actress would trouble herself abouth truth, when there was a chance of saying a mot, or making a scene. brother's life was at stake. The advice he gave his father, who wished him to agitate openly for his brothers, "Rather try to let them be forgotten," was the very best that could have been given, as the event too truly showed. Had nothing been said about André, he might have remained unnoticed for two days longer, which would have been enough to save his life, and actually did save the life of Sauveur; but the memorial which his father addressed to that body called with a mournful irony the Comittee of Public Safety, was his death-warrant. * And now comes a characteristic specimen of radical inaccuracy. Another of the Cheniers, Sauveur, formerly an officer in the army of the north, had been arrested and imprisoned at Beauvais. In such haste was the indictment against Andre drawn up, that it confounded him with Sauveur; attributed to one brother the acts and writings of both, and designated the poet-editor as ex-adujutant-general and chief of brigade, under Dumouriez! One of Andre's eulogists suggests that he made no allusion to this palpable flaw, in hopes that this confusion of personal identity might be the means of saying his brother. If so, his silence was successful. There were, indeed, many reasons why Andre Chenier should have made no further opposition to the proceedings against him, than was necessary to expose their injustice and illegality in the eyes of future generations. To one whose patriotic hopes had been so cruelly disappointed, life was of little value. When a man of refined education, liberal principles, hopes of liberal institutions, and freedom from party fanaticism, sees all constitutional landmarks swept away, and the ochlocracy triumphant, his despondency is utter and hopeless. He has "lost the dream of doing and the other dream of done," and knows not how to help himself or others. In one case only *And yet, after all, must we not say that, in a higher sense, Joseph Chenier was morally guilty of his brother's death? He had encouraged the Jacobins in their earlier attempts; he had defended or apologized for their excesses; he had given them his pen, his voice. and his influence. In so far, then, as he had contributed to their triumph must he be deemed answerable for the consequences of that triumph. Alas! it is not too well remembered even at the present day, that they who help to open the flood-gates, are responsible for the inundation. can he be sustained. If his mind has been deeply imbued with the true philosophy the philosophy of Christianity he may remember that "God fulfils himself in many ways," and faith will illumine for him what, to the eye of reason alone, is thick darkness. θάρσει μοι θάρσει τέκνον, But we very much fear Chenier had not this consolation. His views, lofty and noble as they were, were still bounded by this world and the limits of human ability. And at that time it seemed as if no human ability could do anything for the French. The people from whom the gallows was a more acceptable gift than the right hand of friendship, * had triumphed, and he had long before made up his mind which alternative to choose. Chenier was guillotined July 25th, 1794. His works were not collected till 1819, and complete editions of them did not appear till 1840. RECENT ENGLISH HISTORIANS OF ANCIENT GREECE.** American Review, Feb. 1848. THE study of Greek History is a very different affair now from what it was when Plutarch was accepted for a standard authority, and "Cecrops, who invented marriage," was deemed as historical a personage as Alexander of Macedon. Our readers may be presumed * "S'ils triomphent, ce sont gens par qui il vaut mieux etre pendu que regarde comme ami.” Avis aux Français sur leurs veritables Ennemis. ** A History of Greece, by the Right Rev. CONNOP THIRLWALL. London: Longman & Co. 1835, 1844. A History of Greece, by GEO. GROTE, Esq. London: John Murray. Athenæus XIII, 555. 1846-7. to be familiar with, or at least to have some general idea of the way in which Niebuhr and Arnold (not to mention the more fanciful speculations of Michelet) have taken to pieces and reconstructed the early Roman narrative; and the Greek legends are now subjected to a somewhat similar process by both English and Germans. It certainly does seem strange at first, that an Englishman or German in this nineteenth century should pretend to know more about those remote ages, than the people who lived so much nearer to them the Roman who flourished at the beginning of our era, and the Greek who wrote hundreds of years before it: but the apparent paradox vanishes when we consider the historical sense and habits of philosophical criticism acquired by the moderns. Etymological and philological studies alone have done much. When it has been clearly shown that Livy mistranslated Greek words, and confused old and new meanings of Latin words, and that Apollonius Rhodius misunderstood and misapplied Homeric expressions, we have less hesitation in questioning the accuracy of avowedly poetical narrative of the one and the more specious history of the other; and the detection of such illusory etymologies as those which gave rise to the traditions connected with the Apaturian festival at Athens, and the street Argiletum in Rome, encourages us to apply the same rule of interpretation to other etymologically founded stories. It is not our intention to take any notice of Goldsmith and Gillies, and others of whom we have a dim recollection from our boyhood. But as Mitford, although pretty well laid on the shelf in his own country, still enjoys on this side the Atlantic the reputation and position of a standard historian it would hardly be proper in an article on this subject to omit all mention of him. That his qualifications for the task he undertook surpassed those of his predecessors, and that his work was a great improvement on theirs, is freely admitted. But, to waive the consideration of other faults, there is one inherent defect in the book. It is the history of a people generally republican and partly democratic, written expressly to "show up" democracy. Nay, more, it was written with the evident purpose of drawing a modern conservative British moral from the history of ancient Vol. I. Greek republics. Now a man who sets out with a strong political bias in favor of the institutions of any country, is not likely to make a faithful historian; but much more unlikely is he who starts with a predetermination to see everything in the worst possible light, the facts of history being unfortunately for the most part bad enough in themselves, without any gratuitous blackening. Such a course is sufficiently delusive when only contemporaries are under investigation: it is still worse when we undertake to judge of the customs and actions of the men of one age by the standards of another; such inferences, however encouraged by the necessary licenses of the poet and the dramatist, make sad work with ethical and political speculations. We all see the absurdity of the thing when a young lady in a Magazine story, makes a modern lover of Pericles, or some other Greek worthy, and provides him with a heroine of the modern pattern. We are less quick to perceive the fallacy when a modern Platonist turns the Athenian philosopher into a High-Church divine. Still less prompt are we to disentangle ourselves when the political theorist argues from Rome to England, or from Athens to America, either with or without some such intermediate step as Venice, since so many of the important fundamental terms, Aristocracy, Democracy, &c., remain the same. But the error is none the less, because it is the less transparent. Whately has said that "wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies;"* but surely a ready and accurate discrimination of differences deserves some place in the definition. "Human nature is the same in all ages," we are told; and this text suggests appropriate comments against unnatural schemes, as when it is proposed to construct the bricks of the political edifice without straw, or to compose perfection by an aggregate of imperfections. But we must always make allowance, and great allowance, for the effect of habit and experience. If the republican Greeks had no idea of a king, but as a man who "subverts the customs of the country, violates women, and puts men to death without trial," their idea was in precise conformity with their experience of Rhetoric, pp. 104, 105. Herodotus, iii. 80, quoted by Mr. Grote. |