According to Garat he was mobbed in the street as one of Pitt's spies, and narrowly escaped immediate trial and execution; but even if his apprehension really took place in this way the danger could not have been so imminent as Garat rep

resents.

mania, but the Revolution upheaval turned merchants into fanatics and rationalists into mystics.

Stone's acquittal ought to have rendered Vaughan's return to England perfectly safe, and his brother-in-law William Manning, M.P. for Plympton and a staunch Vaughan repaired to Geneva, and had Tory, was assured by Pitt that as a harmno sooner arrived than he despatched a less enthusiast he might resume his Parlong letter to Robespierre, written in a liamentary duties; but Vaughan suspected tone bespeaking intimacy, and an intention a trap. This was of course absurd, but it of keeping up a correspondence. He ad- shows the atmosphere of distrust which vised Robespierre to contract France to then prevailed. He consequently never her former limits, and to convert her con- again trod English soil; but after living quests into a fringe of free and allied some time with Skipwith, the American States. By the irony of fate this letter, consul in Paris, he rejoined his family at written as if to an autocrat, reached Paris Hallowell, Maine. We do not hear that on the night of the 9th Thermidor, when he took any part in American politics, but Robespierre, arrested but released, was he doctored his neighbors gratuitously, making his last throw for life and power was honored and respected, and died in at the Hôtel de Ville. It was opened by 1835, bequeathing part of a fine library to the Committee of Public Safety, perhaps Bowdoin College. Of all the English exat the very moment when the fallen tribune | iles in Paris he seems to have had the was writhing in agony. peacefullest old age.

In 1796, probably before his return to George Grieve, who hunted Madame Paris, Vaughan published at Strasburg a du Barry to death, is in every way a conpamphlet entitled "De l'état politique et trast to him. Grieve's grandfather, Ralph, économique de la France sous sa Consti- was a scrivener at Alnwick, who, on the tution de l'an 3." It professed to be a election of an incumbent in 1694, headed translation from the German, made by a the minority and was expelled from the foreigner who craved excuse for inaccu- Common Council. His father, Richard, a racies of idiom. It is an unqualified pan- few weeks before George's birth in 1748, egyric of the Directory, a system of was the leader of an election mob which government to be envied, according to stormed the town hall, thus frustrating the Vaughan, even by America, much more attempt of his fellow-councillors to proby England, Switzerland, and Holland. cure an unfair return. With such a linThere is an incidental reference to the eage George Grieve could scarcely fail to Reign of Terror as a political inquisition be an ardent politician; yet his elder whose rigor equalled that of the Spanish brother, Davidson Richard, was a quiet tribunal, and there is a very just remark country gentleman, high sheriff of Northattributing the atrocities of the Revolu-umberland in 1788. George, in 1774, tion in part to the despotism and supersti- headed the opposition to the Duke of tion under which its leaders had been Northumberland's attempt to fill up both trained. Vaughan likewise observes that seats, in lieu of being content with one, the mob generally respected private prop- and the opposition secured a narrow maerty, frequently yielded to the voice of rea- jority of sixteen, Alnwick itself pronouncson, and were rarely intoxicated, "which "ing for the duke. Four years later Grieve an evident fling at the London and Bir-led a mob which levelled the fences of mingham rioters "cannot be said of part of the moor wrongfully presented by mobs everywhere." It is surprising, how- the corporation to the duke's agent. ever, to find him not merely extolling was of course a fervent admirer of Wilkes, the cumbrous and corrupt system of the and a zealous advocate of Parliamentary Directory, but confidently predicting its reform. His affairs, however, became indurability and an era of peace and pros- volved, and like Pigott, he fancied England perity. He was manifestly wanting in to be on the brink of ruin. Accordingly political sagacity. He was also smitten about 1780 he sold his patrimony, crossed with the craze of the Revolution being a the Atlantic, made acquaintance with fulfilment of the book of Daniel, and wrote Washington and Paine, and is said to a treatise on the subject, but had the good have partly supported himself by his pen. sense to suppress it, the printer saving He appears to have been sent on a mission one copy for Grégoire. A Unitarian should to Holland, and then, about 1783, settled have escaped the prophecy-interpretation in Paris.

He

Grieve was to have dined with Marat the very day of his assassination, and he unwarrantably denounced the Jacobin expriest Roux as Charlotte Corday's accomplice, on the ground of having met him at Marat's house and seen him "look furious; " but this denunciation had no effect. He is said, however, to have boasted that he had brought seventeen persons to the guillotine. If the vaunt was true, it can only be hoped that his reason was temporarily impaired. Five months after Robespierre's fall he was arrested at Amiens and taken to Versailles, where twenty-two depositions were given against him, but on unknown grounds the prosecution was stopped. In 1796 he was back in America, where he published a translation of the Marquis de Châtellux's "Travels," unaware perhaps that John Kent, likewise an eyewitness of and pamphleteer on the Revolution, had brought out a translation in London nine years earlier. He eventually settled in Brussels, and died there in 1809. His tool and confederate Zamore, also arrested after Robespierre's fall, but said to have been released on Grieve's representations, lived, morose, miserable, and a vilifier of his benefactress, till 1820.

That such a man would throw himself again petitioned for her liberation, but into the Revolutionary movement is evi- this time in vain. Grieve superintended dent; but although he knew Mirabeau the search for jewels concealed in dungthere is no trace of Grieve's activity till heaps, and got up the case against her. 1792, when he took up his quarters at an His manuscripts, still preserved at the inn at Louveciennes, the hamlet inhabited national archives, are in irreproachable by Madame du Barry. Here he formed a French. Not merely did he collect eviclub, which, the lady being in England in dence, but he was himself a witness, and quest of her stolen jewels, audaciously had it not been for his relentless persecumet in her drawing-room. Her Hindoo tion it seems likely that she would have servant Zamore, whom she had brought been left unmolested. up, had stood sponsor to, and had named after one of Voltaire's tragedies, proved unfaithful. She had loaded him with kindness, and as a boy he used, dressed like Cupid, to hold a parasol over her as she went to meet Louis XV. in the garden; but Grieve wormed all her secrets out of him, got an order for seals to be placed on her property, and placed her name at the head of a list of persons to be arrested. The power of the municipality to make arrests was, however, questioned, and for seven months Madame du Barry remained free, though in perpetual anxiety. On July I, 1793, Grieve escorted the municipality to the bar of the Convention, vehemently denounced her, and obtained authority to apprehend her, but a petition from the villagers, who had profited by her residence, procured her release. Thereupon Grieve issued a pamphlet describing her luxurious life, and holding her up to odium as a conspirator. He signed himself "Man of letters, officious" (this is surely a case for translating officieux officious), "defender of the brave sans-culottes of Louveciennes, friend of Franklin and Marat, factious (factieux) and anarchist of the first water, and disorganizer of despotism for twenty years in both hemispheres." Madame du Barry, who had already dismissed one treacherous servant, now dismissed Zamore also. In September Grieve secured a fresh warrant against her, and singularly enough rode part of the way to Paris in the hackney carriage with her. What passed between them is a mystery. Was he enamored of her, and repelled with horror, or did he offer life and liberty if she disgorged? In any case it is strange that Madame du Barry, whose last lover but one had been an EnglishHenry Seymour, nephew of the Duke of Somerset, the Sunday-evening dancing in whose park at Prunay was remembered by old women still living in 1870 - should have been hunted to death by another Englishman. The inhabitants

man

Marat perhaps made his acquaintance at Newcastle, or while teaching French at Edinburgh in 1772.

We now come to Thomas Paine - the original spelling seems to have been Pain, and the French orthography was Payne

who had twice visited Paris prior to the Revolution, but whose previous career need not be related. He paid a third visit in 1790, and a fourth in 1791, when four Frenchmen joined him in constituting themselves a Republican Society. On the king's flight to Varennes, Paine drew up a republican manifesto, which Duchatelet translated, signed, and placarded on the doors of the Assembly. Still clinging to royalty, that body was much scandalized, and threatened a prosecution. Paine likewise challenged Sieyes to a written controversy on republicanism. He returned to London in company with Lord Daer, son of the Earl of Selkirk, a young Scotchman enraptured with the Revolu tion, destined to die of consumption at Madeira, and with Etienne Dumont, Mi

rabeau's secretary. The latter was thoroughly disgusted by Paine's claiming the chief credit for American independence, and by his avowed desire to burn every book in existence and start society afresh with his "Rights of Man."

Almost the last act of the Constituent Assembly was to confer French citizenship on eighteen foreigners, that they might help to "settle the destinies of France, and perhaps of mankind." Paine was elected by Girondin influence in four departments, one of them styling him "Penne," and as Priestley wisely declined to sit, he and Clootz were the only foreigners in the Convention. Madame Roland, repelled doubtless by his vulgarity, regretted that her friends had not nominated David Williams in his stead. To avoid being mobbed, Paine had to make a detour by Sandwich and Deal to Dover, where the custom-house is said to have rummaged all his effects, and even opened his letters; but at Calais he was greeted with military honors, cheered by the crowd, and harangued by the mayor. Paine, unable even to the last to open his mouth in French, could reply only by putting his hand to his heart. His portrait found its way even into village inns, and an English lady archly wrote home:

At the very moment you are sentencing him to instalment in the pillory we may be awarding him a triumph. Perhaps we are both right. He deserves the pillory from you for having endeavored to destroy a good constitution; and the French may with equal reason grant him a triumph, as their constitution is likely to be so bad that even Mr. Thomas Paine's writings may make it better.*

a French translation of which was read by Bancal while he stood mute at the tribune, evinced humanity and sagacity. He contrasted the success of the English 1688 with the failure of 1649, excused Louis as the victim of bad training, and warned France of the impolicy of losing her sole ally, America, where universal grief would be caused by the death of a king regarded as its best friend. In a sentence which goes far to redeem Paine's errors he said :

I know that the public mind in France has been heated and irritated by the dangers to which the country has been exposed; but if we look beyond, to the time when these dangers and the irritation produced by them shall have been forgotten, we shall see that what now appears to us an act of justice will then appear only an act of vengeance. Marat twice interrupted, first alleging that Paine was a Quaker, and as an objector to capital punishment disentitled to vote, and then pretending that his speech had been mistranslated.

On the fall of the Girondins, Paine discontinued attending the Convention, quietly awaited the impending arrest, and amused himself in the garden and poultryyard of his house with marbles, battledore, and hopscotch. On Christmas day, 1793, he was expelled from the Convention as a foreigner, and on New Year's eve was arrested simultaneously with Clootz. An American deputation vainly pleaded for his release, and on his asking for the good offices of the Cordeliers Club, its only reply was to send him a copy of his speech against the king's execution. Gouverneur Morris, the American ambassador, advised Major Monro, with more seriousness him as the safest course to remain quiet, and severity, exclaimed in a despatch to and Paine appears to have acted on the the English Foreign Office, "What must advice. Morris, however, was mistaken a nation come to that has so little discern- in thinking that he would then have nothment in the election of their representa-ing to fear. Not that there is any truth in tives as to elect such a fellow?" Safe out of reach, Paine sent a defiant letter to the English government, thanking them for extending the popularity of his book by prosecuting it, and sneering at "Mr. Guelph and his debauchee sons as "incapable of governing a nation." When this letter was read at the trial, Erskine, reprobating its tone, could only suggest that it might be a forgery, and urge that in any case it was irrelevant.

Carlyle's story of Paine's cell door flying open, of the turnkey making the fatal chalk-mark on the inside, of the door swinging back with the mark inside, and of another turnkey omitting Paine in the batch of victims; even at the height of the Terror men were not executed without trial, nor without an indictment having been drawn up by Fouquier Tinville and served upon them at least over-night. Not one of these preliminaries had been ac complished in Paine's case. Carlyle, con trary to his practice, cites no authority for the story, but a variation of it appeared in the newspapers in 1823, in a biography of Edited by John Sampson Perry, likewise a prisoner at the Luxembourg, who may have been accus

When the king's trial came on, Paine voted for his detention during the war, to be followed by banishment. His reasons,

• Residence in France, 1792-5. Gifford.

tomed to tell this traveller's tale. Num- is easy to be wise after the event. The bers of survivors of the Terror pretended Revolution was like a day in early spring. indeed to have been ordered for execution It commences with brilliant sunshine, and saved by Robespierre's fall; whereas | light showers then pass over, black clouds the tribunal took a holiday on décadi, the next begin to collect, but there are still Jacobin Sabbath, and of the fifteen cases occasional gleams of sunshine; presently prepared for trial on the 11th Thermidor the hail pelts, the wind howls, there is a there was not one of any note. Paine's rumbling of distant thunder, but there death-warrant was really signed, but it seems still a chance that the sky will consisted in this memorandum, found in clear, till at last the clouds lower, the horiRobespierre's note-book: "Demander que zon narrows, the thunder peals, the lightThomas Payne soit décrété d'accusation, ning flashes, the rain falls in sheets, and pour les intérêts de l'Amérique autant que the day ends in blackness and darkness de la France." and tempest. The capture of the Bastille was the brilliant dawn, arousing an enthusiasm in which even the English ambassador, the Duke of Dorset, shared. Before the first anniversary arrived, clouds had chequered the sky, but till the September massacres hope predominated; even after Louis XVI.'s execution it appeared still probable that the Revolution would be appeased by the blood of its foes; and there were alternations of hope and fear till the Terror commenced :

This animosity can be explained. When Marat was prosecuted in April, 1793, Paine gave information to the Jacobin Club that, addressing him once in English in the lobby of the Convention, Marat expressed his desire for a dictatorship, and though the letter was prudently suppressed Robespierre was probably cognizant of it. In May, 1793, moreover, Paine wrote a letter to Danton (found among Danton's papers and still preserved), advocating the removal of the Convention from Paris, in order that provincial deputies might be

free from mob insults.

France has shown a light to all men, preached

a gospel, all men's good;

Celtic Demos rose a demon, shrieked, and slaked the light with blood.

We see all along what the end was to be, but these English enthusiasts were liter

Paine was released in November, 1794, and Gouverneur Morris gave him hospitality for some months, though his dirty and drunken habits necessitated his exclusion from the family table. On De-ally ignorant of the morrow, and did not Icember 8, the Convention rescinded his easily renounce their illusions. Not till expulsion, and ordered payment of the they were fairly in the toils did they recogarrears of Parliamentary stipend; but he nize the gravity of their position. Flight, did not resume his seat till the following moreover, became increasingly difficult. July, when he pleaded a malignant fever Passports were refused or granted grudg contracted in prison as his excuse. On ingly; to depart without them was perilhis journalistic and pamphleteering activ-ous in the extreme, and even with them ity, his refusal of one of the proposed re- there was constant liability to detention wards to literary men, his subscription of as French aristocrats in disguise. After five hundred francs towards the invasion of England, which Bonaparte intended him to accompany, and his return to America in 1802, it is needless to dwell.

the occupation of Toulon by the English, all British subjects were actual prisoners of war; and although about February, 1795, there was a general liberation, Lord We have not spoken of the dozen En- Malmesbury in 1796 found countrymen in glishmen consigned to the guillotine, for Paris anxious, but still unable, to return though some, like General Arthur Dillon, home. It is easy to say they should never were born in this country, they had be- have gone to Paris during the Revolution come to all intents and purposes French; or should have left before the Terror comnor need we speak of the members of the menced, but how natural was it that those British Club at Paris in 1792, which was whose sympathy had drawn them thither, soon broken up by internal dissensions. like numbers who watched the Revolution Beyond temporarily misleading the Con- from this side the Channel, should hope vention as to public feeling across the and believe that every atrocity was the Channel, they were merely eyewitnesses last, and that these excesses were the of the Revolution, not actors in it. It inevitable_transition to the triumph of may seem strange that so many British subjects, or at least those in no danger of molestation at home, should have remained in France during the Terror, but it

liberty! The wonder indeed is not that they remained till it was too late to flee, but that they suffered nothing beyond imprisonment, coupled, however, with con.

A VISIT IN A DUTCH COUNTRY HOUSE. long tailed brisk horses abreast, clattering