zians and Philanthropists, in education, are traceable to his teachings. He was the most original and influential writer of the last century, on this subject. His ideas of government are too wild to need comment. As his Émilie ou de l'Education was, for his age, the gospel of education, to use the words of Goethe, so was his Contrat Social the gospel of freedom in the whirling eddies of the French revolution. His arguments against materialism, which spring from a deeper source than those of Voltaire, coming from the whole soul, and not merely from the cold, calculating intellect, cannot be noticed here. We have already exceeded our just limits, although the poets, essayists, novelists, and the writers on government, have been passed over in silence. The topics which have been discussed were selected partly because they are characteristic of the book, and partly because they are german to the subjects which fall within the range of theological science.

HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, FROM 1789 TO 1795. By Schmidt. Weissenfels, Prague, 1859.1

THIS volume is a suitable companion to the second volume of Hettner's work noticed above. It not only takes up the story where he dropped it, but is in the highest degree a special history. The literature of the period is wholly political, not consisting of works of permanent value written with the art and pride of authorship, but of pamphlets, newspaper articles, fugitive and theatrical pieces, and songs prepared for special occasions, as the readiest means of influencing the people. As literary productions they are hardly worthy of preservation. They are valuable only as a part of history, furnishing an insight into the state of popular feeling during that extraordinary period, not otherwise to be obtained. It gives a side view of the whole revolutionary movement, presenting the same general picture in a new and interesting light. We know not that this subject has ever been so thoroughly studied and so completely represented before.

In beginning with the Telemaque of Fenelon, the author would seem to go far back in seeking for the first revolutionary ideas. Yet there he finds the first utterance of ideas, which, however they might have been in Fenelon's mind, were distinctively revolutionary in the minds of a later generation. He quotes the following words, pointed out by Chateaubriand, as the earliest passage expressing, as if by prophecy, the idea of the revolution: Il voit tomber un roi despotique, dont la têle sanglante, secouée par les cheveux, est monstrée en spectacle au peuple qu'il opprimait. He elsewhere says that government is a contract between ruler and people; and if the king violates the contract, the people are no longer bound to obey him. Montesquieu, in his Esprit des Lois, contributed vastly more towards the formation of a sentiment which demanded a revolution. Diderot and the other Encyclopedists gave the boldest and clearest utterance to such a sentiment. What could

1 Geschichte der französischen Revolutions-Literatur.

not be effected by grave discussion, was accomplished by the inexhaustible wit and brilliant raillery of Voltaire. Towards constructing a new order of things, Rousseau did what. Voltaire did for destroying the old. Beaumarchais's Figaro brought the vices and political sins of the great upon the stage and destroyed their credit with the people. Sièyes's pamphlet entitled, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers État? threw a fire-brand into the combustible materials of the nation. That and Rousseau's Contract Social formed for the time the people's articles of faith. On the very title-page of that pamphlet, the author furnished the answer: "What is the Third Estat? It is everything." He then proceeds to say: "What has it been hitherto? Nothing. What does it now demand? To be something." The press had never yet become the organ of public opinion, as it is at present. The Third Estate had not participated in public affairs. Of its vast numbers, few belonged to the reading classes. Men had not yet begun to write for the multitude. Mirabeau, at once, saw the use that might be made of the press in circulating popular tracts, and in a system of journalism. For the masses of the people who could not read, and they were inconceivably great at that time— the stage was afterwards resorted to, and political ideas were presented in a dramatic form, and shouted to the multitude by such men as Talma. Against the orders of the Government, Mirabeau, with bold defiance, continued to publish his Journal des États-généraux, spreading before the people the doings of the National Assembly. Such a regular issue of political information was as unprecedented then as it is universal now. His example was followed by others, and this first journal was soon eclipsed by the Annales Françaises and the Moniteur. He who could say to the King's minister: Go, tell your master", as if he were an outside man, who, when the Assembly proposed an address to the king, beginning with the words: "The Assembly lays at your Majesty's feet," could say: "Majesty has no feet," with a voice and manner that were no less remarkable than his language, was evidently the man for the Tribune, rather than for the editor's table. Besides this and numerous other journals and pamphlets, time nearly a hundred in a week, and usually two or three a day, issued for and by the Clubs, which were so eagerly read and discussed that the Cafes were converted into so many tribunes. It was at one of these Clubs that the pamphlet was prepared which proposed the storming of the Bastile. In this it is said, in allusion to the report that the king was to interfere with the Assembly: "He who shall venture to touch the liberties of the deputies will have the hand of the people upon him.”

at one

were

The most spirited and polished writer for the journals at this period of the Revolution was the classical, genial, and yet fantastical and unfortunate Desmoulins. He it was who, on the night before the storming of the Bastile, mounted the table in the Palais-Royal, the chief place of concourse, and carried all before him as he uttered these words: "Friends, shall we die like hares hunted down; like sheep dragged to the place of slaughter, bleating for mercy where there is no mercy; nothing but the sharpened knife? The hour is come, the decisive hour for France and for all mankind,

6

resound with the cry, to Successful speeches, brief

in which there shall be a reckoning between the oppressed and the oppressor, and the watchword shall be, Speedy death or deliverance.' Welcome the hour. For us there is but one fitting cry: To arms! Let all Paris, all France, as with the voice of the whirlwind, arms.'" The press was now the ruling power. and pointed, like the above, were printed and placarded. Songs, like the Ça ira and the later Marseillaise, went like lightning through the land, and this whole species of literature, if we may so call it, took the place of the grave, philosophical discussions of earlier days. The philosophers had either disappeared from the stage, or sunk in the public estimation. Now followed the supremacy of demagogues; and of the demagogues of the press, Marat was the most unscrupulous, fiendish, and influential. His Ami du Peuple, now the leading party organ, was addressed to the prejudices and passions of the multitude. By his example of successful scurrility, other journalists were induced to descend below their natural level in order to strengthen their hold upon the lower classes of the people. Next to Marat in abusive language was Carra, editor of the Annales Patriotique. Desmoulins, editor of the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, had more elevation in his wit, and more historical solidity in what he wrote. Du Pan's Moniteur is distinguished from the other journals by the comparative sobriety and calmness of its tone.

The chief dramatic poet of the Revolution was Chénier, whose Charles IX. called forth the great powers of Talma, the tragedian. This play, on account of its graphic portraiture of tyranny and priesteraft, was long a favorite with the Parisian people. Next in rank was the comic poet, Collot d'Herbois.

The fiercest literary contest during this whole period was that which raged between the Catholic clergy and the revolutionists through the whole year of 1791. The priests accommodated themselves to circumstances until they were required to swear to the articles imposed upon them by the National Assembly, which the majority, under the instruction of their superiors, refused to do. There was now a flood of pamphlets written and widely circulated, on both sides. The priests employed colporteurs to carry them from house to house. The example was followed in the provinces, producing everywhere divisions and feuds of the most alarming character. The revolutionary party were not outdone in this direct appeal to the populace. The wits and most spirited young writers of the party employed all their powers to counteract and destroy the effect of those efforts. A torrent of ridicule was poured upon the priests and upon their religion. Men with stentorian voices and of skill in declamation were selected and sent into the streets to rehearse what others had written, to listening multitudes. In these pieces, often in the form of a dialogue, the wealth, luxury, avarice, and vices of the clergy were set forth, with many a recital of questionable and ludicrous scenes between monks and nuns, bishops and mistresses. The speakers often mounted out-of-door stages, such as are common at the annual fairs, attracting general attention by their violent or comical action.

The foes of the clergy, feeling assured that ridicule was the most effectual means of destroying the respect which had so long been associated with the sacred character of the church and its functionaries, resorted to caricatures to illustrate their subjects and to reach the dullest mind by glaring pictures addressed to the sense. Priests in grotesque forms, with all the pomp of clerical robes and marks of dignity, were usually presented in ambiguous relations with nuns and disreputable women. Such caricatures were suspended on the quays, along the Boulevards, and in all the places of resort, till the public taste was perfectly vitiated, and all respect for decency, not to say, veneration for sacred things, was lost.

From the beginning of the Revolution to Mirabeau's death, April 1792, the literature of the journals was the engine of greatest power in directing the popular will. From that time onward the literature of the Clubs was the predominant power. The Jacobins were at that time a moderate party, not wishing to break with the King. The Cordeliers were the most violently revolutionary of all the Clubs. Most of the journals were under their direction. But what now gave them the greatest influence was the circumstance that they had invented the device of issuing formal decrees, and posting them in public places. The delay of the King in signing the act respecting the clergy, and his attending mass administered by a priest who refused to take the oath, was the occasion of the first proclamation of this Club, directed against the shadow of the Bourbon power that was still remaining. It was therein declared that the first functionary of the nation and the first subject of the laws of the National Assembly, had perjured himself in violating the constitutional laws which he had sworn to maintain. The ill-boding flight of the King was the astounding result of this proclamation. The same Club put up the following placard: "Strayed from the Tuilleries, a fat swine. Any person, finding the same, and returning him to his place, shall receive a suitable reward." The article of greatest political importance was the Adresse aux Française, placarded by Du Châtelet. It was attributed to La Fayette, under whom Châtelet served as an adjutant in America: but was written, as is now known, by Thomas Paine. It was the terse logic of the statement in respect to the present legal relations of the King to the nation, that gave it such force.

The practice of issuing decrees, previously considered by the clubs, led to another great change-that of preparing articles for the press by the joint labors of the club. What appeared in print was no longer the opinions of individuals. It was not Marat, Desmoulins, Gorsas, Carra, Frinon, Royou, or Prudhomme that wrote, but the party in their collective capacity. This organized action, which gave a new aspect to things, was itself the result of a movement now become too general and too wide-spread to be directed by individuals. Intellectually, the revolution was already accomplished. The physical act only was wanting; and for this the instruments, Robespierre, Danton, and Marat were at hand.

The period of the Revolution divides the classic poetry of France from the modern romantic poetry, somewhat as the Middle Ages separate the antique

culture from the modern. Only curious scholars will trouble themselves with studying such descriptive poets as Saint-Lambert, Delille, Roucher, and Fontanes. Lebrun's Pindarics are better. André Chénier, brother of the dramatist, is honored, by Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and others, as the founder of their new romantic school. No other single piece, written during this period, can compare with Rouget de l'Isle's Marseillaise.

So long as the work of the revolutionists was merely destructive, the dif ferent elements among them could be kept together; but as soon as the monarchy was overthrown, the conservative and the violent men necessarily separated from each other. The former, the Girondists, and the latter, the Jacobins, were now arrayed in deadly hostility to each other; and it was a war of extermination. It began with the press. On the side of the Girondists, Brissot was the literary champion. His Patriote Français was undoubtedly the ablest polemical journal of the French revolution. While others used hard words, he used hard arguments. His passions served only to give fire and sublimity to his eloquence. Even Louis XVI., when he received his sentence, remarked: "I thought Brissot would save me." Brissot was supported by other journals, conducted with great ability, such as Condorset's Cronique de Paris, Souvet's Sentinelle, and Gorsas's Courier des Departments. His bitterest and fiercest Jacobin opponents were Robespierre, Desmoulins, and Marat. Each party excelled, in its own way. In their sharp encounters, the Girondists were always triumphant in argument, in the view of all intelligent and high-minded men; but, unfortunately for them, of such judges very few were now to be found. The people, demoralized and imbruted, were too much in sympathy with the Jacobins. There was truth in what Danton said to the Girondists: "You have the advantage of us in knowledge, but not in daring and revolutionary power." This became quite apparent in the National Convention, where power prevailed over the right, and the persons of Girondist deputies, as well as journalists, were in danger (a state of civilization not without its parallels elsewhere). Here the last battle was fought, the Girondist leaders, for the most part, relinquishing their journals, and bravely standing up in the convention and maintaining a lofty and heroic attitude, till the last remains of the party, twenty-one in number, passed through the bloodthirsty crowd, singing the Marseillaise as they went to meet their fate on the scaffold.

During all this period, the theatres resounded with nothing but party politics. Nearly all the pieces were directed against kings, nobles, and priests, the different theatres varying, in tone, according to the sentiment of the parties which they represented, and the times in which the pieces were respectively written.

The scenes of the revolution, from the fall of the Girondists to the death of Robespierre, were little adapted to encourage any species of literature. Under that intellectual party, the political press reached the summit of its power. Never had the people of France been so given to reading as at that