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THE REVOLUTION HAS NO MONUMENTS.

becomes oppressive, Then I wander to the Champ de Ma I sit me down on the parched grass, and inhale the stro breeze that is wafted across the arid plain.

The Champ de Mars! This is the only monument th the Revolution has left. The Empire has its Column, a engrosses almost exclusively the arch of Triumph; royalty h its Louvre, its Hospital of Invalids; the feudal church of th twelfth century is still enthroned at Notre Dame: nay, th very Romans have their Imperial Ruins, the Therme of th Cæsars!

And the Revolution has for her monument-empty space. Her monument is this sandy plain, flat as Arabia. tumulus on either hand, resembling those which Gaul wa accustomed to erect,-obscure and equivocal testimonial t her heroes' fame.

The Hero! do you mean him who founded the bridge o Jena? No, there is one here greater even than he, mor powerful and more immortal, who fills this immensity.

"What God? We know not. But here a God doth dwell.' Yes, though a forgetful generation dares to select this spo for the theatre of its vain amusements, borrowed from a foreign land, though the English race-horse may gallop insolently over the plain, a mighty breath yet traverses it, such as you nowhere else perceive; a soul, and a spirit omnipotent. And though that plain be arid, and the grass be withered, it will, one day, renew its verdure.

For in that soil is profoundly mingled the fruitful sweat of their brows who, on a sacred day, piled up those hills,— that day when, aroused by the cannon of the Bastille, France from the North and France from the South came forward and embraced; that day when three millions of heroes in arms rose with the unanimity of one man, and decreed eternal peace.

Alas poor Revolution. How confidingly on thy first day didst thou invite the world to love and peace. "O my enemies, didst thou exclaim, "there are no longer any enemies!" Thou didst stretch forth thy hand to all, and offer them thy cup to drink to the peace of nations-But they would not.

And even when they advanced to inflict a treacherous wound, the sword drawn by France was the sword of peace. It was to deliver the nations, and give them true peace-liberty,

THE PRINCIPLE EMINENTLY PACIFIC RIGHT.

that she struck the tyrants.

Dante asserts Eternal Love to
And thus the Revolution

be the founder of the gates of hell. wrote Peace upon her flag of war.

Her heroes, her invincible warriors, were the most pacific of human beings. Hoche, Marceau, Desaix, and Kleber, are deplored by friends and foes, as the champions of peace; they are mourned by the Nile, and by the Rhine, nay, by war itself, -by the inflexible Vendée.

France had so completely identified herself with this thought, that she did her utmost to restrain herself from achieving conquests. Every nation needing the same blessing-liberty, and pursuing the same right, whence could war possibly arise? Could the Revolution, which, in its principle, was but the triumph of right, the resurrection of justice, the tardy reaction of thought against brute force, could it, without provocation, have recourse to violence?

This utterly pacific, benevolent, loving character of the Revolution seems to-day a paradox ::-so unknown is its origin, so misunderstood its nature, and so obscured its tradition, in so short a time!

The violent, terrible efforts which it was obliged to make, in order not to perish in a struggle with the conspiring world, has been mistaken for the Revolution itself by a blind, forgetful generation.

And from this confusion has resulted a serious, deeplyrooted evil, very difficult to be cured among this people; the adoration of force.

The force of resistance, the desperate effort to defend unity, '93. They shudder, and fall on their knees.

The force of invasion and conquest, 1800; the Alps brought low, and the thunder of Austerlitz. They fall prostrate, and adore.

Shall I add, that, in 1815, with too much tendency to overvalue force, and to mistake success for a judgment of God, they found at the bottom of their hearts, in their grief and their anger, a miserable argument for justifying their enemy. Many whispered to themselves, "they are strong, therefore they are just."

Thus, two evils, the upon France at once.

greatest that can afflict a people, fell Her own tradition slipped away from

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COVENANT WITH RELIGIOUS TYRANNY.

her, she forgot herself. And, every day more uncertain, paler, and more fleeting, the doubtful image of Right flitted before her eyes.

Let us not take the trouble to inquire why this nation continues to sink gradually lower, and becomes more weak. Attribute not its decline to outward causes; let it not accuse either heaven or earth; the evil is in itself.

The reason why an insidious tyranny was able to render it a prey to corruption is, that it was itself corruptible. Weak and unarmed, and ready for temptation, it had lost sight of the idea by which alone it had been sustained; like a wretched man deprived of sight, it groped its way in a miry road it no longer saw its star. What the star of victory? No, the sun of Justice and of the Revolution.

That the powers of darkness should have laboured throughout the earth to extinguish the light of France, and to smother Right, was natural enough. But, in spite of all their endeavours, success was impossible. The wonder is, that the friends of light should help its enemies to veil and extinguish it.

The party who advocate liberty have evinced, of late, two sad and serious symptoms of an inward evil. Let them permit a friend, a solitary writer, to tell them his entire mind.

A perfidious, an odious hand, the hand of death,-has been offered and stretched out to them, and they have not withdrawn their own. They believed the foes of religious liberty might become the friends of political freedom. Vain scholastic distinctions, which obscured their view! Liberty is liberty.

And to please their enemy, they have proved false to their friend-nay, to their own father, the grand eighteenth century. They have forgotten that that century had founded liberty on the enfranchisement of the mind-till then bound down by the flesh, bound by the material principle of the double incarnation, theological and political, kingly and sacerdotal. That century, that of the spirit, abolished the gods of flesh in the state and in religion, so that there was no longer any idol, and there was no god but God.

Yet why have sincere friends of liberty formed a league

SPIRIT OF EXCLUSION

ગ

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with the party of religious tyranny? Because they had reduced themselves to a feeble minority. They were astonished at their own insignificance, and durst not refuse the advances of a great party which seemed to make overtures to them.

Our fathers did not act thus. They never counted their number. When Voltaire, a child, in the reign of Louis XIV. entered upon the perilous career of religious contention, he appeared to be alone. Rousseau stood alone, in the middle of the century, when, in the dispute between the Christians and the philosophers, he ventured to lay down the new dogma. He stood alone. On the morrow the whole world was with him. If the friends of liberty see their numbers decreasing, they are themselves to blame. Not a few have invented a system of progressive refinement, of minute orthodoxy, which aims at making a party a sect, a petty church. They reject first this, and then that; they abound in restrictions, distinctions, exclusions. Some new heresy is discovered every day.

For heaven's sake, let us dispute less about the light of Tabor, like besieged Byzantium-Mahomet II. is at our gates. When the Christian sects became multiplied, we could find Jansenists, Molinists, &c., in abundance, but no longer any Christians; and so, the sects which are the offspring of the Revolution annul the Revolution itself; people became Constituants, Girondists, Montagnards; but the Revolutionists ceased to exist.

What!

Voltaire is but little valued, Mirabeau is laid aside, Madame Roland is excluded, even Danton is not orthodox. must none remain but Robespierre and Saint-Just?

Without disowning what was in these men, without wishing to anticipate their sentence, let one word be sufficient here: If the Revolution rejects, condemns their predecessors, it rejects the very persons who gave it a hold upon mankind, the very men who for a time imbued the whole world with a revolutionary spirit. If, on the other hand, it declares to the world its sympathy with their characters, and shews no more than the image of these two Apostles upon its altar, the conversion to its tenets will be slow, the French Propaganda will not have much to fear, and absolute governments may repose in peace.

Fraternity fraternity! It is not enough to re-echo the word to attract the world to our cause, as was the case at first. It must acknowledge in us a fraternal heart. It must be gained over by the fraternity of love, and not by the guillotine.

Fraternity! Why who, since the creation, has not pronounced that word? Do you imagine it was first coined by Robespierre or Mably?

Every state of antiquity talked of fraternity; but the word was addressed only to citizens,-to men; the slave was but a thing. And in this case fraternity was exclusive and inhuman.

When slaves or freed-men govern the Empire,-when they are named Terence, Horace, Phedrus, Epictetus, it is difficult not to extend fraternity to the slave. "Let us be brethren,' cries Christianity. But, to be a brother, one must first exist; man had no being; right and liberty alone constitute life. A theory from which these are excluded, is but a speculative fraternity between nought and nought.

"Fraternity, or death," as the reign of Terror subsequently exclaimed. Once more a brotherhood of slaves. Why, by atrocious derision, impart to such an union the holy name of liberty?

Brethren who mutually fly from one another, who shudder when they meet, who extend, who withdraw a dead and icy hand. O odious and disgusting sight! Surely, if anything ought to be free, it is the fraternal sentiment.

Liberty alone, as founded in the last century, has rendered fraternity possible. Philosophy found man without right, or rather a nonentity, entangled in a religious and political system, of which despotism was the base. And she said, Let us create man, let him be, by liberty.' No sooner was he created than he loved.

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It is by liberty moreover, that our age, awakened and recalled to its true tradition, may likewise commence its work. It will no longer inscribe amongst its laws, "Be my brother, or die !” But by a skilful culture of the best sentiments of the human soul, it will attain its ends in such a manner that all, without compulsion, shall wish to be brothers indeed. The state will realise its destiny, and be a fraternal initiation, an education,