grave-diggers had the impudence to send their deputation also, with the emblematic devices of their ill-omened occupation”—ill omened surely, if read by the light of the dire revolutionary proceedings of the few succeeding years. The market women were received a deputation from them into the queen's bed-room, one of them reading to her an address written by La Harpe, piquantly engraved on the inside of a fan, which she handed to her without any embarrassment. This was peculiarly French. Fancy an English market-woman approaching Queen Victoria on such an occasion in that style! The fish women, the pois. sardes, spoke their addresses and sang their songs in honor of the event, with abundant good humor and gayety. Following upon these rejoicings came the bustle and stir of the American war, which the queen is said to have made popular at court, favoring the negotiator Beaumarchais, and humoring the extraordinary attentions paid to Franklin. The time came when she looked back upon this enthusiasm as a source of evil to the dynasty in the encouragement of the democracy which was sweeping away old institutions; but meantime the danger was unsuspected, and France was avenged on the American continent for her loss of Canada to England. The personal appearance of the queen at this time has been described by Lamartine: "On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom, a beauty then in all its splendor. The two children whom she had given to the throne, far from impairing her good looks, added to the attractions of her person, that character of maternal majesty which so well becomes the mother of a nation. The presentiment of misfortunes, the recollection of the tragic scenes of Versailles, the uneasiness of each day somewhat diminished her youthful freshness. She was tall, slim and graceful,--a real daughter of Tyrol. Her naturally majestic carriage in no way impaired the grace of her movements: her neck rising elegantly and distinctly from her shoulders gave expression to every attitude. The woman was perceptible beneath the queen, the tenderness of heart was not lost in the elevation of her destiny. Her light brown hair was long and silky, her forehead, high and rather projecting, was united to her temples by those fine curves which give so much delicacy and expression to that seat of thought or the soul in women; her eyes of that clear blue which recall the skies of the North or the waters of the Danube; an aquiline nose, with nostrils open and slightly projecting, where emotions palpitate and courage is evidenced; a large mouth, brilliant teeth, Austrian lips, that is, projecting and well defined; an oval countenance, animated, varying, impassioned, and the ensemble of these features replete with that expression, impossible to describe, which emanates from the look, the shades, the reflec tions of the face, which encompasses with an iris, like that of the warm and tinted vapor which bathes objects in full sunlight--the extreme loveliness which the ideal conveys, and which by giving it life increases its attrac tion. With all these charms, a soul yearning to attach itself, a heart easi 3 ly moved, but yet earnest in desire to itself; a pensive and intelligent smile, with nothing of vacuity in it, nothing of preference or mere acquaintanceship in it, because it felt itself worthy of friendships. Such was Marie Antoinette as a woman." have become the noblest of her sex. In the political events which suc- It was more, however, by sufferance than action that the queen was to be distinguished in those days of trial. Events moved rapidly. There was hardly more than a single step from the freedom of the court to the re straint of the prison, and the part borne by Marie Antoinette, at any time, could scarcely be anything more than that of a simple adviser of the king, in a feeble, capricious sort of way. She had no senate to influence, no army to command, no royal will to execute. The policy of the nation was shaped by its necessities. Bankruptcy * Art. Correspondence of Marie Antoinette, and starvation were the imperial rulers, and were inexorable in their demands for reform. All that could be done to palliate or defer had been done in previous reigns. The waters had been dammed up beyond the power of human engineery to control them further, and the deluge was inevitable. The only escape for royalty was timely abdication, if the reformers had been willing to spare it as an agent of their work. The king was made both an instrument and a sacrifice. His forced acquiescence in the constitution, which he had no real intention to respect, gave a sanction to the revolutionary proceedings, and henceforth, after a few shiftless efforts at intrigue, and one weak attempt to escape, there was nothing left but submission. The story of the last years of the royal family in this constantly dark. ening revolutionary period is one of the saddest narratives in all history. In their powerless, helpless condition, the insincerity forced upon them by their position, might surely have been forgiven. To bring them to death was an unnecessary crime; to accompany that death with the brutalities which attended it, was the act of fiends. The first scene in this great drama in which Marie Antoinette prominently figures, is in its first act in that incursion of the mob at Versailles, in the night of the 5th of October, 1789, when driven from her bed-chamber, she appeared in early morning in a balcony of the palace with her children, confronting the infuriated crowd in the court-yard below. When they ordered the children away, as if to shut out from their view that appeal to tenderness and pity, the queen, queen appeared alone before them, her Though untried, they are already virtually condemned, and their lives, in the rapid deterioration of political parties, are at the mercy of a mob. In vain has the king sworn to obey the Constitution, completed at last by the National Assembly. The Legislative Assembly, their successors, are more intolerant, and a mob, in the interest of the Republicans, on the 20th June, 1792, finds its way into the inner court of the Tuilleries, demanding concessions of the king, crowning his majesty with the red revolutionary cap, while the queen with difficulty escapes wearing just such another, getting off by placing a tri-colored cockade in her head-dress. This is but child's play, however, to the events at the Tuilleries of the 10th of August, one of the dark days of history, when the insurrectionary factions, commencing the reign of terror, drove the royal family as their only escape from immediate massacre to take refuge in the National Assembly, while the faithful Swiss guard laid down their lives in defence of the palace. The queen would have remained to risk their fate and there met death in defence of the crown; but she was moved by an appeal for her children and submitted. The Assembly decreed that the royal family should be lodged in the Temple, an ancient fortress or castle in the heart of the city. Here for a time, under jstrict confinement, making the best of 14 their situation, the royal party, though suffering greatly, solaced their misfor tunes by mutual acts of affection and kindness, till the king was separated from them. In December, he was carried forth to his trial by the Convention which had succeeded to the Assembly, and on the 21st suffered death at the hands of the public executioner, having previously been permitted the grace, or rather the final torture, of a parting interview with his family. Four months after the death of the king, the dauphin was separated from his mother in the Temple, and the queen was left with the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, to endure the aggravated sorrows and humiliations heaped upon her. In August, 1793, she was removed to the still more cruel prison of the Conciergerie, in the vaults of the Palace of Justice, and in October was led to the court above to undergo the mockery of a trial aggravated by the fiercest and most revolting indignities. She endured all with a heroism worthy the daughter of Maria Theresa. The only charity she experienced, was in her speedy execution on the 16th, when she was conducted amidst the jeers of the populace to the spot, the Place Louis Quinze, where, nine months before, the king had met his fate, and there, her last glance toward the Temple, and her last thoughts on her chil dren, she too suffered death by the guillotine. DAVID GARRICK. D settled at Lisbon as a wine merchant, and Peter entered the army in 1706. His regiment was quartered at Lichfield; and, some eighteen months after he received his commission, he married Arabella, the daughter of the Rev. Mr. Clough, vicar choral of the cathedral there. There was no fortune on either side, but much affection. The usual result followed. Ten children were born in rapid succession, of whom sev en survived. Of these the third was David, who made his appearance somewhat inopportunely, while his father, then a lieutenant of dragoons, was at Hereford on recruiting service. AVID GARRICK was born at the Angel Inn, Hereford, on the 19th February, 1716.* He was French by descent. His paternal grandfather, David Garric, or Garrique, a French Protestant of good family, had escaped to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, reaching London on the 5th of October, 1685. There he was joined in the following December by his wife, who had taken a month to make the passage from Bordeaux in a from Bordeaux in a wretched bark of fourteen tons, "with strong tempests, and at great peril of being lost." Such was the inveteracy of their persecutors, that, in effecting their own escape, these poor people had to leave behind them their only ly. There was good blood on both child, a boy called Peter, who was out sides of it, and they were admitted inat nurse at Bastide, near Bordeaux. It to the best society of the place, and was not until May, 1687, that little held in deserved respect. David was Peter was restored to them by his a clever, bright boy; of quick observanurse, Mary Mougnier, who came over tion, apt at mimicry, and of an engato London with him. By this time aging temper. Such learning as the daughter had been born, and other grammar-school of the town could sons and daughters followed; but of give he obtained; and his training a numerous family three alone surviv- here, and at Edial some years aftered-Peter, Jane, and David. David wards under his townsman Samuel Johnson, produced more of the fruits of a liberal education than commonly results even from schooling of a more * This narrative is abridged from an admirable presentation of the career of Garrick in the Quarterly Review. Lichfield was the home of the fami |