BOOKS.
GLIMPSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.* Tins is not an attempt to deal with the French Revolution scientifically, or on heroic lines. Rather it is a collection of strange and curious facts connected with the years of blood and madness, thrown into a literary form. The result is an exceedingly readable book, and no one who cares for the human or the romantic side of the Terror will read it without the greatest interest. There is nothing to bore the unhistorically minded, no talk about the depreciation of the assignat, the military arrangements of the Convention, or the political aims of this or that group, but plenty of dark and terrible anecdotes illustrating the temper of the times. But although Mr. Alger's book is distinctly "light reading," it, ie not trivial, and the author contrives to escape the blunder of writing loosely and vaguely so often perpetrated by those who try to be popular on a great subject. There is no lack of facts, and no substitution of rhetorical common- places for realities.
Mr. Alger's first chapter is perhaps the most curious in the book. It deals with the myths that have grown up con- cerning the Revolution. The story of the ' Vengeur ' is already well known to be a tissue of absurdities, but there are many others just as baseless and ridiculous which are still believed in. According to Mr. Alger, Fonlon never said that the people might eat grass ; Dr. Guillotin was not one of the victims of his own engine of philanthropy ; Cazotte never had a pro- phetic vision, though Lamartine gravely inserted this myth in his history ; the Girondins had no last supper together; Mademoiselle de Sornbreuil did not drink a glass of blood to save her father's life; the locksmith Gamain, who made the secret cupboard for Louis XVI., was not poisoned by the King ; no attempt was made to save the last batch of Robes- pierre's viaims ; Tom Paine was not saved by there being no elialk-mark on the door, though, oddly enough, he seems to have himself believed in this myth ; human skins were not tanned at Mendon to bind Rousseau's works or any one else's ; and finally, most of the good things supposed to have been said by the heroes of the Revolution were not said at all, but were invented later by journalists and others. For example, the Abbe Edgeworth did not say to the King on the scaffold, "Son of St. Louis, ascend to Heaven." A journalist named His, on the day of the execution, said that this was what the Abbe ought to have said. Oddly enough, the phrase so much pleased the Royalists that they worried the Abbe Edgeworth into believing that he might possibly have said it. As a good example of the way in which myths connected with the Revo- lution are manufactured, we will quote the following account of the Girondins' supper :— " Riouffe's account shows that there was no supper at all, and that the twenty-one were shut up in groups in their several cells, though they could hear each other, and keep time together in singing. But Nodier, who had a turn for historical romances which he palmed off as real history, published in 1833 Le Banquet des Girondins. Lamartine in 1847 added further embellishments. He repreEiented that he had obtained all the details from Lambert, a priest who, living near the prison and having taken the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, was allowed to visit prisoners and may possibly have seen the Girondins that last night, though Lothringer, a priest who certainly saw them next morning, gives no hint of it. Lamartine, who 'saw' at the Carmelite monastery numerous inscriptions traced in blood on the walls by the Girondins—the Girondins were never confined there, and though there were, and still are inscriptions, they are not written in blood—gives a truly artistic picture. A friend provides luxurious dishes, wines, and flowers ; Vergniaud presides ; Brissot, taciturn aud gloomy, is vice-president ; the younger prisoners indulge in light talk and jests ; but towards morning the company become more serious. Brissot draws a mournful picture of the future of France, Vergniaud is more hopeful, the immortality of the soul is discussed, by-and-by the voices are lowered, the conversation is increasingly solemn, Vergniaud in thrilling terms sums up the debate, Lasouree speaks next, the Abbe Fauchet compares their impending doom to Calvary ; at last nearly all retire to their cells and throw themselves on their pallets; but thirteen remain— thus the nearly all' are only eight—and continue the con- ' Glimpses of the French Revolution: Myths, Ideals, ant Realities. By John Q. Alger, London: Liampson Low, Marston, and Oo. 1884. versation. At ten o'clock the executioner arrives to out their hair and tie their hands. At the scaffold they sing the Marseillaise, the voices gradually getting fewer and the melody weaker as one after another mounts the steps and lays hie head on the block. All this is certainly a dramatic picture; un- fortunately it is a pure fiction."
To show how hard the myths die, we may mention the fact that in 1883 a statue was erected at Palaiseau to a boy named Barn, who was supposed to have died under specially heroic circumstances, shouting " Vive la Republique:" As a matter of fact, the boy fell into an ambuscade of Vendeans, and was killed because he would not give up some horses in his charge.
There was nothing specially remarkable in the incident. Barrere and Robespierre, however, manufactured Barn and Viala (the boy who did not cut • the rope and save Avignon) into national heroes; and national heroes they remain.
Very curious is the account which Mr. Alger gives us of the part played generally by children in the Revolution. The demoralisation from which they suffered seems to have been frightful :—" Guillotines became children's toys, with which they operated upon birds, mice, and insects. Even as late as 1801 the Arras authorities had to order the seizure and destruction of these toys, as suggesting ideas of death which might render children ferocious and sanguinary." Fortunately perhaps for France, the frenzied leaders of the Revolution have left very few descendants. M. Carnot was of course an example of a grandson of a member of the Con- vention; but the Organiser of Victory was a soldier, and like other soldiers kept himself free from the blood-fury. Mr. Alger mentions, however, one or two modern Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who are descended from persons who took part in the Revolution. M. Lockroy is the grandson of Jullien, the boy Revolutionist. The history of Mark Antony Jullien is worth noticing :— " On the day of the fall of the Bastille, a schoolboy of fourteen, Marc Antoine Jullien, scattered in the streets bite of paper on which he had written, 'The overthrow of the Bastille is no great thing, the throne must be overturned.' This precocious youth left school full of honours in 1792. He began reporting the debates of the Assembly for Robespierre's organ, the Anti- Federalist. He joined the Jacobin Club, and made a speech there on January 22nd, 1792. Robespierre sent him in September, 1793, into the provinces to 'enlighten the people, support the clubs, watch enemies, and thwart their plans.' In later years he claimed credit for having, at the risk of his life, denounced Carrier, and he told a circumstantial story of his letter to Robespierre from Lorient being intercepted by Carrier, of his being arrested imme- diately on arriving at Nantes, of hia being taken into Carrier's bedroom, of Carrier drawing the letter from under his pillow and threatening him with instant death, and of his cowing that sanguinary monster by warning him that, as the son of a deputy, his death would not be unavenged. The truth is, as proved by his own letters, published in 1893, that no letter was intercepted, that he had an altercation with Carrier on reaching Nantes, but remained there five days, and that on proceeding to Angers he wrote to Robespierre urging Carrier's recall, on account, not of his barbarities, but of hie feud with his colleague Tr6houard. Yet Jullien's inexhaustible loquacity, his ability to deliver four speeches a day, his celebration of civic baptisms, his eomposition at odd moments in three days of a Jacobin play, render his nine months' mission a wonderful feat for a lad of eighteen. He lived just long enough to witness the Revolution of 1848, priding him- self to the last on his intimacy with Robespierre, and reciting in London drawing-rooms, with the profuse tears of senility, mediocre verses on the first Revolution. His son, an actor, assumed the name of Lockroy, and his grandson, retaining that name, was Renan's secretary in Syria, married Victor Hugo's widowed daughter-in-law, and has been a member of French Cabinets."
Another outcome of the Revolution appears to be the novelist "Gyp." She, according to Mr. Alger, is the grand-daughter of Mirabea,u's brother, "Barrel Mirabeau." Most of the fiends of the Terror—Robespierre, Marat, Barrere, St. Just, Barras, Carrier, and Hebert—appear to have been childless men.
We had marked a dozen other passages for notice from this interesting magazine of strange tales, but have no space in which to deal with them. We must, however, quote in con- clusion the following example of the way in which the newspapers treated the daily executions. Here is an extract from a Jacobin print called the Rottyytr,—an anagram on the editor's name :— "Dame Guillotine tried her razor yesterday (July 19, 1793) on an emigre,. After showing the whole length of aristocratic impudence while promenading in Sanson's carriage, on mounting the scaffold he displayed the whole extent of loyalist fanaticism, and defying the nation and justice, he exclaimed five or six times' Vivo le roil' While being arranged on this shaving dish, he again cried, ` Vive la crac ! ' Quick, quick, let him (General Custine) play blind man's buff with the guillotine."
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