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the difference is worth an effort,-and if it [others, would have gone to the guillotine infail, it is but death at last! But that effort stead of himself and his brother and Saintthe adroit speech-maker cannot make: the Just. But even then, had he by the aid of quality that can make such efforts succeed such a military commandant as Bonaparte is not his. If he had but a man instead of survived the bloody turmoil of contending a drunken ruffian to work his guns, they factions and exercised his power in a calmmight still, if well served, blow the opposi-er atmosphere, how long would he have tion into the air. But the hour is past, done so? How long would it have been -the tide has turned for ever for Maximil- before he must have given place to a logic ien Robespierre and his fortunes! more irresistible than his own,-that of the successful soldier, whom the same wars that helped him to retain his power had rendered all-powerful?

In an age of cant any man's moral char

like Robespierre is also perhaps a dangerous one. Yet why should we not do what lies in our power to strip off false colorings and get at truth? Lord Brougham says justly that Robespierre is a name at which men still shudder. It is indeed a name encircled with a haze of blood, which frightens the multitude and confuses the vision even of some who would not reckon themselves of the multitude.

It has been said, and we think not without grounds, that Robespierre had serious thoughts of closing the Reign of Terror with the execution of that last batch of his colleagues which included the most blood-acter is a difficult topic;—that of a man thirsty ruffians produced in the whole course of the Revolution. The opposition which (as he states in his last speech) he made to his colleagues' proposal of a decree of accusation against the sixty-two imprisoned members of the Convention, favors the supposition that he meant to release those deputies, to strengthen himself in carrying out some plan in which he was likely to be opposed by his present colleagues in the Committees. And Napoleon, who believed But it is not necessary in explaining that Robespierre was an honest fanatic, told Robespierre's character to regard him as a Mr. O'Meara, that he had himself seen monster,—that is, as a human being out of letters from Robespierre to his brother, the course of nature. The French people then representing the people with the army were driven, by revolutionary excitement of Nice, which proved his determination to and wild fears of counter-revolution, into a bring the Reign of Terror to an end. That state of phrenzy. When people are in such he was cut off in the midst of some such a state, it is useless to talk of acting with plan, which he wanted nerve to execute, moderation. The first intemperate act proLord Brougham thinks highly probable; duces a state of mind and body resembling and certainly his hostile designs against that of men who have stormed a town and Billaud and Collot are not inconsistent are proceeding to sack it. In that boiling with such a plan, since it would proba- state of the blood things at other times the bly have been quite impracticable with most sacred lose their sanctity, human life such sanguinary colleagues as they. It becomes a commodity of small value, blood appears, however, very doubtful whether is poured forth like water. In this state any amount of nerve in Robespierre him- the leaders, having abundantly used against self, with such a commandant-general of those whom they viewed as the mortal enethe guard of Paris as Henriot under him, mies of their cause, the last punishment would have sufficed. If he could have plac- which man can inflict on man-deathed Napoleon Bonaparte in the place of easily fell into the habit of viewing milder Henriot, though but for twenty-four hours, punishments as inefficient. An ancient he would assuredly have been dictator of deadly enemy is not hated with a more faFrance for some time longer. Billaud and tal hatred than an ancient friend turned riCollot and Barère and Tallien, Vadier, val. Robespierre, it is said, was by nature, Bourdon (de l'Oise), Léonard Bourdon and above other men, a man of blood. He was, let it be granted, proud, reserved, revengeful, ambitious, overvaluing himself, undervaluing others, using them but as tools to be cast aside when done with. How many English politicians are there, without distinction of party, who are all this, and more and worse than all this, and yet bear not an execrated name like his, nor leave be

Whose authority, Lord Brougham says, is wholly unimpeachable. His Lordship adds in a note, "I happen to know facts unknown to Mr O'Meara when he was writing Napoleon's allu sions to those same facts, e. g. Secret Negotiations with Spain in 1806; and thus those allusions were to him unintelligible."—Sketches, vol. iii. p. 68,

note.

hind them like him a scorched and black- in his speech in the Jacobins, on the 28th of ened memory! But he had "cast away all April, 1792), "Je ne suis ni le courtisan, regard to principle" and was "callous to all ni le modérateur, ni le tribun, ni le défenhuman feelings." And yet the man had seur du peuple !-je suis peuple moi-même." faith" believed every word he uttered;" But in April, 1794, he might have inserted and for principle, all the wealth and luxury the definite article and said, with the subof the world could not shake his honesty; stitution of " peuple" for "état" in the exand for feeling, his poor landlord, the car- clamation of Louis XIV.,-" le peuple! penter"in the Rue St. Honoré, loved him, c'est moi!" A whole people is a sovereign, -his brother died for him." Ay, shower whose will cannot easily be manifested on reproaches on the man of blood, but re- all occasions; it must have some accessible member that he was not a quack, that he exponent or index. The French were conwas not a liar, that he was not a renegade! tent to acknowledge for a time such an inBut, independently either of intellectual dex in Robespierre. In him was embodied or moral considerations, Robespierre, that the spirit of the French democracy; conseis to say the mere existence of the individ- quently his word was a law from which ual so called, was not only a great, but a there was no appeal :-his power was a dessingular fact. It stands alone, with nothing potism from which there was no escape; like to it. In the course of the world's dark, swift, inevitable, unrelenting, it knew history three men have stood out pre-emi- neither forgiveness, nor pity, nor remorse. nent among mankind for the vast power Even in his last speeches there is not a which they acquired by their abilities, trace of any thing that can be construed into Cæsar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte. But the slightest expression of sorrow, of regret those abilities were exerted from a certain for the sad fate of so many men who had vantage-ground: their minds and wills did once been his friends, who had once even not come into direct and immediate colli-loved him, whom he had murdered in cold sion with the minds and wills of other men. blood and in the prime of manhood. He There was an intermediate link, a connect continues to speak of them to the last as a ing medium, which took from the operation fanatic of the darkest ages would speak of the simple character of the action of mind his victims, describing them as God's eneupon mind, mixing up instead thereof some mies, justly punished for their black and what of the action of matter upon mind, and horrible sins. When a human selfishness, rendering thereby their logic irresistible. fierce and ravenous as that of the most feroBut in the ancient and modern world there cious wild beast, regards its own gratificahas appeared but one man, who, without tion as a duty and a virtue, we have the their vantage-ground, attained for a season degree of fanaticism, whether religious or a power comparable to theirs. Robes- political, which has raised so many scaffolds pierre's power in the Convention, though and lighted so many fires. And this must not quite equal to Cromwell's in his parlia- be viewed as the master key to Robesment, and to Napoleon's in his, was as great as Cæsar's in the senate. He was obliged to go by a somewhat more circuitous way to his end than a despot of the miltary kind, but he did not the less surely reach that end; for it was death to obstruct his path. To contradict him in any thing became at last as dangerous as it was to contradict Henry VIII. in an argument on the respective merits of Catholicism and Protestantism. There is no other instance, we believe, of such power having been attained by mere political and rhetorical ability. Demosthenes was but the minister of the Athenian people,-Cicero that of the Roman oligarchy but Robespierre was not the man, but the master. He was not so much the servant of the French people as (strange though the phrase may sound) the French people itself. Robespierre once said

*

pierre's character. Napoleon was a fanatic of another kind; the selfishness in him was as vehement and fierce, but the sense of duty and virtue in its gratification either not so strong, or the field of its operation much wider. The world has had several specimens of military, and but this one of oratorical dictatorship; and certainly if this be a fair specimen, we desire to have no more. It would be a thousand times better to live under the despotism of Cæsar, Cromwell, or Napoleon, than under that of Maximilien Robespierre.

* In his last speech this man of blood exclaims, "Otez moi ma conscience, je suis le plus malheureux de tous les hommes."

EXPEDITION OF DR. LEPSIUS IN EGYPT. and hung with bonbons; passing away the

From the Literary Gazette.

Cairo, May 29, 1844.

At

time by exchanging visits with several Turkish authorities, who, like themselves, were detained at this entrance to the wilderness. last,their patience exhausted, they resolved on MY DEAR SIR,-In my last account of the energetic measures, and with difficulty proPrussian mission, I mentioned to you the pro-cured eight camels, two diseased, two fatigued, bability of being some time without news from and one lame. However, with this inadequate them as they advanced towards the southern supply, Dr. Lepsius and his friend Mr. Abeextremity of their mission, beyond the limits ken, a servant, and an interpreter, launched of civilization. That being the case, you will into the desert on the 8th of January, and arnot be surprised at this long interval, which,rived safely at Abu Hamed on the morning of though long as it is, I can fill up from the the 17th. On the road they met a caravan letters of my excellent correspondent with in-that gave them the satisfactory intelligence teresting details. that their karvas had passed by another tract At Korosko (the northern entrance to the with sixty camels. At Abu Hamed, refreshed desert that occupies the space formed by a and provided with an additional camel, they great curve in the valley of the Nile), where I continued their route, which now lay on the left the party detained for want of camels to banks of the river, sometimes beautifully covconvey them and their baggage to Berber, they ered with splendid acacias, groves of doom procured a small boat, and on the 8th of De- palms, small villages, and the patriarchal cember set sail, leaving the camp under the dwellings of the sheiks, and much that was protection of the Prussian eagle and the in- interesting and new to them, till, on the mornvincible Franke. They reached Wady Halfa ing of the 21st of January, they arrived at Elon the 13th, and were returned to their purga-mekhegrif, the capital of Dar Berber. The tory at Korosko on the 22d, having examined next day they proceeded to Damer, where most of the antiquities very minutely, leaving they found themselves in the midst of a Turkthe drawing for a future visit. Of Abu Simbal ish camp and warlike preparations for the exmy correspondent writes:--"Splendid as it is, pedition against Raka; here they remained the colossi, bassi relievi, and hieroglyphics, are four days, and started on the 28th in a fine far inferior in point of style to those of the large boat, which the aid-de-camp of Ahmed time of his father Menephthah, and still more Pasha Nimikly (the new governor of Sennar) to those of the period of Amunoph III. The had offered them, not displeased to exchange style of the sculptures of the time of Rhamses the ship of the desert for that of the river; and II. I find generally bad, and those of Rhamses on the same evening, the 28th, moored near III. (Miamun, the Rhamses IV. of the French) the pyramids of Wady Assoor, at the village abominable. But Amunoph III. and Meneph-of Beggarowish. Arrived in the ancient and thah are like Phidias and Praxiteles, the former fabulous Meroe, near its capital and tombs of excelling all Egyptian sculptures in sublimity its kings, they could not resist the temptation and grandeur, the latter in grace and sweet- of visiting the pyramids the same evening, by ness; indeed there is nothing in Egypt that the feeble light afforded by the moon in its surpasses in sublime grandeur the Memnon first quarter, and feeling the hieroglyphics in colossi in the plain of Thebes, or the chaste the porticos and propyla. The result of the purity of the hieroglyphics of this period. How sudden here, too, the decay of art! From Amunoph III. to Rhamses I., a few generations; and if we compare the sixth dynasty to the fourth, must we not make the same remark? Is this, then, the sad but unavoidable law of humanity? A curious style is that of the Osertasens, an overgrown civilization. You recollect the tablets above Abu Simbal, where an Osertasen is worshipped, as in the temple of Amada, and also, I believe, in the temple of Semneh, and the style of the soi-disant Skeye (whose tomb is near Amunoph's). We found also during this journey, some reasons for the identity of Rhamses with or without hieroglyph, and many other curious things."

On the return of the party to the encampment at Korosko, they were much discomfited at not finding news from their Turkish karvas, whom they had despatched to Berber for camels. At this miserable place they were obliged to pass their Christmas and Newyear's day, at which festivals they did not omit the national pastimes, nor the tree illuminated

next morning's investigation fully confirmed their previous examination; nothing very ancient was found; a great many cartouches, high-sounding titles, and old Egyptian names, adopted in imitation of better times, but every thing, bassi relievi and hieroglyphics, in the very worst style of the latter ages, nothing certainly beyond the Ptolemaic period, and most much more modern: "as you know very well, it is impossible to mistake this latter barbarity for the presumed rudeness of early times; every thing in imitation of Egypt,Egyptian divinities, letters, language, as it seems, but it will require further investigation to decide whether at least there is not a peculiar dialect. You will be amused to hear that, for the first time, we found a camel represented." The doctor and his companion found a great many names of kings, of whom most probably little more will be known, and many cartouches purposely mutilated. On the 29th, the architect, Heer Erbkam, joined them with the rest of the members of the mission. On the 30th they visited Shendy; and on the 31st,

Beni Naga, where exist the ruins of a temple DE JOINVILLE-A perusal of the Prince de with Typhonic columns, and the remains of Joinville's very clever note on the state of the some other edifices with bassi relievi and in- French navy, confirms our opinion of its origin. scriptions much mutilated, "but evidently also The young admiral burns for distinction; the of a very late period." From thence they peace of the seas denies it him; and he rushes proceeded, on the 1st of February, eight or into print. And very well he acquits himself. nine hours into the desert, to see the ruins of His note is a strictly professional effusion: he sees the French navy, especially the steam maNaga or Gebel Arden, copied the inscriptions rine, (which he acutely perceives to be a modiand cartouches unknown. "There is clearly fication of shipping suited to the unnautical French in this ruin an influence of Roman architec- nation,) in a state of deplorable inefficiency; he ture." On the 2d they visited the ruins at desires to procure an efficient steam marineMesaurat or Wady Sufra (not Owataib, as would he not signalize himself in its management Hoskins calls them, the latter name belonging and use?-and accordingly he sets forth how to the valley that extends from Beni Naga, at weak is that arm of France, and how strong and the Nile, to Naga in the desert); a curious as- effective it might be made. This is done in lansemblage of walls, columns, halls, courts, stair- guage which is plain, terse, and pithy; there is cases, corridors, temples, &c., without hiero- no enfeebling rhetoric-every sentence tells home glyphics, and only a few bassi relievi of hum--the reader is convinced as he reads. Glance ble style. "To me they appear to have beyond the professional view, indeed, and you formed a country residence or hunting place clearsighted and clever a man, coming, too, from are struck with the crude statesmanship of so of some king of Meroe. I dare affirm, that on the whole island or peninsula of Meroe, there is not one vestige of remote antiquity; and for my part have no doubt that Ethiopia' derived its religion, literature, and civilization, from Egypt, and that at a comparatively late time. We are anxious now to see the works of Terhaka at Gebel Barkal, and to try if we can make out a link between him and the later Ethiopians of Meroe. Did he come, too, from Meroe? He has left no monument there."

On the 5th of February, the party arrived at Kartoum, the town at the junction of the White and Blue Rivers. At this new metropolis of Upper Nubia they stayed till the 17th, making a few excursions, particularly on the White stream, the banks of which are flat, but magnificently wooded; and on the 17th they again separated, the architect and some of the members to prosecute the work at Naga, while the doctor and his friend made a journey up the Blue River, a rapid stream, with high and well-wooded banks; visited the ruins of Soba, which was the flourishing capital of a Christian kingdom in the tenth century,-now nothing but heaps of burnt bricks indicate its site, and probably that of a more ancient city, as a statue of Osiris and a Sphinx (now in Cairo) have been found among them, also a little bronze statue of Venus, of Grecian workmanship. On the 27th the southern division of the expedition was at Sennaar, and from thence, about two days further south, to near Seyro, from whence they returned to Kartoum, from which place my correspondent dates his letter March 22, the thermometer at 105° in the middle of the day.

Of other news, they inform me of the revolt of 800 black soldiers, which has since been allayed, and of the appearance of an epidemic resembling the plague, neither of which, thank God, affected them.--I remain, my dear sir, yours very truly,

J. BONOMI.

so prudent a family; for nothing can be more inoportune and indiscreet than the talk about warring with England, which he assumes among his data. And there are other warlike allusions which could not but act like a match thrown among gunpowder, when promulgated in Paris. That collateral tendency of his pamphlet may have recommended it to others more cunning and more malicious, and have procured him the advice to publish it. Once determined, it is not surprising that he should have been obstinate in refusing to give up his darling work, so likely to do him credit, and at least to make a noise. The papers had last week a story how he threatened, some time back, to resign, because Admiral Dufather's anger-how he succumbed to the tearful petit-Thouars was given up-how he resisted his entreaties of his venerable mother: this week they have the very counterpart of the story, but now it is about the pamphlet; only they say that the king was so far party to a compromise, that he asked, and even executed with his own hand, the alteration of certain passages. The sagacious Nemours, too, it is said, was angrily opposed to his sailor-brother: and no wonder if he were. The Standard contradicts this tale, " on authority." At all events, the affair is settled: and no war is likely to follow because de Joinville has shown in type how he would display his Prowess.

The Journal des Débats has a formidable account But it seems we are menaced in other quarters. of renewed understanding between Russia and our enemies in the East-a conspiracy extending from St. Petersburg to Cabul, from Nicholas to Akhbar Khan; and once more, in the fancy of the Parisian journalist, our Indian empire totters to its fall! Has some hallucination come over men like these astute French writers? Impossible. But a little anti-British farrago may serve as a set-off to the recent lecture administered to the Prince de Joinville, and may reconcile the ultra-French spirits who took fire at the Débats, which was pronounced to be more English than is chosen on which a most terrible attack can be our Times or Chronicle; and accordingly, a topic made upon British interests-where it can do no harm-where it can have no present results.— Spectator.

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THE MARTYRS OF SCIENCE.

From the Edinburgh Review.

The Martyrs of Science; or, the Lives of
Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler. By
Sir David Brewster, K. H. D. C.
12mo. London: 1841.

L.

prototype of an age in a state of transition from ignorance and barbarism, to knowledge and refinement-devoting himself with equal zeal to the pursuits of astronomy and astrology, chemistry and alchemy, and in whose character religion and superstition, enlarged views and abject credulity, Next we have Ir the distinguished author of this unpre- were strangely blended. tending little volume had undertaken to Kepler, also an astrologer, but while pracwrite the history of the origin of Physical tising the art, railing at its vanity and worthAstronomy, he could not have thrown his lessness;-indulging in the wildest reveries narrative into a more convenient or inter- respecting the laws of the planetary moesting form than by writing the lives of tions, but rigidily subjecting all his fancies Galileo, Tycho Brahé, and Kepler. These to the test of calculation; refuting his own three names occupy by far the most con- hypotheses, when he found them inconsisspicuous place in the annals of Astronomy, tent with observation, with as much pabetween those of Copernicus and Newton. tience and complacency as others employ in By explaining the phenomena of the celes- establishing the most important theories; tial motions, on the hypothesis of the immo- speculating on the nature of attraction so bility of the sun and the twofold motion of as almost to anticipate Newton, yet stating at the earth, Copernicus made the first step the same time his belief, that the solid globe towards the true theory of the universe; of the earth is an enormous animal, and that but he did not discard the eccentrics and the tides are produced by the spouting out of epicycles of the ancient faith; and the water through its gills! Lastly, we have the universally received dogma of antiquity-accomplished and courtly Galileo; a conuniform motion in circular orbits-remain-troversialist, a rhetorician, a man of the ed undisturbed. In order to proceed a step world; treating with sarcasm and ridicule beyond the point at which Copernicus had the physical dogmas countenanced by the arrived, observations of greater precision, Church, yet living on terms of intimate and more distinct ideas respecting the laws friendship with its dignitaries; establishing of motion, were necessary. Tycho Brahe the true system of the world with an overfurnished the observations. Kepler, with whelming force of argument, and recanting infinite labor and sagacity, traced out their his doctrines in submission to ecclesiasticonsequences, and proved from them that cal authority. the planetary orbits are not circles, but ellipses; and that the motions are not uniform, though regulated by a law remarkable for its simplicity and beauty. Galileo directed the telescope to the heavens; fortified the Copernican doctrine with new proofs; and, by the discovery of the laws of motion, prepared the way for the dynamical theories of Newton. In effecting this advance from formal to physical astronomy, no other individual contributed in any remarkable degree; hence the history of their labors includes that of the science itself, during one of the most interesting periods of its progress.

Characters thus marked would afford, under any circumstances, interesting subjects for biographical sketches; but in the present case, the interest is greatly increased by the accidents of life and position. The persecution of Galileo by the Catholic Church for maintaining doctrines which are now regarded as the most certain truths of science; the injuries, real or imaginary, which compelled Tycho to abandon his Observatory, and exile himself from his country; the privations and miseries of Kepler, whose fate it was to be one day engaged in working out the laws of the universe, and the next in calculating nativities to procure bread for his children;

But if the three individuals just named the incidents, in short, which entitle them are pre-eminently distinguished for their ser- to be regarded as martyrs of science-have vices to Astronomy, they are not less remark- procured for them the sympathies of the able for their intellectual characters, and the world, and given them a notoriety altogethincidents of their personal histories. They er independent of their scientific discovlived in an age of unusual intellectual activi-eries. It is to the personal, rather than the scity, when Europe was rousing itself from the torpor of centuries, and gradually acquiring entific history of these three individuals, the characteristics of our own times. First that Sir David Brewster has chiefly directin chronological order comes Tycho-the ed the attention of his readers in the pres

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