it, and the two ladies conducted her to the Bull's eye. A door which led from the queen's toilet closet to that apartment, had never before been fastened but on her side. What a dreadful moment! It was found to be secured on the other. They knocked repeatedly with all their strength; a servant of one of the king's valets de chambre came and opened it; the queen entered the king's chamber, but he was not there. Alarmed for the queen's life, he had gone down the corridors under the Bull's eye, by means of which he was accustomed to go to the queen's apartments without being under the necessity of crossing that room. He entered her majesty's room, and found no one there but some body guards who had taken refuge in it. The king, unwilling to expose their lives, told them to wait a few minutes, and afterwards sent to desire them to go to the Bull's eye. Madame de Tourzel, at that time governess of the children of France, had just taken madame and the dauphin to the king's apartments. The queen saw her children again. The reader must imagine this scene of tenderness and despair." It was this moment, so unfit for the purpose, that calumny selected for the assertion of a circumstance, aimed at the reputation of the queen-that circumstance is well known, and we shall not mention it, but Marie Antoinette had been the butt of calumny from the moment of her entering France. Well might she say, when her attendants observed to her they feared she would be poisoned, that the assassin went a surer way than that to work they aimed more

certain and more fatal blows by calumny.

"The army occupied the place d'armes, all the court-yards of the chateau, and the entrance to the avenue. They called for the queen to appear in the balcony: she came forward with madame and the dauphin. There was a cry of no children.' Was this with a view to deprive her of the interest she inspired, accompanied as she was by her young family; or did the leaders of the democrats hope that some madman would venture to aim a mortal blow at her person? This seemed to be her idea, for she sent away her children, and, with hands and eyes raised towards heaven, advanced upon the balcony like a self-devoted victim.

"The mob demanded of the king to go to Paris. At one o'clock they set out the King and Queen, the Dauphin and Madame, the king's daughter, Monsieur, Madame, Madame Elizabeth, and Madms. de Tourzel, were in the carriage; the Princess de Chimay and the ladies of the bedchamber for the week, the king's suite and servants followed in court carriages; a hundred deputies in carriages, and the bulk of the Parisian army closed the procession. The poissardes went before and around the carriage of their majesties, crying We shall want no more bread, we have brought the baker, the baker's wife, and the little baker boy.' In the midst of this troop of canibals, the heads of two murdered body guards were carried on poles. The monsters who made trophies of them, conceived the horrid idea of forcing a hairdresser of Sevres to dress them up, and powder their bloody locks. In the midst

of

of all the tumult, clamour, and singing, interrupted by frequent discharges of musquetry, which the hand of a bungler, or a monster, might so easily render fatal, the queen preserved the most courageous tranquillity of soul, and an air of nobility and inexpressible dignity."

It is not often we meet with a more perfect contrast of circumstances, than in the fortunes of Marie Antoinette. The animating spirit of the splendid enchantments of Versailles; a creature of light and gaiety, matchless in her beauty, playful in her wit; unreserved and unrestrained, without care and without thought; this aërial being, whose shoulder had never been touched by the yoke of adversity,-first pursued by slander, then her ruin plotted, the object of perpetual insult, outraged by the mob, her hair bleached in one night by sorrow as with extreme age; her ears assailed by the most disgusting language; her heart broken by continued grief; the queen, the mother, and the woman, stung in every point, and at last, the victim of her cruel enemies.

"I still see in imagination," says Madame Campan, "and shall always see, that narrow cell at the Feuillans, hung with green paper, that wretched couch whence the dethroned queen stretched out her arms to us, saying, 'that our misfortunes, of which she was the cause, aggravated her own.' There, for the last time, I saw the tears, I heard the sobs of her, whom her high birth, the endowments of nature, and above all, the goodness of her heart, had seemed to destine for the ornament of a throne, and the happiness of her people."

How satisfying an answer does this firmness and constancy afford, to the numerous calumnies with which she has been assailed. She might be, and was imprudent :being without care, she was also without thought; and unsuspectingly offered abundance of opportunities for men as malignant and artful as Soulavie or Rohan, to influence a blind mob to believe those calumnies, false as they were, and to offer her at every step an increase of insult, till at last they trampled her beneath their feet.

If we recur only to the story of the diamond necklace, how simple is Madame Campan's narrative, contrasted with that of the practised and cautious courtier.

Her marriage was the cause of all her misfortunes; from the beginning it was marked with painfulness. The constitutional coldness of the Dauphin, arising from disease, gave her for a long time domestic uneasiness; and his weakness and indecision, when he came to the crown, caused her misfortunes as a queen.

The affairs of France had been long coming to a crisis :-no one could bear the tyranny of the government; Louis XV. never hesitated to wound, for his gratification, the dearest and deepest feelings of the heart. Such was the history of Mademoiselle Tiercelin. The king remarked her at only nine years of age, as he had many other young persons, whom he had directed his confidential servant, Le Bel, to watch and to entrap for him; she was in the care of a nurse in the gardens of the Tuileries; the king spoke of her extraordinary beauty to Le Bel, who succeeded in procuring her from the nurse for a few louis. She was the daughter of

M.

M. de Tiercelin, a man of quality, who could not patiently endure an affront of this nature; he was, however, told, that his child was lost, and it would be best for him to submit to the sacrifice unless he wished to lose his liberty also. She was introduced at the palace as Mad. Boneval. The Duke de Choiseul afterwards became jealous of her influence over the king, and accused her father of intrigue. The father and daughter were, in consequence, confined separately in the Bastille.

Things could not long go on thus: Louis XVI. came to a throne tottering through the wickedness of his predecessors, and he was of all men one of the least likely to secure it by strength of mind, or firm decision of action. His embarkation in the American war has been often remarked for its imprudence: his view was certainly to injure England, not to extend republican principles; and the king lost no opportunity of showing his disapprobation of such principles, which he could not but perceive were gaining ground, even among those who are the support of an absolute monarchy, the military. The queen was always opposed to interference in the American war; she treated the English nobility, upon the peace of 1785, with marked attention, and often laughed at the enthusiasm with which Franklin inspired the French: such, indeed, could not be agreeable either to her or the king.

Dr. Franklin appeared at court in the dress of an American cultivator. His hair straight and unpowdered, his round hat and brown cloth coat, formed a contrast with the laced and embroidered coats and powdered and

perfumed heads of the courtiers of Versailles. This novelty turned the enthusiastic heads of the French women. Elegant entertainments were given him, at one of which Mad. Campan was present, when the most beautiful woman out of three hundred was selected to place a crown of laurel upon the white head of the American philosopher, and two kisses upon his cheeks. Even in the palace of Versailles, Franklin's medallion was sold under the king's eyes, in the exhibition of . Sevres porcelain. The motto of this medallion was

"Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."

The king certainly evinced his sentiments in a jest he played upon the Countess Diana, who had entered warmly into the idolatry of the American delegate. He had a vase de nuit made at the Sevres manufactory, at the bottom of which was the medallion with its fashionable legend ; and he sent it to the Countess as a new year's gift.

The Americans abroad and the ultras at home at last brought his majesty to his tremendous expiation of sins, generally not his own; and as if these gentry were not enough then (as they bid fair to be now) to ruin their master, the Empress Catherine of Russia was at the pains to write him a letter with her own hand, in which was this meek advice-" Kings ought to proceed in their career, undisturbed by the cries of the people, as the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs."

We shall not follow the events of the revolution which are generally so well known; but conclude with the following extracts.

"One of the things about which

the

the queen most desired to be satisfied, was the opinion of the famous Pitt. She would sometimes say to me: "I never pronounce the name of Pitt, but I feel death at my shoulder (I use her very words): that man is the mortal enemy of France; and he takes a dreadful revenge for the impolitic support given by the Cabinet of Versailles to the American insurgents. He wishes, by our destruction, to guarantee the maritime power of his country for ever, against the efforts made by the king to improve his marine power, and their happy results during the war. He knows that it is not only the king's policy, but his private inclination, to be solicitous about his fleets; and that the most active step he has taken, during his whole reign, was to visit the port of Cherbourg. Pitt has served the cause of the French revolution from the first disturbances; he will perhaps serve it until its annihilation. I will endeavour to learn to what point he intends to lead us, and I am sending M to London for that purpose. He has been intimately connected with Pitt, and they have often had political conversations respecting the French government. I will get him to make him speak out, at least as far as such a man can speak out."

"Some time afterwards, the queen told me that her secret envoy had returned from London; and that all he had been able to wring from Pitt, whom he found alarmingly reserved, was, that he would not suffer the French monarchy to fall; that to suffer the revolutionary spirit to erect an organized republic in France,

would be a great error, as regarding the tranquillity of all Europe." "Whenever," said she, "Pitt expressed himself upon the neces sity of supporting a monarchy in France, he maintained the most profound silence upon what concerns the monarch. The result of these conversations is any thing but encouraging; but, even as to that monarchy, which he wishes to save, will he have means and strength to save it, if he suffers us to fall?"

Bad as affectation of any kind may be, that of republican rudeness is one of the worst. "Petion's republican rudeness was disgusting; he ate and drank in the king's berlin in a slovenly manner, throwing the bones of the fowls out through the window, at the risk of sending them even into the king's face; lifting up his glass when Madame Elizabeth poured him out wine, to show her that there was enough, without saying a word. Petion held the little Dauphin upon his knees, and amused himself with curling the beautiful light hair of the interesting child round his fingers; and as he spoke with much gesticulation, he pulled his locks hard enough to make the Dauphin cry out. 'Give me my son,' said the queen to him: he is accustomed to tenderness and delicacy, which render him little fit for such roughness.'"

2.-Reminiscences of Charles Butler, Esq. of Lincoln's Inn.

Parliamentary Eloquence. Lord Chatham.-No person, in his external appearance, was ever more bountifully gifted by nature for an orator. In his look and his gestures,

grace