is fomething beautiful in nature: but we who live in human fhambles, who every day fee fresh victims dragged to execution, we are become fo familiarized with death, that we look on it with unconcern." A few days before this fanguinary trial ended, the adminiftration of the police fent orders that the English-women confined in the Luxembourg should be re moved the next day to a convent in the fauxbourg St. Antoine. With what keen regret La Source and Sillery received this intelligence! A thousand and a thousand times they thanked us for the dangers we had rifqued in receiving them, and for the fympathy which had foothed the laft hours of their existencea thousand times they declared, that if it were yet poffible their lives might be preserved, they should confider themselves for ever bound to us by the most sacred ties of gratitude and friendship: but they felt, alas! how fmall was the chance that we should meet again in this world. Sillery cut off a lock of his white hairs, which he begged I would preferve for his fake, and La Source gave me the fame relick. They embraced us with much emotion. They prayed that the bleffing of God might be upon us: we mingled our tears together, and parted to meet no more! Let me, before I conduct you to our new prifon, give you a fhort account of the political events and their causes, which, after bringing those members of the convention to the fcaffold who were most fitted by their talents to defend liberty, and by their moral qualities to make it beloved, ended in fuch a fyftem of cruelty and crimes, that it can be only by a long perfeverance in public virtue that France can make reparation to humanity, or retrieve her character among the nations. LET LETTER IV. THE republican party of the legisla tive affembly had, it is well known, very early projected many alterations in the new constitution. They had obferved. with great inquietude the changes which had taken place at the clofe of the first national affembly, when its labours underwent a revifion previously to the acceptance of the conftitution by the executive power, and when they found that those who had hitherto been the most. strenuous opponents of the court suddenly became its moft zealous advocates and friends. Though this party formed the minority of the legislative affembly, its influence by means of the popular focieties was very extenfive. But when the ftruggle took place between the court and the republiD 5 can can party, both of which were at length agreed in the overthrow of the new conftitution, with which each was for different reafons equally diffatisfied, the party was joined by many who in this deftruction of the regal authority had no other end in view than the establishment of their own. The fociety of the Jacobins, which had been for a long time the rival and at length the conqueror of the throne, was deferted immediately after the victory by almost all those who had contributed to gain it. They imagined that every domeftic enemy was annihilated when the firft decree of the convention changed the monarchy into a republic; and though fymptoms of difcontent discovered themfelves among fome who thought that the change had been too hastily decided on, and symptoms of a more dangerous and fatal tendency to the welfare of the government had already appeared among others, yet thofe to whom the people had given their their confidence were not fufficiently aware of the instability of popular favour, and the precarious tenure by which they held it. The commune of Paris claimed an equal right to fhare with the Jacobins the honours of the triumph over royalty; but diffatisfied with the little credit given to the fervices it had rendered during the ftruggle, it took advantage of the imbecility of the legislative affembly then expiring, and had already erected itself into a rival power before the convention had opened its firft debates. The pretence of making extraordinary exertions to oppofe the march of the enemy towards Paris had led the commune, amidst a multiplicity of other acts of rebellion, to arrogate the functions of the reprefentatives of the people; and having at the fatal period of the maffacre of September humbled the legislative affembly to the duft, they thought that the fame daring conduct would give them the fame fupeD6 riority |