The river is the
benefactor
of the country.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 to v25 - Rab to Tur
The courtiers, who derived advantage from these abuses,
would have been glad to see an end put to the embarrassments
of the exchequer, provided it did not cost them a single sacrifice.
They descanted at court on the state of affairs, and there retailed
philosophical maxims; they deplored, whilst hunting, the oppres-
sions inflicted upon the farmer; nay, they were even seen to
applaud the enfranchisement of the Americans, and to receive
with honor the young Frenchmen who returned from the New
World. The parliaments also talked of the interests of the peo-
ple, loudly insisted on the sufferings of the poor, and yet opposed
## p. 14833 (#407) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14833
the equalization of the taxes, as well as the abolition of the
remains of feudal barbarism. All talked of the public weal, few
desired it; and the people, not yet knowing who were its true
friends, applauded all those who resisted power, its most obvious
enemy.
By the removal of Turgot and Necker, the state of affairs
was not changed; the distress of the treasury still remained the
same. Those in power would have been willing to dispense, for a
long time to come, with the intervention of the nation; but it
was absolutely necessary to subsist—it was absolutely necessary to
supply the profusion of the court. The difficulty, removed for a
moment by the dismissal of a minister, by a loan, by the forced
imposition of a tax, appeared again in an aggravated form, like
every evil injudiciously neglected. The court hesitated, just as a
man does who is compelled to take a dreaded but an indispensa-
ble step. An intrigue brought forward M. de Calonne, who was
not in good odor with the public, because he had contributed to
the persecution of La Chalotais. Calonne, clever, brilliant, fertile
in resources, relied upon his genius, upon fortune, and upon men,
and awaited the future with the most extraordinary apathy. It
was his opinion that one ought not to be alarmed beforehand, or
to discover an evil till the day before that on which one intends
to set about repairing it. He seduced the court by his manners,
touched it by his eagerness to grant all that it required, afforded
the King and everybody else some happier moments, and dis-
pelled the most gloomy presages by a gleam of prosperity and
blind confidence.
That future which had been counted upon now approached: it
became necessary at length to adopt decisive measures.
It was
impossible to burden the people with fresh imposts, and yet the
coffers were empty. There was but one remedy which could be
applied, that was to reduce the expenses by the suppression
of grants; and if this expedient should not suffice, to extend the
taxes to a greater number of contributors,- that is, to the nobil-
ity and clergy. These plans, attempted successively by Turgot
and Necker and resumed by Calonne, appeared to the latter not at
all likely to succeed, unless the consent of the privileged classes
themselves could be obtained. Calonne, therefore, proposed to
collect them together in an assembly, to be called the Assembly
of the Notables, in order to lay his plans before them, and to
gain their consent either by address or by conviction.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
-
XXV-928
## p. 14834 (#408) ##########################################
14834
ADOLPHE THIERS
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN WESTERN FRANCE
From the History of the French Revolution'
AN
NOTHER much more general revolt had broken out in the
Marais and the department of La Vendée. At Machecoul
and Challans, the recruiting was the occasion of a universal
insurrection. A hair-dresser named Gaston killed an officer, took
his uniform, put himself at the head of the troop, took Challans,
and then Machecoul,- where his men burned all the papers of
the administrations, and committed murders of which Bocage had
furnished no example. Three hundred republicans were shot
by parties of twenty or thirty. The insurgents first made them
confess, and then took them to the edge of a ditch, beside which
they shot them, to spare themselves the trouble of burying the
bodies. Nantes instantly sent several hundred men to St. Phili-
bert; but learning that there was a disturbance at Savenay, it
recalled those troops, and the insurgents of Machecoul remained
masters of the conquered country.
In the department of La Vendée,- that is, to the south of
the theatre of this war,-the insurrection assumed still more con-
sistence.
The national guards of Fontenay, having set out on their
march for Chantonnay, were repulsed and beaten. Chantonnay
was plundered. General Verteuil, who commanded the eleventh
military division, on receiving intelligence of this defeat dis-
patched General Marcé with twelve hundred men, partly troops
of the line and partly national guards. The rebels, who were
met at St. Vincent, were repulsed. General Marcé had time to
add twelve hundred more men and nine pieces of cannon to
his little army. In marching upon St. Fulgent he again fell in
with the Vendeans in a valley, and stopped to restore a bridge
which they had destroyed. About four in the afternoon of the
18th of March, the Vendeans, taking the initiative, advanced and
attacked him. Availing themselves as usual of the advantages of
the ground, they began to fire with their wonted superiority; and
by degrees surrounded the republican army, astonished at this de-
structive fire, and utterly unable to reach an enemy concealed
and dispersed in all the hollows of the ground. At length they
rushed on to the assault, threw their adversaries into disorder,
and made themselves masters of the artillery, the ammunition,
and the arms, which the soldiers threw away that they might be
the lighter in their flight.
## p. 14835 (#409) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14835
These more important successes in the department of La
Vendée, properly so called, procured for the insurgents the name
of Vendeans; which they afterwards retained, though the war
was far more active out of La Vendée. The pillage committed by
them in the Marais caused them to be called brigands, though
the greater number did not deserve that appellation. The insur-
rection extended into the Marais, from the environs of Nantes
to Les Sables; and into Anjou and Poitou, as far as the environs
of Vihiers and Parthenay. The cause of the success of the Ven-
deans was in the configuration of the country; in their skill and
courage to profit by it; and finally in the inexperience and im-
prudent ardor of the republican troops, which, levied in haste,
were in too great a hurry to attack them, and thus gave them
victories and all their results,-military stores, confidence, and
courage.
Easter recalled all the insurgents to their homes, from which
they never would stay away long. To them a war was a sort
of sporting excursion of several days; they carried with them
a sufficient quantity of bread for the time, and then returned to
inflame their neighbors by the accounts which they gave. Places
of meeting were appointed for the month of April. The insur-
rection was then general, and extended over the whole surface of
the country.
THE HEIGHT OF THE "TERROR»
From the "History of the French Revolution'
NⓇ
EVER had the terror been greater, not only in the Convention,
but in the prisons and throughout France.
The cruel agents of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville the
accuser and Dumas the president, had taken up the law of the
22d of Prairial, and were preparing to avail themselves of it for
the purpose of committing fresh atrocities in the prisons. "Very
soon," said Fouquier, "there shall be put up on their doors bills
of This house to let. "" The plan was to get rid of the greater
part of the suspected persons. People had accustomed themselves
to consider these latter as irreconcilable enemies, whom it was
necessary to destroy for the welfare of the republic. To sacri-
fice thousands of individuals, whose only fault was to think in a
certain manner,- nay, whose opinions were often precisely the
## p. 14836 (#410) ##########################################
14836
ADOLPHE THIERS
same as those of their persecutors,- to sacrifice them seemed a
perfectly natural thing, from the habit which people had acquired
of destroying one another. The facility with which they put
others to death, or encountered death themselves, had become
extraordinary. In the field of battle, on the scaffold, thousands
perished daily, and nobody was any longer shocked at it. The
first murders committed in 1793 proceeded from a real irritation
caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; the republic
was victorious: people now slaughtered not from indignation, but
from the atrocious habit which they had contracted. That for-
midable machine which they had been obliged to construct in
order to withstand enemies of all kinds, began to be no longer
necessary; but once set going, they knew not how to stop it.
Every government must have its climax, and does not perish till
it has attained that climax. The Revolutionary government was
not destined to end on the same day that all the enemies of
the republic should be sufficiently terrified: it was destined to
go beyond that point, and to exercise itself till it had become
generally disgusting by its very atrocity. Such is the invariable
course of human affairs. Why had atrocious circumstances com-
pelled the creation of a government of blood, which was to reign
and vanquish solely by inflicting death?
nance.
A still more frightful circumstance is, that when the signal is
given, when the idea is established that lives must be sacrificed,
all dispose themselves for this horrid purpose with an extraordi-
nary facility. Every one acts without remorse, without repug-
People accustom themselves to this, like the judge who
condemns criminals to death, like the surgeon who sees beings
writhing under his instrument, like the general who orders the
sacrifice of twenty thousand soldiers. They frame a horrid lan-
guage according to their new operations; they contrive even to
render it gay; they invent striking words to express sanguinary
ideas. Every one, stunned and hurried along, keeps pace with
the mass; and men who were yesterday engaged in the peaceful
occupations of the arts and commerce, are to-day seen applying
themselves with the same facility to the work of death and de-
struction.
-
The Committee had given the signal by the law of the 22d.
Dumas and Fouquier had but too well understood it.
necessary, however, to find pretexts for immolating so many vic-
tims. What crime could be imputed to them, when most of them
## p. 14837 (#411) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14837
were peaceful, unknown citizens, who had never given any sign
of life to the State? It was conceived that being confined in
the prisons, they would think how to get out of them; that their
number was likely to inspire them with a feeling of their strength,
and to suggest to them the idea of exerting it for their escape.
The pretended conspiracy of Dillon was the germ of this idea,
which was developed in an atrocious manner. Some wretches
among the prisoners consented to act the infamous part of in-
formers. They pointed out in the Luxembourg one hundred and
sixty prisoners who, they said, had been concerned in Dillon's
plot. Some of these list-makers were procured in all the other
places of confinement; and they denounced in each, one or two
hundred persons as accomplices in the "conspiracy of the prisons. "
An attempt at escape made at La Force served but to authorize
this unworthy fable; and hundreds of unfortunate creatures be-
gan immediately to be sent to the Revolutionary tribunal. They
were transferred from the various prisons to the Conciergerie,
to be thence taken to the tribunal and to the scaffold. In the
night between the 18th and 19th of Messidor (June 6th), the one
hundred and sixty persons denounced at the Luxembourg were
transferred. They trembled on hearing themselves called: they
knew not what was laid to their charge, but they regarded it as
most probable that death was reserved for them. The odious Fou-
quier, since he had been furnished with the law of the 22d, had
made great changes in the hall of the tribunal. Instead of the
seats for the advocates and the bench, which would hold eighteen
or twenty persons and had been appropriated to the accused, an
amphitheatre for the accused was constructed by his order, with
a capacity of one hundred or one hundred and fifty at a time.
This he called his "little seats. " Carrying his atrocious activ-
ity still further, he had even caused a scaffold to be erected in
the very hall of the tribunal; and he proposed to have the one
hundred and sixty accused in the Luxembourg, tried at one and
the same sitting.
The Committee of Public Welfare, when informed of the kind.
of mania which had seized its public accuser, sent for him, ordered
him to remove the scaffold from the hall in which it was set up,
and forbade him to bring sixty persons to trial at once. "What! "
said Collot-d'Herbois in a transport of indignation: "wouldst thou
then demoralize death itself? " It should however be remarked
that Fouquier asserted the contrary, and maintained that it was
## p. 14838 (#412) ##########################################
14838
ADOLPHE THIERS
he who demanded the trial of the one hundred and sixty in
three divisions. Everything proves, on the contrary, that it was
the Committee which was less extravagant than their minister,
and checked his mad proceedings. They were obliged to repeat
the order to Fouquier-Tinville to remove the guillotine from the
hall of the tribunal.
The one hundred and sixty were divided into three companies,
tried and executed in three days. The proceedings were as expe-
ditious and as frightful as those adopted in the Abbaye on the
nights of the 2d and 3d of September. Carts ordered for every
day were waiting from the morning in the court of the Palace of
Justice, and the accused could see them as they went up-stairs to
the tribunal. Dumas the president, holding sessions like a maniac,
had a pair of pistols on the table before him. He merely asked
the accused their names, and added some very general question.
In the examination of the one hundred and sixty, the president
said to one of them, Dorival, "Do you know anything of the
conspiracy? " "No. "—"I expected that you would give that
answer; but it shall not avail you. Another. " He addressed a
person named Champigny, "Are you not an ex-noble? " "Yes. "
"Another. " To Gudreville, "Are you a priest? " "Yes —
but I have taken the oath. "-"You have no right to speak.
Another. " To a man named Menil, "Were you not servant to
the ex-constituent Menou ? » "Yes. "—"Another. " To Vely,
"Were you not architect to Madame? -"Yes; but I was dis-
missed in 1788. " — "Another. " To Gondrecourt, "Had you not
your father-in-law at the Luxembourg? " "Yes. " — "Another. "
To Durfort, "Were you not in the life-guard? " — "Yes; but I
was disbanded in 1789. "-
» — "Another. "
-
-
Such was the summary mode of proceeding with these unfor-
tunate persons. According to the law, the testimony of witnesses
was to be dispensed with only when there existed material or
moral proofs; nevertheless no witnesses were called, as it was
alleged that proofs of this kind existed in every case. The
jurors did not take the trouble to retire to the consultation room.
They gave their opinions before the audience, and sentence was
immediately pronounced. The accused had scarcely time to rise
and to mention their names. One day there was a prisoner whose
name was not upon the list of the accused, and who said to the
Court, "I am not accused; my name in not on your list. " "What
signifies that? " said Fouquier, "give it quick! " He gave it, and
-
-
>>
-
―
-
.
## p. 14839 (#413) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14839
was sent to the scaffold like the others. The utmost negligence
prevailed in this kind of barbarous administration. Sometimes,
owing to the extreme precipitation, the acts of accusation were
not delivered to the accused till they were before the tribunal.
The most extraordinary blunders were committed. A worthy old
man, Loizerolles, heard along with his own surname the Christ-
ian names of his son called over: he forebore to remonstrate,
and was sent to the scaffold. Some time afterward the son was
brought to trial; it was found that he ought not to be alive,
since a person answering to all his names had been executed:
it was his father. He was nevertheless put to death. More than
once victims were called long after they had perished. There
were hundreds of acts of accusation quite ready, to which there
was nothing to add but the designation of the individuals.
The trials were conducted in like manner. The printing-office
was contiguous to the hall of the tribunal: the forms were kept
standing, the title, the motives, were ready composed; there was
nothing but the names to be added. These were handed through
a small loophole to the overseer. Thousands of copies were im-
mediately printed, and plunged families into mourning and struck
terror into the prisons. The hawkers came to sell the bulletin
of the tribunal under the prisoners' windows, crying, "Here are
the names of those who have gained prizes in the lottery of
St. Guillotine. " The accused were executed on the breaking-up
of the court; or at latest on the morrow, if the day was too far
advanced.
Ever since the passing of the law of the 22d of Prairial, vic-
tims perished at the rate of fifty or sixty a day. "That goes
well," said Fouquier-Tinville: "heads fall like tiles. " And he
added, "It must go better still next decade: I must have four
hundred and fifty at least. " For this purpose there were given.
what were called orders to the wretches who undertook the office
of spies upon the suspected. These wretches had become the
terror of the prisons. Confined as suspected persons, it was not
exactly known which of them it was who undertook to mark
out victims; but it was inferred from their insolence, from the
preference shown them by the jailers, from the orgies which
they held in the lodges with the agents of the police. They fre-
quently gave intimation of their importance, in order to traffic
with it. They were caressed, implored, by the trembling prison-
ers; they even received sums of money not to put their names
## p. 14840 (#414) ##########################################
14840
ADOLPHE THIERS
upon their lists. These they made up at random: they said of
one, that he had used aristocratic language; of another, that he
had drunk on a certain day when a defeat of the armies was
announced: and their mere designation was equivalent to a
death-warrant. The names which they had furnished were in-
serted in so many acts of accusation; these acts were notified in
the evening to the prisoners, and the latter were removed to the
Conciergerie. This was called in the language of the jailers
"the evening journal. " When those unfortunate creatures heard
the rolling of the tumbrils which came to fetch them, they were
in an agony as cruel as that of death. They ran to the gates,
clung to the bars to listen to the list, and trembled lest their
name should be pronounced by the messenger. When they were
named, they embraced their companions in misfortune, and took
a last leave of them. Most painful separations were frequently
witnessed, a father parting from his children, a husband from
his wife. Those who survived were as wretched as those who
were conducted to the den of Fouquier-Tinville. They went back
expecting soon to rejoin their relatives. When the fatal list was
finished, the prisoners breathed more freely, but only till the fol-
lowing day. Their anguish was then renewed, and the rolling of
the carts brought fresh terror along with it.
The public pity began to be expressed in a way that gave
some uneasiness to the exterminators. The shopkeepers in the
Rue St. Honoré, through which the carts passed every day, shut
up their shops. To deprive the victims of these signs of mourn-
ing, the scaffold was removed to the Barrière du Trone; but not
less pity was shown by the laboring people in this quarter than
by the inhabitants of the best streets in Paris. The populace, in
a moment of intoxication, may have no feeling for the victims
whom it slaughters itself; but when it daily witnesses the death
of fifty or sixty unfortunate persons against whom it is not ex-
cited by rage, it soon begins to be softened. This pity, however,
was still silent and timid. All the distinguished persons confined
in the prisons had fallen,- the unfortunate sister of Louis XVI.
had been immolated in her turn; and Death was already descend-
ing from the upper to the lower classes of society. We find at
this period on the list of the Revolutionary tribunal, tailors,
shoemakers, hair-dressers, butchers, farmers, publicans, nay, even
laboring men, condemned for sentiments and language held to be
counter-revolutionary. To convey in brief an idea of the num-
―
## p. 14841 (#415) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14841
ber of executions of this period, it will be sufficient to state that
between the month of March 1793, when the tribunal commenced
its operations, and June 1794 (22d Prairial, year II), 577 persons
had been condemned; and that from the 10th of June (22d Prai-
rial) to the 17th of July (9th Thermidor) it condemned 1,285: so
that the total number of victims up to the 9th of Thermidor
amounts to 1,862.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
THE POLICY OF NAPOLEON IN EGYPT
From the History of the French Revolution'
THE
HE Arabs were struck by the character of the young con-
queror. They could not comprehend how it was that a
mortal who wielded the thunderbolt should be so merciful.
They called him the worthy son of the Prophet, the Favorite of
the great Allah. They sang in the great mosque the following
litany:
:-
"The great Allah is no longer wroth with us. He hath forgotten
our faults: they have been sufficiently punished by the long oppres-
sion of the Mamelukes. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"Who is he that hath saved the Favorite of Victory from the
dangers of the sea and the rage of his enemies? Who is he that
hath led the brave men of the West safe and unharmed to the banks
of the Nile?
"It is the great Allah, the great Allah, who hath ceased to be
wroth with us. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"The Mameluke beys had put their trust in their horses; the
Mameluke beys had drawn forth their infantry in battle array.
"But the Favorite of Victory, at the head of the brave men of the
West, hath destroyed the footmen and the horsemen of the Mam-
elukes.
"As th vapors which rise in the morning from he Nile are scat-
tered by the rays of the sun, so hath the army of the Mamelukes
been scattered by the brave men of the West; because the great
Allah is now wroth with the Mamelukes, because the brave men of
the West are as the apple of the right eye of the great Allah. "
Bonaparte, in order to make himself better acquainted with
the manners of the Arabs, resolved to attend all their festivals.
He was present at that of the Nile. which is one of the greatest
## p. 14842 (#416) ##########################################
14842
ADOLPHE THIERS
in Egypt.
The river is the benefactor of the country. It is, in
consequence, held in great veneration by the inhabitants, and is
the object of a sort of worship. During the inundation, its water
is introduced into Cairo by a great canal: a dike prevents it from
entering the canal until it has attained a certain height; the dike
is then cut, and the day fixed for this operation is a day of
rejoicing. The height to which the river has risen is publicly
proclaimed, and when there are hopes of a great inundation,
general joy prevails, for it is an omen of abundance.
It is on the 18th of August (1st of Fructidor) that this fes-
tival is held. Bonaparte had ordered the whole army to be
under arms, and had drawn it up on the banks of the canal. An
immense concourse of people had assembled, and beheld with
joy the "brave men of the West" attending their festival. Bona-
parte, at the head of his staff, accompanied the principal authori-
ties of the country. A sheik first proclaimed the height to which
the Nile had risen. It was twenty-five feet, which occasioned
great joy. Men then fell to work to cut the dike. The whole
of the French artillery was fired at once, at the moment when
the water of the river poured in. According to custom, a great
number of boats hastened to the canal, in order to obtain the
prize destined to that which should first enter. Bonaparte deliv-
ered the prize himself. A multitude of men and boys plunged
into the waters of the Nile, from a notion that bathing in them
at this moment is attended with beneficial effects. Women threw
into them hair and pieces of stuff. Bonaparte then ordered the
city to be illuminated, and the day concluded with entertain-
ments.
The festival of the Prophet was celebrated with not less pomp.
Bonaparte went to the great mosque; seated himself on cushions,
cross-legged like the sheiks; and repeated with them the litanies.
of the Prophet, rocking the upper part of his body to and fro,
and shaking his head. All the members of the holy college were
edified by his piety. He then attended the dinner given by the
Grand Sheik elected in the course of the day.
It was by such means that the young general, as profound a
politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate him-
self with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the
moment, he labored to diffuse among them some day the light of
science, by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He
collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought
## p. 14843 (#417) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14843
with him; and associating with them some of the best educated
of his officers, established that institute, to which he appropriated
revenues and one of the most spacious palaces in Cairo. Some
were to occupy themselves in preparing an accurate description
and a map of the country, comprehending the most minute de-
tails; others were to explore its ruins, and to furnish history with
new lights; others, again, were to study the productions, to make
observations useful to natural philosophy, natural history, and
astronomy; while others were to employ themselves in inquiries.
concerning the ameliorations that might be made in the condition
of the inhabitants,- by machines, canals, works upon the Nile,
and processes adapted to a soil so singular and so different from
that of Europe. If Fortune did subsequently wrest from us that
beautiful country, at any rate she could not deprive us of the
conquests which science was about to make in it. A monument
was preparing which was destined to reflect not less honor on
the genius and the perseverance of our men of science, than the
expedition on the heroism of our soldiers.
Monge was the first who obtained the presidency. Bonaparte
was only the second. He proposed the following subjects: To
inquire the best construction of wind and water mills; to find a
substitute for the hop (which does not grow in Egypt) for the
making of beer; to determine the sites adapted to the cultivation
of the vine; to seek the best means of procuring water for the
citadel of Cairo; to dig wells in different spots in the desert;
to inquire the means of clarifying and cooling the water of the
Nile; to devise some useful application of the rubbish with which
the city of Cairo- and indeed all the ancient towns of Egypt-
was incumbered; and to find out materials requisite for the manu-
facture of gunpowder in Egypt. From these questions, the reader
may judge of the bent of the general's mind. The engineers,
the draughtsmen, and the men of science, immediately dispersed
themselves throughout all the provinces, to commence the de-
scription and the map of the country. Such were the first pro-
ceedings of this infant colony, and the manner in which its
founder directed the operations.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
## p. 14844 (#418) ##########################################
14844
ADOLPHE THIERS
NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY AFTER THE DISASTER
OF ABOUKIR
N the festival of the foundation of the republic, celebrated
ON on the 1st of Vendémiaire, he strove to give a new stim-
ulus to their imagination: he had engraven on Pompey's
Pillar the names of the first forty soldiers slain in Egypt.
They were the forty who had fallen in the attack on Alexandria.
These forty names of men sprung from the villages of France
were thus associated with the immortality of Pompey and Alex-
ander. He issued this grand and extraordinary address to his
army, in which was recorded his own wonderful history:-
"Soldiers:
"We celebrate the first day of the year VII. of the republic.
"Five years ago the independence of the French people was
threatened: but you took Toulon; this was an omen of the
destruction of your enemies.
"A year afterwards you beat the Austrians at Dego.
"The following year you were on the summits of the Alps.
"Two years ago you were engaged against Mantua, and you
gained the famous victory of St. George.
"Last year you were at the sources of the Drave and the
Isonzo, on your return from Germany.
"Who would then have said that you would be to-day on the
banks of the Nile, in the centre of the Old World?
*
"From the Englishman, celebrated in the arts and commerce,
to the hideous and ferocious Bedouin, all nations have their eyes
fixed upon you.
"Soldiers, yours is a glorious destiny, because you are worthy
of what you have done and of the opinion that is entertained of
you. You will die with honor, like the brave men whose names
are inscribed on this pyramid, or you will return to your country
covered with laurels and with the admiration of all nations.
"During the five months that we have been far away from
Europe, we have been the object of the perpetual solicitude of
our countrymen. On this day, forty millions of citizens are cele-
brating the era of representative governments; forty millions of
citizens are thinking of you. All of them are saying, 'To
their labors, to their blood, we are indebted for the general peace,
for repose, for the prosperity of commerce, and for the blessings
of civil liberty. " "
## p. 14845 (#419) ##########################################
14845
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
(1854-)
HE poetical work of Edith Matilda Thomas is chiefly remark-
able for its sustained literary quality. While it is never
lacking in spontaneity, it always shows conscientious work-
manship, and strict fidelity to a high ideal of the requirements of
Its subject-matter evidences a thoughtful, sensitive, and oft-
times passionate spirit in the author, governed however by that spirit
of asceticism which is the distinguishing mark of the true artist. Miss
Thomas's self-restraint is commensurate with her inspiration.
verse.
She was born in 1854 in Chatham, Ohio;
was educated at the Normal Institute at
Geneva, in the same State. While she was
yet a girl, she began writing for the maga-
zines. In 1885 she published a volume of
verse entitled 'A New-Year's Masque,' and
in the following year a volume of prose
with the title The Round Year. ' Her
prose is no less excellent than her verse,
being always strong, simple, and direct.
'The Round Year' is a kind of continuous
essay on the various aspects of the seasons.
The author's love of nature is not that bred
in the town, through long deprivation of its
refreshment. She has the intimate acquaint-
ance with it which does not deal in generalities, but lingers with
discerning affection over the beauties of certain flowers and way-
side bushes, of elusive changes in the sky, of the impalpable essences
of natural things felt rather than seen even with the inner eye.
This friendly love for the outside world informs many of her most
beautiful poems. The volumes entitled 'Lyrics and Sonnets,' 'A
Winter Swallow,' 'Fair Shadow Land,' 'A New-Year's Masque,' con-
tain not a few of these poems of the sky and earth. In one of them,
'Half Sight and Whole Sight,' she expresses the spirit in which she
herself looks upon the God-made world:-
—
VWJ
EDITH M. THOMAS
"Thou beholdest, indeed, some mystical intimate beckoning
Out of the flower's honeyed heart, that passeth our reckoning;
Yet when hast thou seen, or shalt see,
With the eye of yon hovering bee? »
## p. 14846 (#420) ##########################################
14846
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Miss Thomas's poems of love and life are more remote in their
spirit than her poems of nature; yet in a time of feverish erotic
verse their apparent coldness is welcome. She has drunk too deep,
it may be, at the fountain-head of Greek poetry to share the modern
extravagance of thought and feeling. Her poems on classical sub-
jects show no small degree of comprehension of the Greek spirit. She
makes use oftenest of the sonnet and lyric forms in her poetry, han-
dling them with delicate skill. The sense of her verse is never sacri-
ficed to its music; and in her preservation of the fine balance between
the two elements, she gives clearest evidence of the genuineness of
her poetical gifts.
SYRINX
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems. ' Copyright 1884, by Edith
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
OME forth, too timid spirit of the reed!
Leave thy plashed coverts and elusions shy,
And find delight at large in grove and mead.
No ambushed harm, no wanton's peering eye,
The shepherd's uncouth god thou needst not fear,-
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
CON
'Tis but the vagrant wind that makes thee start,
The pleasure-loving south, the freshening west;
The willow's woven veil they softly part,
To fan the lily on the stream's warm breast:
No ruder stir, no footstep pressing near,—
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
Whether he lies in some mossed wood, asleep,
And heeds not how the acorns drop around,
Or in some shelly cavern near the deep,
Lulled by its pulses of eternal sound,
He wakes not, answers not, our sylvan cheer,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
Else we had seen him, through the mists of morn,
To upland pasture lead his bleating charge;
There is no shag upon the stunted thorn,
No hoof-print on the river's silver marge;
Nor broken branch of pine, nor ivied spear,—
Pan has not passed that way for many a year.
## p. 14847 (#421) ##########################################
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14847
O tremulous elf, reach me a hollow pipe,
The best and smoothest of thy mellow store!
Now I may blow till Time be hoary ripe,
And listening streams forsake the paths they wore:
Pan loved the sound, but now will never hear,-
Pan has not trimmed a reed this many a year!
And so, come freely forth, and through the sedge
Lift up a dimpled, warm, Arcadian face,
As on that day when fear thy feet did fledge,
And thou didst safely win the breathless race. —
I am deceived: nor Pan nor thou art here,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
LETHE
-
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
SUNSET
EMEMBRANCE followed him into the skies.
R
They met. Awhile mute Sorrow held him thrall.
Then broke he forth in spirit words and sighs:-
"Great was my sin, but at my contrite call
Came pardon and the hope of Paradise;
If this be Heaven, thy blessing on me fall! »
She looked. Peace filled her unremembering eyes;
She knew him not-she had forgotten all.
-
From A Winter Swallow: With Other Verse. Copyright 1896, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
WHA
HAT pageants have I seen, what plenitude
Of pomp, what hosts in Tyrian rich array,
Crowding the mystic outgate of the day:
What silent hosts, pursuing or pursued,
And all their track with wealthy wreckage strewed!
What seas that roll in waves of gold and gray,
What flowers, what flame, what gems in blent display,—
What wide-spread pinions of the phoenix brood!
## p. 14848 (#422) ##########################################
14848
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Give me a window opening on the west,
And the full splendor of the setting sun.
There let me stand and gaze, and think no more
If I be poor, or old, or all unblest;
And when my sands of life are quite outrun,
May my soul follow through the day's wide door!
CYBELE AND HER CHILDREN
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
THE
HE Mother has eternal youth;
Yet in the fading of the year,
For sake of what must fade, in ruth
She wears a crown of oak-leaves sear.
By whistling woods, by naked rocks,
That long have lost the summer heat,
She calls the wild, unfolded flocks,
And points them to their shelter meet.
In her deep bosom sink they all;
The hunter and the prey are there;
No ravin-cry, no hunger-call:
These do not fear, and those forbear.
The winding serpent watches not;
Unwatched, the field-mouse trembles not;
Weak hyla, quiet in his grot,
So rests, nor changes line or spot.
For food the Mother gives them sleep,
Against the cold she gives them sleep,
To cheat their foes she gives them sleep,
For safety gives them death-like sleep.
The Mother has eternal youth,
And therefrom, in the wakening year
Their life revives; and they, in sooth,
Forget their mystic bondage drear.
## p. 14849 (#423) ##########################################
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14849
THE GRASSHOPPER
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems.
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
Copyright 1884, by Edith
SH
HUTTLE of the sunburnt grass,
Fifer in the dun cuirass,
Fifing shrilly in the morn,
Shrilly still at eve unworn;
Now to rear, now in the van,
Gayest of the elfin clan:
Though I watch their rustling flight,
I can never guess aright
Where their lodging-places are:
'Mid some daisy's golden star,
Or beneath a roofing leaf,
Or in fringes of sheaf,
Tenanted as soon as bound!
Loud thy reveille doth sound.
When the earth is laid asleep,
And her dreams are passing deep,
On mid-August afternoons;
And through all the harvest moons,
Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace,-
Thy gainsaying doth not cease.
When the frost comes thou art dead:
XXV-929
We along the stubble tread,
On blue, frozen morns, and note
No least murmur is afloat;
Wondrous still our fields are then,
Fifer of the elfin men.
WINTER SLEEP
From A Winter Swallow. ' Copyright 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons
I
KNOW it must be winter (though I sleep) —
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many and the grass grows deep.
I know I must be old (how age deceives! ) -
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,
My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green
When late rains patter on the falling sheaves.
## p. 14850 (#424) ##########################################
14850
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
I know I must be tired (and tired souls err) —
I know I must be tired, for all my soul
To deeds of daring beats a glad faint roll,
As storms the riven pine to music stir.
I know I must be dying (Death draws near) -
I know I must be dying, for I crave
Life life, strong life, and think not of the grave
And turf-bound silence in the frosty year.
-
## p. 14851 (#425) ##########################################
14851
JAMES THOMSON
1
(1700-1748)
AMES THOMSON occupies a significant position among English
poets, less by virtue of his poetical gifts-although these
are of no mean order-than by the wholesome influence of
his recognition of nature in an artificial age. He was a contemporary
of Pope, yet he struck a note in his poems which was to be ampli-
fied later in the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Shelley and
Keats. He was the father of the natural school, as opposed to the
pseudo-classical school of which Pope was the complete embodiment.
When Thomson was growing up amid
the wild scenery of the Scottish Border
country, literary England was dominated by
an ideal of, verse in contrast to which even
Shakespeare's measures were held to be
barbarous. The rhyming iambic pentame-
ter, the favorite verse form, had been devel-
oped by Pope to such a point of polished
perfection that imitation alone was possible.
Moreover, it was employed only on a lim-
ited range of subjects. These might be
either classical or urbane: nothing so vul-
gar as nature or the common people was
worthy of the Muse. The genius of poetry
had been brought from the fresh air of the
fields into the vitiated air of the drawing-rooms; had been laced and
powdered and encased in stiff brocades, which hindered all freedom
of motion.
JAMES THOMSON
But of this Thomson knew nothing. It was his good fortune to
have been born far from London, and to have been brought up amid
the simple influences of country life. He was born in 1700 in the
parish of Ednam, in Roxburghshire, of which his father was minister.
He received his early education at Jedburgh school. It was at Jed-
burgh that he met a Mr. Riccalton, who was accustomed to teach
the boys Latin in the aisle of his church. He had written a poem
on 'A Winter's Day,' from which Thomson obtained his first idea for
the 'Seasons. ' The future poet's education was received more from
nature than from books. The magnificent panorama of the year
was unrolled continually before him, and he was not indifferent
## p. 14852 (#426) ##########################################
14852
JAMES THOMSON
to its beauties. It was with reluctance that he left his country
home for Edinburgh, where he remained five years as a student of
divinity. The ministry, however, had few attractions for him: in 1725
he abandoned his studies, and followed a fellow-student, Mallet, to
London, to seek his fortune there. Through the influence of a friend,
Lady Baillie, he obtained a tutorship in the family of Lord Binning;
but he held this position only a short time. The following winter
found him without money, without prospects, and almost without
friends. The death of his mother had plunged him into deep melan-
choly he gave vent to his feelings at the approach of the unfriendly
winter, by writing the first of his poems on the seasons. For several
weeks after its publication no notice was taken of it; then a gentle-
man of some influence in the London world of letters ran across it,
and immediately proclaimed its value in the coffee-houses.
(Winter)
began to be widely read: its popularity was soon established.
Thomson enjoyed all the prestige of a man who has struck a new
vein in literature. It is easy to understand how the jaded palates
of the London circles, surfeited with Popian classicism, were re-
freshed by this simple poem of winter in the country. To the gener-
ations which know Wordsworth, Thomson's song of the bleak season
seems well-nigh artificial; but it was Nature herself to the coffee-
house coteries who had forgotten her existence. It contains indeed
much that is sincere, wholesome, and beautiful. The pretty picture
of bright-eyed robin-redbreast hopping across the cottage floor in
quest of crumbs, the pathetic description of the peasant-shepherd
dying in the snow, while his wife and children wait for him in vain,
must have stirred unwonted emotions in the hearts of a generation
accustomed to the jeweled artificialities of the Rape of the Lock. '
Thomson's conception of nature was in no sense like that of Words-
worth: he never disassociated it from human interests; it is always
the background for the human drama: but for this reason it was
popular, and will always remain popular, with a class of persons to
whom the Wordsworthian conception seems cold and unsympathetic.
'Winter' was also significant because it was written in blank
verse of a noble order.
The rhyming couplets of the classicists, the
rocking-horse movement of their verse, had done much to destroy
the exquisite musical sense which had reached its perfection in the
Elizabethans. It was the mission of Thomson to revive this sense
through his artistic use of blank verse.
'Summer' was published not long after 'Winter. ' It was followed
by an Ode to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton. ' 'Spring' was pub-
lished in 1728, and 'Autumn' in 1730. In this same year, the play of
'Sophonisba' also appeared; but Thomson never succeeded as a play-
wright. His 'Agamemnon,' his Tancred and Sigismunda,' his masque
of 'Alfred,' which contains the song 'Rule, Britannia,' are stilted and
## p. 14853 (#427) ##########################################
JAMES THOMSON
14853
dreary compositions. He had written 'Alfred' in conjunction with
his friend Mallet. His poem 'Liberty,' published the first part in
1734 and the second in 1736, was of no higher order of merit. It
would seem that after writing the 'Seasons,' Thomson's energies
declined, not again to be revived in full force until he wrote the
Castle of Indolence,' shortly before his death. His income during
these years was obtained partly from his books, and partly from
sinecure positions. In 1744 he was appointed Surveyor-General of
the Leeward Islands, a position which he held until his death in
1748.
In the year of his death The Castle of Indolence' was published.
It is a poem of great beauty and charm, whose richness of diction
is suggestive of Keats. The sensuous Spenserian stanza employed
is well adapted to the subject. The false enchanter, Indolence,
holds many captive in his castle by his magic arts; but he is at last
conquered by the Knights of the Arts and Industries. The slum-
berous atmosphere of the Castle and its environment is wonderfully
communicated in the opening stanzas; and the poem in its entirety
is worthy of the author of the 'Seasons' at his best.
What Wordsworth is to the nineteenth century, Thomson was to
the eighteenth. With him began that outpouring of the true poetical
spirit which was to culminate one hundred years later.
RULE, BRITANNIA!
From the Masque of Alfred'
WH
HEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:-
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
-
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
## p. 14854 (#428) ##########################################
14854
JAMES THOMSON
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe, and thy renown.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
would have been glad to see an end put to the embarrassments
of the exchequer, provided it did not cost them a single sacrifice.
They descanted at court on the state of affairs, and there retailed
philosophical maxims; they deplored, whilst hunting, the oppres-
sions inflicted upon the farmer; nay, they were even seen to
applaud the enfranchisement of the Americans, and to receive
with honor the young Frenchmen who returned from the New
World. The parliaments also talked of the interests of the peo-
ple, loudly insisted on the sufferings of the poor, and yet opposed
## p. 14833 (#407) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14833
the equalization of the taxes, as well as the abolition of the
remains of feudal barbarism. All talked of the public weal, few
desired it; and the people, not yet knowing who were its true
friends, applauded all those who resisted power, its most obvious
enemy.
By the removal of Turgot and Necker, the state of affairs
was not changed; the distress of the treasury still remained the
same. Those in power would have been willing to dispense, for a
long time to come, with the intervention of the nation; but it
was absolutely necessary to subsist—it was absolutely necessary to
supply the profusion of the court. The difficulty, removed for a
moment by the dismissal of a minister, by a loan, by the forced
imposition of a tax, appeared again in an aggravated form, like
every evil injudiciously neglected. The court hesitated, just as a
man does who is compelled to take a dreaded but an indispensa-
ble step. An intrigue brought forward M. de Calonne, who was
not in good odor with the public, because he had contributed to
the persecution of La Chalotais. Calonne, clever, brilliant, fertile
in resources, relied upon his genius, upon fortune, and upon men,
and awaited the future with the most extraordinary apathy. It
was his opinion that one ought not to be alarmed beforehand, or
to discover an evil till the day before that on which one intends
to set about repairing it. He seduced the court by his manners,
touched it by his eagerness to grant all that it required, afforded
the King and everybody else some happier moments, and dis-
pelled the most gloomy presages by a gleam of prosperity and
blind confidence.
That future which had been counted upon now approached: it
became necessary at length to adopt decisive measures.
It was
impossible to burden the people with fresh imposts, and yet the
coffers were empty. There was but one remedy which could be
applied, that was to reduce the expenses by the suppression
of grants; and if this expedient should not suffice, to extend the
taxes to a greater number of contributors,- that is, to the nobil-
ity and clergy. These plans, attempted successively by Turgot
and Necker and resumed by Calonne, appeared to the latter not at
all likely to succeed, unless the consent of the privileged classes
themselves could be obtained. Calonne, therefore, proposed to
collect them together in an assembly, to be called the Assembly
of the Notables, in order to lay his plans before them, and to
gain their consent either by address or by conviction.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
-
XXV-928
## p. 14834 (#408) ##########################################
14834
ADOLPHE THIERS
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN WESTERN FRANCE
From the History of the French Revolution'
AN
NOTHER much more general revolt had broken out in the
Marais and the department of La Vendée. At Machecoul
and Challans, the recruiting was the occasion of a universal
insurrection. A hair-dresser named Gaston killed an officer, took
his uniform, put himself at the head of the troop, took Challans,
and then Machecoul,- where his men burned all the papers of
the administrations, and committed murders of which Bocage had
furnished no example. Three hundred republicans were shot
by parties of twenty or thirty. The insurgents first made them
confess, and then took them to the edge of a ditch, beside which
they shot them, to spare themselves the trouble of burying the
bodies. Nantes instantly sent several hundred men to St. Phili-
bert; but learning that there was a disturbance at Savenay, it
recalled those troops, and the insurgents of Machecoul remained
masters of the conquered country.
In the department of La Vendée,- that is, to the south of
the theatre of this war,-the insurrection assumed still more con-
sistence.
The national guards of Fontenay, having set out on their
march for Chantonnay, were repulsed and beaten. Chantonnay
was plundered. General Verteuil, who commanded the eleventh
military division, on receiving intelligence of this defeat dis-
patched General Marcé with twelve hundred men, partly troops
of the line and partly national guards. The rebels, who were
met at St. Vincent, were repulsed. General Marcé had time to
add twelve hundred more men and nine pieces of cannon to
his little army. In marching upon St. Fulgent he again fell in
with the Vendeans in a valley, and stopped to restore a bridge
which they had destroyed. About four in the afternoon of the
18th of March, the Vendeans, taking the initiative, advanced and
attacked him. Availing themselves as usual of the advantages of
the ground, they began to fire with their wonted superiority; and
by degrees surrounded the republican army, astonished at this de-
structive fire, and utterly unable to reach an enemy concealed
and dispersed in all the hollows of the ground. At length they
rushed on to the assault, threw their adversaries into disorder,
and made themselves masters of the artillery, the ammunition,
and the arms, which the soldiers threw away that they might be
the lighter in their flight.
## p. 14835 (#409) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14835
These more important successes in the department of La
Vendée, properly so called, procured for the insurgents the name
of Vendeans; which they afterwards retained, though the war
was far more active out of La Vendée. The pillage committed by
them in the Marais caused them to be called brigands, though
the greater number did not deserve that appellation. The insur-
rection extended into the Marais, from the environs of Nantes
to Les Sables; and into Anjou and Poitou, as far as the environs
of Vihiers and Parthenay. The cause of the success of the Ven-
deans was in the configuration of the country; in their skill and
courage to profit by it; and finally in the inexperience and im-
prudent ardor of the republican troops, which, levied in haste,
were in too great a hurry to attack them, and thus gave them
victories and all their results,-military stores, confidence, and
courage.
Easter recalled all the insurgents to their homes, from which
they never would stay away long. To them a war was a sort
of sporting excursion of several days; they carried with them
a sufficient quantity of bread for the time, and then returned to
inflame their neighbors by the accounts which they gave. Places
of meeting were appointed for the month of April. The insur-
rection was then general, and extended over the whole surface of
the country.
THE HEIGHT OF THE "TERROR»
From the "History of the French Revolution'
NⓇ
EVER had the terror been greater, not only in the Convention,
but in the prisons and throughout France.
The cruel agents of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville the
accuser and Dumas the president, had taken up the law of the
22d of Prairial, and were preparing to avail themselves of it for
the purpose of committing fresh atrocities in the prisons. "Very
soon," said Fouquier, "there shall be put up on their doors bills
of This house to let. "" The plan was to get rid of the greater
part of the suspected persons. People had accustomed themselves
to consider these latter as irreconcilable enemies, whom it was
necessary to destroy for the welfare of the republic. To sacri-
fice thousands of individuals, whose only fault was to think in a
certain manner,- nay, whose opinions were often precisely the
## p. 14836 (#410) ##########################################
14836
ADOLPHE THIERS
same as those of their persecutors,- to sacrifice them seemed a
perfectly natural thing, from the habit which people had acquired
of destroying one another. The facility with which they put
others to death, or encountered death themselves, had become
extraordinary. In the field of battle, on the scaffold, thousands
perished daily, and nobody was any longer shocked at it. The
first murders committed in 1793 proceeded from a real irritation
caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; the republic
was victorious: people now slaughtered not from indignation, but
from the atrocious habit which they had contracted. That for-
midable machine which they had been obliged to construct in
order to withstand enemies of all kinds, began to be no longer
necessary; but once set going, they knew not how to stop it.
Every government must have its climax, and does not perish till
it has attained that climax. The Revolutionary government was
not destined to end on the same day that all the enemies of
the republic should be sufficiently terrified: it was destined to
go beyond that point, and to exercise itself till it had become
generally disgusting by its very atrocity. Such is the invariable
course of human affairs. Why had atrocious circumstances com-
pelled the creation of a government of blood, which was to reign
and vanquish solely by inflicting death?
nance.
A still more frightful circumstance is, that when the signal is
given, when the idea is established that lives must be sacrificed,
all dispose themselves for this horrid purpose with an extraordi-
nary facility. Every one acts without remorse, without repug-
People accustom themselves to this, like the judge who
condemns criminals to death, like the surgeon who sees beings
writhing under his instrument, like the general who orders the
sacrifice of twenty thousand soldiers. They frame a horrid lan-
guage according to their new operations; they contrive even to
render it gay; they invent striking words to express sanguinary
ideas. Every one, stunned and hurried along, keeps pace with
the mass; and men who were yesterday engaged in the peaceful
occupations of the arts and commerce, are to-day seen applying
themselves with the same facility to the work of death and de-
struction.
-
The Committee had given the signal by the law of the 22d.
Dumas and Fouquier had but too well understood it.
necessary, however, to find pretexts for immolating so many vic-
tims. What crime could be imputed to them, when most of them
## p. 14837 (#411) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14837
were peaceful, unknown citizens, who had never given any sign
of life to the State? It was conceived that being confined in
the prisons, they would think how to get out of them; that their
number was likely to inspire them with a feeling of their strength,
and to suggest to them the idea of exerting it for their escape.
The pretended conspiracy of Dillon was the germ of this idea,
which was developed in an atrocious manner. Some wretches
among the prisoners consented to act the infamous part of in-
formers. They pointed out in the Luxembourg one hundred and
sixty prisoners who, they said, had been concerned in Dillon's
plot. Some of these list-makers were procured in all the other
places of confinement; and they denounced in each, one or two
hundred persons as accomplices in the "conspiracy of the prisons. "
An attempt at escape made at La Force served but to authorize
this unworthy fable; and hundreds of unfortunate creatures be-
gan immediately to be sent to the Revolutionary tribunal. They
were transferred from the various prisons to the Conciergerie,
to be thence taken to the tribunal and to the scaffold. In the
night between the 18th and 19th of Messidor (June 6th), the one
hundred and sixty persons denounced at the Luxembourg were
transferred. They trembled on hearing themselves called: they
knew not what was laid to their charge, but they regarded it as
most probable that death was reserved for them. The odious Fou-
quier, since he had been furnished with the law of the 22d, had
made great changes in the hall of the tribunal. Instead of the
seats for the advocates and the bench, which would hold eighteen
or twenty persons and had been appropriated to the accused, an
amphitheatre for the accused was constructed by his order, with
a capacity of one hundred or one hundred and fifty at a time.
This he called his "little seats. " Carrying his atrocious activ-
ity still further, he had even caused a scaffold to be erected in
the very hall of the tribunal; and he proposed to have the one
hundred and sixty accused in the Luxembourg, tried at one and
the same sitting.
The Committee of Public Welfare, when informed of the kind.
of mania which had seized its public accuser, sent for him, ordered
him to remove the scaffold from the hall in which it was set up,
and forbade him to bring sixty persons to trial at once. "What! "
said Collot-d'Herbois in a transport of indignation: "wouldst thou
then demoralize death itself? " It should however be remarked
that Fouquier asserted the contrary, and maintained that it was
## p. 14838 (#412) ##########################################
14838
ADOLPHE THIERS
he who demanded the trial of the one hundred and sixty in
three divisions. Everything proves, on the contrary, that it was
the Committee which was less extravagant than their minister,
and checked his mad proceedings. They were obliged to repeat
the order to Fouquier-Tinville to remove the guillotine from the
hall of the tribunal.
The one hundred and sixty were divided into three companies,
tried and executed in three days. The proceedings were as expe-
ditious and as frightful as those adopted in the Abbaye on the
nights of the 2d and 3d of September. Carts ordered for every
day were waiting from the morning in the court of the Palace of
Justice, and the accused could see them as they went up-stairs to
the tribunal. Dumas the president, holding sessions like a maniac,
had a pair of pistols on the table before him. He merely asked
the accused their names, and added some very general question.
In the examination of the one hundred and sixty, the president
said to one of them, Dorival, "Do you know anything of the
conspiracy? " "No. "—"I expected that you would give that
answer; but it shall not avail you. Another. " He addressed a
person named Champigny, "Are you not an ex-noble? " "Yes. "
"Another. " To Gudreville, "Are you a priest? " "Yes —
but I have taken the oath. "-"You have no right to speak.
Another. " To a man named Menil, "Were you not servant to
the ex-constituent Menou ? » "Yes. "—"Another. " To Vely,
"Were you not architect to Madame? -"Yes; but I was dis-
missed in 1788. " — "Another. " To Gondrecourt, "Had you not
your father-in-law at the Luxembourg? " "Yes. " — "Another. "
To Durfort, "Were you not in the life-guard? " — "Yes; but I
was disbanded in 1789. "-
» — "Another. "
-
-
Such was the summary mode of proceeding with these unfor-
tunate persons. According to the law, the testimony of witnesses
was to be dispensed with only when there existed material or
moral proofs; nevertheless no witnesses were called, as it was
alleged that proofs of this kind existed in every case. The
jurors did not take the trouble to retire to the consultation room.
They gave their opinions before the audience, and sentence was
immediately pronounced. The accused had scarcely time to rise
and to mention their names. One day there was a prisoner whose
name was not upon the list of the accused, and who said to the
Court, "I am not accused; my name in not on your list. " "What
signifies that? " said Fouquier, "give it quick! " He gave it, and
-
-
>>
-
―
-
.
## p. 14839 (#413) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14839
was sent to the scaffold like the others. The utmost negligence
prevailed in this kind of barbarous administration. Sometimes,
owing to the extreme precipitation, the acts of accusation were
not delivered to the accused till they were before the tribunal.
The most extraordinary blunders were committed. A worthy old
man, Loizerolles, heard along with his own surname the Christ-
ian names of his son called over: he forebore to remonstrate,
and was sent to the scaffold. Some time afterward the son was
brought to trial; it was found that he ought not to be alive,
since a person answering to all his names had been executed:
it was his father. He was nevertheless put to death. More than
once victims were called long after they had perished. There
were hundreds of acts of accusation quite ready, to which there
was nothing to add but the designation of the individuals.
The trials were conducted in like manner. The printing-office
was contiguous to the hall of the tribunal: the forms were kept
standing, the title, the motives, were ready composed; there was
nothing but the names to be added. These were handed through
a small loophole to the overseer. Thousands of copies were im-
mediately printed, and plunged families into mourning and struck
terror into the prisons. The hawkers came to sell the bulletin
of the tribunal under the prisoners' windows, crying, "Here are
the names of those who have gained prizes in the lottery of
St. Guillotine. " The accused were executed on the breaking-up
of the court; or at latest on the morrow, if the day was too far
advanced.
Ever since the passing of the law of the 22d of Prairial, vic-
tims perished at the rate of fifty or sixty a day. "That goes
well," said Fouquier-Tinville: "heads fall like tiles. " And he
added, "It must go better still next decade: I must have four
hundred and fifty at least. " For this purpose there were given.
what were called orders to the wretches who undertook the office
of spies upon the suspected. These wretches had become the
terror of the prisons. Confined as suspected persons, it was not
exactly known which of them it was who undertook to mark
out victims; but it was inferred from their insolence, from the
preference shown them by the jailers, from the orgies which
they held in the lodges with the agents of the police. They fre-
quently gave intimation of their importance, in order to traffic
with it. They were caressed, implored, by the trembling prison-
ers; they even received sums of money not to put their names
## p. 14840 (#414) ##########################################
14840
ADOLPHE THIERS
upon their lists. These they made up at random: they said of
one, that he had used aristocratic language; of another, that he
had drunk on a certain day when a defeat of the armies was
announced: and their mere designation was equivalent to a
death-warrant. The names which they had furnished were in-
serted in so many acts of accusation; these acts were notified in
the evening to the prisoners, and the latter were removed to the
Conciergerie. This was called in the language of the jailers
"the evening journal. " When those unfortunate creatures heard
the rolling of the tumbrils which came to fetch them, they were
in an agony as cruel as that of death. They ran to the gates,
clung to the bars to listen to the list, and trembled lest their
name should be pronounced by the messenger. When they were
named, they embraced their companions in misfortune, and took
a last leave of them. Most painful separations were frequently
witnessed, a father parting from his children, a husband from
his wife. Those who survived were as wretched as those who
were conducted to the den of Fouquier-Tinville. They went back
expecting soon to rejoin their relatives. When the fatal list was
finished, the prisoners breathed more freely, but only till the fol-
lowing day. Their anguish was then renewed, and the rolling of
the carts brought fresh terror along with it.
The public pity began to be expressed in a way that gave
some uneasiness to the exterminators. The shopkeepers in the
Rue St. Honoré, through which the carts passed every day, shut
up their shops. To deprive the victims of these signs of mourn-
ing, the scaffold was removed to the Barrière du Trone; but not
less pity was shown by the laboring people in this quarter than
by the inhabitants of the best streets in Paris. The populace, in
a moment of intoxication, may have no feeling for the victims
whom it slaughters itself; but when it daily witnesses the death
of fifty or sixty unfortunate persons against whom it is not ex-
cited by rage, it soon begins to be softened. This pity, however,
was still silent and timid. All the distinguished persons confined
in the prisons had fallen,- the unfortunate sister of Louis XVI.
had been immolated in her turn; and Death was already descend-
ing from the upper to the lower classes of society. We find at
this period on the list of the Revolutionary tribunal, tailors,
shoemakers, hair-dressers, butchers, farmers, publicans, nay, even
laboring men, condemned for sentiments and language held to be
counter-revolutionary. To convey in brief an idea of the num-
―
## p. 14841 (#415) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14841
ber of executions of this period, it will be sufficient to state that
between the month of March 1793, when the tribunal commenced
its operations, and June 1794 (22d Prairial, year II), 577 persons
had been condemned; and that from the 10th of June (22d Prai-
rial) to the 17th of July (9th Thermidor) it condemned 1,285: so
that the total number of victims up to the 9th of Thermidor
amounts to 1,862.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
THE POLICY OF NAPOLEON IN EGYPT
From the History of the French Revolution'
THE
HE Arabs were struck by the character of the young con-
queror. They could not comprehend how it was that a
mortal who wielded the thunderbolt should be so merciful.
They called him the worthy son of the Prophet, the Favorite of
the great Allah. They sang in the great mosque the following
litany:
:-
"The great Allah is no longer wroth with us. He hath forgotten
our faults: they have been sufficiently punished by the long oppres-
sion of the Mamelukes. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"Who is he that hath saved the Favorite of Victory from the
dangers of the sea and the rage of his enemies? Who is he that
hath led the brave men of the West safe and unharmed to the banks
of the Nile?
"It is the great Allah, the great Allah, who hath ceased to be
wroth with us. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"The Mameluke beys had put their trust in their horses; the
Mameluke beys had drawn forth their infantry in battle array.
"But the Favorite of Victory, at the head of the brave men of the
West, hath destroyed the footmen and the horsemen of the Mam-
elukes.
"As th vapors which rise in the morning from he Nile are scat-
tered by the rays of the sun, so hath the army of the Mamelukes
been scattered by the brave men of the West; because the great
Allah is now wroth with the Mamelukes, because the brave men of
the West are as the apple of the right eye of the great Allah. "
Bonaparte, in order to make himself better acquainted with
the manners of the Arabs, resolved to attend all their festivals.
He was present at that of the Nile. which is one of the greatest
## p. 14842 (#416) ##########################################
14842
ADOLPHE THIERS
in Egypt.
The river is the benefactor of the country. It is, in
consequence, held in great veneration by the inhabitants, and is
the object of a sort of worship. During the inundation, its water
is introduced into Cairo by a great canal: a dike prevents it from
entering the canal until it has attained a certain height; the dike
is then cut, and the day fixed for this operation is a day of
rejoicing. The height to which the river has risen is publicly
proclaimed, and when there are hopes of a great inundation,
general joy prevails, for it is an omen of abundance.
It is on the 18th of August (1st of Fructidor) that this fes-
tival is held. Bonaparte had ordered the whole army to be
under arms, and had drawn it up on the banks of the canal. An
immense concourse of people had assembled, and beheld with
joy the "brave men of the West" attending their festival. Bona-
parte, at the head of his staff, accompanied the principal authori-
ties of the country. A sheik first proclaimed the height to which
the Nile had risen. It was twenty-five feet, which occasioned
great joy. Men then fell to work to cut the dike. The whole
of the French artillery was fired at once, at the moment when
the water of the river poured in. According to custom, a great
number of boats hastened to the canal, in order to obtain the
prize destined to that which should first enter. Bonaparte deliv-
ered the prize himself. A multitude of men and boys plunged
into the waters of the Nile, from a notion that bathing in them
at this moment is attended with beneficial effects. Women threw
into them hair and pieces of stuff. Bonaparte then ordered the
city to be illuminated, and the day concluded with entertain-
ments.
The festival of the Prophet was celebrated with not less pomp.
Bonaparte went to the great mosque; seated himself on cushions,
cross-legged like the sheiks; and repeated with them the litanies.
of the Prophet, rocking the upper part of his body to and fro,
and shaking his head. All the members of the holy college were
edified by his piety. He then attended the dinner given by the
Grand Sheik elected in the course of the day.
It was by such means that the young general, as profound a
politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate him-
self with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the
moment, he labored to diffuse among them some day the light of
science, by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He
collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought
## p. 14843 (#417) ##########################################
ADOLPHE THIERS
14843
with him; and associating with them some of the best educated
of his officers, established that institute, to which he appropriated
revenues and one of the most spacious palaces in Cairo. Some
were to occupy themselves in preparing an accurate description
and a map of the country, comprehending the most minute de-
tails; others were to explore its ruins, and to furnish history with
new lights; others, again, were to study the productions, to make
observations useful to natural philosophy, natural history, and
astronomy; while others were to employ themselves in inquiries.
concerning the ameliorations that might be made in the condition
of the inhabitants,- by machines, canals, works upon the Nile,
and processes adapted to a soil so singular and so different from
that of Europe. If Fortune did subsequently wrest from us that
beautiful country, at any rate she could not deprive us of the
conquests which science was about to make in it. A monument
was preparing which was destined to reflect not less honor on
the genius and the perseverance of our men of science, than the
expedition on the heroism of our soldiers.
Monge was the first who obtained the presidency. Bonaparte
was only the second. He proposed the following subjects: To
inquire the best construction of wind and water mills; to find a
substitute for the hop (which does not grow in Egypt) for the
making of beer; to determine the sites adapted to the cultivation
of the vine; to seek the best means of procuring water for the
citadel of Cairo; to dig wells in different spots in the desert;
to inquire the means of clarifying and cooling the water of the
Nile; to devise some useful application of the rubbish with which
the city of Cairo- and indeed all the ancient towns of Egypt-
was incumbered; and to find out materials requisite for the manu-
facture of gunpowder in Egypt. From these questions, the reader
may judge of the bent of the general's mind. The engineers,
the draughtsmen, and the men of science, immediately dispersed
themselves throughout all the provinces, to commence the de-
scription and the map of the country. Such were the first pro-
ceedings of this infant colony, and the manner in which its
founder directed the operations.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
## p. 14844 (#418) ##########################################
14844
ADOLPHE THIERS
NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY AFTER THE DISASTER
OF ABOUKIR
N the festival of the foundation of the republic, celebrated
ON on the 1st of Vendémiaire, he strove to give a new stim-
ulus to their imagination: he had engraven on Pompey's
Pillar the names of the first forty soldiers slain in Egypt.
They were the forty who had fallen in the attack on Alexandria.
These forty names of men sprung from the villages of France
were thus associated with the immortality of Pompey and Alex-
ander. He issued this grand and extraordinary address to his
army, in which was recorded his own wonderful history:-
"Soldiers:
"We celebrate the first day of the year VII. of the republic.
"Five years ago the independence of the French people was
threatened: but you took Toulon; this was an omen of the
destruction of your enemies.
"A year afterwards you beat the Austrians at Dego.
"The following year you were on the summits of the Alps.
"Two years ago you were engaged against Mantua, and you
gained the famous victory of St. George.
"Last year you were at the sources of the Drave and the
Isonzo, on your return from Germany.
"Who would then have said that you would be to-day on the
banks of the Nile, in the centre of the Old World?
*
"From the Englishman, celebrated in the arts and commerce,
to the hideous and ferocious Bedouin, all nations have their eyes
fixed upon you.
"Soldiers, yours is a glorious destiny, because you are worthy
of what you have done and of the opinion that is entertained of
you. You will die with honor, like the brave men whose names
are inscribed on this pyramid, or you will return to your country
covered with laurels and with the admiration of all nations.
"During the five months that we have been far away from
Europe, we have been the object of the perpetual solicitude of
our countrymen. On this day, forty millions of citizens are cele-
brating the era of representative governments; forty millions of
citizens are thinking of you. All of them are saying, 'To
their labors, to their blood, we are indebted for the general peace,
for repose, for the prosperity of commerce, and for the blessings
of civil liberty. " "
## p. 14845 (#419) ##########################################
14845
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
(1854-)
HE poetical work of Edith Matilda Thomas is chiefly remark-
able for its sustained literary quality. While it is never
lacking in spontaneity, it always shows conscientious work-
manship, and strict fidelity to a high ideal of the requirements of
Its subject-matter evidences a thoughtful, sensitive, and oft-
times passionate spirit in the author, governed however by that spirit
of asceticism which is the distinguishing mark of the true artist. Miss
Thomas's self-restraint is commensurate with her inspiration.
verse.
She was born in 1854 in Chatham, Ohio;
was educated at the Normal Institute at
Geneva, in the same State. While she was
yet a girl, she began writing for the maga-
zines. In 1885 she published a volume of
verse entitled 'A New-Year's Masque,' and
in the following year a volume of prose
with the title The Round Year. ' Her
prose is no less excellent than her verse,
being always strong, simple, and direct.
'The Round Year' is a kind of continuous
essay on the various aspects of the seasons.
The author's love of nature is not that bred
in the town, through long deprivation of its
refreshment. She has the intimate acquaint-
ance with it which does not deal in generalities, but lingers with
discerning affection over the beauties of certain flowers and way-
side bushes, of elusive changes in the sky, of the impalpable essences
of natural things felt rather than seen even with the inner eye.
This friendly love for the outside world informs many of her most
beautiful poems. The volumes entitled 'Lyrics and Sonnets,' 'A
Winter Swallow,' 'Fair Shadow Land,' 'A New-Year's Masque,' con-
tain not a few of these poems of the sky and earth. In one of them,
'Half Sight and Whole Sight,' she expresses the spirit in which she
herself looks upon the God-made world:-
—
VWJ
EDITH M. THOMAS
"Thou beholdest, indeed, some mystical intimate beckoning
Out of the flower's honeyed heart, that passeth our reckoning;
Yet when hast thou seen, or shalt see,
With the eye of yon hovering bee? »
## p. 14846 (#420) ##########################################
14846
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Miss Thomas's poems of love and life are more remote in their
spirit than her poems of nature; yet in a time of feverish erotic
verse their apparent coldness is welcome. She has drunk too deep,
it may be, at the fountain-head of Greek poetry to share the modern
extravagance of thought and feeling. Her poems on classical sub-
jects show no small degree of comprehension of the Greek spirit. She
makes use oftenest of the sonnet and lyric forms in her poetry, han-
dling them with delicate skill. The sense of her verse is never sacri-
ficed to its music; and in her preservation of the fine balance between
the two elements, she gives clearest evidence of the genuineness of
her poetical gifts.
SYRINX
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems. ' Copyright 1884, by Edith
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
OME forth, too timid spirit of the reed!
Leave thy plashed coverts and elusions shy,
And find delight at large in grove and mead.
No ambushed harm, no wanton's peering eye,
The shepherd's uncouth god thou needst not fear,-
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
CON
'Tis but the vagrant wind that makes thee start,
The pleasure-loving south, the freshening west;
The willow's woven veil they softly part,
To fan the lily on the stream's warm breast:
No ruder stir, no footstep pressing near,—
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
Whether he lies in some mossed wood, asleep,
And heeds not how the acorns drop around,
Or in some shelly cavern near the deep,
Lulled by its pulses of eternal sound,
He wakes not, answers not, our sylvan cheer,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
Else we had seen him, through the mists of morn,
To upland pasture lead his bleating charge;
There is no shag upon the stunted thorn,
No hoof-print on the river's silver marge;
Nor broken branch of pine, nor ivied spear,—
Pan has not passed that way for many a year.
## p. 14847 (#421) ##########################################
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14847
O tremulous elf, reach me a hollow pipe,
The best and smoothest of thy mellow store!
Now I may blow till Time be hoary ripe,
And listening streams forsake the paths they wore:
Pan loved the sound, but now will never hear,-
Pan has not trimmed a reed this many a year!
And so, come freely forth, and through the sedge
Lift up a dimpled, warm, Arcadian face,
As on that day when fear thy feet did fledge,
And thou didst safely win the breathless race. —
I am deceived: nor Pan nor thou art here,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
LETHE
-
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
SUNSET
EMEMBRANCE followed him into the skies.
R
They met. Awhile mute Sorrow held him thrall.
Then broke he forth in spirit words and sighs:-
"Great was my sin, but at my contrite call
Came pardon and the hope of Paradise;
If this be Heaven, thy blessing on me fall! »
She looked. Peace filled her unremembering eyes;
She knew him not-she had forgotten all.
-
From A Winter Swallow: With Other Verse. Copyright 1896, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
WHA
HAT pageants have I seen, what plenitude
Of pomp, what hosts in Tyrian rich array,
Crowding the mystic outgate of the day:
What silent hosts, pursuing or pursued,
And all their track with wealthy wreckage strewed!
What seas that roll in waves of gold and gray,
What flowers, what flame, what gems in blent display,—
What wide-spread pinions of the phoenix brood!
## p. 14848 (#422) ##########################################
14848
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Give me a window opening on the west,
And the full splendor of the setting sun.
There let me stand and gaze, and think no more
If I be poor, or old, or all unblest;
And when my sands of life are quite outrun,
May my soul follow through the day's wide door!
CYBELE AND HER CHILDREN
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
THE
HE Mother has eternal youth;
Yet in the fading of the year,
For sake of what must fade, in ruth
She wears a crown of oak-leaves sear.
By whistling woods, by naked rocks,
That long have lost the summer heat,
She calls the wild, unfolded flocks,
And points them to their shelter meet.
In her deep bosom sink they all;
The hunter and the prey are there;
No ravin-cry, no hunger-call:
These do not fear, and those forbear.
The winding serpent watches not;
Unwatched, the field-mouse trembles not;
Weak hyla, quiet in his grot,
So rests, nor changes line or spot.
For food the Mother gives them sleep,
Against the cold she gives them sleep,
To cheat their foes she gives them sleep,
For safety gives them death-like sleep.
The Mother has eternal youth,
And therefrom, in the wakening year
Their life revives; and they, in sooth,
Forget their mystic bondage drear.
## p. 14849 (#423) ##########################################
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14849
THE GRASSHOPPER
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems.
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
Copyright 1884, by Edith
SH
HUTTLE of the sunburnt grass,
Fifer in the dun cuirass,
Fifing shrilly in the morn,
Shrilly still at eve unworn;
Now to rear, now in the van,
Gayest of the elfin clan:
Though I watch their rustling flight,
I can never guess aright
Where their lodging-places are:
'Mid some daisy's golden star,
Or beneath a roofing leaf,
Or in fringes of sheaf,
Tenanted as soon as bound!
Loud thy reveille doth sound.
When the earth is laid asleep,
And her dreams are passing deep,
On mid-August afternoons;
And through all the harvest moons,
Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace,-
Thy gainsaying doth not cease.
When the frost comes thou art dead:
XXV-929
We along the stubble tread,
On blue, frozen morns, and note
No least murmur is afloat;
Wondrous still our fields are then,
Fifer of the elfin men.
WINTER SLEEP
From A Winter Swallow. ' Copyright 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons
I
KNOW it must be winter (though I sleep) —
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many and the grass grows deep.
I know I must be old (how age deceives! ) -
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,
My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green
When late rains patter on the falling sheaves.
## p. 14850 (#424) ##########################################
14850
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
I know I must be tired (and tired souls err) —
I know I must be tired, for all my soul
To deeds of daring beats a glad faint roll,
As storms the riven pine to music stir.
I know I must be dying (Death draws near) -
I know I must be dying, for I crave
Life life, strong life, and think not of the grave
And turf-bound silence in the frosty year.
-
## p. 14851 (#425) ##########################################
14851
JAMES THOMSON
1
(1700-1748)
AMES THOMSON occupies a significant position among English
poets, less by virtue of his poetical gifts-although these
are of no mean order-than by the wholesome influence of
his recognition of nature in an artificial age. He was a contemporary
of Pope, yet he struck a note in his poems which was to be ampli-
fied later in the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Shelley and
Keats. He was the father of the natural school, as opposed to the
pseudo-classical school of which Pope was the complete embodiment.
When Thomson was growing up amid
the wild scenery of the Scottish Border
country, literary England was dominated by
an ideal of, verse in contrast to which even
Shakespeare's measures were held to be
barbarous. The rhyming iambic pentame-
ter, the favorite verse form, had been devel-
oped by Pope to such a point of polished
perfection that imitation alone was possible.
Moreover, it was employed only on a lim-
ited range of subjects. These might be
either classical or urbane: nothing so vul-
gar as nature or the common people was
worthy of the Muse. The genius of poetry
had been brought from the fresh air of the
fields into the vitiated air of the drawing-rooms; had been laced and
powdered and encased in stiff brocades, which hindered all freedom
of motion.
JAMES THOMSON
But of this Thomson knew nothing. It was his good fortune to
have been born far from London, and to have been brought up amid
the simple influences of country life. He was born in 1700 in the
parish of Ednam, in Roxburghshire, of which his father was minister.
He received his early education at Jedburgh school. It was at Jed-
burgh that he met a Mr. Riccalton, who was accustomed to teach
the boys Latin in the aisle of his church. He had written a poem
on 'A Winter's Day,' from which Thomson obtained his first idea for
the 'Seasons. ' The future poet's education was received more from
nature than from books. The magnificent panorama of the year
was unrolled continually before him, and he was not indifferent
## p. 14852 (#426) ##########################################
14852
JAMES THOMSON
to its beauties. It was with reluctance that he left his country
home for Edinburgh, where he remained five years as a student of
divinity. The ministry, however, had few attractions for him: in 1725
he abandoned his studies, and followed a fellow-student, Mallet, to
London, to seek his fortune there. Through the influence of a friend,
Lady Baillie, he obtained a tutorship in the family of Lord Binning;
but he held this position only a short time. The following winter
found him without money, without prospects, and almost without
friends. The death of his mother had plunged him into deep melan-
choly he gave vent to his feelings at the approach of the unfriendly
winter, by writing the first of his poems on the seasons. For several
weeks after its publication no notice was taken of it; then a gentle-
man of some influence in the London world of letters ran across it,
and immediately proclaimed its value in the coffee-houses.
(Winter)
began to be widely read: its popularity was soon established.
Thomson enjoyed all the prestige of a man who has struck a new
vein in literature. It is easy to understand how the jaded palates
of the London circles, surfeited with Popian classicism, were re-
freshed by this simple poem of winter in the country. To the gener-
ations which know Wordsworth, Thomson's song of the bleak season
seems well-nigh artificial; but it was Nature herself to the coffee-
house coteries who had forgotten her existence. It contains indeed
much that is sincere, wholesome, and beautiful. The pretty picture
of bright-eyed robin-redbreast hopping across the cottage floor in
quest of crumbs, the pathetic description of the peasant-shepherd
dying in the snow, while his wife and children wait for him in vain,
must have stirred unwonted emotions in the hearts of a generation
accustomed to the jeweled artificialities of the Rape of the Lock. '
Thomson's conception of nature was in no sense like that of Words-
worth: he never disassociated it from human interests; it is always
the background for the human drama: but for this reason it was
popular, and will always remain popular, with a class of persons to
whom the Wordsworthian conception seems cold and unsympathetic.
'Winter' was also significant because it was written in blank
verse of a noble order.
The rhyming couplets of the classicists, the
rocking-horse movement of their verse, had done much to destroy
the exquisite musical sense which had reached its perfection in the
Elizabethans. It was the mission of Thomson to revive this sense
through his artistic use of blank verse.
'Summer' was published not long after 'Winter. ' It was followed
by an Ode to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton. ' 'Spring' was pub-
lished in 1728, and 'Autumn' in 1730. In this same year, the play of
'Sophonisba' also appeared; but Thomson never succeeded as a play-
wright. His 'Agamemnon,' his Tancred and Sigismunda,' his masque
of 'Alfred,' which contains the song 'Rule, Britannia,' are stilted and
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JAMES THOMSON
14853
dreary compositions. He had written 'Alfred' in conjunction with
his friend Mallet. His poem 'Liberty,' published the first part in
1734 and the second in 1736, was of no higher order of merit. It
would seem that after writing the 'Seasons,' Thomson's energies
declined, not again to be revived in full force until he wrote the
Castle of Indolence,' shortly before his death. His income during
these years was obtained partly from his books, and partly from
sinecure positions. In 1744 he was appointed Surveyor-General of
the Leeward Islands, a position which he held until his death in
1748.
In the year of his death The Castle of Indolence' was published.
It is a poem of great beauty and charm, whose richness of diction
is suggestive of Keats. The sensuous Spenserian stanza employed
is well adapted to the subject. The false enchanter, Indolence,
holds many captive in his castle by his magic arts; but he is at last
conquered by the Knights of the Arts and Industries. The slum-
berous atmosphere of the Castle and its environment is wonderfully
communicated in the opening stanzas; and the poem in its entirety
is worthy of the author of the 'Seasons' at his best.
What Wordsworth is to the nineteenth century, Thomson was to
the eighteenth. With him began that outpouring of the true poetical
spirit which was to culminate one hundred years later.
RULE, BRITANNIA!
From the Masque of Alfred'
WH
HEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:-
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
-
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
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JAMES THOMSON
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe, and thy renown.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
