Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426

At this juncture, Robespierre was earnestly entreated by one of his more resolute adherents, St Just, to play a bold game for the dictatorship, which he represented as the only means of saving the Republic from anarchy. Anonymous letters to the same effect also poured in upon him; and prognostics of his greatness, uttered by an obscure fortune-teller, were listened to by the great demagogue with something like superstitious respect. But for this personal elevation he was not prepared. Pacing up and down his apartment, and striking his forehead with his hand, he candidly acknowledged that he was not made for power; while the bare idea of doing anything to endanger the Republic amounted, in his mind, to a species of sacrilege. At this crisis in his fate, therefore, he temporised: he sought peace, if not consolation, in solitude. He took long walks in the woods, where he spent hours seated on the ground, or leaning against a tree, his face buried in his hands, or earnestly bent on the surrounding natural objects. What was the precise tenor of his meditations, it would be deeply interesting to know. Did the great promoter of the Revolution ponder on the failure of his aspirations after a state of human perfectibility? Was he torn by remorse on seeing rise up, in imagination, the thousands of innocent individuals whom, in vindication of a theory, he had consigned to an ignominious and violent death, yet whose removal had, politically speaking, proved altogether fruitless?

It is the more general belief, that in these solitary rambles Robespierre was preparing an oration, which, as he thought, should silence all his enemies, and restore him to parliamentary favour. A month was devoted to this rhetorical effort; and, unknown to him, during that interval all parties coalesced, and adopted the resolution to treat his oration when it came with contempt, and, at all hazards, to have him proscribed. The great day came, July 26 (8th Thermidor), 1794. His speech, which he read from a paper, was delivered in his best style—in vain. It was followed by yells and hootings; and, with dismay, he retired to the Jacobins, to deliver it over again—as if to seek support among a more subservient audience. Next day, on entering the Convention, he was openly accused by Tallien and Billaud-Varennes of aspiring to despotic power. A scene of tumult ensued, and, amid cries of Down with the tyrant! a writ for his committal to prison was drawn out. It must be considered a fine trait in the character of Robespierre the younger, that he begged to be included in the same decree of proscription with his brother. This wish was readily granted; and St Just, Couthon (who had lost the use of his legs, and was always carried about in an arm-chair), and Le Bas, were added to the number of the proscribed. Rescued, however, from the gendarmes by an insurrectionary force, headed by Henriot, Robespierre and his colleagues were conducted in triumph to the Hôtel de Ville. Here, during the night, earnest consultations were held; and the adherents of Robespierre implored him in desperation, as the last chance of safety for them all, to address a rousing proclamation to the sections. At length, yielding unwillingly to these frantic appeals, he commenced writing the required address; and it was while subscribing his name to this seditious document, that the soldiers of the Convention burst in upon him, and he was shot through the jaw by one of the gendarmes. At the same moment, Le Bas shot himself through the heart. All were made prisoners, and carried off—the dead body of Le Bas not excepted.

While residing for a short time in Paris in 1849, we were one day conducted by a friend to a large house, with an air of faded grandeur, in the eastern faubourgs, which had belonged to an aged republican, recently deceased. He wished me to examine a literary curiosity, which was to be seen among other relics of the great Revolution. The curiosity in question was the proclamation, in the handwriting of Robespierre, to which he was in the act of inscribing his signature, when assaulted and made prisoner in the Hôtel de Ville. It was a small piece of paper, contained in a glass-frame; and, at this distance of time, could not fail to excite an interest in visitors. The few lines of writing, commencing with the stirring words: 'Courage, mes compatriotes!' ended with only a part of the subscription. The letters, Robes, were all that were appended, and were followed by a blur of the pen; while the lower part of the paper shewed certain discolorations, as if made by drops of blood. And so this was the last surviving token of the notorious Robespierre! It is somewhat curious, that no historian seems to be aware of its existence.

Stretched on a table in one of the anterooms of the Convention; his head leaning against a chair; his fractured jaw supported by a handkerchief passed round the top of his head; a glass with vinegar and a sponge at his side to moisten his feverish lips; speechless and almost motionless, yet conscious!—there lay Robespierre—the clerks, who, a few days ago, had cringed before him, now amusing themselves by pricking him with their penknives, and coarsely jesting over his fall. Great crowds, likewise, flocked to see him while in this undignified posture, and he was overwhelmed with the vilest expressions of hatred and abuse. The mental agony which he must have experienced during this humiliating exhibition, could scarcely fail to be increased on hearing himself made the object of unsparing and boisterous declamations from the adjoining tribune.

At three o'clock in the afternoon (July 28), the prisoners were placed before the Revolutionary Tribunal, and at six, the whole were tied in carts, the dead body of Le Bas included, and conducted to execution. To this wretched band were added the whole family of the Duplays, with the exception of the mother; she having been strangled the previous night by female furies, who had broken into her house, and hung her to the iron rods of her bedstead. They were guiltless of any political crime; but their private connection with the principal object of proscription was considered to be sufficient for their condemnation. The circumstance of these individuals being involved in his fate, could not fail to aggravate the bitterness of Robespierre's reflections. As the dismal cortège wended its way along the Rue St Honoré, he was loaded with imprecations by women whose husbands he had destroyed, and the shouts of children, whom he had deprived of parents, were the last sounds heard by him on earth. Yet he betrayed not the slightest emotion—perhaps he only pitied the ignorance of his persecutors. In the midst of the feelings of a misunderstood and martyred man, his head dropped into the basket!

These few facts and observations respecting the career of Robespierre, enable us to form a tolerably correct estimate of his character. The man was a bigot. A perfect Republic was his faith, his religion. To integrity, perseverance, and extraordinary self-denial under temptation, he united only a sanguine temperament and moderate abilities for the working-out of a mistaken principle. Honest and zealous in his purpose, his conduct was precisely analogous to that of all religious persecutors—sparing no pain or bloodshed to accomplish what he believed to be a good end. Let us grant that he was a monomaniac, the question remains as to his general accountability. If he is to be acquitted on the score of insanity, who is to be judged? Not so are we to exempt great criminals from punishment and obloquy. Robespierre knew thoroughly what he was about; and far as he was misled in his motives, he must be held responsible for his actions. Before entering on the desperate enterprise of demolishing all existing institutions, with the hope of reconstructing the social fabric, it was his duty to be assured that his aims were practicable, and that he was himself authorised to think and act for the whole of mankind, or specially commissioned to kill and terrify into his doctrines. Instead of this, there is nothing to shew that he had formed any distinct scheme of a government to take the place of that which he had aided in destroying. All we learn is, that there hovered in his mind's eye some vague Utopia, in which public affairs would go on very much of themselves, through the mere force of universal Benevolence, liberated from the bosom of Nature. For his folly and audacity in nourishing so wild a theory, and still more for the reckless butcheries by which he sought to bring it into operation, we must, on a review of his whole character, adhere to the popular belief on the subject. Acquitted, as he must necessarily be, of the charge of personal ambition, he was still a monster, only the more dangerous and detestable for justifying murder on the ground of principle.

W.C.

INFANT SCHOOLS IN HUNGARY

The Austrian government has for some years been exerting itself, in connection with the clergy, for the improvement and spread of education in all the provinces of the empire, being anxious to do all in their power to save the country from those excesses which are so often found in connection with ignorance. As an Englishman, living in friendly intercourse with members of the imperial family, and many persons high in the administration, I am happy to avow my thorough conviction, that such, pure and simple, is the object held in view in the establishment of schools throughout the empire, and above all, in that of the infant schools, which are now planted in every place where there exists a sufficiency of population. I have all along taken a deep interest in these little seminaries in the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, and am highly sensible of the liberal and humane principles on which they are conducted.

Each contains from two to three hundred children, between one and a half and five years of age, all of them being the offspring of the humbler classes, and many of them orphans. All are instructed in the same room, but classed apart; that is, the girls occupy one half of the apartment, and the boys the other, leaving an avenue between them, which is occupied by the instructors. The boys are under the superintendence of a master, and the girls under that of a mistress. Both, however, teach or attend to the various necessities of either, as circumstances may require. Infants too young to learn, and those who are sent, either because they are orphans, or because the extreme poverty of the mother obliges her to do outwork, are amused with toys and pictures, all, however, of an instructive nature, and which the elder children delight to exhibit and explain to them in their own quaint little ways. I have frequently seen an infant, scarcely able to walk, brought in for the first time, and left on one of the benches of the school-room, surrounded by those already initiated. The alarm its new position occasioned to the little creature, at thus suddenly finding itself abandoned by the only person with whom it was familiar, in the midst of a multitude of unknown faces, can easily be imagined. A flood of tears was the first vent to its feelings, accompanied by a petulant endeavour to follow its parent or nurse. It was immediately, however, surrounded by a score of little comforters, who, full of the remembrance of past days, when their fears and their sadness were in like manner soothed and dissipated, would use a thousand little arts of consolation—one presenting a toy or picture, another repeating what has almost become a formula of kindly re-assurance, till smiles and sunshine would succeed to tears and clouds upon that little brow, and confidence and content to fear and mistrust. I have often seen the day thus pass with neophytes as a dream, only to be broken when the parent or nurse, returning to take them home, found them in the centre of a little joyous group, the gayest of the gay!

One, after all, cannot wonder at this change, when he contrasts the scenery of the interior of an infant school with that of the generality of poor homes. The child, making, as it were, its first voyage in life, has here been introduced, not merely to a society conducted on principles of gentleness and kindness, but to a fairyland of marvels for the fascination of its intellectual faculties. From the ceiling to the dado—the wainscotted space at the base, for in Hungary this old arrangement is still maintained in its fullest form—the walls are covered with pictures of scripture scenes and objects in natural history; while the dado itself, terminating above in a shelf, exhibits busts, stuffed animals, and pots of flowers—the whole place, indeed, being a kind of museum, specially adapted for the enjoyment as well as instruction of the young. At first, filled with wonder and delight, the infant begins to study the meaning and character of these objects: after a short attendance, you find they can tell the names of many, and speak many things regarding them. One day, while attending a Bohemian infant school, which was dismissing, and as I was examining some of the birds upon the shelf, a little hand was insinuated into mine, as if to get it warmed—as is often done by children—when, looking down, I beheld a bright, intelligent face, apparently eager to make some communication. 'Tuzok, tuzok!' ('Bustard, bustard!') said a little voice. Encouraged by my smile, there was immediately added: 'Ez tuzok, ez mazzar honban, tisza fetöl jönn;' ('That is a bustard from Hungary, from the river Teiss.') Another little one, attracted by this observation, pointed to the elephant, and said in German: 'Und der ist elephant: er kommt von weiten, von ausland—von morgenland!' ('And that is the elephant: it comes from far, from a foreign land—from the morning-land!')—that is, the East!

The children learn the first rudiments of religion, duty and obedience to their parents and teachers, spelling, &c. After the expiration of the time allotted to them here, they are sent to the normal schools, where they are instructed in all the various branches of education which are necessary to fit them for any situation or profession for which their several talents seem to have destined them.

All parents of the lower classes are compelled by law to send their children to school at a certain age. If they are in easy circumstances, they contribute a small sum monthly towards the expenses of the establishment. Those who are unable to pay the full sum, pay the half or a part; others, again, such as a great portion of day-labourers with large families, and who cannot even supply their children with necessary food and clothing, pay nothing: it is merely necessary for these to be furnished with a certificate of their incapacity to pay for the education of their children, and the state takes the whole charge of their instruction on itself.

We have already spoken of the deep interest we have taken in the progress of the infant schools. We visit them frequently, and attend all the examinations. On entering, it is scarcely possible to recognise in clean, orderly inmates, the dirty, ragged, quarrelling, scratching, screaming children of the back-streets, which, however, they were only a short time ago. All is changed: the miserable hut, the narrow street, and muddy lane, for a pretty room full of pleasant objects; the timid look and distrustful scowl, for sunny cheerfulness and open confidence. There is no unkind distinction among the lower classes in this country, and by this I mean the whole of the Austrian states. There being only two classes—the nobles and the commons—none of the commons despise each other, however poor or humble their situation may be. The barefooted orphan, kept and educated by charity or the state, is not an object of contempt or ridicule to the child of the prosperous artisan, who stands clothed in its little snow-white frock and pink ribbons beside its less fortunate companion. Neither is any distinction made on account of religion. The infant schools of the empire are for the children of all the poor—Catholic, Lutheran, evangelical, &c.; and the two belonging to Presburg, to which we here particularly allude, contain from sixty to seventy of the latter in every two hundred.

I was present at an examination of one of our Presburg seminaries in September last. A number of girls and boys, from three to five years of age, with a very few a little older, who had come in comparatively late, were subjected to the usual questioning in the various branches of their very elementary erudition. Some of the queries proved beyond the powers of the generality of the children; but this led to no expression of dejection or awkwardness. They evidently all endeavoured to do their very best. It was interesting to observe, that so far from pining to see a cleverer neighbour answer what they had failed in, they seemed to feel a triumph when, after a general difficulty, it was at length found that some one could give the right answer—shewing that they might have a feeling of emulation as to the honour of the school, but none as between one pupil and another. On several occasions, when some unusually intelligent little creature would come from a back-form, and solve a question which had bewildered those in front, there was a sensible expression of delight over the whole school.

In a far-off corner sat a little boy, poorly dressed, and of pallid countenance, but with a keen and intelligent eye, which had attracted my notice from the beginning. The more difficult the questions grew, his eye was fixed with the keener gaze on the face of the master. Several times I observed a puzzled child cast backwards to him a look, as expressing the assurance that he was able to solve all difficulties. At length, on a slight motion of the master's hand, the little brown boy was seen to dart from his obscure recess, and pass rapidly across the forms, while his companions eagerly made way for him, clapping their hands as in anticipation of some brilliant achievement. In an instant, the boy stood before the master, his dark eye full of anxious expression, but quite devoid of doubt or anxiety. All our attention was at once directed to the half-clothed, barefooted child, to whom the questions were now put, and by whom they were answered with a promptitude and precision most wonderful. And who, what was he, that little brown boy? Some did not care to ask, and others said: 'Who would have thought that that little beggar-boy would have been so smart!' But God has chosen the vile things (to man) of this earth to become a bright and shining light to the world. We asked who that little boy was, and the master smiled, shook his head, and said: 'Oh, I scarcely know myself: it is a little boy the police have sent us in lately from the streets. It is not above three weeks since he came, but he is a good and very clever child—very desirous to learn, and never forgets anything!'

I was affected by this trivial circumstance, reflecting how many little brown boys like this there must be in various countries called civilised, who, for want of a refuge where love and light are predominant, remain the outcasts of the streets, and become the prey of vice and ignorance.

THE LOSING GAME

[The following story is by no means a piece of mere invention. The principal points were narrated to me by a very intelligent young North-Sea fisherman, who had frequently heard the legend from a grizzled old sailor on board the smack in which he was an apprentice. The veteran used to tell the story as having happened to himself; and he had told it so often, that he firmly believed it, and used to get into a passion when any of the crew dared to doubt or laugh. I have, of course, licked the rough outlines of the story or anecdote into something like shape; but the main incidents are repeated to this day by the sailors of the 'Barking Fleet,' as the squadron of handsome smacks are called, which, hailing from the town of Barking, in Essex, pursue the toilsome task, in all seasons, and almost in all weathers, of supplying the London market with North-Sea turbot, soles, and cod. The story is told in the first person, as Dick Hatch himself might have narrated it.]

Nigh forty years ago, mates, when I was as young and supple as the boy Bill, there—though I was older than him by some years—I was serving my apprenticeship to the trade aboard the sloop Lively Nan. There were not such big vessels in the trade then, mates, as now; but they were tight craft, and manned by light fellows; and they did their work as well as the primest clipper of the Barking Fleet. Well, the Lively Nan was about this quickest and most weatherly of the whole fleet; and she had a great name for making the quickest runs between the fishing-grounds and the river. But it wasn't owing so much to the qualities of the smack, as to the seamanship of the skipper. A prime sailor he was, surely. There wasn't another man sailed out of the River Thames who could handle a smack like Bob Goss. When he took the tiller, somehow the craft seemed to know it, and bobbed up half a point nearer to the wind; and when we were running free with the main-sheet eased off, and the foresail shivering, her wake would be as straight as her mast; only, he was a rare fellow for carrying on, was old Captain Goss! We would be staggering under a whole main-sail, when the other smacks had three reefs in theirs; and it was odds but we had one line of reef-points triced up, when our neighbours would be going at it under storm-trysail and storm-jib. He worked the Lively Nan hard, he did, did Captain Goss. Sweet, and wholesome, and easy as she was—for she would rise to any sea, like as comfortable as a duck—Old Goss all but drove her under. Dry jackets were scarce on board the Lively Nan. If there was as much wind stirring as would whirl round the rusty old vane on the topmast head, 'Carry on, carry on!' was always the captain's cry; and away we would bowl, half-a-dozen of the lee-streaks of the deck under water.

Well, mates, Old Goss was a prime sailor; but he was a strange sort of man. To see him in a passion, was something you wouldn't forget in a hurry; and you wouldn't have known him long without having the chance. Most of us can swear a bit now and then; but you ought to have heard Captain Goss! He used even to frighten the old salts, that had common oaths in their mouths from morning till night. He was worse than the worst madman in Bedlam when his blood was up; and even the strong, bold men of the crew used to cower before him like as the cabin-boy. And yet, mates, he was but a little, maimed man, and more than sixty years old. He had a regular monkey-face; I never saw one like it—brown, and all over puckers, and working and twitching, like the sea where the tide-currents meet. He had but one eye, and he wore a big black patch over the place where the other had been; but that one eye, mates, would screw into you like a gimlet. Well, Captain Goss was more than fifty when he came down to Barking, and bought the Lively Nan, and made a carrier1 of her; and nobody knew who he was, or where he came from. There was an old house at Barking then, and I have heard say that its ruins are there yet. The boys said that Guy Fawkes—him they burn every 5th of November—used to live there; and the story went that it was haunted, and that there was one room, the door of which always stood ajar, and nobody could either open or shut it. Well, mates, Old Captain Goss wasn't the sort of man to care much about Guy Fawkeses or goblins; so he hires a room in this old house—precious cheap he got it!—and when he was ashore, you could see a light in it all night; and if you went near, you might listen to Old Goss singing roaring songs about the brisk boys of the Spanish main, and yelling and huzzaing to himself, and drinking what he called his five-water grog. Five-water grog, mates—that was one of his jokes. It was rum made hot on the fire; and he could drink it scalding and never wink: and he would drink it till he got reg'lar wild. He was never right-down drunk, but just wild, like a savage beast! And then he would jump up, and make-believe he was fighting, and holler out to give it to the Spanish dogs, and that there were lots of doubloons below. I've gone myself with other youngsters, to listen at the door; and once when he was in the fit, yelling and singing, and laughing and swearing, all at once, I'm jiggered if he didn't out with a brace of old brass-mounted ship's pistols, and fire them right and left in the air, so that we cut and run a deal faster than we came. Of course the report soon got about that Captain Goss was an old pirate, or at the best an old bucaneer; and the Barking folks used to tell how many crews he had made walk the plank, and how there was blood-marks on his hands, which he used to try to cover with tar. But no one dared to say a word of this to him; and as he was a prime sailor, and even kind after his fashion, when he had taken first a reg'lar quantity of his five-water grog, he never wanted hands. At sea, he was often wild enough with liquor; but he no sooner put his hand on the tiller, than he seemed all right: and the Lively Nan walked through it like smoke. I'm jiggered, mates, if that old fellow couldn't sail a ship asleep or awake, drunk or sober, dead or alive.