short work of the British Constitution. But his majesty remained inert; he smiled at the raving from the Kennington wagon, and turned on his heel laughing. Fleet-Street forums received the boosy ministers of King Mob; while the Guards trotted back to barracks, and Louis Napoleon dropped his constable's truncheon in his Jermyn-Street lodgings. Speaking of one of these mob orators,-the dusky one,—who was in the habit of settling a Cuffey constitution nightly amid smoke and beer, under the presidency of a fifth-rate bill-discounter, a Corinthian observed that the advocate of this noble Nigger constitution would never bring his argument to a just conclusion, because he invariably got drunk on the premises. The rest of the violent, inconsequential, and disreputable crew who, in 1848, believed they could stir King Mob to employ them, discovered, to their dismay, that his majesty was not quite so irrational as he had shown himself in former days. The flattery was not delicate enough for his new nature. He would have none of their publications, even when they flavoured sedition with blasphemy, and pointed it with pikes. King Mob kept his hands in his pockets, and smiled, and shook his head. As when a mighty braggart, seeing his countrymen in distress, girt his sword about his loins, and called upon the hungry Irish giant to follow him against the Saxon-what issue? The giant was tame, and would not blindly stride, with his club, in the wake of his pigmy counsellor. The manikin, in the end, was taken in a cabbage-garden. Yet must he make a noise, and cry aloud to be killed, that his pigmyship should not be lost to the eyes of Europe! In 1831 the stirrings of King Mob made the great and rich of this realm tremble. Duke Ernest of Cumberland believed that there was an end of his race at St. James's. The Iron Duke was gloomy with forebodings; for the voice of the mob was loud, and ministers were disposed to be compliant. That at last the mob succeeded in obtaining all his majesty really required, is matter of notorious history. The Poor Man's Guardian, a journal devoted to the dissemination of sedition, called King William the Fourth, William Guelph, and dubbed him "dastardly assassin;" but the rollicking old sailor remained secure upon his throne, to dine his beloved blue-coats at Windsor, and lavish promises he was unable to keep. We are told that the Poor Man's Guardian commanded a fair sale; but it spoke not the mind of King Mob even in 1831, even thirty years ago. The people wanted Parliamentary Reform, among a few other reforms;-not the crown-jewels out of the Tower, nor the dismissal of the old sailor from his royal quarters. These press excesses were lamentable attempts to angle for the favour of King Mob's worst nature. There might have been a lingering animosity, or relic of ignorant brutality in him, which such preaching as that of the Poor Man's Guardian might turn to account. But his majesty withstood all temptations to sedition, and took his Reform Bill under his arm contentedly, leaving the sailor-king to make merry with his admirals, and to lash his Hanoverian orders to men who importuned him for favours. While writing these few reflections on the recent history of the press in our own country, my eyes have glanced ever and anon to two little dark prints, in black funeral frames, that hang (above some porcelain Swiss troubadours of dazzling colour) over the mantel-piece of the humble country cottage in which, in search of quiet, I find myself. I look out upon the grounds that encompass the house whence a Stuart started, from the fury of his people, to exile. Luckier was he in his generation than the portly gentleman with the shelving forehead, the end of whose story is told in the two pictures in funeral frames, dont il est question. Here is the Sixteenth Louis, with a star upon his breast; Marie Antoinette burying her curls, that have so often shaken with her laughter, upon his shoulder. The son,-poor child!—in skeleton suit, clasps the parental knee; and in the background Louis's sister looks anxiously through the window. The engraving is rough and coarse, and soiled; but it is very vivid. It was published on the 6th of March 1793, by C. Sheppard, 15 St. Peter's Hill, Doctors' Commons, London. The inscription is, "Louis XVI. taking leave of his Family the morning of his execution;" and then there is the following highly moral doggrel: "Farewell, queen, children, sister (Louis cries); Think of my fate, and steer your course with care." This catch-penny tells the story of hapless Louis and poor Marie Antoinette more vividly than Mr. Ward can tell it. We catch the spirit of the time; we almost smell the blood. We are within six weeks of the fatal morning. Ay, when this scrap of paper was hawked about, the guillotine had not done all its work upon the good and brave. But here is the companion picture. The guillotine is the central and most suggestive object, with the inclined plane by which Louis will be presently tilted, and the basket that in a few minutes will receive the head that has worn a crown. People crowd the house-tops; cocked hats and bayonets peep beyond the edges of the scaffold. The king is in his shirtsleeves; his neck bared; his head turned heavenward, and his hands clasped. It looks a wicked piece of business these gentlemen in black, who are speaking to Capet, have in hand. The rigour of death could hardly have bound the limbs of the Bourbon when the draughtsman took this print in hand, and laboured hotly at it, that it might appear while the deed of blood was fresh in men's minds. On the 21st of January Louis suffered, and on the 6th of March this picture appeared, thus inscribed: "When on the scaffold he did say, Wringing his hands with upcast eyes, And, oh, forgive my enemies." King Mob was rampant then across the Channel; and from the British shores thousands were watching in sorrow his majesty's savage doings. In his white-hot rage, at his fiercest, he found ministers ready to do his will. Some twenty-five years ago two adventurous young men, anxious to start a new journal (about their tenth venture), determined to give it, at any rate, a title that would attract attention. This title, mildly interpretated, was, The Post of the Realm governed by his Satanic Majesty. Having hit upon this sounding name, the adventurers cast about for some new method of advertising. The mild poster upon the walls was tame, and the daily journals would, in all probability, reject an advertisement headed as they proposed to head theirs. At last a most original plan was matured. The wardrobe of some Nathan was ransacked, and a demon-dress of the most ferocious aspect was selected, and borne triumphantly to certain quiet chambers in the Temple. "We shall never find a wretch sufficiently necessitous to be bribed into this," cried one of the daring speculators. And in reply his companion put forth his belief in the dogma that the demand would create the supply. The companions searched in the poorest neighbourhoods; tempted crossing-sweepers; waylaid half-naked vagrants: and still the demon-skin remained without a wearer. Some few woe-begone men crept to the Temple to look at the dress; but they wrapped their rags about them, and declined to walk along the main thoroughfares of London with horns upon their head, a long tail gracefully hung over one arm, and two advertising-boards suspended from their shoulders; for this was the duty which the proprietors of the new journal demanded in return for the pay they offered. At length, however, the demand produced the supply. The man who drew his lank limbs into the demon's suit must have had his cup of misery brimmed; his back broken with sorrows; his eyes scalded out with tears; his tongue bitten through with agony. Had the world given him all its kicks and none of its halfpence? He had been kicked so often that it could matter very little to him whether the costume he was adjusting brought him a few more; at any rate, in this instance his halfpence were secure. The dress buttoned and secured, the horns set dapperly upon the head, the tail hung upon the arm, the two bills announcing the approaching appearance of Satan's Post were slung, sandwich-wise. Our audacious speculators gave their victim strict injunctions. They were to set out along Fleet Street and the Strand, and the demon was to follow them at a distance, just keeping them in sight. This precaution was necessary to secure the performance of the contract. The speculators started on their walk, followed by the demon. A murmur arose behind them; then screams of laughter; then a crowd and a roar. They hastened their footsteps; whereupon the poor frightened demon, hemmed in by a mob, called after, and attempted to run after, them. A few minutes more, and the trembling wretch stood before a Bow-Street magistrate. And in like manner, but in greater state, and with power to spread the evil far and wide, other countries have had their chroniclers of that which is evil, of that which is satanic in men. It was no burlesque demon habited by Nathan, and led by a couple of roystering wights who had just dropped their satchels, that stalked in the neighbourhood of the Palais Royal, the "Forum of the Revolution;"-a very grave, sagacious, well-larded demon stood in the broad daylight, and was acclaimed by the mob. He had curses on his lip, and the guillotine under his thumb. The burden of his savage songs was liberty, equality, fraternity. The millions were to be made happy by the execution of the obnoxious thousands. The mob cheered the desolating sentiments of the inspired monster, and called him friend and saviour and regenerator. His imps, of lesser power, flitted about him, and worshiped him, and helped him. From these lesser imps, sprung from the ground of the realms of darkness (which is paved, as all the world knows, with good intentions), what profit might we expect should we treat of them at length? We have a most notable, sagacious, ay, learned, and in some respects a most amiable and patriotic, monster before us. When he is gone, stabbed valiantly to the heart by a right honestly prompted hand, so great is he in his cavernous way that there will arise an inflated little creature-a Guffroy —to snatch at his red-hot sceptre.* This man, who in the height of his delirium calls for heads as calmly as a housewife would order Brussels sprouts, was, in July 1789, the pacificator. He calls upon the people not to give themselves up to sedition; to be calm and patient; to be prudent and orderly. Let the ministers, in a time of famine, surround the capital with sixty thous and armed men: but be quiet, O people; the hour of vengeance will come! A salutary revolution, that will not cost a drop of blood, will be your reward. Even in September, when men's blood was hot, and when things augured ill for king, aristocracy, and clergy, the voice of Marat was that of prudence and of reason. It was then, in his Paris Publicist, better known afterwards as the Friend of the People, that he spoke. His words were inflated and pompous-the writing of a vain, and a very vain, if a patriotic, man. He told his readers that they would often be surprised at the boldness of his ideas; but that they would always find in his journal liberty without license, energy without violence, &c. He declared that truth and justice were his only earthly divinities. Bold he was; for in one of his earlier sheets he paraphrased the Commandments. In this, his calmer time, we catch glimpses of the wretch who tempted the lovely D'Armans, known to history as Charlotte Corday, from Caen to the inn in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, and thence in a hackney-coach to the Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine. We remark a spirit that has no modesty. The man is so thoroughly content with his own judgment; he is incontestably right always; he tells you so; and you soon perceive that contradiction will put the vain-glorious man in a terrible passion. It is *After the death of Marat, on the 13th of July 1793, a deputy named Guffroy declared himself the successor of this People's Friend, and published a journal to succeed him, called Rougyffen Vedette, Rougyff being the anagram of Guffroy. delight to read his journal, with a short recapitulation of his opinions, under the head of " Important Observations." He will be the oracle by which men shall be led, or the arm by which they shall be punished. It was when they were not sufficiently obsequious to satisfy his monstrous vanity, that his ferocious eyes were bent upon his adorable guillotine. The probity of the celebrated Beaumarchais was suspected; whereupon Marat fell upon him like a wild-beast. Day by day his passions, inflamed by his vanity, became more ferocious. Baillio attacked him in the Lantern-him, the Infallible! But he was more than equal to the occasion, bold as leaders of opinion had grown. The Iron Mouth was speaking the opinions of the Iron Mouths. The journal of the Sans Culottes wore upon its title-page, "The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mould." The Journal of Equality propounded a dead level of men. In the midst of the wild storm the voice of Marat rose with the sharpest shriek, for he must die or be heard; let those who sought to drown his utterance, beware. He would unchain a hungry mob upon them, and hound the lean savages upon his enemies to the "Here are the vampires who have sucked your food! They seek to starve you back to slavery!" He predicted for Necker the fate of the law. He called the people to arms, that society might be purified from such foul ingredients as aristocracy and clergy. He feared not threats of the Châtelet. Persecution brings Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Gorsas, and other notables to his side. Citizens keep guard at his doors; friends hide the monster, not knowing yet all the savagery of which he is capable. cry, His Even when denounced, in his hiding-place, by the traiteur whose establishment he patronised, the officers sent to arrest him left him untouched, when he told them that he was the Friend of the People. Day by day his enemies grew paler, and he bolder and fiercer. hour of vengeance was at hand. He must bare his arm to take a lusty crop. He struck wide and hard: at Lafayette and Mirabeau, as at poor Necker. He prayed that Mirabeau might have an eternal hooping-cough to prevent him from using his noisy lungs in Parliament. Nor did he spare Marie Antoinette: she was a "German Sultana" to him. The authorities seized his presses, and tried to take his body; but all was of little avail. The Friend of the People cropped to the surface again and again, and was published, by turns, in nearly every arrondissement of Paris. The redoubtable writer seldom slept twice in the same bed was now in Danton's cellars, and now the concealed guest of Legendre. This, he tells friend Desmoulins, was his happiest time; because he was penetrated with the grandeur of the cause he was defending. Slandered; he replied, it must be confessed with home-thrusts. He would have neither place nor pension. He would not accept the portfolio of Minister of Finance, even to save him from death by hunger. He called The name of a club that existed in 1790. |