In this short space they have formed a compendium of all the vices which have marked as many preceding ages:—­the cruelty and treachery of the league—­the sedition, levity, and intrigue of the Fronde [A name given to the party in opposition to the court during Cardinal Mazarin’s ministry.—­See the origin of it in the Memoirs of that period.] with the licentiousness and political corruption of more modern epochs.  Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other.  You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;—­the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;—­and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity.

La Fayette, without very extraordinary pretensions, became the hero of the revolution.  He dictated laws in the Assembly, and prescribed oaths to the Garde Nationale—­and, more than once, insulted, by the triumph of ostentatious popularity, the humiliation and distress of a persecuted Sovereign.  Yet when La Fayette made an effort to maintain the constitution to which he owed his fame and influence, he was abandoned with the same levity with which he had been adopted, and sunk, in an instant, from a dictator to a fugitive!

Neckar was an idol of another description.  He had already departed for his own country, when he was hurried back precipitately, amidst universal acclamations.  All were full of projects either of honour or recompence—­ one was for decreeing him a statue, another proposed him a pension, and a third hailed him the father of the country.  But Mr. Neckar knew the French character, and very wisely declined these pompous offers; for before he could have received the first quarter of his pension, or the statue could have been modelled, he was glad to escape, probably not without some apprehensions for his head!

The reign of Mirabeau was something longer.  He lived with popularity, was fortunate enough to die before his reputation was exhausted, was deposited in the Pantheon, apotheosised in form, and his bust placed as a companion to that of Brutus, the tutelary genius of the Assembly.—­Here, one might have expected, he would have been quit for this world at least; but the fame of a patriot is not secured by his death, nor can the gods of the French be called immortal:  the deification of Mirabeau is suspended, his memory put in sequestration, and a committee appointed to enquire, whether a profligate, expensive, and necessitous character was likely to be corruptible.  The Convention, too, seem highly indignant that a man, remarkable only for vice and atrocity, should make no conscience of betraying those who were as bad as himself; and that, after having prostituted his talents