felt the severest grief that he could not be at his post in the palace. In the evening he and his wife (who was now within two months of her confinement) were exposed to the utmost peril in seeking a more obscure lodging, in which they remained, in danger every moment, for a fortnight, at the end of which they made their escape, through various difficulties and hazards, from Paris, to retire into Poitou. It would have been impracticable but for the kindness of a democratic officer, who from respect to the virtues of Lescure came to their aid at the most critical moment, contrived to create for himself an official occasion for accompanying them through the most hazardous part of the journey, and displayed throughout a most admirable presence of mind. We cannot resist the temptation to go back to quote an instance of this rare quality in a Parisian grocer, who on the tenth of August saved, by an instantaneous turn of thought, the life of a royalist, M. de Montmorin,

• He (Montmorin) saw himself followed by four of the national guard, drunk with blood, who wanted to fight with him. He went into a grocer's shop and asked for a glass of brandy. The four guards furiously entered with him. The grocer suspected that M. de Montmorin had come from the palace, and, assuming the air of an acquaintance, said to him, "Ah, well Cousin, I did not expect you to come from the country to see the end of the tyrant! But come, let us drink to the health of these brave comrades, and the nation:"—and thus he was saved by the presence of mind of this good man, who did not even know him; but it was for a short time, for he was massacred the 2nd of September,'

Though the Revolution had never been favourably regarded, nor its enactments and institutions fully complied with, by the majority of the inhabitants, the peasantry especially, of the departments where the civil war subsequently raged, there had as yet been no considerable disturbance. Before entering on the melancholy history, the Author gives an interesting description of the physical and moral state of the tract known since the civil war by the glorious name,' she says, 'of Vendée,' but previously, by that of Le pays du Bocage; comprehending a part of Poitou, of Anjou, and of the county of Nantes; a country differing by its aspect, and still more by the manners of the inhabitants, from most of the other provinces of France.' It is in general almost level, having scarcely any hill suf'ficiently elevated to serve for a point of observation, or to 'command the country.' It is woody, though without extensive forests. Each field or meadow, generally small, is fenced with a quickset hedge, and trees very close together,not high nor spreading, the branches being lopped off every five years, twelve or fifteen feet above ground.'

It is intersected by cross roads in all directions, narrow and deep, between the hedges and trees arching over; miry in winter, and rough in summer; and, when they happen to follow the declivity of a hill, often serving at the same time, for the bed of a rivulet. In some instances, these cross roads ascend the heights by irregular steps over rocks. At the end of each field almost, you meet with a short turn or a branching off, which leaves the traveller in uncertainty what course to follow, finger-posts being unknown. The inhabitants themselves are frequently at a loss, when they happen to go two or three leagues from home. There are no great towns in the Bocage; small ones, of two or three thousand souls, are dispersed over its surface. The villages are not numerous, and distant from each other. The ground is divided into small farms, each inhabited by a family and some servants.

It is seldom that a farm yields to the proprietor more than 600 francs a year; the revenue is principally from grazing. The gentlemen's residences were built and furnished without magnificence, and had neither expensive parks nor fine gardens. Their owners lived without pomp, and even with extreme simplicity. When called to the capital on business or pleasure, they generally did not return to the Bocage with the airs and manners of Paris. Their greatest luxury at home was the table, and their only amusement field sports. At all times the gentlemen of Poitou have been celebrated sportsmen.' This last part of the description may serve at once to suggest and answer the question, whether the Vendean aristocracy were likely to be very good judges of political subjects; whether they could have so considered those subjects, as to have any warrant of reason and conscience to put themselves at the head of an insurrection, against an order of things which the great mass of the nation had concurred in adopting. It seems, however, not once to have occurred to this very amiable lady, that hunting, shooting, and good eating, (though France may not be the only country, where these constitute a very considerable portion of the fitting out of a good number of persons, who assume importance in the State,) may not be exactly the right preparatory discipline for taking a part, under the most awful responsibility, in grand national affairs.-Her husband was an exception, but clearly, by her own account, almost a singular one, to the unenlightened state of mind under which the ill-fated people of these departments ventured into war,

The feudal state in these provinces, forms a more pleasing picture than in most other places where it has prevailed, and probably, than in any other part of France. The painter has doubtless put her best colours upon it; but it should seem that the peasantry were no where else so little oppressed and degraded. A certain community of interests, and habits of friendly intercourse, existed between the Seigneurs and the vassals.

The proprietors did not lease out their land, but divided the produce with the farmer. The farms being small, a seigneur had

twenty or thirty such tenants, in the midst of whom he lived patcrnally, conversing with them about their affairs, the care of their cattle, and taking an interest in their good or ill fortune, in which he was himself concerned. He went to the weddings of their children, and drank with the guests. On Sunday, the tenants danced in the court of the Chateau, and the ladies often joined. When there was to be a hunt of the wolf, the boar, or the stag, the information was communicated by the curate to the parishioners in church after the service. Each took his gun, and went joyfully to the place assigned. The hunters posted the shooters, who conformed strictly to the orders given them, and this was very like their tactics during the civil war. With these habits, the inhabitants of the Bocage were an excellent people, mild, pious, hospitable, charitable, full of courage and vivacity; of pure manners and honest principles. Crimes were never heard of, and law-suits were rare. They were devoted to their landlords, and their manner, although free, was respectful. Naturally suspicious, their confidence, when once bestowed, was unbounded.

The inhabitants of the towns, and the small proprietors, did not entertain the same sentiments toward the seigneurs and landholders; nevertheless, as they were always received with kindness and familiarity when they came to their houses, and many of them were under obligations, they also had an affection and respect for the principal families of the country. Some had embraced with warmth revolutionary opinions, but without any particular animosity. The horrors which have been committed were often strongly opposed by them.'

A multitude of facts in the story of the warfare, prove the general truth of the Author's representation of the devotedness of the peasants to the landed, aristocracy. The clergy also enjoyed an ample share of attachment and influence. It cannot be ascertained how much of it they might have forfeited, had their estimate of sabbatical sanctity or propriety been too high to allow their making the hunting announcements a part of the church service, and their approving the Sunday afternoon dances.

It is evident that the religion, such as it was, had general and strong hold on the people's minds. It is needless to say it appears to have been the most humble, ignorant, uninquiring form of the national superstition. It was a religion of the very essence of which they dreaded lest political power should deprive them. The grand object proposed in one of their zealous avowals of a unanimous invincible determination for war, was literally, by our Author's statement, to "defend their God!" "Rendezmoi mon Dieu!'-was the dying retort of a peasant, to the summons "Rends-toi," from some gendarmes whom he had resolutely fought with a pitchfork, and had received twenty-two cuts of the sabre,

It was not, however, that the ceremonies of worship did not continue the same as before, if they would have attended them;

it was that the performers were changed. The greatest number of the priests, to whom they were attached by long acquaintance, mutual offices of kindness, and the familiarity of these pastors with their dialect and manners, had refused to take the prescribed oath to the new form of government, the limited constitutional monarchy, in which the monarch himself had by a solemn and public oath declared his acquiescence. Of course, they were suspended from their functions, which devolved on conforming ecclesiastics. But in these new hands the religion was not recognised as the same by the peasants, who hated and insulted them to such a degree, that in some places they were not able to perform the public offices, even to the empty walls. Meanwhile, the non-juring priests said mass in retired places in the woods, with doubtless an additional zeal, both in themselves and their auditors, from the stimulus of what they would feel as persecution! After the tenth of August severer measures were adopted against them by the revolutionary government. These provoked a determined and indignant reaction.

The harshness and insolence of the new administrators towards a people accustomed to mildness and justice, together with the news of the first successes of the coalesced powers, inflamed the public mind. The peasants assembled armed with guns, scythes, and pitchforks, to hear mass in the fields, and to defend their curate, should there be an attempt to carry him off. A particular circumstance set all the people in motion. A man named Delouche, mayor of Bressuire, had a quarrel with some other functionaries, and was driven from the town, in which he had proclaimed martial law. He then went to Montcoutant, where he excited the peasants to rise, and more than forty parishes united.’

This may be considered as the commencement of the desperate and sanguinary struggle; and it gave the first full occasion to the republicans to display an atrocity of disposition which, in whatever country it had been displayed, by a number of men promiscuously brought together, would have given a glaring demonstration of the detestable character of the political system under which such men had grown up.—On this occasion a numerous tumultuary mass of the peasants were brought into military operation; but they were encountered and soon routed by the republican national guards, who, having taken a number of prisoners, massacred several of them in cold blood ; and then, some of these national guards,

— returned to their homes, carrying as trophies, at the point of their bayonets, noses, ears, and shreds of human flesh,' p. 48.

Now, the character of these men had not, assuredly, been formed by the few months of the Revolution; no, it had grown to its maturity under that old government, which had ripened

unnumbered thousands more of such noxious beings under its baneful auspices, to be just ready, at the breaking up of the power of that government, to rush out, like rabid wolves, to destroy its once sovereign personages, and the classes of persons sharing its power, favour, and splendour, and its humbler adherents, and then to fall upon and tear one another in pieces. A system under which such a population was formed, deserved to be destroyed, notwithstanding any merits in individuals, which ought in justice to have exempted them personally in the catastrophe. That political state was, in its time, detested by all liberal Englishmen, by all friends of justice, liberty, and popular improvement and happiness, in the world. And all such men would have looked back upon its fall with delight, as a beneficent and glorious event,-but for the dreadful eruption of crimes which the depravity of the old French government itself had prepared, and but for the calamities which have followed, as the mingled result of the enormous depravity thus previously matured in the French nation, and of the spirit of pride and despotism in the surrounding states.

The reader will have particularly noticed what our Author says of the effect produced by 'the news of the first successes of the coalesced powers.'

She is uniform and decisive in stating (and it is impossible she could be misinformed as to such a fact) that the war did not originate with the aristocracy, but actually with the peasantry. Though in mind disaffected enough towards the new government, the gentry remained quiet till the people were in general commotion, and broke out in particular places in actual insurrection, provoked to the last excess by the addition to all the other grievances, of the demand of their quota of the immense number of men to be raised for the republican armies.

'It may be seen that this war was not, as has been said, fomented by the nobles and the priests. The unhappy peasants, wounded in every thing that was dear to them, subjected to a yoke, which the happiness they had previously enjoyed made them feel still heavier; revolted at last, and chose for their leaders men in whom they had placed their confidence and affection. The gentlemen and the curates, proscribed and persecuted themselves, marched with them, and supported their courage. The insurrection began from the impulse of the moment, without plan, without concert, and almost without hopes; for what could a handful of men, destitute of means of any sort, effect against the forces of all France? Their first success infinitely surpassed their expectations. The minds of the people being universally disposed to resistance, the first example was followed generally without previous concert or understanding. The different chiefs did not even know each other. As to M. de Lescure, and our friends, I can affirm that they took no step that could lead to war. They foresaw it, they VOL. VI. N.S.

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