A few extracts taken at random will suffice to show the character of his infamous paper, and to disperse the rosy mist of humane benevolence and love of his kind, in which MM. Bougeart, Brunet, and Bax have tried to envelope him.

The italics in the following extracts are reproduced from the originals.

Cease wasting your time in thinking of means of defence, there remains for you only the one which I have so often recommended, a general insurrection, and executions by the populace. Begin by making sure of the king, the dauphin, and the royal family; place them under a strong guard, and let their heads answer for whatever happens. Next hew down without hesitation the head of the general, those of the ministers and ex-ministers who are against the Revolution, those of the anti-revolutionary mayor, and the municipal officers. Make the entire état majeur of Paris, all the blacks, and the ministers of the National Assembly, and every known supporter of despotism, run the gauntlet of the sword. I repeat, that only this means of saving the country remains to you. Six months ago five or six hundred heads would have sufficed to raise you from destruction. Now that you have stupidly allowed your implacable enemies to form plots, and unite, perhaps five or six thousand must be struck down; but if it were necessary to strike down 20,000 there is no possibility of hesitation for an instant. If you do not anticipate them they will murder you barbarously to insure their domination; remember the massacre of Nancy. Let perfidious quietists exclaim at barbarism! No, no; it is not he who advises you to overthrow your enemies who is likely to murder you.-L'Ami du Peuple, Dec. 18, 1790.

DENUNCIATION OF LAFAYETTE.

To the important post of general of the Parisian army, none but proved patriots should have been raised, and they should have been allowed to remain there but a month at the longest. The inhabitants

of the capital have had the stupidity to appoint to this position a low servant of the court, and they have committed the folly of suffering him to remain there for eighteen months. And this cunning tartuffe, this adroit rascal, this mean rogue, has employed a thousand artifices to make himself master of the citizen guard and the national forces. False demonstrations of patriotism, honeyed speeches, cajoleries, curvettings, warlike parades and processions, military festivals, funereal pomp, brawling, debauchery, flattery, promises, bribery, -every resource of seduction, imposture and perfidy has been used in turn for this end. . . . No, I shall not rest until he has expiated his crimes by a shameful death. Every day I will point out his traps, his secret practices, his plots, his outrages; every day I will reveal his lies, his impostures, his rascality, his turpitude; every day I will drag him in the mire, until, horrified at the fate which awaits him, he seeks safety in flight, or in having me murdered by his cut-throats.-L'Ami du Peuple, Dec. 19, 1790.

In the present cruel position of the country, the only thing left for the nation to do to avert the dangers with which it is threatened by the enemies of the Revolution and foreign Powers, is to secure the king, the dauphin, and the royal family, and especially the queen and the ministers. To keep them under strict guard, and to warn them that their heads will be answerable for whatever may happen. This duty devolves upon the people of the capital. As to all the other towns in the kingdom, they must take like measures in regard to former nobles, prelates, lawyers, aristocrats, and in short, of all the supporters of the old régime. Then at the first invasion of French territory, or at the first cannon-shot, kill them all without exception, beginning with the maréchaussée, and the royal satellites.-L'Ami du Peuple, Jan. 13, 1791.

Blind citizens! Will you always be foolish, will you never open your eyes? Ten months ago the fall of five hundred heads would have assured your happiness; now, in order to save yourselves, you will perhaps be obliged to strike down a hundred thousand, after having seen your brothers, wives, and children murdered.-L'Ami du Peuple Jan. 30, 1791.

You should have assembled all citizens who are friends of their country, and arrested the ministers some fine night, and if the treacherous Assembly had refused to punish them by the hangman, you should have killed them yourselves without hesitation! -L'Ami du Peuple, Feb. 12, 1791.

If you are dissatisfied with your officers, dismiss them; if violence is used towards you, then comrades, unite and thrust your bayonets into their bellies up to the very barrel.—L'Ami du Peuple, Feb. 14, 1791.

Oh, people! what are you about? Your leaders are betraying you Arm yourselves with daggers, murder the perfidious Lafayette, and the cowardly Bailly; hurry then to the Senate and drag out from there the conscript fathers; impale these representatives who are sold to the court, and let their bleeding limbs, hung upon the cornices of the hall, inspire with terror all those who would fill their places !— L'Ami du Peuple, July 1791.

I shall not believe in the Republic until the head of Louis XVI. is no longer on his shoulders.—Journal de la République, Nov. 19, 1792.

The machine will never work until the people bring two hundred thousand scoundrels to justice. They must reduce their representatives and agents to one quarter of their present number.-Le Publiciste Parisien, Dec. 1792.

In all countries where the rights of the people are not empty titles, existing only in a pompous declaration, the looting of a few shops, upon whose doors the speculating proprietors would be hung, would soon put an end to these embezzlements.-Le Publiciste Parisien, Feb. 1793.

Dreary reading this, and we close the book with a shudder, remembering how docile those old-time

readers proved to the teachings of this master of murder, and how his bitter denunciations brought noble heads and innocent beneath the axe as well as those deserving of their fate.

CHAPTER VI.

PREPARATIONS.

"I will do a thing which shall go throughout all generations to the children of our nation."

"But enquire not ye of mine act, for I will not declare it unto you, till the things be finished that I do."-The Book of Judith, chap. viii., v. 32, 34.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY has frequently been called a Girondist, but in point of fact she was not in any sense a political woman, and belonged to no party or sect. Undoubtedly she sympathised with the Gironde, partly because their moderate principles most nearly harmonised with her own Utopian dreams, and partly because so many of its members were known and honoured in Caen. But although in the main sympathising with the ideas of the Girondists, she very