heaven! Only one word for the earth she was quitting – "Oh, Liberty!"
Approach the dungeon door of the Girondins. Their last night is a banquet; the only hymn, the Marseillaise!
Follow Camille Desmoulins to his execution. A cool and indecent pleasantry at the trial, and a long imprecation on the road to the guillotine, were the two last thoughts of this dying man on his way to the last tribunal.
Hear Danton on the platform of the scaffold, at the distance of a line from God and eternity. "I have had a good time of it; let me go to sleep." Then to the executioner, "you will show my head to the people – it is worth the trouble!" His faith, annihilation; his last sigh, vanity. Behold the Frenchman of this latter age!
What must one think of the religious sentiment of a free people whose great figures seem thus to march in procession to annihilation, and to whom that terrible minister – death – itself recalls neither the threatenings nor promises of God!
The republic of these men without a God has quickly been stranded. The liberty, won by so much heroism and so much genius, has not found in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it against that atheism which has been called glory. All ended in a soldier and some apostate republicans travestied into courtiers. An atheistic republicanism can not be heroic. When you terrify it, it bends; when you would buy it, it sells itself. It would be very foolish to immolate itself. Who would take any heed? the people ungrateful and God non-existent! So finish atheist revolutions! —Bien Publique.
THOMAS HARLOWE
All amid the summer roses
In his garden, with his wife,
Sate the cheerful Thomas Harlowe,
Glancing backward through his life.
Woodlarks in the trees were singing,
And the breezes, low and sweet,
Wafted down laburnum blossoms,
Like an offering, at his feet.
There he sate, good Thomas Harlowe,
Living o'er the past in thought;
And old griefs, like mountain summits,
Golden hues of sunset caught.
Thus he spake: "The truest poet
Is the one whose touch reveals
Those deep springs of human feeling
Which the conscious heart conceals.
"Human nature's living fountains,
Ever-flowing, round us lie,
Yet the poets seek their waters
As from cisterns old and dry.
"Hence they seldom write, my Ellen,
Aught so full of natural woe,
As that song which thy good uncle
Made so many years ago.
"My sweet wife, my life's companion,
Canst thou not recall the time
When we sate beneath the lilacs,
Listening to that simple rhyme?
"I was then just five-and-twenty,
Young in years, but old in sooth;
Hopeless love had dimmed my manhood,
Care had saddened all my youth.
"But that touching, simple ballad,
Which thy uncle writ and read,
Like the words of God, creative,
Gave a life unto the dead.
"And thenceforth have been so blissful
All our days, so calm, so bright,
That it seems like joy to linger
O'er my young life's early blight.
"Easy was my father's temper,
And his being passed along
Like a streamlet 'neath the willows,
Lapsing to the linnet's song.
"With the scholar's tastes and feelings,
He had all he asked of life
In his books and in his garden,
In his child, and gentle wife.
"He was for the world unfitted;
For its idols knew no love;
And, without the serpent's wisdom
Was as guileless as the dove.
"Such men are the schemer's victims.
Trusting to a faithless guide,
He was lured on to his ruin,
And a hopeless bankrupt died.
"Short had been my father's sorrow;
He had not the strength to face
What was worse than altered fortune,
Or than faithless friends – disgrace.
"He had not the strength to combat
Through the adverse ranks of life;
In his prime he died, heart-broken,
Leaving unto us the strife.
"I was then a slender stripling,
Full of life, and hope, and joy;
But, at once, the cares of manhood
Crushed the spirit of the boy.
"Woman oft than man is stronger
Where are inner foes to quell,
And my mother rose triumphant,
When my father, vanquished, fell.
"All we had we gave up freely,
That on him might rest less blame;
And, without a friend in London,
In the winter, hither came.
"To the world-commanding London,
Came as atoms, nothing worth;
'Mid the strift of myriad workers,
Our small efforts to put forth.
"Oh, the hero-strength of woman,
When her strong affection pleads,
When she tasks her to endurance
In the path where duty leads!
"Fair my mother was and gentle,
Reared 'mid wealth, of good descent,
One who, till our time of trial,
Ne'er had known what hardship meant.
"Now she toiled. Her skillful needle
Many a wondrous fabric wrought,
Which the loom could never equal,
And which wealthy ladies bought.
"Meantime I, among the merchants
Found employment; saw them write,
Brooding over red-lined ledgers,
Ever gain, from morn till night.
"Or amid the crowded shipping
Of the great world's busy hive,
Saw the wealth of both the Indies,
For their
