which he was
peculiarly distinguished, arose from benevolence, not from
pusillanimity.

Upon the scaffold, he behaved with the firmness which became a noble
spirit, and the patience beseeming one who was reconciled to heaven. As
one of the few marks of sympathy with which his sufferings were
softened, the attendance of a confessor, who had not taken the
constitutional oath, was permitted to the dethroned monarch. He who
undertook the honourable but dangerous office, was a gentleman of gifted
family of Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown; and the devoted zeal with which
he rendered the last duties to Louis, had like in the issue to have
proved fatal to himself. As the instrument of death descended, the
confessor pronounced the impressive words,--"Son of Saint Louis, ascend
to heaven!"

There was a last will of Louis XVI. circulated upon good authority,
bearing this remarkable passage:--"I recommend to my son, should you
have the misfortune to become king, to recollect that his whole
faculties are due to the service of the public; that he ought to consult
the happiness of his people, by governing according to the laws,
forgetting all injuries and misfortunes, and in particular those which I
may have sustained. But while I exhort him to govern under the authority
of the laws, I cannot but add, that this will be only in his power, in
so far as he shall be endowed with authority to cause right to be
respected, and wrong punished; and that without such authority, his
situation in the government must be more hurtful than advantageous to
the state."

Not to mingle the fate of the illustrious victim of the royal family
with the general tale of the sufferers under the reign of terror, we
must here mention the deaths of the rest of that illustrious house,
which closed for a time a monarchy, that existing through three
dynasties, had given sixty-six kings to France.

It was not to be supposed, that the queen was to be long permitted to
survive her husband. She had been even more than he the object of
revolutionary detestation; nay, many were disposed to throw on Marie
Antoinette, almost exclusively, the blame of those measures which they
considered as counter-revolutionary.

The terms of her accusation were too basely depraved to be even hinted
at here. She scorned to reply to it, but appealed to all who had been
mothers, against the very possibility of the horrors which were stated
against her. The widow of a king, the sister of an