n; and that we may not
suppose the legislators at large deficient in sensibility, we learn also
that they not only shed their grateful tears on this affecting occasion,
but have settled a pension on the man who was instrumental in rescuing
the benign Collot.

The members of the Committee are not, however, the exclusive objects of
public adoration--the whole Convention are at times incensed in a style
truly oriental; and if this be sometimes done with more zeal than
judgment, it does not appear to be less acceptable on that account. A
petition from an incarcerated poet assimilates the mountain of the
Jacobins to that of Parnassus--a state-creditor importunes for a small
payment from the Gods of Olympus--and congratulations on the abolition of
Christianity are offered to the legislators of Mount Sinai! Every
instance of baseness calls forth an eulogium on their magnanimity. A
score of orators harangue them daily on their courage, while they are
over-awed by despots as mean as themselves and whom they continue to
reinstal at the stated period with clamorous approbation. They
proscribe, devastate, burn, and massacre--and permit themselves to be
addressed by the title of "Fathers of their Country!"

All this would be inexplicable, if we did not contemplate in the French a
nation where every faculty is absorbed by a terror which involves a
thousand contradictions. The rich now seek protection by becoming
members of clubs,* and are happy if, after various mortifications, they
are finally admitted by the mob who compose them; while families, that
heretofore piqued themselves on a voluminous and illustrious genealogy,**
eagerly endeavour to prove they have no claim to either.

* _Le diplome de Jacobin etait une espece d'amulette, dont les
inities etaient jaloux, et qui frappoit de prestiges ceux qui ne
l'etaient pas_--"The Jacobin diploma was a kind of amulet, which the
initiated were jealous of preserving, and which struck as it were
with witchcraft, those who were not of the number."

Rapport de Courtois sur les Papiers de Robespierre.

** Besides those who, being really noble, were anxious to procure
certificates of sans-cullotism, many who had assumed such honours
without pretensions now relinquished them, except indeed some few,
whose vanity even surmounted their fears. But an express law
included all these seceders in the general proscription; alledging,