4.

His last moments presented a terrific scene; his mouth full of blood,
his eyes half closed, his head bound up with a bloody handkerchief, he
was thrown into the same cell which had been successively inhabited by
Hebert, Danton, and Chaumette. When he quitted the prison to meet his
punishment, the proscribed persons obstructing the passage, the jailer
cried out, "Make way for monsieur the incorruptible!" He was conveyed in
a cart between Henriot and Couthon; the people halted before the house,
two women danced before the wagon, and one of them exclaimed; "Your
sufferings intoxicate us with joy! You will descend to hell, accompanied
by the curses of all wives and mothers." The executioner, in order to
dispatch him, rudely tore away the bandage from his wound. He uttered a
cry of horror; his lower jaw separated itself from the upper. The blood
again flowed, and his head exhibited a spectacle of the most frightful
kind. He died at the age of thirty-six.

Robespierre was not a monster; his life attests it; nor was he solely
guilty of the atrocities which signalized his reign. By his downfall he
was loaded with all those iniquities which, had he triumphed, he would
have attributed to his opponents.

JEAN HENRI PESTALOZZI

By HARRIET MARTINEAU

(1746-1827)

[Illustration: Jean Henri Pestalozzi. [TN]]

Those of us who can look back forty years must well remember the fancy
that society took, on a sudden, to interrogate children. It is an odd
thing to recall now one of the strangest fashions of a period full of
wild fashions. After a long term of insular seclusion, through the war,
we welcomed all sorts of foreigners to our soil, and all manner of
foreign notions to our minds. The grand discovery of the benefit of
questioning children made great way in the country, and among some of
the best-hearted people in it. Wherever one went, among the educated
classes, one found the same thing going on. Children of all ages, but
especially the younger, were undergoing cross-examination from morning
till night. It was a terrible time for them. I have seen some fall into
a habit of tears when asked a question which they could not answer. I
have seen more fall into a habit of glib lying, under the teazing
constraint. I have seen tempers ruined for life by the constant
irritation, and most old people can probably say that they have seen
promising intellects frittered away; minds above the average at the
outset of life rend