ng passages of the French Revolution, is
the assassination of the tyrant Marat, by Charlotte Corday. With the
blood of old Corneille running in her veins, and possessing something of
his stern and masculine love of liberty, this simple child of nature
hears in her distant home that her friends, the Girondists, are
proscribed, and that a hated triumvirate in Paris, tramples on the
feelings and liberties of the people. Full of one idea, she purchases a
knife, and, without a single confidant, sets out for the metropolis,
where, procuring an interview with Marat, she stabs him to the heart,
and with one blow accomplishes her revenge, and what she vainly supposed
to be the people's redemption.

In Miss Julia Kavanagh's charming volumes she gives us a pretty faithful
memoir of this extraordinary woman. Among the women of the French
Revolution, there is one, says the gifted authoress, who stands
essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. She appears
for a moment, performs a deed--heroic as to the intention, criminal as
to the means--and disappears forever; lost in the shadow of time--an
unfathomed mystery.

The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday--to give her the
name by which she is generally known--was spent in the calm obscurity of
her convent solitude. Many high visions, many burning dreams and lofty
aspirations, already haunted her imaginative and enthusiastic mind, as
she slowly paced the silent cloisters, or rested, lost in thought,
beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. It is said that, like Madame
Roland, she contemplated secluding herself for ever from the world in
her monastic retreat; but, affected by the skepticism of the age, which
penetrated even beyond convent walls, she gave up the project....

All the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor,
Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descendant. Even
Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had no pages that could
absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, with its stirring
deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon Philipon in the
recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Corday be seen in her
convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open volume of Plutarch, that
powerful and eloquent historian of all heroic sacrifices.

When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the Revolution,
Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life, and o