the great infamy of Barere. It would be idle,
for example, to relate how he, a man of letters, a member of an Academy
of Inscriptions, was foremost in that war against learning, art, and
history which disgraced the Jacobin government; how he recommended a
general conflagration of libraries; how he proclaimed that all records
of events anterior to the Revolution ought to be destroyed; how he laid
waste the Abbey of St Denis, pulled down monuments consecrated by the
veneration of ages, and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient kings.
He was, in truth, seldom so well employed as when he turned for a moment
from making war on the living to make war on the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That in
Barere as in the whole breed of Neros, Caligulas, and Domitians whom he
resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew,
twice in every decade, from the work of blood, to the smiling gardens of
Clichy, and there forgot public cares in the madness of wine and in the
arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does
not altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that
Barere's dissipation was not carried to such a point as to interfere
with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barere was by no means so
much addicted to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder. It was his
boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he cut out work for the
Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his exertions
would hurt his health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than they
thought. "The guillotine," he said, "does all; the guillotine governs."
For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look indulgently on
the pleasures which he allowed to himself than on the pain which he
inflicted on his neighbours.

"Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset
Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit urbi
Illustresque animas, impune ac vindice nullo."

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a
blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth, of Lord Somers, of Mr Fox. But
the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere.

And now Barere had become a really cruel man. It was from mere
pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his first great crimes. But the
whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others
is a taste which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acqui