lood of the Queen of France, the blood of
the greatest orators and philosophers of France, was on his hands. He
had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the
great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that
the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is
placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe.
His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino
and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and police runners.

"Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast;
But shall the dignity of vice be lost?"

So sang Pope; and so felt Barere. When it was proposed to him to publish
a journal in defence of the Consular government, rage and shame inspired
him for the first and last time with something like courage. He had
filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr Pitt or General
Washington; and he was coolly invited to descend at once to the level
of Mr Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a wide
distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the
Revolution who were summoned to the aid of the government. Those
statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle;
but they were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the
vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were made tribunes and
legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators,
and consuls. They might reasonably expect to rise with the rising
fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were destined
to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron
Crown; to be arch-chancellors and arch-treasurers, counts, dukes, and
princes. Barere, only six years before, had been far more powerful, far
more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought
worthy to represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they
received crowds of suitors in gilded antechambers, he was to pass his
life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It
was too much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion
themselves to a No, now murmured expostulation and refusal. "I could
not"--these are his own words--"abase myself to such a point as to serve
the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many
insignificant, low, and servile people, such as the Treilhards, the
Roederers, the Leb