shooting. Gentlemen of the royal household were sent to Barere, in order
to intercede for the deer and pheasants. Nor was this intercession
unsuccessful. The reports were so drawn that Barere was afterwards
accused of having dishonestly sacrificed the interests of the public to
the tastes of the court. To one of these reports he had the
inconceivable folly and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from Virgil,
fit only for such essays as he had been in the habit of composing for
the Floral Games:--

"Si canimus sylvas, sylvae sint Consule dignae."

This literary foppery was one of the few things in which he was
consistent. Royalist or Girondist, Jacobin or Imperialist, he was always
a Trissotin.

As the monarchical party became weaker and weaker, Barere gradually
estranged himself more and more from it, and drew closer and closer to
the republicans. It would seem that, during this transition, he was for
a time closely connected with the family of Orleans. It is certain that
he was entrusted with the guardianship of the celebrated Pamela,
afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald; and it was asserted that he received
during some years a pension of twelve thousand francs from the Palais
Royal.

At the end of September, 1791, the labors of the National Assembly
terminated, and those of the first and last Legislative Assembly
commenced.

It had been enacted that no member of the National Assembly should sit
in the Legislative Assembly; a preposterous and mischievous regulation,
to which the disasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In
England, what would be thought of a Parliament which did not contain one
single person who had ever sat in Parliament before? Yet it may safely
be affirmed that the number of Englishmen who, never having taken any
share in public affairs, are yet well qualified, by knowledge and
observation, to be members of the legislature is at least a hundred
times as great as the number of Frenchmen who were so qualified in 1791.
How, indeed, should it have been otherwise? In England, centuries of
representative government have made all educated people in some measure
statesmen. In France the National Assembly had probably been composed of
as good materials as were then to be found. It had undoubtedly removed a
vast mass of abuses; some of its members had read and thought much about
theories of government; and others had shown great oratorical talents.
But that kind of skill which is required for