rives to take his stand between them
and to lay his hand upon them both. Such was in 1792 the state of
France. On one side was the great name of the heir of Hugh Capet, the
thirty-third king of the third race; on the other side was the great
name of the republic. There was no rallying point save these two. It was
necessary to make a choice; and those, in our opinion, judged well who,
waiving for the moment all subordinate questions, preferred independence
to subjugation, and the natal soil to the emigrant camp.

As to the abolition of royalty, and as to the vigorous prosecution of
the war, the whole Convention seemed to be united as one man. But a deep
and broad gulf separated the representative body into two great parties.

On one side were those statesmen who are called, from the name of the
department which some of them represented, the Girondists, and, from the
name of one of their most conspicuous leaders, the Brissotines. In
activity and practical ability, Brissot and Gensonne were the most
conspicuous among them. In parliamentary eloquence, no Frenchman of that
time can be considered as equal to Vergniaud. In a foreign country, and
after the lapse of half a century, some parts of his speeches are still
read with mournful admiration. No man, we are inclined to believe, ever
rose so rapidly to such a height of oratorical excellence. His whole
public life lasted barely two years. This is a circumstance which
distinguishes him from our own greatest speakers, Fox, Burke, Pitt,
Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which of these celebrated men would now be
remembered as an orator, if he had died two years after he first took
his seat in the House of Commons? Condorcet brought to the Girondist
party a different kind of strength. The public regarded him with justice
as an eminent mathematician, and, with less reason, as a great master of
ethical and political science; the philosophers considered him as their
chief, as the rightful heir, by intellectual descent and by solemn
adoption, of their deceased sovereign D'Alembert. In the same ranks were
found Gaudet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, too well known as the
author of a very ingenious and very licentious romance, and more
honorably distinguished by the generosity with which he pleaded for the
unfortunate, and by the intrepidity with which he defied the wicked and
powerful. Two persons whose talents were not brilliant, but who enjoyed
a high reputation for probity and public