man was hurled down
from the height of power to hopeless ruin and infamy. The shock sobered
him at once. The fumes of his horrible intoxication passed away. But he
was now so irrecoverably depraved that the discipline of adversity only
drove him further into wickedness. Ferocious vices, of which he had
never been suspected, had been developed in him by power. Another class
of vices, less hateful perhaps, but more despicable, was now developed
in him by poverty and disgrace. Having appalled the whole world by great
crimes perpetrated under the pretence of zeal for liberty, he became the
meanest of all the tools of despotism. It is not easy to settle the
order of precedence among his vices; but we are inclined to think that
his baseness was, on the whole, a rarer and more marvellous thing than
his cruelty.

This is the view which we have long taken of Barere's character; but,
till we read these Memoirs, we held our opinion with the diffidence
which becomes a judge who has only heard one side. The case seemed
strong, and in parts unanswerable; yet we did not know what the accused
party might have to say for himself; and not being much inclined to take
our fellow creatures either for angels of light or for angels of
darkness, we could not but feel some suspicion that his offences had
been exaggerated. That suspicion is now at an end. The vindication is
before us. It occupies four volumes. It was the work of forty years. It
would be absurd to suppose that it does not refute every serious charge
which admitted of refutation. How many serious charges, then, are here
refuted? Not a single one. Most of the imputations which have been
thrown on Barere he does not even notice. In such cases, of course,
judgment must go against him by default. The fact is, that nothing can
be more meagre and uninteresting than his account of the great public
transactions in which he was engaged. He gives us hardly a word of new
information respecting the proceedings of the Committee of Public
Safety; and, by way of compensation, tells us long stories about things
which happened before he emerged from obscurity, and after he had again
sunk into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to write
trifles, he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never
been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man
who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and
he who has not read Barere's Memoirs may