e loudly exulted over her joy in finding herself 'eating
stewed beef out of Sevres porcelain,' and who, being asked when he came
back from the Jardin des Plantes whether he had seen Lacepede,
innocently replied: 'No; but I saw La giraffe!'--Carnot, 'Papa Victory,'
of whom Lareveillere says that 'nobody could endure his vanity and
self-conceit;' and, lastly, Lareveillere himself, whom Carnot in his
Memoirs, published at London in 1799, compares to a 'viper,' and says,
'after he has made a speech he coils himself up again'--these were
hardly the men to give their nights and days to reconstructing the
educational system of France!

Merlin (of Douai), Minister of Justice under the quintette, really ruled
France for nearly five years. This was Merlin, author of the 'Law of the
Suspects,' which Mr. Carlyle, though obviously in the dark as to its
real genesis and objects, finds himself constrained to stigmatize as the
'frightfullest law that ever ruled in a nation of men.' Mr. Carlyle does
not seem to have observed that the author of this 'transcendental' law,
the aim of which was to convert the French people into a swarm of spies
and assassins, was not only one of the first of the Republican' Titans'
to fall down and kiss the feet of Napoleon, but one of the first also to
desert Napoleon, and embrace the knees of the returning King. On April
11, 1814, this creature, who had caused the Convention to reject a
petition for a pardon presented by a man condemned for a crime, the real
authors of which had confessed his innocence and their own guilt, on the
ground that 'every sentence pronounced by the law should be
irrevocable,' joined in a most fulsome address of welcome to the
legitimate sovereign of France! His namesake Merlin (of Thionville),
another 'Titan' whom Mr. Carlyle admires as riding out of captured
Mayence still 'threatening in defeat,' was nimbler even than Merlin of
Douai. On April 7, 1814, he wrote to King Louis begging to be allowed
'to serve the true, paternal government of France!'

Concerning Merlin (of Douai), Barras, who made him 'Minister of
Justice,' placidly says: 'Poltroons are always cruel. Merlin always hid
himself in the moment of danger, and came out again only to strike the
vanquished party.' Proscription and confiscation kept the Government
which this worthy Republican directed much too busy to leave it any time
for looking after the schools of France.

When at last Napoleon gathered up the reins,