my head as
willingly on this block as I ever laid it down to sleep." This is
faith in Patriotism! See Charles I., in his turn,--that model of a
kingly death. At the moment that he was to receive the blow of the
axe, the edge of which he had coolly examined and touched, he raised
his head, and addressed the clergyman who was present:--"Remember!"
said he; as if he had said, "Remember to advise my sons never to
revenge their father!"

Sidney, the young martyr of a patriotism, guilty, because too hasty,
died to expiate the dream of the freedom of his country. He said to
the jailer, "May my blood purify my soul! I rejoice that I die
innocent toward the king, but a victim resigned to the King of Heaven,
to whom we owe all life."

The republicans of Cromwell sought only the way of God, even in the
blood of battles. Their politics is nothing but faith; their
government, a prayer; their death, a holy hymn;--they sang, like the
Templars, on their funeral-pile. We see, we feel, we hear God, above
all, in these revolutions, in these great popular movements, and in
the souls of the great citizens of these nations.

But recross the Atlantic, traverse the Channel, approach our own
time, open our annals; and listen to the great political actors in the
drama of our liberty. It would seem as if God was hidden from the
souls of men; as if his name had never been written in the language.
History will have the air of being atheistic, while recounting to
posterity these _annihilations_, rather than _deaths_, of the
celebrated men of the greatest years of France. The victims alone have
a God; the tribunes and lictors have none.

See Mirabeau on his death-bed. "Crown me with flowers," said he,
"intoxicate me with perfumes, let me die with the sound of delicious
music." Not one word of God, or of his soul! A sensual philosopher, he
asks of death only a supreme sensualism; he desires to give a last
pleasure even to agony.

Look at Madam Roland, that strong woman of the Revolution,--upon the
car that carries her to death. She looks with scorn upon the stupid
People, who kill their prophets and their sibyls. Not one glance to
Heaven; only an exclamation for the earth she leaves:--"O, Liberty!"

Approach the prison door of the Girondines: their last night is a
banquet, and their last hymn is the _Marseillaise_!

Follow Camille Desmoulins to punishment:--a cold and indecent
pleasantry at the tribunal; one long imprecation on the road to t