nd and became frightened
at himself. 'Death, and nothing but death!' he cried, in conversation
with his intimate friends, 'and the villains charge it upon me. What
memory shall I leave behind me if this goes on? Life is a burthen to
me!'"

Once, says Lamartine, the truth became manifest. He (Robespierre)
exclaimed, with a gesture of despair, "_No, I was not made to govern,
I was made to combat the enemies of the people!_"

These meditations on the character of Robespierre, show sufficiently
that Lamartine, though he may not as yet have taken a positive
direction in politics, has at least, from his vague poetical
conceptions, returned to a sound state of political criticism, the
inevitable precursor of sound theories. His views on the execution of
the royal family are severe but just.

"Had the French nation a right to judge Louis XVI. as a legal
tribunal?" demands Lamartine. "No! Because the judge ought to be
impartial and disinterested--and the nation was neither the one nor
the other. In this terrible but inevitable combat, in which, under the
name of revolution, royalty and liberty were engaged for emancipating
or enslaving the citizen, Louis XVI. personified the throne, the
nation personified liberty. This was not their fault, it was their
nature. All attempts at a mutual understanding were in vain. Their
natures warred against each other in spite of their inclination toward
peace. Between these two adversaries, the king and the people, of whom
the one, by instinct, was prompted to retain, the other to wrest from
its antagonist the rights of the nation, there was no tribunal but
combat, no judge but victory. We do not mean to say that there was not
above the parties a moral of the case, and acts which judge even
victory itself. This justice never perishes in the eclipse of the law,
and the ruin of empires; but it has no tribunal before which it can
legally summon the accused; it is the justice of state, the justice
which has neither regularly appointed judges, nor written laws, but
which pronounces its sentences in men's consciences, and whose code is
equity."

"Louis XVI. could not be judged in politics or equity, but by a
process of state. Had the nation a right to judge him thus? As well
might we demand whether she had a right to fight and conquer, in other
words, as well might we ask whether despotism is inviolable--whether
liberty is a revolt--whether there is no justice here below but for
kings--whether