the infatuation which so long kept him at a distance from the most. gracious and adorable of beings. Oh, reader, if these lines still find thee a stranger to peace, a disappointed wanderer after happiness, hear the Divine message, "Be ye reconciled to God!" 2 Cor. v. 20. However vile and polluted, fall down before the cross of Christ; cling with a death-clasp to the feet of that Saviour who died upon it, and implore in earnest prayer the aid of the Holy Spirit to enable thee to shake off the degrading bondage of sin. "O taste and see that the Lord is good blessed is the man that trusteth in him," Psa. xxxiv. 8.

CHAPTER VIII.

Wars of the French revolution-Prussian invasion repelledThionville-Metz and Lille besieged-Anecdotes-Alliance of the leading nations of Europe against France-England joins in the war-Enthusiasm of the French-Their military system-Civil war breaks out in La Vendée-Cruelties committed there-Siege of Lyons-Couthon, Collot d'Herbois, and Carryer-Their atrocities.

We

SUSPENDING for a little the narrative of the events which marked the progress of the revolutionary torrent in Paris, it will be proper now to advert to some military transactions which occurred about this time in the provinces and on the frontiers of France. have before adverted to the alarm which was inspired in the French metropolis, by the intelligence that a body of Prussians had captured the towns of Llongwi and Verdun. Fortunately for the cause of the revolutionary party, the invaders received a severe check from some French troops under the command of general Dumouriez, who succeeded, eventually, in expelling them from France.

A

terrible revenge was taken upon such of the citizens of Llongwi or Verdun as had aided or sympathised with the Prussians. Six young ladies perished on the guillotine merely for having presented a garland of flowers to the king of Prussia. Simultaneously with the above invasion, some Austrian forces had made an attempt to capture the French towns of Thionville and Metz. They were quite as unsuccessful, however, as the Prussians had been. The inhabitants of Thionville were stanch republicans, and taunted the besiegers by hanging from the walls a wooden horse, having tied to its mouth a bundle of hay with the following inscription, "When I finish eating my hay you will take Thionville." The citizens of Lille showed equal resolution in defending their town. Red hot balls and bombs, filled with liquid fire, were rained in one continuous shower upon the besieged, whose spirits, however, never sank. They formed parties in different districts of the town for the purpose of extinguishing the conflagrations occasioned by the shot of the enemy-an object which they effected with the display of much intrepidity, mingled even with hilarity and humour. A ball happening to be fired into the town-hall,

at the time the magistrates were sitting, they coolly proceeded with their business as if nothing out of the way had occurred, the chairman remarking, "We are engaged in a permanent sitting." On another occasion, a shell exploding near a barber, he seized one of the splintered fragments, and exclaiming," See my new shaving dish!" put soap and water into it and shaved fourteen persons upon the spot.* These operations of the Austrian and Prussian forces had been commenced previously to the execution of the French monarch. After that event, many other of the European powers, who were anxious to remain neutral, felt themselves compelled, in self-defence, to have recourse to arms, in order to arrest the progress which revolutionary opinions were making in their own dominions. Russia, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Naples, and Great Britain, finally united themselves into one vast alliance, for the purpose of crushing the hydra-headed monster anarchy, which had risen in France. Thus commenced that most eventful war, which, after raging for twenty years, and causing the expenditure of countless treasure and the loss of millions of lives, was only

* Carlyle's French Revolution.

finally terminated on the plains of Waterloo. The propriety of the nations of Europe embarking in this contest has been questioned by modern writers; but, on a dispassionate review of all the circumstances of the case, the quarrel seems to have been forced, on some of them at least, by the intemperate and overbearing conduct of France. The latter country, like most young republics, was anxious for military conquest. So eager, in particular, were the leaders of the Girondin party to embroil their country in war, as a means of committing it irrevocably to the cause of the revolution, that they at one time concerted a scheme for attacking a French village, by means of French soldiers disguised as Austrians, in the hopes that the two nations might thus be precipitated into a contest with each other, before the artifice could be discovered. Not content, too, with revolutionizing their own country, the French excited the deepest uneasiness in other nations, by a decree which the convention issued, declaring that it would afford help and countenance to any people which might wish to shake off the fetters of despotism. This decree was printed in almost all the known languages of the world, and copies of it and