hasty legislation, and measures were, in consequence, frequently passed on the impulse of the moment, which, if subjected to the review of an upper chamber, would have been rejected or stripped of their obnoxious qualities. The tiers états displayed considerable skill in its mode of carrying the question of a united chamber. They did not act on the aggressive against the nobility, but remained in their place of meeting, day after day, doing nothing, and professing to be waiting only for the higher orders to join them. They well knew that every hour their position was becoming stronger, from the powerful manner in which public opinion was setting in in their favour. On the 17th of June, about a month after their first meeting, perceiving that a favourable period for action had come, they threw off the passive attitude which they had assumed; took for themselves the name of "National Assembly," and determined to make laws without any reference to the nobility, who, along with the clergy, still sat in a separate chamber. The aristocratic party were struck with astonish ment at this bold step of the tiers états. Under the circumstances, one of two courses was open to the king, either to dissolve the assembly, or

to use his influence to prevail on the nobility to sit with the representatives of the people. Unhappily, a middle course was chosen, which irritated, without producing any beneficial effect.

On the 20th of June the king intimated, by proclamation, that three days afterwards he would hold what was termed a royal sitting, when it was his intention to propose some important measures. Until that day the meeting of the States-General was prorogued. Purposely disregarding, however, this proclamation, the members of the tiers états, or National Assembly, as we shall henceforth term them, proceeded, as usual, to their place of meeting, the doors of which they found closed and surrounded with soldiers. The day was a rainy one, and the courtiers, from the windows of the palace, are said to have amused themselves by ridiculing the draggled and disconsolate appearance of the deputies. Their laughter was, however, premature, for the members of the assembly marched to an adjoining tennis court, and there united in a solemn declaration that they would not suspend their legislative labours until they had regenerated the constitution. On the 23rd of June, upon repairing to the royal sitting, the king made a speech, pro

posing a variety of reforms similar to those detailed in the preceding chapter, as having been contemplated by Turgot. He concluded by commanding the meeting to retire and commence its labours in separate chambers. "Never," added the well-meaning, but vacillating monarch-" Never, I may say, without fear of self-deception, did any king so much for his subjects as I have done for mine." The concessions which the king made upon this occasion were indeed most important, and ten years before would have been hailed with rapture; now, however, they were listened to with gloomy silence. The nobility and clergy obeyed the king's command and retired, but the deputies of the people remained. The master of the ceremonies perceiving this, entered the hall, and reminded them of the king's wishes. Mirabeau, shaking his shaggy locks, turned to the messenger and exclaimed, with a menacing voice, "Tell your master that we are here by order of the people, and that we will not be expelled but at the point of the bayonet." On the following day forty-six of the nobility, headed by the duke of Orleans, (a profligate nobleman, the father of Louis Philippe, the present king of France,) joined the assembly.

The king was strongly urged by his more intemperate advisers at once to dissolve the assembly by military force. Humane even to a fault, he replied, "I will not suffer one life to be lost on my account;" and followed up this declaration by prevailing on the nobility to comply with the wishes of the popular party. A junction was accordingly made between the tiers états, the nobility, and the clergy, with many effusions of that sentimentality which forms so prominent a feature in the French character. Whilst these scenes were being acted in the assembly, the French capital and the nation at large were in a state of ferment. In Paris a large wooden tent had been erected, where tailors, shoemakers, and members of every trade, by turns, addressed the mob on the political questions of the day. Every hour produced its pamphlet. "There were thirteen to-day," says a British traveller, writing from. Paris at the time, "sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week." In the pamphlet shops, indeed, so great was the demand, that customers could not, without strong elbowing, get to the counter. The Palais Royal, the residence of the duke of Orleans, the king's cousin, was the principal scene of agitation.

"It was amidst the den of gambling and the glitter of prostitution," says an eminent writer, no less elegantly than justly, "that liberty was nurtured in France. It must be owned it could not have had a cradle more impure."

The unhappy Louis was continually swayed by opposing counsels. He had no sooner agreed to comply with the wishes of the popular party, than he yielded to the intrigues of the nobility, headed by the queen, and collected large bodies of troops to overawe the assembly in their deliberations. Acting upon the same indiscreet counsels, he dismissed Neckar (at that time the idol of the people,) from the ministryan event which proved the signal for an immediate revolt in Paris. The lower orders, joined by some disaffected troops, attacked the Bastile, a fortress of scarcely less antiquity than the Tower of London, and which, during the reign of Louis xv. and the earlier monarchs of France, had witnessed many a foul and midnight crime, and had been watered by the tears of many a victim of tyranny. Breaking into a public museum, all the artillery which the mob at first could find, were two silver-mounted cannons, presented by the king of Siam to Louis XIV., more than a hundred years before.