furpaffing all the other kings of Europe; and hence the appellation of the grande monarche has been given to them. Befides, with fuperlative pride they have worn an emble of the fun, as a type of their fuperior power and magnificence over the kings of the earth, and prefumptuously affumed as their motto, "NEC PLURIBUS IMPAR:" and this emblem was worn by the late king. Thefe circumstances united, being peculiar to the monarchs of France and no other, feem plainly to indicate, that LEWIS XVI. was, the object intended to be marked out by the hieroglyphic, the Sun," and upon which this vial was to be poured out; and it has been pouted out upon him by the providence of that God who if fets up kings, and overturns kingdoms, according to his righteous pleasure,

To unfold all the calamities fuffered in body and mind by this unfortunate King, would engrois a volume it would be to write a history of the revolution. Let it then fuffice to say, that, deftitute of friends, he fought them abroad and at -home, and found none. The princes of Europe were in a manner deaf to his cries, and his people were fo many..vultures preying upon his vitals. His cabinet was faithlefs and treacherous; his army, lately the most loyal and devoted, forfook him, and revolted to his enemies, who were ingenious in contriving the means of diftracting and tormenting his mind, difgracing his dignity, and annihilating his power. Surrounded by factions, who were fearlefs of God or man, the moft bloody infurrections and maffacres difplayed themselves without intermiffion, not only in all parts of his kingdom, but in his capital; nay before his face, menacing him and his family with death. At length, helpless and hopeless, he was obliged to feek for refuge among the very fiends, who aimed at obtaining

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his

his throne, and his life being a bar to their fuccefs, they thirfted for his blood. They now imprifoned him; and during his confinement covered him with infults; and they who had no right, dared to try and convict him without evidence, and put him to an ignominious death, as the most atrocious criminal.

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Having denounced this judgment of God upon the King, the prophet naturally proceeds to the dreadful events which were to follow. For the angel, commiffioned with this vial, had a two-fold errand, firft, to pour it out upon the fun, and next tofcorch men with fire;" and we are told, that men fhould be "fcorched with great heat" Now, what are we here to understand by "fire" When we confult the Scripture, we find it often ufed as a symbol to exprefs the indignation and wrath of offended omnipotence, and the plagues with which he punishes incorrigible finners*. Nor is it lefs than an appofite figure, because of all the elements it is the most powerful and tremendous, and like the wrath of God deftroys whatever it operates upon. This fire, or wrath of God, was to caufe" a great heat." It seems impoffible for the prophet to have chofen, a more fuitable expreffion to defcribe the woeful ftate of France, which took place immediately after the death of the king, than a "great heat."." Heat,' when it refers to a man figuratively, means paffion; as we fay, "he is in a heat, or paffion :" when to a number of men united, it means a faction, or a tumultuary number of men in a fermentation or paffion against government. "Heat" is alfo, in a - literal fenfe, that quality by which fire destroys all things. And this was to be "a great heat."

*Deut. iv. 24. Nah, i, 6. Heb. xii. 29.

So

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Nebuchad

Nebuchadnezzar, when in great wrath he decreed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be put to death, ordered the furnace to be "heated one seven "times more than it was wont to be heated,” that the heat might be the quicker and fiercer in deftroying them. Taking the expreffions of the text in these their true fenfes, what do they amount to? but that when this vial fhould be poured out, the country should be tormented and plagued with the most outrageous factions, and that these factions fhould be the means of deftroying "men," or a great number of the people, in a thort time. Let us then apply these fenfes of the text to the late tranfactions and events which have taken place in France, and then judge whether they do not firictly correfpond.

The monarchy being deftroyed, and the monarch murdered, the dæmons of revolution had nothing left to fuffer but themselves, and the wretched people who had efcaped their former maffacres. From among them arofe new factions, more violent, more ferocious and blood-thirsty than their predeceffors, and all aiming at the fovereign power. These were in the heart of the republic, in the convention itself: that body became " fuddenly the "flave of factions." It is compared by an hiftorian of the day, and spectator of the tumultuous fcene, to the "fea, when furious whirlwinds agitate the waves, and vehemently dafh one against the "other." He alfo, labouring for language to paint 'their bloody defigns, calls it a "theatre of gladiators;" and thefe gladiators foon began the tragical and bloody scene by murdering one another. Such was the righteous will of God. They began with fuppreffing the Orleans faction by the deftruction of the Duke their chief, one of the most unprin

cipled men among them. In the next place fell the faction of the Rolandifts, &c.

In thefe terrible fcenes of action and reaction, Roberfpierre, that eldest fon of Satan, that "for of perdition," rode out the form, and became paramount defpot of France. His word was now the law in the National Convention, in the Committee of Safety, in the Jacobin Club, in the revolutionary committees, and revolutionary armies, However great the calamities and woes of the French nation might have been under the former general plunder, infurrections, and maffacres, they were now increafed an hundred fold: the blood of the people of France flowed without measure.

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To defcribe in detail all the nefarious acts of this dreadful period, must be an unneceffary tafk, inafmuch as they have been faithfully written by feveral French hiftorians, and fome of them fpectators of the facts. I fhall therefore fubmit to the confideration of the reader, only a fummary account taken from them, for the most part from one who juftifies the revolution, and cannot therefore be reasonably fuppofed to have exaggerated any of the facts. He tells us *, that, in "violation of every

principle, murder, theft, and plunder, maffacre "and devaftation, were legalized:" that "under "the name of Revolutionary Government, all the "public functions were united in the Committee of "Public Safety, where Roberfpierre had for a long "time dominated: then it was that this Committee "became dictatorial, and hurried into the depart"ments that horde of ferocious proconfuls, whom "we have feen betraying and flaughtering the "people, whofe fervants they were, and to whom

* Page's Secret Hiftory of the Revolution.

"they

they owed their political exiftence; fometimes "carrying with them, in their murderous circuits, "the guillotine, at others declaring it permanent, "which was faying, in other words, that the exe"cutioner was not to have a moment's reft. These "monsters in miffion, thefe coloffufes of crime, these "phænomena of cruelty, hunted men as a German "Baron hunts wild boars." In another part he tells what he confeffes "had never before been seen, "and what probably will never be feen again, "that a great and enlightened nation were mutilated, decimated, hot, drowned, and guillotined "by their own reprefentatives: that Rome had a fe“ ries of tyrants in fucceffion, or at least at short "intervals; but France had, at one and the fame in“ftant, a host of CALIGULAS: that Tacitus himself, "(the great hiftorian) would have broken his pencil "from regret at not being able to paint all the "crimes which fprang from the monstrous junction of the ferocious Roberfpierre, with the fangui"nary Cuthon; the barbarous Billaud, with the gloomy Amar; the tyger Collot, with the tyger "Carriere; the cut-throat Dumas, with the cut

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throat Caffinhal, and a thousand fubalterns, fub"miffive to their orders; and that Mirabeau un"doubtedly faw a part only of these horrors when "he faid Liberty flept only on mattreffes of dead car" caffes!"

Having thus confeffed the inadequacy of language to a just description of the crimes, horrors, and deftruction of this woeful period, and given the most faithful account of it in his power, the fame hiftorian exclaims, "WHAT A PICTURE! "the waves of the ocean fwelled by the mangled "bodies committed to the Loire; blood flowing in "torrents down the streets of every town; the "dungeons of a hundred thousand baftiles groaning

"under