the peasantry and landed proprietors; and the various sources of the wealth of the nation, as well as the financial difficulties of the Government. These may perhaps appear dry and uninteresting subjects; but they throw great light on subsequent events; and in fact, without them, it would be next to impossible adequately to comprehend the various interests and motives which combined to produce one of the greatest revolutions the world ever witnessed. On the death of Louis XV., the whole empire was completely disorganised, and almost in a state of anarchy. Under his successor, the long expected crisis arrived. In vain Louis XVI. used every effort to divert the gathering storm. Minister after minister succeeded one another in quick succession, but all to no effect. Reform, justice, and a conscientious solicitude for the public welfare, were now of no avail. Indeed, the very steps which the king and his ministry, with the best intentions in the world, took to reform past errors, were all too late, and frequently hastened on the impending outbreak; for so soon as mal-administration and peculation were dealt with in any one department, those in office, seeing that their power, and perhaps their means of livelihood, were in danger, did not scruple to hire the hungry and half famished multitude to side. with them in open and armed rebellion against the king. For a while the monarch persisted in an honourable and just policy; determined, if possible, to redress long-standing abuses; but everywhere the result was the same-with the nobility, the hereditary Government officials, and the pampered civic guilds : as soon as their dangerous privileges and unjust exemptions and monopolies were curtailed, they were up in arms against the Ministry. There can be no doubt that Louis XVI. acted conscientiously; but unfortunately he was wanting in ability and decision, and lacked most of all a Premier of sufficient courage and sagacity to contend against the fearful odds which he had to encounter; and Madame de Staël tells us what they were in the case of her own father, an honest and able minister. Turgot, his first minister, was the greatest reformer of the day. Unflinchingly he cut at the root of existing evils, and did his utmost to demolish existing abuses, and to further as much as possible the true interests of the people at large, and to unite the Government. But in every quarter his steps aroused the strongest opposition: he was openly abused by the king's youngest brother, the Count Charles of Artois, and accused of being a traitor and a democrat; while a cousin of the monarch," the rich and abandoned Philip Duke of Orleans, began, amid the general excitement, to play the demagogue on his own account. Then, for the first time, a spectacle was seen in Paris, which was subsequently repeated in even darker colours-the spectacle of the police authorities of the capital stirring up the mob against the Crown, and, on this occasion, in the interest of the privileged classes." The king was too feeble, and too weak-minded to continue his course, and at the end of eighteen months Turgot resigned. Just then our American colonies and the mother country were at war. In the existing state of things, the majority of the French nation sympathised strongly with our Colonies. The aim of each was almost identical; and the French were, at the time, smarting under the effects of recent wars with us. So the war party carried the day; and the king acquiesced, perhaps in the hope that, having one common enemy to confront, his people would become to some degree united, and, for the sake of the public good, sink party interests. How far Louis XVI. was to blame in this matter, we hesitate to say: the nation, beyond all doubt, were bent upon war, with Lafayette and the followers of Rousseau at their head. Certain it is, however, that the enterprise proved a ruinous one to the French government; for, while it effectually crippled their already embarrassed resources, it spread democratic opinions, of the rankest description, broad-cast over the land. Luckily for the king, he had at that time a clever financier, Necker, who for a while succeeded in mystifying the country as to the true state of the Exchequer; in other words, he made up false accounts, and borrowed money largely for Government. He was for a while the very paragon of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, until the bills fell due; then, of course, there was a collapse, and Necker lost his place. Subsequently, Calonne succeeded as Minister: he inaugurated his political career by the shrewd, but we cannot say highly principled, observation, "that whoever wished for credit must cultivate luxury;" and, adds M. Von Sybel, "he renewed the prodigality of the Court in the style of Louis XV. After matters had gone on in this jubilant course for some years, and the public debt had been increased by 400 millions, and the taxation by 21 millions, the ruin of the country became palpable at the beginning of the year 1787, and the catastrophe inevitable." In point of fact, Calonne, at the outset, well knew how hopelessly the country was involved, and, with reckless inindifference as to the future, made himself and the Court as much at ease as possible; and the people had to bear an annual taxation of 880 millions. Thus it will be clearly seen that step by step the empire was being rapidly demoralized and ruined. When Louis XV. ascended the throne, the tide of destruction set in; and Louis XVI., through his timidity and want of ability, opened wide the flood-gates, and his kingdom was desolated. (To be concluded in our next.) TENNYSON'S "LUCRETIUS." Lucretius. By Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate. THE Roman poet, whom our Laureate has made the subject of his last new poem, was born about ninety-five years before the Christian era. His great work is a philosophic didactic poem, written in heroic hexamters, and entitled De Rerum Natura. He is the popular exponent of Epicurean philosophy; and, according to the Eusebian chronicle, he was driven to madness by a love potion, and perished by his own hand at the age of forty-four. Mr. Tennyson's poem, with the exception of an explanatory prologue, and a tragical epilogue, consists entirely of a soliloquy made by Lucretius, before he terminated his mortal existence by his own hand. Lucilla, his wife, mistaking the poetical abstractions of her husband while fabricating the long roll of his hexameter verses, conceived him to be cherishing a passion of a different kind, and was wholly carried away by the spirit of jealousy. To regain the affections which she had never lost, and to withdraw him from a rival which only existed in her own imagination, she consulted a witch. Acting under the direction of this wretched adviser, the jealous wife secretly administered to her husband a slow poison, under the assurance that the magical philtre would bring back his roving affections to their own lawful and proper centre. With his nerves unstrung, his blood poisoned, and his brain distracted by the fatal potion which had now got thoroughly into his system, the unhappy poet wakes up, after a night of terrific storm, and gives utterance to the soliloquy which ends in his committing suicide. He recounts the three frightful dreams from which he was. twice awakened by the violence of the storm. These are all such as would naturally occur to a mind deeply imbued with heathen mythology; at the same time there is direct reference to the profuse slaughter which had recently been made in Rome by the Dictator Sylla, when he triumphed over Marius, his rival. In reflecting upon his dreams, and the anguish they had caused him, the poet enquires if this were the vengeance inflicted upon him for his advocacy of the philosophy of Epicurus. Sometimes he speaks as if he really believed the popular superstition respecting Venus, and then he explains him. self 66 I did take That popular name of thine to shadow forth The atomic system of the universe was adopted by Epicurus; and while he expressly taught the existence of the gods, he excluded them alike both from the creation of the world and the direction of its affairs. His notion of atoms is inconsistent with belief in the immortality of the gods. This difficulty was felt by Lucretius when his mind was in full vigour; well might he feel staggered and overpowered by it in his present state. He is represented as saying, "If all be atoms, how then should the gods The description of the sun, and the various objects upon which he shines, is perhaps the finest part of the poem; yet this glorious luminary, though worshipped as a god, is most assuredly an unconscious and inanimate agent. There is something very touching in the poor distracted bard speaking thus of the sun as he catches his orient beams : "And me, altho' his fire is on my face, Even a heathen poet could feel and confess that there must be some close affinity between himself and the vain and foolish thoughts that so constantly lodge themselves in the mind and the heart, to the exclusion of everything purer and better:"How should the mind, except it loved them, clasp These idols to herself ?" He compares them to Crowds, that in an hour Of civic tumult jam the doors, and bear The keepers down, and throng, their rags and they, Where sit the best, and stateliest of the land." The philosopher derided, and not unjustly, as foolish tales and delusive fancies, all that the popular mind so greedily devoured respecting fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs. But while he did this, he was wholly unable to get the victory over the lusts and passions of which these imaginary creatures were the types and the representatives. The ancient Epicurean, who really wished to live a simple and harmless life, was precluded by his principles from expecting any help or strength from above against the impure thoughts and evil desires that so continually marred his peace, and mocked all his fine-spun theories of satisfaction and tranquillity. According to his philosophy, the powers above did not concern themselves with the sins and sorrows, the wants and weaknesses, of mortal men. And yet sometimes, under the pressing sense of need, the philosopher was constrained, even against his professed principles, to implore the succour of those whom he believed either unable or unwilling to help him. "He thought as a sage, but he felt as a man." Our poet represents Lucretius as saying to the superior powers, in his emergency,— "I know you careless, yet behold to you From childly want and ancient use I call." At the same time, without any practical knowledge of the solemn truth that after death is the judgment, and trying to believe that man, with all his hopes and fears and joys and sorrows "Shall pass Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, he conceived it the manly and the Roman part to seek tran- Or soon or late, yet out of season, thus I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not How roughly men may woo thee, so they win." If this be all that ancient philosophy can give to her votaries, surely she is at the best a most mournful guide, and a miserable comforter. But when we think that this was the conclusion to which Lucretius came, under the influence of the maddening potion which had been administered to him, we are utterly at a loss to understand what is the point or moral that is aimed at by our Laureate in this mournful song. Here is the tragic conclusion of the painful soliloquy : "With that he drove the knife into his side: As having failed in duty, shriek'd That she but meant to win him back, fell on him, Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, Care not thou! |