Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 | Page 6

way of his views, Robespierre bethought himself of acting a new part
in public affairs, calculated, as he thought, to dignify the Republic.
Chaumette, a mean confederate of Hebert, and a mouthpiece of the
rabble, had, by consent of the Convention, established Paganism, or the
worship of Reason, as the national religion. Robespierre never gave his
approval to this outrage, and took the earliest opportunity of restoring
the worship of the Supreme. It is said, that of all the missions with
which he believed himself to be charged, the highest, the holiest in his
eyes, was the regeneration of the religious sentiment of the people: to
unite heaven and earth by this bond of a faith which the Republic had
broken, was for him the end, the consummation of the Revolution. In
one of his paroxysms, he delivered an address to the Convention, which
induced them to pass a law, acknowledging the existence of God, and
ordaining a public festival to inaugurate the new religion. This fête took
place on the 8th of June 1794. Robespierre headed the procession to the
Champ de Mars; and he seemed on the occasion to have at length
reached the grand realisation of all his hopes and desires. From this
_coup de théâtre_ he returned home, magnified in the estimation of the
people, but ruined in the eyes of the Convention. His conduct had been
too much that of one whose next step was to the restoration of the
throne, with himself as its occupant. By Fouché, Tallien,
Collot-d'Herbois, and some others, he was now thwarted in all his
schemes. His wish was to close the Reign of Terror and allow the new
moral world to begin; for his late access of devotional feeling had, in
reality, disposed him to adopt benign and clement measures. But to
arrest carnage was now beyond his power; he had invoked a demon
which would not be laid. Assailed by calumny, he made the
Convention resound with his speeches; spoke of fresh proscriptions to
put down intrigue; and spread universal alarm among the members. In
spite of the most magniloquent orations, he saw that his power was
nearly gone. Sick at heart, he began to absent himself from committees,
which still continued to send to the scaffold numbers whose obscure
rank should have saved them from suspicion or vengeance.
At this juncture, Robespierre was earnestly entreated by one of his
more resolute adherents, St Just, to play a bold game for the

dictatorship, which he represented as the only means of saving the
Republic from anarchy. Anonymous letters to the same effect also
poured in upon him; and prognostics of his greatness, uttered by an
obscure fortune-teller, were listened to by the great demagogue with
something like superstitious respect. But for this personal elevation he
was not prepared. Pacing up and down his apartment, and striking his
forehead with his hand, he candidly acknowledged that he was not
made for power; while the bare idea of doing anything to endanger the
Republic amounted, in his mind, to a species of sacrilege. At this crisis
in his fate, therefore, he temporised: he sought peace, if not consolation,
in solitude. He took long walks in the woods, where he spent hours
seated on the ground, or leaning against a tree, his face buried in his
hands, or earnestly bent on the surrounding natural objects. What was
the precise tenor of his meditations, it would be deeply interesting to
know. Did the great promoter of the Revolution ponder on the failure
of his aspirations after a state of human perfectibility? Was he torn by
remorse on seeing rise up, in imagination, the thousands of innocent
individuals whom, in vindication of a theory, he had consigned to an
ignominious and violent death, yet whose removal had, politically
speaking, proved altogether fruitless?
It is the more general belief, that in these solitary rambles Robespierre
was preparing an oration, which, as he thought, should silence all his
enemies, and restore him to parliamentary favour. A month was
devoted to this rhetorical effort; and, unknown to him, during that
interval all parties coalesced, and adopted the resolution to treat his
oration when it came with contempt, and, at all hazards, to have him
proscribed. The great day came, July 26 (8th Thermidor), 1794. His
speech, which he read from a paper, was delivered in his best style--in
vain. It was followed by yells and hootings; and, with dismay, he
retired to the Jacobins, to deliver it over again--as if to seek support
among a more subservient audience. Next day, on entering the
Convention, he was openly accused by Tallien and Billaud-Varennes of
aspiring to despotic power. A scene of tumult ensued, and, amid cries
of _Down with the tyrant!_ a writ for his committal to prison