Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 | Page 6

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 théatre_ 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 was drawn out. It must be considered a fine trait in the character of Robespierre the younger, that he begged to be included in the