NINTH NIGHT.

M. DE MALESHERBES' MEMOIR CONTINUED.

Dec. 20. WHILST attentive Europe contemplates the drama exhibited in France, whilst the Almighty, who does not disdain to look down upon it, abandons the unravelling of the plot to the secondary causes of human passions, Paris, where the awful scene is displayed, seems to view it with indifference. No new bustle seems to interfere with the daily movements, uniform and incessant in this great metropolis. The same periodical ebb and flow of thoughts, speeches, and actions, which constitute its existence, prevails. The administrator deliberates, the manufacturer fills his ware house, the labourer toils, fashion gives youth

to worn out dresses, voluptuousness refines its delights, ambition extends the field of its hopes and insatiable desires. The destiny of the people, the life of the king, will be finally decided upon tomorrow! To day they crowd to the new opera, and a thousand throats warble the last fashionable air. Such are the perceptions of those superficial and inattentive observers, who carelessly skim the surface. But he, who meditates on objects, observes their gradual transformation, and sees hearts rancle with sentiment of terror and hope, which finally influence all the actions of life, more than one man shudders at the reflection, that his name sounded under certain cir cumstances, that his signature attached to certain deliberations, will irrevocably fix his final destiny! The quarrel, subsisting between nations and governments, appals the well drilled diplomatic character, and excites a sigh from the ardent student. The magic cry of liberty, which resounds from the Rhine to the Pyrennees, and from the Var to the Calvados, this cry awakes all the affections, animates every soul, sees things in a different light,

and staggers every mind. The brows have yet a peaceful aspect, adolescence still murmurs favourite airs, but the fermentation has commenced, and opinion vacillates briskly. Will the impending crisis plunge the age in the abyss of barbarism and ignorance, or will it make it soar towards the source of virtue, knowledge, and happiness! What a problem! in the resolving of which all passions are about to enlist! What flood of tears, how much blood is to purchase the political regeneration of man, now commenced in France A personage, virtuously murdering, considers the sacrifice of an individual to the species, as a mere arithmetical subtraction. But the man, who sets a higher value on the blood lavished by dazzling visions, on the tears, which dogmatical theories cause to flow, and on the sweet repose thus interrupted, beholds with awe the flood of misery and torrent of crimes about to overflow this wretched kingdom, to sweep away its former and ancient errors; this reflection breaks the heart of a feeling man, who sees a brother in each fellow creature.

My mind was engrossed with these sad reflections on my way to the Temple !.....The Temple, which yet retains the last link of that chain, that still confines the revolutionary demon. The clearness of the sky, the sharpness of the cold, induced me to perform on foot this sacred duty to the king. From the magnificent bridge, Peronnett's masterpiece, from that monument to which Louis XVI. gave his name, I contemplated, for some time, a playful band of schoolboys, whose feet, provided with skates, slid rapidly forward, and fancifully traced innumerable curves on the polished crystal of the frozen Seine. The most prudent, whom they called timorous, confined their gambols to the same circle, the most courageous, whom I denominat ed rash, fled, with the vivacity of the bird cleaving the air, even to the confines of the consolidated element. The gazing crowd, mistaking rashness for heroism, applauded these dangerous experiments, which apalled me. All of a sudden, under the multiplied weight of the imprudent skaters, the ice cracks, breaks, and opens a dreadful gap. O grief! I saw the hope and love of