by his own cowardly pistol-shot, dressed in a sky blue silk coat, his pow dered hair and lace ruffles dabbled in his own blood. It was the very incarnation of French republicanism in its last unpitied agonies.

In its less appalling traits, Revolutionary France was a great theatre, where a play was played with all the ranting and strutting and tinsel of the acting drama; and their great men, from Mirabeau, the greatest of them all, downward on the roll to the poorest strolling patriot of the smallest section, each was but the mock hero of his own stage, where virtue is faction and blood and carnage was the only reality. If, with its full record spread out before the eye, one was called upon to point his finger to any incident that deserved the name of purely picturesque, it could not be done further than by indicating the heroic conduct of the two advocates who volunteered to defend the king at the bar of the Convention, and the last hours of the poor queen, that star which shone so brightly in its occident, and shot forth a new beam as it touched the rugged borders of its last horizon, widowed and childless, a gray-haired young woman, who died divested of all a woman's beauty, save that which mantled on her cheeks in childhood and crimsoned them at her last moment on the scaffold-the inextinguishable beauty of a modest woman's blush. All else was fantastic horror and nothing more. What a contrast does it present to the romantic dignity and virtuous grace of our Revolution! Compare the old Continental Congress, an assembly which in gravity and heroism would have done honor to ancient Rome, with the notables, or the Assembly, or the Convention! Take Mirabeau, or Roland, or Brissot, or Dumouriez, and contrast each and all of them with the true chivalry of our annals, our soldiers and statesmen, and the palm is ours. Our men of chivalry in the field I need not name. In the councils of the American Revolution true chivalry was not wanting. The history of the Old Congress, from its first feeble convocation to its eclipse under the federal Constitution, is of itself a rich record of romance. Much could be said of the romantic character of the men of the Revolution, but let us look only at that of Washington. He was a perfect character of romance and chivalry in its highest sense. Nor were those traits of his character, which in the common estimate might pass for prosaic and purely matter-of-fact, at all at variance with his more shining qualities. His strict sense of justice, his systematic disposition of his time, his rigid determination on all occasions to claim what was due to him, his willingness to give that only which he had a right to give, his sense of religious obligation, his deference to the world's well-ascertained proprieties-all these were as much parts of his high chivalric bearing as was the dignity of his personal appearance, surpassed by no knight of real or fictitious chivalry, the daring gallantry of his

spirit, his quick, impetuous temper, or any other trait that poetry more readily consecrates.

A comparison has often been made by able hands between Washington and that fierce creation that sprang from the caldron of revolutionary France-Napoleon Bonaparte. It would be in vain even to attempt to retouch these contrasted portraits, but taking the record of their lives in our hands, let us be attentive to its last page—a page of deep and touching interest-the record of their death, for the death of each was a characteristic comment of his life. The one an illustration of all the gentle virtues which constituted his heroism; the other a fit farewell to a life of storm and tumult. The one that may not inaptly be likened to the last anchorage of some warworn frigate, whose broad ensign has floated o'er many a just battle; the other the shipwreck of a private cruiser, whose flag has been long an emblem of terror to a peaceful world, whose decks are stained with blood, and at the height of the tempest founders on some obscure rock in the centre of an ocean's desolation.

Washington died on his own farm in the centre of the land to which he more than any other had given freedom and peaceful independence. The simple narrative of the details of his death, as preserved by his secretary, is beautifully characteristic, and so well known that it need but be referred to. The spirit of Washington returned to the power that gave it with neither agony of mind or body. His last accents breathed gratitude to all around him and peace and good will to men. As his noble figure lay on its last pillow, it lay in sweet repose, wasted by no long disease, deformed by no fierce convulsions. It was a scene of sorrow, but a scene of peace.

What a contrast to this gentle death was the last hour of Napoleon's trial. Darker and more tumultuous was the Imperial exile's death. "Head of my army," were the last words which escaped his lips, intimating that his thoughts were watching the current of a heavy fight. He who thought to conquer Europe found a prison in which to die. In the evening, desolate, surrounded by a surging sea, in the midst of a storm of wind and rain, the elements themselves in strife, in a whirlwind of delirium Napoleon's spirit took its flight.

It would require a volume in which to point out the many picturesque incidents of the American Revolution, for in its aggregate and in its details it was romantic. It was the effort of a dependent people to stand by itself, to govern itself. It involved a long and unequal contest, the desolation of many a field of prosperous industry, the sacrifice of many a cherished life. But it involved no wanton desolation; it was a war of defence; it was a war

for home. There was no fanaticism, there was no persecution, there was no scaffold. There was throughout the high dignity of that character peculiar to our Revolutionary forefathers, and embellished by the gentler grace which the refining spirit of the age hung around it.

The soil we stand on is filled with the bones of those who lived for us -the spirits of the mighty dead are above us and about us. The object of their trials, the recompense of their sufferings, was our Union. To perpetuate that Union, to save it from danger, let it come from what source it may, let us remember the beautiful in our history, and the righteousness of our existence as a nation; let us hang on the Union's sacred walls and stand on its noble porticos the pictures of the romantic deeds and the statues of the men who performed them. In imperishable records let their just praises be written, and then, when the agent of faction or mistaken zeal shall broach his calculations of the Union's value, or the Constitution's obligation, let him be led thither, and while he kneels in veneration, some interceding spirit must prompt him to carve on the arch of the Union, Esto perpetua.

DAVIS BRODHEAD

THE FRENCH SPOLIATION CLAIMS

For the forty-first time within the past eighty years a report is presented in Congress in favor of the settlement of the French Spoliation Claims. "These remarkable claims," as they are characterized by the Senate Committee, have perhaps ceased to be remarkable in themselves, and become so because of the fact indicated that after repeated public acknowledgments of their justice, and repeated recommendations for their adjudication, they still remain unpaid.

Except to the claimants concerned, the history of the claims is pretty much a forgotten chapter. Singularly enough the very treaty of alliance with France which weighed so heavily in our favor during the war of the Revolution, became, less than twenty years later, during the wars of the French Revolution, a burden, vexation, and source of anxiety to us. By one of the articles of that treaty, the United States guaranteed, in case of any future rupture between France and Great Britain, to secure to the former her possessions in the West Indies, this being one of the considerations on which France on her part guaranteed the sovereignty and independence of the United States. The French Revolution followed, and France seized the cargoes and vessels of neutrals, Americans among them, in con

sequence of England's attempt to stop all traffic with French ports. When the United States complained, and presented claims for damage done to her private shipping, France presented the counter-claim that our Government had failed to observe the treaty of Alliance of 1778, not only in not attempting to defend the French West Indies, but also by actually declaring itself neutral in the contest between Republican France and the monarchies of Europe. In September, 1800, the dispute was finally settled by offsetting these claims against each other-France agreeing to release the United States from the onerous obligations of the treaty of 1778, and the United States releasing France from the payment of the claims for captured vessels and cargoes. By this arrangement, the United States herself assumed the debt due by France to the owners of the despoiled vessels and cargoes in question, and she continues to this day to remain their debtor. The descendants of these owners are before the present Congress as the original claimants stood before the early sessions of Congress, from eighty to sixty years ago, petitioning for the payment of the claims.

Among the reports presented to Congress, the one drawn up by Charles Sumner in 1864 is exhaustive of the subject, and it is reprinted as an appendix of the report now before the Senate. The whole question is there discussed with great clearness and ability, and the obligation of the United States to the petitioners reaffirmed in unequivocal terms. A point of practical moment concerns the amount for whieh the Government may be liable. Senator Sumner looked into this matter carefully, and ascertained that there were eight hundred and ninety-eight vessels included in the claims from which France was released prior to 1801, the value of which was officially estimated in 1799 at $20,000,000.

Notwithstanding the numerous favorable reports made, twice only have bills been passed by Congress for the payment of the claims, one of which was vetoed by President Polk, and the other by President Pierce. The present Senate bill provides for "the ascertainment of all the facts in the controversy, and a settlement of all the questions of law arising by the Court of Claims, with a right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States." The objections against the payment, as given in the vetoes and adverse minority reports, are that the claims are stale; that at the time they arose there was war between France and the United States, and that they have been embraced in subsequent settlements and conventions.