great number of other motions strange for equality, fineness and subtility." A reader of our day sees no wonders here. The steam-engine, the magnetic-telegraph, the Paixhan-gun, the various late improvements in ordnance, gun-cotton, balloons, life-boats, life-preservers, clocks running for years without winding, and with an astonishing precision, automata and innumerable other inventions, have long since fulfilled this prophecy. With the exception of "perpetual motions," (of which, we fear, the most sanguine Baconians must despair,) all have been accomplished to the letter.

But it is time that we draw these protracted observations to a close. We regard the New Atlantis as an admirable, though, necessarily, an inadequate epitome of the advantages of the Modern Philosophy of Fruit. Hopeful without presumption and bold without extravagance, the founder of that philosophy has here laid down the inventions and discoveries to which he believed his system would one day conduct mankind. He has been lying beneath his parish church at St. Albans two hundred and twenty-two years. And those inventions and discoveries are but the first fruits of his system; nor, we believe, can it possibly cease to " enlarge the boundaries of human empire," till both man and his works shall be swept by their Creator from earth.

66

t.

THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.

A FULL justification of the execution of Louis XVI, has never come to our knowledge; and we should fail to establish one on our own responsibility, should we consider the subject on the one hand with the technical views of the lawyer, or suffer ourselves to be biassed on the other, by the sage conclusions of prejudiced Englishmen. It is the misfortune of us Americans to have our ideas, tastes, and prejudices too much subjected to the caprice of the English. We lay ourselves open to censure and ridicule, when, as a nation, we affect to despise England, while, at the same time, we suffer her to rule us as individuals. She, trembling at the slightest indications of life among the ignobile vulgus, belches forth far and wide her furious indignation, with hope of demolishing in the embryo, civil institutions that threaten to be more mild and lenient towards their subjects than her own. We may not wonder, then, that while stigmatizing our free press as capable of driving the most innocent persons from the country-the judgment of our courts as most unjust on every popular question-our government itself as ruled, during periods of tranquillity, directly by the cabals of interest; we need not wonder that when thus promulgating her verdict on the impotence of our attempt at self-government, she should, from the very first, treat that noble uprising of oppressed France as a drama of the infernal world. But does she, when expatiating on the lack of French loyalty, once consider that she-commons and aristocracy-constitutes a nation of regicides? And, as she traces back

her origin, and boasts that every step she has taken has been in advance of the present perfection of civil liberty, does she enumerate the princes she has slain and the atrocious deeds her own people have perpetrated?

We thus premise with reference to England, not to make her acts exculpatory of the excesses of France; but as indications rather of the civil horrors which a nation, weighed down by ordinances planted in Feudalism, must experience ere they can rest on the basis of pure liberty. We refer to her utter abhorrence of Democratic institutions, that we may not be unduly biassed by the multitudinous writings which her mercenary scribblers have sent among us so profusely, to alienate our sympathies from that distressed people, whose crimes (if they were crimes) were committed in the attempt to assimilate their institutions to ours.

France was unfortunate in not throwing off her shackles before. The convulsion, if it had been less violent, would have been more consonant with the age, and less marked by the surrounding world. But while other nations were slaughtering their rulers and purging their constitutions with blood, she bended loyally beneath the yoke, and allowed the incubus of despotism to press heavier and more heavy with each successive reign. The cruelties of Louis XI,-the treacheries of Charles IX,-the draining profligacy and tyranny of Louis XIV, the extravagancies and beastly licentiousness of Louis XV,each in its turn was accumulating an account with the people, which was at length to meet with a terrible settlement. Those princes themselves foresaw the consequences to which their acts would lead; they knew that they were entailing on the throne a fatal incumbrance. The last despot, after having apparently made it the chief object of his reign to surpass his predecessors in debasing the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of his people, and refining upon the profligacy and extravagancy of his court, gave as his dying counsel to his grandson, that he should rule with a vigorous arm if he would maintain his crown. The throne itself knew that the crisis was at hand; and all history bore warning that its coming would be attended with the most terrible convulsions.

As another has justly remarked, the birth of new truths is ever painful, and the work of centuries cannot be destroyed without a struggle. An atonement was to be made for the injustice of centuries. The ice of France's long winter of despotism was at length to melt down in an inundation of blood. On which side ought to have fallen the sacrifice? Did the people inherit it? Was the crime theirs, that a succession of tyrants had vied with each other in crushing them under such grinding poverty; that an infamous clergy had for centuries rioted on the pay and exactions for teaching them ignorance and error? Was it, in fine, their fault that they were thus gradually prepared to execute upon their masters, in their maddening efforts to regain for themselves the rights of human beings, deeds which they themselves would have loathed, had they been allowed even a shadow of the privileges and duties of men? No! It was just that the

storm should burst upon the head which received it, and that despotism, by its very excesses, should become its own destroyer. That head belonged to Louis the Sixteenth, and that despotism to the throne to which he succeeded-an irresolute prince to an ill-fated heritage. Louis made the long-threatened atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. By his death he opened a path to the regeneration of France, and gained for himself (pleasing immortality!) a sort of natural gratitude, which renders his own people deaf to all but his virtues; while an obviously selfish policy draws from the various governments of Europe a profusion of eulogies. But was he, indeed, such a noble and worthy prince as his brother monarchs would represent? Did he, of his own accord, make a single valuable accession to the people? Was it not by reason of a petition from parliament, that he at length consented to the convocation of the States-general? and does not the blundering embarrassment which characterized every succeeding relinquishment, plainly indicate that his generosity was guided by necessity as well as impulse? His eulogists themselves must acknowledge that he constantly played before the French people the part of a hypocrite. He did this when, pretending to subscribe with readiness to the acts of the national assembly, he was secretly summoning a force of soldiers to prevent its sitting. He did this when, in his ignominious flight from Paris, he left papers in his palace, renunciatory of the principles involved in that constitution which he had, so lately, and with such apparent willingness, acknowledged in the presence of his people. Never once seizing upon a favorable crisis during his reign, he hastened on the revolution as much by his concessions as by his opposition. When besieged in his palace-when arrested in his flight at Varennes-when in any emergency of danger he was called upon to show himself not only a man, but a king-he had but one constant ejaculation: "God forbid I should be the cause of death to any fellow-creature." Whatever may be urged in favor of his virtuous qualities, we see not that he manifested a less ardent love for despotism and its paraphernalia than his predecessors. Every civil and military officer he selected from the privileged orders. The flattering counsels of Maurepas he suffered to influence him more than the combined wisdom of Turgot and Necker. The expenditure of his court was not one jot retrenched, though the cry of starvation came up to his ears more and more agonizingly.

Such are some of the inadvertencies (in the language of his eulogists) which Louis committed as a king, and for which he was deposed by the National Assembly of France; if indeed his own flight did not virtually depose him previously. As a king, too, really, though not nominally, he was condemned to death. We do not contend that his condemnation was legal in form, or that the whole number of charges were true. But if law or regulations once established are inviolable, there could have been but one form of government since the foundation of the world. Robespiere was right once, if in no other instance, when he exclaimed, "Kings will never enact laws for their own overthrow." Paley says, "No usage, law, or authority whatever, is so

binding that it need or ought to be continued, when it may be changed with advantage to the community." Was that community the king and his few adherents, or the famished people? If, according to American views, it was the latter, we aver it was not only advantageous, but absolutely necessary, that the law of royal inviolability should be broken, and that the king, as such, though he had possessed double the personal virtues of Louis, should incur the penalty of death.

It was, indeed, a lamentable necessity, both to the condemned and the condemning. But what history furnishes us the precedent of a dethroned king living as a private citizen among his revolutionized people. The circumstances, then, surrounding France prevented, how múch soever she might have desired it, sending him into exile. She was amid monarchies which trembled at the spirit of Democracy, and combined in crushing its first appearance. Whatever course she may have been compelled to pursue, through peril and despair, she was then bent on adopting, as a model, our institutions. Could she have proceeded confidently in this noble design, with her king alive in any portion of the globe? She possessed not the power of England, in guarding securely her deposed sovereign on a distant and barren island. In no place, on either continent, could he have remained, without their being tortured by a continual fear that he would return, and with foreign aid bring back upon them the miseries of the past-a condition to which they could not revert without a shudder.

If, then, we are to condemn the execution of Louis the Sixteenth, we must go back, before the immediate necessity was incurred; to the breaking out of the revolution which led to such results; to that most unavoidable necessity, gnawing hunger, which caused the first dismal cry for bread to ring through the streets of Paris; and if we continue our examination still farther back, we shall find the ultimate cause to be the throne itself. It is to his ancestors and to his own irresolution, that Louis must lay the charge at the second and last tribunal.

S. S. S.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.

THE following tale is among those current with the German pesantry, which have been collected and published by the Brothers Grimm, accounts of whose lobors may be found scattered through the later volumes of the Foreign Quarterly Review. It occurs, also, in the German Reader, edited by Prof. Adler, of New York. In able hands, we believe our simple Saxon English might be made to adequately reproduce the naturalness and pathos of the vernacular German.

THERE once lived a King and Queen, who said every day," Would that we had a child!" and yet had they none. But it happened while the Queen was bathing, that a frog crept from the water upon the land and said, "Thy wish shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt have a daughWhat the frog had predicted came to pass; the Queen bore a

ter."

daughter, who was so beautiful that the King could not contain himself for joy; and he made a great feast. He called not only his kinsmen, friends, and acquaintances, but likewise the Fortune-tellers, that they might be kind and friendly to the child. There were thirteen of them in his kingdom, but because he had only twelve golden plates, on which they were to eat, there was one whom he could not call. Those who had been invited came; and when the feast was over, they blessed the child with their wonderful gifts; the first with virtue, the second with beauty, the third with riches, and so on with every thing that is good in the world. When ten of them had given in their wishes, came the thirteenth, who had not been called, and wished to avenge herself for it. She said, "The King's daughter must, in her fifteenth year, pierce herself with a spindle and fall down dead." Then stepped forward the twelfth, who had one more wish left. To be sure she could not turn back the evil prediction, but she could lighten it; and she said, "It shall not be death, but a deep sleep of a hundred years, into which the King's daughter must fall."

The King, who wished to save his beloved child from the evil omen, sent forth an order that all the spindles in the kingdom should be destroyed. But the wishes of the Fortune-tellers for the maid were all fulfilled; for she was so beautiful, modest, and kind, and had so much understanding, that nobody that saw her could but love her. It happened on the day when she became just fifteen, that the King and Queen were not at home, and the maiden was all alone in the castle. Then she went about everywhere, saw the rooms and chambers, and came at length to an old tower. She climbed up a narrow staircase and came to a little door. In the lock there was a rusty key, and when she turned it the door sprang open, and there sat in a little room an old woman busily spinning her flax. "Well, good mother," said the King's daughter, "what are you doing there ?" "I am spinning flax," said the old woman, and nodded with her head. "How merrily this thing goes round!" said the maiden; and she took the spindle and wanted to spin herself. Scarcely had she touched the spindle, when the prediction was fulfilled, and she pierced herself with it.

But at the moment when she felt the wound, she fell down in a deep sleep. And the King and Queen, who had just returned, fell asleep with the whole Court. Then slept likewise the horses in the stable, the dogs in the yard, the doves on the roof, the flies on the wall; even the fire which was flickering on the hearth grew still and slept; and the meat stopped frying, and the cook who was about pulling the kitchen-boy by the hair because he had spilled something, let him go and fell asleep, and every thing that had breath grew still and slumbered.

But round about the castle a thorn-hedge began to grow, which every year became higher, and at last surrounded and grew over the whole castle, so that nothing more could be seen, not even the flag upon the roof.

But there spread abroad in the land the story of the beautiful sleeping Dornröschen, for thus was the King's daughter called; so that from