The anti-monopolist., 1874-08-13
MkRAT.


Jean Paul Marat, who is by far the
most loathsome character in the French
revolution, and who will live as the
type incarnate of rabid journalism, was,
likeJ. J. Rousseau, Swiss. He was
born in 1744, and it adds much to his
guilt that he received superior educa-
tion and possessed natural abilities Of
a high order. 1t is fair to add, how
ever, that his talents and learning SUBJ
jected him, at the outset of his career,
to cruel prosecutions. After studying
medicine and obtaining an appointment
as a doctor to the count of Artois S
grooms,he addicted himself to researches
in natural science, and published several
essays on the theory of light. These
papers had the honor Of being reviewe d
and warmly praised by Voltaire, but
they upset all the notions on light
which were held by the academy
of sciences, and that learned
body instantly fell foul Of the
innovator. He was friendless, poor, land
irritable; he wrote of the academy with
contempt, and, above all, his theories
were the true ones. These were reasons
enough to draw on him hostility of a
very active kind; and the institute of
France, which was powerful corpora
ton, refuted him waspishly. and then
set influences at work to drive him
from the country. Marat was of sick
ly health and Of sour temper; keen
private sorrow, resulting from mis-
placed attachment, added to his innate
moroseness, so that he was in every
manner unfit to bear up serenely under
persecution. He went off to England
and spent ten years in London, lodging
in Fleet street, after this he divided a
couple of years between Edinburgh and
Dublin, and then he visited Holland,
picking up all the while precarious sus-
tenance as doctor, tutor, trans
lator, and author. In 1880,
the outbreak of the revolution brought
him ba tx to Paris, rich with the fresh
stores Of learning and experience he
had acquired during his exile, and bent
upon starting newspaper like other
clever men. Narat differed from other
men, though, in this respect, that from
the first he had clear perception of
his object, and pursued it to the last
undeviatingly. His ideas of reform
were never clogged by the wish to ape
English constitutionalism, for he de-
tested England. He desired a radical
republic; and though his first journal,
LIE Publiciste Parisien, was couched in
moderate terms, it's logic was so tren-
chant, and it's drift so evident that even
the most jealous deputies Of the third
estate took olfense at it as going far be-
yond what they aspired to, and as cal
culated to do their cause an in
jury. 1t was the distinctive
trait of fMurat' s genius that he could not
write line but attracted attention. His
scholarship was so deep, and his style
consequently so pure and strong, his
knowledge of the peoples grievances
was so thorough, and his perseverance
in the aims he was pursuing so relent-
less, that the writings Of other men
paled beside his. And now i'm
agine France given over to the garru-
Gus convention, in which there was not
a man who clearly knew what he want
ed save this one, Marat. Forty-eight
years old at this date. Marat was less
than five feet high, and
had head enormously dis
proportionate to the size of his body.
The upper part of his face was hand
some, but the lower part beginning
with the nose, was that of wild beast.
The nose was fat and large. with nos
trils that quivercd; the mouth huge,
and filled with black. jagged teeth; the
chin square. and generally ill.shaved,
covered with stubble of several days
growth. Naturally unclean in his per-
son, Marat cultivated slovenliness
for the purpose of inspiring great
CT confidence to the dregs of
the populace. He seldom wore hat,
but covered his head with twisted
handkerchief red, yellow and greasy.
His linen was worse than dingy, his
shoes stringless, his stockings torn and
down at heel, and his brown coat Gov.
cred with stains, ink-splashes and flakes
OF dried mud. In constant terror of
his life, he never ventured out alone,
but was always attended by tattered
mob of rutfians who called themselves
his body-suard. and piled cudgels about
them to clear him passage through the
street crowds. Women, when they saw
him. trembled and turned their heads
aside; children ran away from him: at
the convention house his entrance was
the signal for a general silence. and Of
%ax 20 Il &C I ~ L
present. Marat, who was eaten up with
bilious vanity, gloried in the universal
repulsion which he excited, and he had
grim, vicious way of smiling when
fixing his eye on any member whom he
disliked, he saw the man turn pale and
crouch. Such was the man who. by
means of all the scum of Paris, kept the
convention in terror. and through it
governed France.-CornhW Maga-
zine.
Reading HehreW.