Litchfield enquirer., 1876-09-14
ROBES PIERRE.

itself, and had right to perform leading parts. Disqualified for sitting in the as.
 sembly, he yielded greater power thaf ever in the club. The constituent lad l been full of his enemies. "Alone witil
 my soul. he once cried to the Jacobins,
 'how conld have borne struggles that
 were beyond any human strength, if
 had not raised my spirit to God ?" This Isolation marked him with kind of the
 ocrstc distinction. These cemmunings
 with tue unseen powers gave certain in- dehnable prerOgatiye to man,, even
 among the children of the century of Vol
 taire. Condorcet, the youngest of the
 iDtimates and disciples of Voltaire,
 D'Aiembert, of Turgot, was the first tn
 sound bitter warming that 1sobespierre
 WAS at ieart priest. The suggestion
 was more than gibe. Pri, st IS the mys- tagogne in office; his own authority is l bound up with the prosperity and accep- 1 tance of his holy water; he held the ne- cessity of an intervener and interpreter, and that lntervener is himself his spirit
 has no elasticity. no pliancy, no spacious ness; it stifes and is stifed. Decidedly Robespierre had the sarcerdotal temper ament, it's private leaniDgs to the shake and the cord; and he had one of those de- plorable natures that seem as if they had never known the careless joys of spring l tlme in their lives. By-and-by, from mere priest he developed into the deadli- CT carnivore, the Inquisitor. The absence of advantages of bodily presence has nev- CT been fatal to the pretensions of the Pontif. Robespierre was only couple of inches above five feet in height, but the grand monarch himself was hardly l more. His eyes were small and weak, ,and he usually wore spectacles; his face was pitted by the marks of small pox; his complexion was dull and sometimes liyid !; the tones of his voice were dry and shrill; and he spoke with the vulgar accent ot his province, Such is the accepted trodition, and there IS no reason to dissent from 1t. It is fair, however, to remember that Robespierres enemies had command of his historic reputation at it's source, and this is always great advantage for fac tion If not for truth. So Robespierre' s voice and person may have been maligned just as Aristophanes may have been cal umniator when he accused Cleon of hav- ing an intolerably loud voice and smelling of the tan.yard. What is certain is that Robespierre was master of effective ora- tory adapted for a violent popular audi- ence, to impress, to persuade, ,and to con- mand. The convention would have yawn- ed. if, it had not trembled under him, but the Jacobin club never found him tedious. Robespierre's style had no richness either of feeling or of phrase; no fervid original ity, no happy violences. If we turn from page of Rousseau to page of Robes pierre, we feel that the disciple has none of the thrilling sonorousness of the mas
 ter; the glow and the ardor have become metallic; the long-drawn plangency is parodied by shrill notes of splenetic com plaint. The rhythm has no broad wings the phrases have no quality of radiance the oratorical glimpses never lift the spir- it into new worlds.
 We are never conscious of those great pulses of strong emotion that shake and vibrate through the nobly measured pc riods of Cicero or Bossuet or Burke. Robespierre could not rival the vivid and highly y-colored Reclamation of Vergniaud; his speeches.were never heated with the ardent passion that poured like torrent of fire through some of the orations of Isnard; nor, above all, had he any mas- tery of that dialect of the Titans by which Danton convulsed an audience with fear, with amazement, or With the spirit of de- liant endeayor. The absence of these ln- tenser qualities did not make Robes pierre's speeches less effective for their own purpose. On the contrary, when the air has become torrid. and passionate ut terance is cheap, then severity in form is very likely to pass for good sense in sub- stance. That Robespierre had decent flu ency, copiousness, and finish, need hard ly be said. The French have an artistic sense; they have never accepted our own whimsical doctrine, that mans politics must be sagacious if his speaking is only clumpsy enough. Robespierre more than once showed himself ready with forci- ble reply on critical occasions; this only makes him an illustration the more of the good oratorical rule that he Is most likely to come well out of the emergency of an improvisation who Is usually most careful to prepare. Robespierre was as solicit ous about the correctness of his speech as he was about the neatness of his clothes: the polishing of his discourses than he grudged the time given every day to the powdering of his hair. Nothing was more remarkable than hls dexterity Tn present. ing his case. James Mill used to point out 10 his son among other skillful arts of Demosthenes these two; first that he said everything important to his purpose at the exact moment when he had brought the minds of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive 1t; second, that he insinuated gradually and indirectly into their minds ideas which would have reused opposition if they had been ex- pressed more directly. Mir. Mill once called the attention of the present writer to exactly the same kind of rhetorical skill in the speeches of Robespierre The reader may do well to turn, for excellent specimens of this, to the speech of Jan. Il, 1792, against the war, or that of May, 1794. against Atheism. The logic is strin- gent, but the premises are arbitrary. Robespierre is as one who should lterate indisputable propositions of abstract ge- ometry and mechanics while men are craving an architect who shall bridge the gulf of waters. Exuherance of high words no longer conceals the sterility of his ideas and the shallowness of his method. We should say of his speeches, and of so much of the speaking and writing of the time, that 1t is transparent and smooth, but there is none of that quality which the critics of painting call texture.
 We have still to mark tine trait that above every thing else gave to Ropespierre the trust and confidence of Paris. As men listened to him they had full faith in the integrity of the speaker. And Robes pierre in one way deserved this confi- dence. He was evidently the possessor of Q conscience. When the strain of cir cumstance in the last few months of his life pressed him toward wrong. at least before doing wrong, he was forced to lie to his own conscience. This IS kind of honesty as the world goes, In the Salon of l791 an artist exhibited Robes
 pierre's portrait. simply inscribiug it The
 Incorruptible. Throngs passed before it every day, and, ratified the honorable des- tignatfon by eager murmurs of approva
 The Democratic journals were loud if
 panegyric on the unsleeping sentinels of liberty. They loved to speak of
 him as the modern Fabricius, and delighted to recall the words of Py- rhus. that it is easier to turn the sun
 from its course than Frabricius from the
 path of honor. Patriotic parents eagerly
 besought him to be sponsor for their chil-
 dren.l Ladies of wealth, including at least one country woman ofour oWn vain-