400 ROBESPIERRE ; 
resolved itself into a contest of opinions. The fierce party strife 
existing between the aristocracy and the people being no longer, in 
the slightest degree, to be controlled, the members of the National 
Assembly endeavoured to moderate the virulence of the adverse 
factions by leading the monarch from the prison, where the public 
sympathy at least was extended to him, once more to the throne, 
which was shorn of all its former charms and splendour, save its 
giddy height, and where heart-burnings and dark suspicions con- 
stituted his only guard. The prophetic warning of Robespiérre, 
conveyed in these words, ‘‘ Cesar was assassinated because his per- 
son was inviolable,” was but too strictly realized when the king, 
being sorely pressed on by all parties, found there was but one al- 
ternative, either entirely to suppress and subdue the Revolution 
itself, or to become its certain and hapless victim. Having been 
thus placed in the midst of the contending parties, he became, as it 
were, a target to the one and a shield to the other: all parties, 
therefore, may be said to have dipped their hands in his blood. 
The mystery and doubt in which Robespiérre’s designs are in- 
volved admit of no elucidation, according to those ordinary rules by 
which human ambition is generally supposed to be guided ; and all 
inferences being more or less involved in contradictions, we must be 
satisfied with the explanation afforded by Bailleul, to which we 
have already referred, which stands alone in bearing the test of in- 
vestigation. We are still, however, at a loss to account for the 
success with which, for a long time, he pursued his resolution to 
found a new social institution among the people, who were neither 
able nor willing to enter into projects as little consonant with the 
feelings of the nation at large, as they were ill suited to the times 
in which they were proposed. It is true that all his measures, 
however severe, failed to exterminate the actual existing society, 
which was to be superseded by the ideal fraternity conceived in his 
fertile imagination ; but he nevertheless shook the former to its very 
foundation, in a manner unparalleled in the history of nations. 
The question, then, which remains to be decided is, how or by what 
co-operating circumstances did he acquire and wield that unrestrain- 
ed popular influence which enabled him to indulge his chimeras, 
and to carry devastation, fire, and sword, into the remotest corners 
of the land? We must here repeat that fickle nature had not en- 
dowed the poor lawyer of Arras with those dazzling talents and 
personal graces which, fastening on the attention, frequently extract 
an acquiescence from auditors before time has been afforded them 
duly to consider, and to argue, the subject in dispute. He governed 
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