A MAN OF THE NATION. Al 
affairs of France. Thus we shall see, under the name of 
Michaux, amidst the fellow labourers of our academician, 
the celebrated Darcon, who had emigrated, but returned 
to his country. Still, what occasion is there to drag our 
audience through individual instances, when a general 
reflection will lead to the same result? The Convention 
was the arena where the chiefs of the factions that 
divided the country, went to combat; yet it was in the 
Clubs that they created those adherents, and obtained 
that bodily strength, whose action, and even whose mere 
presence, often sufficed to annul the effects of the most 
eloquent discourses. If the Convention saw the thunder- 
cloud burst, it was outside its walls that it began to 
threaten, that it swelled, that it acquired an irresistible 
power. Men could not then acquire political influence 
without attending daily either at the Jacobins or at the 
Cordeliers, and mixing and taking part in all their de- 
bates: well, Gentlemen, Carnot did not belong to any 
of those associations; never did a word of his echo in 
those Clubs. In those troublous times, Carnot made 
himself exclusively a man of the nation. 
The character was high, but not without danger. 
Robespierre especially was jealous of him, and ex- 
claimed in one of his harangues: “'To have taken the 
command of all the military operations, is decidedly an 
act of egotism ; obstinately refusing to take any part in 
the affairs of internal police, is contriving means of ac- 
commodation with the enemies of the country.”—He 
said to Cambon on another occasion: “I am in despair 
at not comprehending anything of the intersection of 
lines and tints, that I see on those maps. Ah! if I had 
studied the military art in my youth, I should not now 
be obliged, whenever our armies are treated of, to sub- 
