some particulars concerning his companions in misfortune, which will give an idea of the kind of crowd upon which the troops continued to pour a hail of bullets for half an hour, until the last wretch who failed to gain a harbour of refuge had ceased to move or groan. There were women among the horrified group in the wineshop, two of whom had just been purchasing provisions for their dinner; a little clerk despatched on an errand by his master; some speculators from the Exchange and other men of business; some workmen, hardly any of them in their working blouses. One of those poor fellows was almost mad with grief; he had been returning with his wife to dine with his family at the Faubourg Montmartre, when at the first discharge both he and his wife fell. The husband contrived to pick himself up, and was dragged by pitying hands into the wineshop; but the poor wife was killed. The despair of the husband was terrible, and he could hardly be withheld from rushing out into the hail of bullets in the street in search of her. He was afterwards arrested and transported to Cayenne for uttering threats against the President.

DETAILS OF THE MASSACRE; SLAUGHTER OF NON-COMBATANTS.

Various witnesses have given particulars as to the extent and duration of the massacre. The testimony of all of them coincides in certain particulars, namely. as to the entirely unexpected nature of the attack, the long extent of the line of boulevards on which it was effected, and its completely indiscriminate nature. "Words cannot give an adequate idea of such an act of barbarism," says an eye-witness; and he goes on to tell how he saw shots fired "by thousands" on inoffensive people, without the slightest necessity. Another describes the doubtful shot as having been fired in the air, as might be seen by the smoke rising perpendicularly; whereupon, as on a given signal, the firing and the bayonet charges on the people commenced. One man, who took refuge in a gateway in the Rue Taitbout, and who saw a woman shot dead within ten paces of him, declares emphatically that there were neither insurgents nor barricades to be seen,-nothing, he says, but "hunters and flying game." Another witness uses almost the same term, declaring that the soldiers lay in wait for passing citizens at the corners of the streets, like sportsmen stalking game, and fired at the wounded who raised themselves on their hands and knees and attempted to crawl away. The soldiers fired down gratings into the cellars where the inhabitants of many houses had taken refuge. Until nightfall the cannonade and the fire of musketry continued. Some

houses, like the Sallandronze warehouse, were completely gutted. The men could no longer be restrained by their officers, who, in some instances, sought in vain to moderate their rage; they seemed drunk with fury and cruelty. Some of them made bets with their comrades that they would hit a certain man or woman flying across an open place. A roar of laughter arose each time one of these horrible wagers was won. One woman was found dead with a loaf of bread under her arm. A printer's boy dragged himself into an entry to die, with the proofsheet he was carrying still grasped in his hand. A poor streetseller of lemonade, with his tin fountain on his back; an errand boy of thirteen deliberately put up and shot, in spite of his childish appeal for mercy; an old white-haired man, with an umbrella in his hand, were among the "enemies" shot down by the soldiery. The lesson given to them had borne good fruit, they were quite ready to revenge the insults of 1830 and 1848; and, among other achievements, signalised themselves by entering a dozen houses of the "Bedouins," under pretext that that there had been shots fired from the windows, and bayoneting every one of the inmates.

The soldiers killed for the sake of killing. One who saw the dead removed for burial, declared that they lay in heaps-men, women, and children; blouses and broad-cloth mixed in indescribable confusion; heads, arms, and legs all mingled together. The streets were literally running with blood; and each of the young trees, round which hollows had been dug to retain the water, stood in a gory pool.

That night the troops bivouacked on the Boulevards, by the light of huge watch fires. There is good evidence, also, that distributions of money, generally at the rate of ten francs per man, were made to the troops in acknowledgment of their exertions. "The officers were breaking open rouleaux of Louis like sticks of chocolate," says an eye-witness. There were drinking and carousing and singing of songs among the bivouacs,—while mournful women were searching with lanterns among the heaps of corpses for lost husbands, brothers, and sons.

THE SUCCESS of the Coup D'ÉTAT; THE PLEBISCITE.

With the massacre, the success of the coup d'état was secured. Paris was petrified with horror at first; then the feeling seemed that of a frightened child, mingled with a strange puerile curiosity. The city was full of bearers carrying away corpses from the hospitals and the places to which they had been taken when the blood-stained streets were cleared of the heaps of dead; and yet the people were out again, looking with greedy curiosity

at the traces of the carnage,-standing in gaping groups in front of houses shattered by cannon balls,-putting their fingers in the pools of blood,-pointing out to each other the traces which showed where wounded wretches had dragged themselves along the pavement in search of some corner where they might sink down and die in peace. The committee of defence made some spasmodic efforts on the morning of the 5th to keep up the resistance, but it was useless; a barricade or two was still defended for a time by a few indomitable workmen; but Paris would not rise,it was cowed by the atrocities that had been committed. The men of the Elysée had their way; and Louis Napoleon could make his preparations at leisure for the farce called a "plébiscite," which was to raise him permanently to the supreme power by "the will of the French nation,”—a nation to whose provinces De Morny had sent despatches announcing that the National Assembly had been dissolved amid general division,- before the policemen commissioned to arrest the members had fulfilled their sorry task.

TESTIMONY OF AN IMPARTIAL WITNESS; PUBLIC FEELING IN ENGLAND.

A gentleman, who has since won for himself an eminent position in literature, Mr. George Augustus Sala, then a young man, happened to arrive in Paris just at the time when the coup d'état was in full operation. He came upon it quite unexpectedly, and gave a powerful and graphic account of what he saw and heard in Charles Dickens's Household Words, under the expressive heading, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Musketry." His account was written, it must be remembered, while the impression produced by these scenes was still fresh in his memory, for the occurrences described were not a fortnight old. He walked through Paris on the day after the massacre, and this is what he says about it :-"With the merits or demerits of the struggle I have nothing to do. But I saw the horrible brutality and ferocity of this ruthless soldiery. I saw them bursting into shops to search for arms or fugitives, dragging the inmates forth like sheep from a slaughter-house, smashing the furniture and windows. I saw them, when making a passage for a convoy of prisoners, or a

waggonful of wounded, strike wantonly at the bystanders with the butt ends of their muskets, and thrust at them with their bayonets. . . . So much for what I saw. I know, as far as a man can know from trustworthy persons, from eye-witnesses, from patent and notorious report, that the military, who are now the sole and supreme masters of that unhappy city and country, have been perpetrating most frightful barbarities since the riots were over. I know that from the Thursday I arrived to the Thursday I left Paris they were daily shooting their prisoners in cold blood. . . . I know that in the Champ de Mars one hundred and fifty-six men were executed; and I heard one horrible story (so horrible that I can scarcely credit it) that a batch of prisoners were tied together with ropes, like a faggot of wood, and that the struggling mass was fired into until not a limb moved nor a groan was uttered. I know-and my informant was a clerk in the office of the Ministry of War—that the official return of insurgents killed was two thousand and seven, and of soldiers fifteen. Rather long odds!"

In England the news of these things created a profound sensation; the feeling was everywhere one of indignation and horror, and the English newspapers spoke out in such frank fashion that they were promptly prohibited in France. The Queen wrote immediately to the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, to desire that nothing might be said by the Government that could by any means be made to assume an appearance of approval of the coup d'état; and Lord Palmerston, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had indiscreetly used some phrases that were interpreted by the French ambassador, Count Walewski, as expressions of concurrence in the course adopted by the President, and by him reported to the French Minister, M. Turgot, was dismissed from his post. At a later period England acknowledged in the Emperor of the French a faithful and friendly ally; but the means by which he attained to power were never forgotten, and especially came back to remembrance after that fatal day of Sedan, where, amid a scene of slaughter, he lost the throne to which he had mounted by bloodshed and wrong.

H. W. D.

GREAT MOVEMENTS AND REACTION. T is giving expression to a truism to say, that many of those popular moverments which have redounded in blessing to mankind, have come as reactions against what could no longer be passively endured; the tide having marked its lowest ebb would not remain stationary, but rather began to return towards those high-water marks which had been frequently touched in other days. This was so at the dawn of the Reformation; the cup of papal iniquity was full; and having in the printingpress an engine of new power to work with, one true man, as it were, had it in his power literally to chase a thousand enemies of the right, and so to set in motion the inevitable reaction against priestcraft and tyranny. It was so at the Revolution of 1688; the dreary and forbidding political outlook was at once the darkest hour of night and the hour before the dawn. By a beneficent law, evils are thus made to bring their own correctives, while in the end the representatives of wrong and of oppression, against their personal will and design, defeat their own purposes. There is, of course, considerable danger incurred when the

leaders in a national movement are themselves too low down in the mire, or are too blinded by class prejudices, to see clearly in what the cure for grievances consists, and thus to realize what a suffering people really require for their elevation. The risks and penalties referred to were painfully exemplified during the course of that French Revolution which alarmed and threatened Europe in the very days when our own more favoured country was beginning to taste of the grateful fruits resulting from the seed-sowing of the Methodist pioneers. France passed through an ordeal of blood and fire such as might have fallen to the lot of England, had not a determined band of religious and moral reformers been raised up to draw into the fold of the Church those classes of the people who were becoming dangerous to the State, in proportion to their ignorance and lawlessness in daily life.

ENGLAND UNDER GEORGE II.

The triumph of the Protestant Succession was really ensured in 1688, as the outcome of the Revolution; but nevertheless the enemies of Popery manifested joy both unfeigned and deep, when, about a quarter of

a century later, the heir of the House of Brunswick quietly took possession of the crown. The friends of order and of true religion regarded this transition as one of those bloodless revolutions which reveal the hand of God in history, and no right-minded person will be prepared to challenge their conclusion. It is true that the roseal promises of better days which had seemed to tinge the horizon of the Revolution had not been fulfilled; but there was at least an augury of good in the bare fact that the machinations of the enemy were defeated. Though neither George I. nor his successor was a pattern of Christian propriety, they were both representatives of those principles of civil and religious liberty which were dear to the English people, and beneath the ascendency of which true progress can alone be made.

Still, as years passed by, it was found that the mere profession of Protestanism and nothing else was not more promising than trusting for fruit to a sapless and dead tree. The Reformation, hailed in England as a mighty deliverance, soon struck its roots deep in the national affection, and the history of the early and later Puritans is in itself the history of a great revival following close upon the receding darkness of Popery. When, however, the Puritans passed away, they left no successors; and the earlier years of the eighteenth century were a time of religious deadness, of moral and political corruption such as could not easily be paralleled in the annals of our country. In the fourth decade of the century, under George II., progress was indeed made, but it was a progress from bad to worse; the reaping was not worthy of the seed-sowing.

In the palace, during two reigns, there had been domestic strife, the King and heirapparent presenting a sorry example to the people by quarrelling with one another; and while politicians, from the chief minister downwards, were commonly unscrupulous as regarded the means they used for accomplishing their purposes, the upper classes lived for themselves alone, indulging in sports as everyday pastimes which were less civilized than characteristic of the times. With the main roads too badly kept to admit of travelling with pleasure or even with safety, few persons knew much about the country beyond their own immediate locality; but while those who ventured on a journey risked inconveniences arising from accident and highwaymen, those who remained behind lived in dread of the foot-pads and burglars who swarmed in the towns. Left to themselves, without day or Sunday schools, and without any effort being made by pastor or missionary to ameliorate their sadly degraded lot, the common people were then, in a sense we can hardly understand, the dangerous classes.

Drinking and debauchery had risen to such a height in 1736, that the Justices of Middlesex petitioned Parliament to exercise its authority in checking the evil. In and about London there were 20,000 gin-shops, and day after day the newspapers recorded the fate of persons who had died suddenly from over-drinking. Parliament passed a repressive measure, but the disease lay too deep for surface treatment; and thus the mob hooted their defiance at Government in the streets, subjected informers to a mud-bath in the gutters, and drank gin, as before, under fancy names. Then systematic smuggling was not only largely carried on, but was condoned by the public; and the fate of Porteous, at Edinburgh, was not only a specimen of popular lynching, it was an example of how an organized lawless mob could revenge itself on the Legislature. Daily becoming more estranged from morality and religion, the common people showed in other pastimes than drinking the downward tendency of human nature when parted from the influence of the Gospel. Savage sports, such as would have found favour in a heathen amphitheatre, were chiefly in request, pugilistic combats, dog- and cockfights, bull-baiting and rat-worrying; while on secluded and dangerous parts of the coast demon-like wreckers allured ships to destruction for the sake of booty. The children of the poor, both in town and country, were born to a heritage of humiliation; even the commonplace things of civilization, now the birthright of all who exemplify soberness and industry, were beyond their reach. picture drawn by Raikes, about a generation later, of the noise and ribaldry with which the children of Gloucester filled the streets of that town during the Sunday hours, was no exaggeration. Gloucester was a very typical case; what occurred there was similar to what happened in every town throughout England in the reign of George II. The churches and chapels were as ill-attended as the prisons were crowded; and on all hands there were longings for deliverance from the dominion of sin.

The

The literature of any period is undoubtedly a mirror which correctly reflects the people's moral and religious life. The early part of the eighteenth century was something more than the Augustan age of English letters; it represents the opening of a new epoch, when newspapers and periodicals began to exercise that influence on the popular mind which has now grown into one of the most potent forces of our modern civilization. When, however, we come to look into the moral character of the writings chiefly in vogue, we find little reason for satisfaction. We retain admiration for the galaxy of brilliant stars such a'sAddison and Steele, Goldsmith,