A Sequel to Don Juan — page 220: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DON JUAN. : 211 XVIII. This torrent of demoniac argument Fell on the lady’s ear, like the simoom On him whose steps are o’er the desart bent, And who in sight of safety finds a tomb.— Those words like daggers to her bosom went ; Hope fled—and on her face a fearful gloom Spread rapidly :—she thought she heard the knell Of one she loved too tenderly and well! his private life, and a man of the strictest probity and honour. Let not the reader imagine that we would attempt here to justify the enormities of which he was the author, or the terrible measures which he sanctioned; we merely wish to record our sentiments relative to the motives of this diabolical conduct. We maintain that Robespierre acted not from an innate love of cruelty and bloodshed, but from a con- viction that the happiness of his country was only to be ensured by the death of all those who were likely to oppose the principles of a complete revolution and the establish- ment of a purely republican government. He was a mistaken man; and he doubt- less shuddered at the horrible alternative which he deemed himself compelled to adopt But he could not persuade himself that France could be rendered happy unless the very roots of aristocracy were exterminated: and under this impression he consigned thousands to the scaffold. In order to regenerate his native land, he considered it necessary to cut off the seniors of the existing genera!ion, and prepare the way for a new race whose ideas should be only those of republicanism and universal equality. He thought it proper to sacrifice the lives of a comparative few, in order to ensure the felicity of the millions ; and it was with these views that he kept the axe of the guillotine incessantly at work. He performed the disagreeable duty of a patriot, according to his own ideas, and chastened the country the happiness of which he fondly deemed himself called upon to establish upon a solid foundation. It cannot be said that a love of gain or any exalted ideas of ambition or self-aggrandizement urged him thus to act; and when we see that he pursued so strange a path without being in- fluenced by any of those motives which generally excite men to slaughter or to crime, we must look for the causes in another direetion. We find them in conscientious, disinterested, but miserably mistaken views; and we find also that a man of a naturally humane disposition, became, by the force of idiosyncratic convictions, the most sanguinary tyrant that ever deluged a country with the blood of its citizens. Comichbooksneo iin