fied abuses to the light of heaven and vengeance stalks between the stilts; the howl of famished men, and the shriek of nursing mothers whose breasts are dry. The one at best a tonic, but mostly sedative in its operation, and harmless at any time: the other from the beginning a stimulant, and to be used on great occasions only, and for great objects. The Girondists sang the first four lines of it, as-except one who fell before his judges, struck through the heart with his own dagger-they turned away from the bloody tribunal which had condemned them to death in the name of the liberty they had done so much to gain. At the battle of Jemappes, at the most perilous hour of that long doubtful day, Dumouriez, finding his right wing almost without officers, and giving way before the fire of the Austrian infantry and a threatened charge of the huzzars, put himself at the head of his battalions and began to sing the Marseillaise hymn, then not many months old; the soldiers joined in the song, their courage rallied, they charged and carried all before them. And in August of the next year at the fête of the inauguration of the constitution (always a fête and an inauguration !) when the convention and the delegates from the primary assemblies, including eighty-six doyens-which seems to be French for the oldest inhabitant-to represent the eighty-six departments, assembled with a throng of "citizens generally" in the Place de la Bastille at four o'clock in the morning around a great fountain, called the Fountain of the Regeneration, as soon as the first beams of the sun appeared, they saluted him by singing stanzas to the air of the Marseillaise; and then the President took a cup, poured out before the sun the waters of regeneration, and drank thereof himself, and passed the cup to the oldest inhabitants, and they also drank thereof, in their parochial capacity. These ways are not the ways of our race. Indeed, even if Sir John Cope had begun to sing "God Save the King" at Preston-pans, or General Hawley had in like manner lifted up his voice at Falkirk, or General McDowell had favored the army with the "Star-Spangled Banner" at Manassas (always supposing it to be within the compass of his voice), I doubt much whether they would have produced any change in the fortunes of those battles; nay I fear they would have been greeted only with unseemly merriment. Sir John Cope's regulars would still have "fled in the utmost confusion at the first onset ;" General Hawley's veterans would have been "broke by the first volley" and "turned their backs and fled in the utmost consternation;" and General McDowell's raw volunteers, after fighting three hours and a half against an entrenched enemy in superior force, and driving him two miles before them, would still have been seized with a sudden panic and retreated in disgraceful disorder to Washington, leaving their enemy so crippled that he could not, even if he dared, pursue them.* But differing thus entirely in spirit and origin, these celebrated songs have one historical point in common, * See the extracts from Southern newspapers and letters in the "Rebellion Record." which is interesting in itself, and full of significance to such folk as say, Go to, let us make a national hymn: -they have both been perverted from their original purpose. The British hymn, made up, as we have seen, of an air from France, and words from Jacobite Scotland, into a song praying for the scattering, the confounding, the frustrating, and the general damnation of the reigning family, with its words altered by this man and the other, and its melody doctored by this musician and its harmony by the other, has come to be the recognised formal expression of loyalty to the very house for whose overthrow it first petitioned. And as to the Marseillaise, the purpose of its author is sadly told in his sad fate. Soon proscribed as a royalist, he fled from France, and took refuge in the Alps. But the echoes of the chord that he so unwittingly had struck pursued him even to the mountain tops of Switzerland. What," said he to a peasant guide in the upper fastnesses of the border range, "is this song that I hear-Allons, enfans de la patrie ?" "That? That is the Marseillaise." And thus, suffering from the excesses that he had innocently stimulated, he first learned the name which his countrymen had given to the song that he had written.* * I have reason to believe that complete copies of the Marseillaise Hymn are not so common as to make a reproduction of the whole song unwelcome here. Most copies contain only three stanzas, the first, second, and sixth, and those only are sung as the national hymn; but the third, fourth, and fifth, are interesting from the marks they bear of the occasion on which they were written. In the fifth, there is even a denunciation of Marshal Bouillé, by name: But from the purpose built into its very structure, and breathing in its every word, the Marseillaise canCHANT DE GUERRE DE L'ARMÉE DU RHIN. BY ROUGET D'LISLE. 1. Allons, enfans de la patrie, Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! 2. Que veut cette horde d'esclaves, De traitres, de rois conjurés? Pour qui ces ignobles entraves, Ces fers dès longtemps preparés ? Français, pour vous; ah, quel outrage! Quels transports il doit exciter! C'est vous qu'on ose méditer De rendre à l'antique esclavage. Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! 3. Quoi! ces cohortes étrangères Les maitres de nos destinées! Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! Marchons! qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! not be perverted. It is a war song, and is only suited to the periods when the liberties of the nation are threatened. Therefore, other national airs are per 4. Tremblez, tyrans! et vous, perfides, Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! 5. Français, en guerriers magnanimes, Épargnez ces tristes victimes, Dechirent le sein de leur mère. Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons. Marchons qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! 6. Amour sacré de la patrie, Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs Liberté, liberté chérie, Combats avec tes defenseurs ! Sous nos drapeaux que la Victoire Accoure à tes mâles accents; Que tes ennemis expirants Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire! Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! STRASBOURG, 1792. |