ambition, avarice or personal resentments; and they did not fail to embrace it. While, on the one hand, demagogues fanned the popular flame by the vilest artifices; put on the semblance of patriotism, and by practising the most detestable hypocrisy, professed themselves to be the friends of the people, whom they were deluding into premeditated ruin. Even virtuous Frenchmen, and many of them possessing no inconsiderable share of discernment, soon fell victims to the machiavelian policy of these pretended patriots. These, in their turn, were sacrificed under the denunciations of their compeers, or other aspiring villains; and thus, others still in succession: until, finally, a fortunate military usurper, restored the monarchy in his own person, with absolute sway; and by substituting an horrible military despotism, in the place of a most sanguinary anarchy, confounded all ranks of his subjects in one vast mass of miserable slaves; who have been since employed in destroying the peace, freedom and happiness of their fellow-men, in other countries. Such have been, hitherto, the fruits of the French revolution; from which, at its commencement, myriads of good men fondly anticipated an issue precisely the reverse.[277] ----- Footnote 277: The deleterious, though—as it might almost be called—fascinating influence, of the revolution undertaken by the people of France, extended itself far and wide, prior to the murder of their king, even in countries under the milder forms of government: many characters of great worth were every where misled by the plausibility of the avowed designs of its authors and supporters; and in no country was the infatuation more general, than in the United States. In England itself, it begat a kind of political frenzy; and, had not the wise and salutary writings of the celebrated Burke arrested its progress, in good time, the most fatal consequences must have ensued. Among the literary and scientific men in Britain, who became deeply infected by the revolution-mania of that day, was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Miss Anna Seward (one of his biographers) remarks, that the Doctor has introduced into his _Botanic Garden_ an allegory, representing _Liberty_ “as a great form, slumbering within the iron cage and marble walls of the French Bastile, unconscious of his chains; till, touched by the patriot flame, he rends his flimsy bonds, lifts his colossal form, and rears his hundred arms over his foes; calls to the good and brave of every country, with a voice that echoes like the thunder of heaven to the polar extremities; “Gives to the winds his banner broad, unfurl’d, “And gathers in its shade the living world!” In consequence of Darwin’s use of this grossly misapplied figure;—as the issue of the French revolution too fatally proves it to have been,—Miss Seward offers the following apology for the subject of her friendly pen: