The Scioto Company turned out to be a swindling land-company, the precursor of many that have resembled it. The lands they offered had been bought of the Ohio Company, but were never paid for. When the poor French barbers, fiddlers, and bakers, as they are called in a contemporary narrative, reached the banks of _la belle rivière_, they found that their title-deeds were good for nothing, and that the woods produced savages instead of sugar. Some died of privation, some were scalped, and some found their way to New Orleans. The few who remained eventually obtained a grant of a few acres from the Ohio Company, by paying for them over again. In the mean time the French Revolution had broken out, and Barlow saw the visions and dreamed the dreams of the enthusiasts of that day. He dropped the land business, and he dropped his New England prejudices, religious as well as political, and his New England common sense. Connecticut men who wander into other lands and other opinions seem peculiarly subject to such violent transformations. Some of the most ignivorous of our Southern countrymen are the offspring of Connecticut; and, strange as it may appear, the sober land of the pumpkin and onion exports more arbiters of elegance and punctilio, more judges without appeal of horses, wine, and beauty, more gentlemen of the most sensitive and demonstrative honor, than any other Northern State. Inspired by the instincts of his race, Barlow fancied he saw the approach of a new era of perfection. To hasten its advent in England, he translated Volney's "Ruins," and went to London to publish his translation. There he wrote his "Advice to the Privileged Classes," a political pamphlet, and became an active member of the Constitution Society. The Society commissioned him as delegate to the French Convention, with an address of congratulation and a gift of a thousand pairs of shoes. The Convention rewarded him with the dignity of _Citoyen Francais_. Barlow adopted the character, and carried it out. He sang at a supper a parody of "God save the King," composed by himself. "Fame, let thy trumpet sound! Tell all the world around How Capet fell! And when great George's poll Shall in the basket roll, Let mercy then control The Guillotine! "God save the Guillotine, Till England's King and Queen Her power shall prove; When all the sceptred crew Have paid their homage to The Guillotine!" A few years before, Barlow had dedicated the "Vision of Columbus" to poor Capet, whose destruction he celebrates so pleasantly,--with many assurances of the gratitude of America, and of his own veneration. "_Coelum, non animum_," would never have been written, if Horace had properly understood Connecticut character.