Chambers's papers for the people - 1850 Author:Chambers W. and R. ltd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VALERIE DUCLOS: SOME LEAVES FROM THE JOURNAL OF A FRENCH PHYSICIAN. THE revolutionary outburst at the end of the eighteenth century not only consumed the t... more »ime-worn governmental institutions of France—shielded, liallowed, sanctified, as the dreamers of the world believed them to be, by the ' awful hoar ' of many ages of traditional glory—but, in the intoxication and madness of sudden and unexpected triumph, snapped temporarily asunder many of the wholesome bonds by which society can alone be restrained and held together; withering up by its fiery breath alike the poison-trees of unjust privilege, and the gentle and holy influences which shed light and calm upon the shadow stretching from the cradle to the tomb ; and from which alone the multitude, in their daily walks of life, can hope to derive wise and healthy counsel and guidance. Of this trite truth, visible to the dullest eyes that ever glanced across the stormy chaos of the first revolution, the following incidents, drawn from the domestic history of France during that troubled period, furnish one of the many vivid illustrations which, for the warning and instruction of the world, light up pages that seem to visibly palpitate beneath the eye with all the fierce emotions which can stir and inflame the human heart. The dress of the story is alone changed : in its incidents and catastrophe it remains unaltered. The author has but paraphrased, as it were, a few leaves of a volume, every line of which is full of suggestive meaning to mankind—-to the rulers and the ruled, to the Christian philosopher as well as to the merely analytical student of the moral phenomena of social and individual existence. One afternoon towards the close of the month Brumaire, year 2, of the French Republic—November 1793 by Christian reckoning—...« less