CAMILLE BENOIT, the most highly fitted of all the literary men who took part in the first French Revolution, was born at Guise in Picardy in 1762. After a singularly brilliant career at school and college he adopted the profession of the law; but the frivolous levity of his manner precluded the possibility of his permanent success at the bar. He then began to take part in the political questions which at that time agitated France. Deeply versed in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, he conceived that the social constitution of these countries might be applied to remedy the state of anarchy and disorder into which his native country had at this time fallen. With this idea he published his two first works: *La Philosophie au peuple Français* (1788) and *La France libre* (1789). On hearing of the dismissal of Necker he rushed to the Palais Royale, where he soon infected a large multitude of bystanders with the fanaticism with which he was himself inspired. Pulling some leaves off an adjoining tree, he fixed one in his own hat and distributed the rest among his hearers. This was the origin of the national cockade and the prelude of the insurrection. Desmoulins next began to publish, under the title of *Les Révolutions de Flandres et de Brabant*, a periodical which gave a strong impulse to the march of events. This work owed its success as much to the exaggerated sentiments and bold theories which it embodied as to the brilliant colouring and rapid energy of style which it displayed side by side with the most revolting cynicism. An example of this latter character may be found in the title which the author assumed as *procureur-général de la Lanterne*. In 1790, Desmoulins married a young French woman, by name Lucile Duplessis, with whom he received a considerable fortune. Of the sixty persons who attached their names to his marriage contract, there remained six months later only two, Danton and Robespierre; all the rest were either in exile or guillotined. The charge against Desmoulins' complicity in the September massacres has been now proved to be utterly devoid of foundation. At the trial of Louis XVI. Desmoulins voted for the king's execution, "though too late, perhaps," he said, "for the honour of the convention." He now threw the whole weight of his influence and genius into the cause of the Mountain against the Girondins; and, by his satirical pamphlet entitled *Histoire des Girondins*, contributed not a little to bring on the trial and secure the execution of these ill-fated men. But this was more than Camille had intended; and when he saw his twenty-two victims led to the scaffold, he cried out in accents of despair, "Tis I who have brought them to the gibbet." From this time he greatly moderated the extravagance of his sentiments, though too late to benefit either his country or himself. In 1793 he published the first numbers of the *Vieux Cordeliers*, which produced an immense sensation. In his previous works he had undertaken the task of unfolding the abuses of the old régime; in this he set himself to expose the horrors of the new. Taking Tacitus and Juvenal for his models, he traced out, under the thin disguise of ancient forms, the crimes of the modern tyrants of France. He had even the boldness, in the face of decrees which inserted terror in the order of the day, to propose the formation of a committee of clemency. This ill-judged moderation drew down upon its proposer the fiercest execrations of the still powerful Mountain; and Desmoulins' haughty reply to the motion of Robespierre, that the published numbers of the Vieux Cordeliers should be burnt, made that all-powerful despot his mortal enemy. Soon afterwards appeared the seventh number of his journal, which concluded with the memorable words, "The gods are astir!" On the night of the 30th of March 1794, Desmoulins, along with his friend Danton, was arrested at the instigation of St Just; and shortly afterwards these two prime-movers of the Revolution perished on the same scaffold. On the evening before his death, Desmoulins wrote from his prison a letter to his wife, which, indeed, was never delivered to her, but which has come down to our days, a monument of sincere and ardent affection. This letter alone is sufficient to prove that Desmoulins' heart was not susceptible to impulses of high and virtuous thought, and makes us deplore that the faculties he possessed should have been so early and so completely abused.