Jean Paul, was born at Bandry in Neu-chatel in 1744. After passing some time in the study of physical and medical science, he resolved to quit his native country and go in search of a wider sphere of activity. We find him accordingly in Edinburgh in 1774, supporting himself by giving lessons in French; and about the same time, his first publication, The Chains of Slavery, written in English, made its appearance. This work he afterwards translated into French, and published at Paris in 1792. His second publication, De l'Homme, ou des Principes et des Lois de l'Influence de l'Ame sur le Corps, et du Corps sur l'Ame, appeared at Amsterdam in 1775, and had the honour of being subjected to the polemical sarcasm of Voltaire, who undertook to refute it in the Gazette Litteraire. Marat still continued to pursue his physical inquiries in a somewhat fitful and irregular manner, and produced his *Recherches Médicales sur l'Electricité* at Paris in 1784. But he was not destined to succeed in this department. His morbid ambition and immoderate vanity scorned to have his upward progress as a scientific reformer checked by the patient observation and laborious experiment requisite to wring from nature her simplest secret. He nevertheless kept writing and publishing his empty paradoxes with surprising activity and boldness, furious at any one who dared to contradict him. But writing and rage failed to supply Marat with the means of subsistence, and we accordingly find him ere long in the streets of Paris, a needy vender of quack medicines. This position he exchanged in 1789 for that of veterinary surgeon at the D'Artois stables. Such had been the antecedents of Jean Paul Marat when the flames of the Revolution broke out in France. He flung himself with wild energy into the heart of this fearful movement, and gained for himself a name of infamy and shame. Marat had tried his hand at political philanthropy in 1787, in his *Plan de Legislation Criminelle*; but his regular political career commenced with the issue of his journal *Le Publiciste Parisien* on the 12th September 1789, shortly after the promulgation of the "rights of man." He afterwards exchanged the title of this paper for that of *L'Ami du Peuple*, a publication which soon acquired a fearful celebrity. This periodical was filled with the most violent denunciations against the court, the ministers, the Assembly, the National Guard, and, in short, against all the constituted authorities of society. These writings of "The People's Friend," read aloud every evening at the squares and public places of Paris, captivated the attention, and excited the passions of the needy and the turbulent. In October 1789 Marat joined the club of the Cordeliers, founded by the celebrated Danton. Having proposed, to the horror of the Assembly, to hang the 800 deputies on 800 trees of the Tuileries, commencing with Mirabeau, Marat was hunted from one wretched den to another, till the imprisonment of the royal family, and the formation of the new municipality by the republicans on the 10th August 1792; when, emerging from his obscurity, the "People's Friend," arrested and imprisoned the suspects, and as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, signed the circular which exhorted the whole of France to imitate Paris, and massacre the so-called aristocrats. On being returned by Paris as a deputy to the National Convention, Marat was denounced in the assembly for having advocated in his paper the guillotining of 270,000 persons as fit objects of public vengeance. He not only admitted the charge, but defended it with great confidence, and with an air of sincerity, as the most effective method for saving the innocent, and for appeasing the people of France. His persuasive tongue not only silenced the angry clamour of the Convention, but even converted their rage into pity, and their shrieks into shouts of applause for "The Friend of the People." Whereupon Marat drew forth a pistol, and placing it to his head, said, if they had passed the accusation decree he would have blown out his brains. The Girondins had long been the objects of Marat's most virulent hatred, and he used every effort for their proscription. This party succeeded in summoning their relentless adversary before the revolutionary tribunal, but he was acquitted, as a matter of course, and carried in triumph by the populace back to the Convention. He soon after assumed the dictatorship, sounded the alarm on the 31st of May 1793, and witnessed the downfall of the Girondins, an event which he only survived till the 13th of July, when the assassin's knife of Charlotte Corday, a young Norman lady, who found access to his squalid apartment, put an end to his atrocities, and "did France a great service." (See Corday.) His death, however, was only hastened by a few days, for he was already, says a historian, "ill of revolution fever,—of what other malady this history had rather not name." He was living in a state of want and wretchedness, for it had never been his aim to amass wealth. He on one occasion sold his bed to enable him to publish his journal; and even when he had reached the summit of power, he continued to reside in a mean apartment with the wife of his printer, who is said to have loved him. After his death he was regarded as a martyr of liberty, and almost adored by the Jacobins. He had Pantheon honours and a public funeral decreed him. The dust of Mirabeau had to make way for him, and his heart was enshrined in a golden urn.