ABSTRACT
There is something in sorrow, which makes us desire to conceal it; but where all mourn, concealment is impossible. A most deplorable effect of a long career of profligate expenditure, of cruel and unwise enactments, is driving from the nation men of property and talent, whose loss we cannot replace. Mr. Cobbett’s experience of mankind, his knowledge of life and public men, gave him advantages over every writer that preceded him. “The Bastille consists of eight very strong towers, with walls of freestone, 10 feet thick at the top. It appears that the Bastille was destined to prisoners whose destruction was resolved on, either by apparent forms of justice, or by the punishment of the oubliettes, which was inflicted by causing the victims to be placed on a trap-door, through which they fell on wheels armed with points and cutting edges; others were drowned with a stone about their necks, or stifled in dungeons.
