Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/30

10 expressed, however, a strong desire of being taken to a lawyer." What became of him is uncertain. One account is that a benevolent person sheltered him, but that on his beginning a few days afterwards to plunder the house, he was forced to send him to Charenton lunatic asylum. Dorset, however, could not ascertain his fate. The capture of the Bastille, or the procession which followed it, was witnessed by several Englishmen. Some were active participants, others simple spectators. Among the former was William Playfair, whose opinions, like his fortunes, underwent singular vicissitudes. A brother of John Playfair, the Edinburgh mathematician and geologist, he was a civil engineer, and had settled in Paris. He had patented a new rolling-machine, and in 1789 joined Joel Barlow in launching the Scioto Company, which in two months disposed of 50,000 acres in Ohio to two convoys of French emigrants. When Barlow was called back to America, Playfair acted as sole agent. He must have assisted in the capture of the Bastille, for he was one of the eleven or twelve hundred inhabitants of the St. Antoine quarter who on the previous day had formed themselves into a militia, and who, with the exception of a few detained by patrol duty, headed the attack on the