CLOOTS, JEAN BAPTISTE, Baron, better known as Anacharsis Cloots, was perhaps the most singular of all the enthusiasts brought to the surface of society by the French rev olution. He was born near Cleves in 1755, and from his 11th year was educated in Paris. Through ardent study of the ancients, his imagination, naturally extravagant, became so heated with the political constitutions of Greece, that he undertook the mis Sion of-spreading the democracy of Sparta and Athens throughout the world; and with this view he traveled through most of the countries of Europe, under the name of Anacharsis, everywhere expending upon his philanthropic Schemes large sums of his very considerable private fortune. The union of all nations in one family was the ulti mate aim of all his cosmopolitan schemes. The breaking out of the French revolution brought his enthusiasm to a head, as he saw in it the fulfillment of his dreams and plans. He returned to Paris, constituted himself the " orator or advocate of the human race," and presented numerous petitions to the national assembly. On the 19th of June, 1790, he appeared at the bar of the assembly at the head of a number of strangers, dressed in the costumes of different nations, as the representatives of the whole earth, and presented an address of thanks for the stand made against the tyrants of the world, and a request that all the strangers then in Paris should be made French citizens. As a member of the constituent assembly, he offered to raise a Prussian corps, to be called the vandal legion; proposed to lay a price on the head of the duke of Brunswick; called the king Of Prussia the Sardanapalus of the north; and eulogized count Ankarstrom for having assassinated the king of Sweden. What is singular is, that these extravagances were received often with storms of applause. He called for the apotheosis of Gutenberg in the Pantheon, as the "creator of the word," and also for that of an apostate priest. On the
occasion of the general armament of France, ho deposited 12,000 francs on the altar of the country. In 1792, he was elected a member of the convention, and continued to weary the house with his extravagant motions. lie hated Christianity no less than roy alty; declared himself the enemy of its founder; and, as an adherent of the worship of reason, preached downright. inaterialisin. At the trial of Louis XVI. he gave his vote for death "in the name.of the human race," and took occasion at the same time to pass sentence on the king of Prussia. Some time after, on the motion of Robespierre; he was excluded from the club of the Jacobins, on the ground that he was wealthy and a noble man. Robespierre hated and feared the enthusiast; and when St. Just brought his impeachment against Hebert and his adherents, C. was involved in it, and was condemned to death, and executed Mar. 23, 1794. He heard his sentence with the greatest composure, comforted the companions of his fate, and continued to preach materialism to his friend Hebert on the way to the place of execution. At the foot of the scaffold, he requested that his turn might be last, in order that he might have time to establish a few more principles, while the heads of the others were falling. He then laid his head with equanimity on the block, after asserting his innocence, and protesting against his sentence, "in the name of the human race." He left a number of writings, all of the same extravagant character, of which we may mention here Certitude des Preures du Mokammidisme (Lond. 1780); L' Orateur the Genre Humain (1791); and Base Constitutionale de 4 Republique du Genre Hu main (1793).