exposing with scorching and unsparing sarcasms the evils of the day,
especially in the department of finance. He laid bare to the eyes of the
nation the sores of the body politic,--the accumulated evils of
centuries. He exposed all the shams and lies to which ministers had
resorted. He was terrible in the fierceness and eloquence of his
assaults, and in the lucidity of his statements. Without being learned,
he contrived to make use of the learning of others, and made it burn
with the brilliancy of his powerful and original genius. Everybody read
his various essays and tracts, and was filled with admiration. But his
moral character was bad,--Was even execrable, and notoriously
outrageous. He was kind-hearted and generous, made friends and used
them. No woman, it is said, could resist his marvellous
fascination,--all the more remarkable since his face was as ugly as
that of Wilkes, and was marked by the small-pox. The excesses of his
private life, and his ungovernable passions, made him distrusted by the
Court and the Government. He was both hated and admired.

Mirabeau belonged to a noble family of very high rank in Provence, of
Italian descent. His father, Marquis Mirabeau, was a man of liberal
sentiments,--not unknown to literary fame by his treatises on political
economy,'--but was eccentric and violent. Although his oldest son, Count
Mirabeau, the subject of this lecture, was precocious intellectually,
and very bright, so that the father was proud of him, he was yet so
ungovernable and violent in his temper, and got into so many disgraceful
scrapes, that the Marquis was compelled to discipline him severely,--all
to no purpose, inasmuch as he was injudicious in his treatment, and
ultimately cruel. He procured _lettres de cachet_ from the King, and
shut up his disobedient and debauched son in various state-prisons. But
the Count generally contrived to escape, only to get into fresh
difficulties; so that he became a wanderer and an exile, compelled to