_that_ of the human race.

Recital animated by the imagination, weighed and judged by wisdom,--such
is history as the ancients understood it; and of history conceived and
produced in such a spirit, I would, under the Divine guidance, leave a
fragment to my country.


II.

HISTORY OF THE GIRONDISTS.

Mirabeau had just died. The instinct of the people led them to press
around the house of his tribune, as if to demand inspiration even from
his coffin; but had Mirabeau been still living, he could no longer have
given it; his star had paled its fires before that of the Revolution;
hurried to the verge of an unavoidable precipice by the very chariot he
himself had set in motion, it was in vain that he clung to the tribune.
The last memorial he addressed to the king, which the Iron Chest has
surrendered to us, together with the secret of his venality, testify the
failure and dejection of his mind. His counsels are versatile,
incoherent, and almost childish:--now he will arrest the Revolution with
a grain of sand--now he places the salvation of the Monarchy in a
proclamation of the crown and a regal ceremony which shall revive the
popularity of the king,--.and now he is desirous of buying the
acclamations of the tribune, and believes the nation, like him, to be
purchasable at a price. The pettiness of his means of safety are in
contrast with the vast increase of perils; there is a vagueness in every
idea; we see that he is impelled by the very passions he has excited,
and that unable any longer to guide or control them, he betrays, whilst