he is yet unable to crush, them. The prime agitator is now but the
alarmed courtier seeking shelter beneath the throne, and though still
stuttering out terrible words in behalf of the nation and liberty, which
are in the part set down for him, has already in his soul all the
paltriness and the thoughts of vanity which are proper to a court. We
pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau
was the most potent man of his time; but the greatest individual
contending with an enraged element appears but a madman. A fall is only
majestic when accompanied by virtue.

Poets say that clouds assume the form of the countries over which they
have passed, and moulding themselves upon the valleys, plains, or
mountains, acquire their shapes and move with them over the skies. This
resembles certain men, whose genius being as it were acquisitive, models
itself upon the epoch in which it lives, and assumes all the
individuality of the nation to which it belongs. Mirabeau was a man of
this class: he did not invent the Revolution, but was its manifestation.
But for him it might perhaps have remained in a state of idea and
tendency. He was born, and it took in him the form, the passion, the
language which make a multitude say when they see a thing--There it is.

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugee and established
in Provence, but of Italian origin: the progenitors were Tuscan. The
family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the
stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his
country in such bitter strains for her exiles and persecutions. The
blood of Machiavel and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics
were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The
proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices,
passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or