History of the Girondists, Volume I | Page 7

in the good done for the people nothing but an insult to the nobility. His popular sentiments were in some sort but the liberality of his genius. The vast expansiveness of his mighty soul had no resemblance with the paltry impulses of demagogues. In acquiring rights for the people he seemed as though he bestowed them. He was a volunteer of democracy. He recalled by his part, and his bearing, to those democrats behind him, that from the time of the Gracchi to his own, the tribunes who most served the people had sprung from the ranks of the patricians. His talent, unequalled for philosophy of thought, for depth of reflection, and loftiness of expression, was another kind of aristocracy, which could never be pardoned him. Nature placed him in the foremost rank; and death only created a space around him for secondary minds. They all endeavoured to acquire his position, and all endeavoured in vain. The tears they shed upon his coffin were hypocritical. The people only wept in all sincerity, because the people were too strong to be jealous, and they, far from reproaching Mirabeau with his birth, loved in him that nobility as though it were a spoil they had carried off from the aristocracy. Moreover, the nation, disturbed at seeing its institutions crumbling away one by one, and dreading a total destruction, felt instinctively that the genius of a great man was the last stronghold left to them. This genius quenched, it saw only darkness and precipices before the monarchy. The Jacobins alone rejoiced loudly, for it was only he who could outweigh them.
It was on the 6th of April, 1791, that the National Assembly resumed its sittings. Mirabeau's place, left vacant, reminded each gazer of the impossibility of again filling it; consternation was impressed on every countenance in the tribunes, and a profound silence pervaded the meeting. M. de Talleyrand announced to the Assembly a posthumous address of Mirabeau. They would hear him though dead. The weakened echo of his voice seemed to return to his country from the depths of the vaults of the Pantheon. The reading was mournful. Parties were burning to measure their strength free from any counterpoise. Impatience and anxiety were paramount, and the struggle was imminent. The arbitrator who controlled them was no more.
V.
Before we depict the state of these parties, let us throw a rapid glance over the commencement of the Revolution, the progress it had made, and the principal leaders who were about to attempt directing it in the way they desired to see it advance.
It was hardly two years since opinion had opened the breaches against the monarchy, yet it had already accomplished immense results. The weak and vacillating spirit of the government had convoked the Assembly of Notables, whilst public spirit had placed its grasp on power and convoked the States General. The States General being established, the nation had felt its omnipotence, and from this feeling to a legal insurrection there was but a word; that word Mirabeau had uttered. The National Assembly had constituted itself in front of, and higher than, the throne itself. The prodigious popularity of M. Necker was exhausted by concessions, and utterly vanished when he no longer had any of the spoils of monarchy to cast before the people. Minister of a monarch in retirement, his own had been utter defeat. His last step conducted him out of the kingdom. The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the ancient régime in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors, and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but it was, notwithstanding, the very essence of the new dogma.
VI
There are objects in nature, the forms of which can only be accurately ascertained when contemplated afar off. Too near, as well as too far off, prevents a correct view. Thus it is with great events. The hand of God is visible in human things, but this hand itself has a shadow which conceals what it accomplishes. All that could then be seen of the French Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the advent of a new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and afterwards the democratic government.
This idea was an emanation of Christianity. Christianity finding men in serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a resignation. It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy--liberty, equality, fraternity--amongst mankind. But it had for a