ships) turning aside to Aix; and "multitudes | thunder-riven, but broad-based, rooted in the gathered even on the roofs" to hear him, the Earth's (in Nature's) own rocks; and will not Court-house being crammed to bursting! De- tumble prostrate! So true is it what a moralist; mosthenic fire and pathos; penitent husband has said: "One could not wish any man to calling for forgiveness and restitution :-" ce fall into a fault; yet is it often precisely after n'est qu'un claque-dents et un fol," rays forth the old a fault, or a crime even, that the morality Marquis from the chimney-nook: "a chatter- which is in a man first unfolds itself, and what teeth and madman?" The world and Parle- of strength he as a man possesses, now when ment thought not that; knew not what to think, all else is gone from him." if not that this was the questionablest able man they had ever heard; and, alas, still farther, that his cause was untenable. No wife then; and no money! From this second attack on Fortune, Mirabeau returns foiled, and worse than before; resourceless, for now the old Marquis, too, again eyes him askance. He must hunt Ishmael-like, as we said. Whatsoever of wit or strength he has within himself will stand true to him; on that he can count; unfortunately on almost nothing but that. Mirabeau, through these dim years, is seer wandering from place to place; in France Germany, Holland, England; finding no rest for the sole of his foot. It is a life of shifts and expedients, au jour le jour. Extravagant in his expenses, thriftless, swimming in a welter of debts and difficulties; for which he has to provide by fierce industry; by skill in financiership. The man's revenue is his wits; he has a pen and a head; and, happily for him, "is the demon of the impossible." At no time is he without some blazing project or other, which shall warm and illuminate far and wide; which too often blazes out ineffectual; which in that case he replaces and renews, for his hope is inexhaustible He writes pamphlets unweariedly as a steam-engine: On the Opening of the Scheldt, and Kaiser Joseph: On the Order of Cincinnatus and Washington. on Count Cagliostro, and the Diamond Necklace. Innumerable are the helpers and journeymen (respectable Mauvillons, respectable Dumonts) whom he can set working for him on such matters; it is a gift he has. He writes Books, in as many as eight volumes, which are properly only a larger kind of Pamphlets. He has polemics with Caron Beaumarchais on the water-company of Paris; lean Caron shooting sharp arrows into him, which he responds to demoniacally, "flinging hills with all their woods." He is intimate with many men; his "terrible gift of familiarty," his joyous couruership and faculty of pleasing, do not forsake him: but it is a questionable intimacy, granted to the man's talents, in spite of his character: a relation which the proud Riquetti, not the humbler that he is poor and ruined, correctly feels. With still more women is he intimate; girt with a whole system of intrigues, in that sort, wherever he abide; seldom travelling without a-wife (let us call her) engaged by the year, or during mutual satisfaction. On this large department of Mirabeau's history. what can you say, except that his incontinence was great, enormous, entirely indefersible! If any one please (which we do not) to be present, with the Fils Adop'if, at "the autopsie," and post-mortem examination, he will see curions documents on this head; and to what depths of penalty Nature, in her just self-vindication, can sometimes doom men. The Fils Adopaf is very sorry. To the kind called unfortunate females, it would seem, nevertheless, this utfortunate-male had an aversion amounting to complete nolo-tangere. Mirabeau's life for the next five years, which creeps troublous, obscure, through several of these Eight Volumes, will probably, in the One right Volume which they hold imprisoned, be delineated briefly. It is the long-drawn practical improvement of the sermon already preached in Rhé, in If, in Joux, in Holland, in Vincennes, and elsewhere. A giant man in the flower of his years, in the winter of his prospects, has to see how he will reconcile these two contradictions. With giant energies and talents, with giant virtues even, he, burning to unfold himself, has got put into his hands, for implements and means to do it with, disgrace, contumely, obstruction; character elevated only as Haman was; purse full only of debt-summonses; household, home, and possessions, as it were, sown with salt; Ruin's plough-share furrowing too deeply himself and all that was his. Under these, and not under other conditions, shall this man now live and struggle. Well might he "weep" long afterwards, (though not given to the melting mood,) thinking over, with Dumont, how his life had been blasted, by himself, by others; and was now so defaced and thunder-riven, no glory could make it whole again. Truly, as we often say, a weaker, and yet very strong man, might have died,-by hypochondria, by brandy, or by arsenic but Mirabeau did not die. The world is not his friend, nor the world's law and formula? It will be his enemy then; his conqueror and master not altogether. There are strong men who can, in case of necessity, make way with formulas, (humer les formules,) and yet find a habitation behind them: these are the very strong; and Mirabeau was of these. The world's esteem having gone quite against him, and most circles of society, with their codes and regulations, pronouncing little but anathema on him, he is nevertheless not lost; he does not sink to desperation; not to dishonesty, or pusillanimity, or splenetic aridity. Nowise! In spite of the world, he is a living The old Marquis sits apart in the chimne strong man there: the world cannot take from nook, observant: what this roaming, unresting. bim his just consciousness of himself, his warm rebellious Titan of a Count may ever prove of open-hearted feeling towards others; there use for? If it be not, O Marquis, for the are still limits, on all sides, to which the world general Overturn, Culbute Générale? He is and the devil cannot drive him. The giant, swallowing Formulas; getting endless ab we say! How he stands, like a mountain;quaintance with the Realities of things ana : men: in audacity, in recklessness, he will not, is like, be wanting. The old Marquis rays Dat curious observations on life;-yields no effectual assistance of money. draws towards completion, and it becomes ever more evident to Mirabeau that great things are in the wind, we find his wanderings, as it were, quicken. Suddenly emerging out of Night and Cimmeria, he dashes down on the Paris world, time after time; flashes into it with that fire-glance of his; discerns that the time is not yet come; and then merges back again. Occasionally his pamphlets provoke a fulmination and order of arrest, wherefore he must merge the faster. Nay, your Calonne is good enough to signify it beforehand: On such and such a day I shall order you to be arrested; pray make speed therefore. When the Notables meet, in the spring of 1787, Mirabeau spreads his pinions, alights on Paris and Versailles; it seems to him he ought to be secretary of those Notables. No! friend Dupont de Nemours gets it: the time It is still but the time of Hark! On the 27th of December, 1788, here finally is the long-expected announcing itself: royal Proclamation definitively convoking the States-General for May next! Need we ask whether Mirabeau bestirs himself now; whether or not he is off to Provence, to the Assembly of Noblesse there, with all his faculties screwed to the sticking-place? One strong dead-lift pull, thou Titan; and perhaps thou carriest it! Ministries change and shift; but never, in the new deal, does there turn up a good card for Mirabeau. Necker he does not love, nor is love lost between them. Plausible Calonne bears him Stentor-like denouncing stock-jobbing, (Denonciation de l'Agiotage :) communes with him, corresponds with him; is glad to get him sent, in some semi-ostensible or spydiplomatist character, to Berlin; in any way to have him sopped and quieted. The Great Frederic was still on the scene, though now very near the side-scenes: the wiry thin Drillserjeant of the World, and the broad burly Mutineer of the World, glanced into one another with amazement; the one making entrance, the other making exit. To this Berlin busi- is not yet come. ness we owe pamphlets; we owe Correspond-"Crispin-Catiline" d'Espréménil, and other #uces, (“ surreptitiously published"-with con- such animal-magnetic persons. Nevertheless, sent;) we owe (brave Major Mauvillon serving the Reverend Talleyrand, judicious Dukes, as hodman) the Monarchie Prussienne, a Pam- liberal noble friends not a few, are sure that phlet in some eight octavo Volumes, portions the time will come. Abide thy time. of which are still well worth reading. Generally, on first making personal acquaintance with Mirabeau as a writer or speaker, one is not a little surprised. Instead of Irish oratory, with tropes and declamatory fervid feeling, such as the rumour one has heard gives prospect of, you are astonished to meet a certain hard angular distinctness, a totally unornamented force and massiveness: clear perspicuity, strong perspicacity, conviction that wishes to convince,-this beyond all things, and instead of all things. You would say the primary character of those utterances, nay, of the man himself, is sincerity and insight; strength, and the honest use of strength. Which, indeed, it is, O Reader! Mirabeau's spiritual gift will be found on examination to be verily an honest and a great one; far the strongest, best practical intellect of that time; entitled to rank among the strong of all times. These books of his ought to be riddled, like this book of the Fils Adoptif. There is precious matter in them; too good to lie hidden among shot rubbish. Hear this man on any subject, you will find him worth considering. He has words in him, rough deliverances; such as men do not forget. As thus: "I know but three ways of living in this world: by wages for work; by begging; thirdly, by stealing, (so named, or not so named.)" Again: "Malebranche saw all things in God; and M. Necker sees all things in Necker!" There are nicknames of Mirabeau's worth whole treatises. “Grandison-Cromwell Lafayette:" write a volume on the man, as many volumes have been written, and try to say more! It is the likeness yet drawn of him,-by a ourish and two dots. Of such inexpressible advantage is it that a man have "an eye, instead of a pair of spectacles merely;" that, seeing through the formulas of things, and making away" with many a formula, he sees into the thing itself, and so know it and be master of it! even " As the years roll on, and that portentous decale of the Eighties (or "Era of Hope") How Mirabeau wrestled and strove under these auspices; speaking and contending all day, writing pamphlets, paragraphs, all night; also suffering much, gathering his wild soul together, motionless under reproaches, under drawn swords even, lest his enemies throw him off his guard; how he agitates and represses, unerringly dexterous, sleeplessly unwearied, and is a "demon of the impossible," let all readers fancy. With "a body of Noblesse more ignorant, greedier, more insolent than any I have ever seen," the Swallower of Formulas was like to have rough work. We must give his celebrated flinging up of the handful of dust, when they drove him out by overwhelming majority :— "What have I done that was so criminal? I have wished that my Order were wise enough to give to-day what will infallibly be wrested from it to-morrow; that it should receive the merits and glory of sanctioning the assemblage of the Three Orders, which all Provence loudly demands. This is the crime of your enemy of peace!' Or rather I have ventured to believe that the people might be in the right. Ah, doubtless, a patrician soiled with such a thought deserves vengeance! But I am still guiltier than you think; for it is my belief that the people which complains is always in the right; that its indefatigable patience invariably waits the uttermost excesses of oppression, before it can determine on resisting; that it never resists long enough to obtain complete redress; and does not sufficiently know that to strike its enemies into terror and submission, it has only to stand still, that the most inno cent as the most invincible of all powers is he power of refusing to do. I believe after this manner: punish the enemy of peace! der, and sigh forgotten by him. For this Mira beau too the career at last opens. "But you, ministers of a God of peace, who At last! Does not the benevolent Reader, are ordained to bless and not to curse, and yet though never so unambitious, sympathize a have launched your anathema on me, without little with this poor brother mortal in such a even the attempt at enlightening me, at rea- case? Victory is always joyful; but to think soning with me! And you, 'friends of peace,' of such a man, in the hour when, after twelve who denounce to the people, with all vehe- Hercules' Labours, he does finally triumph! mence of hatred, the one defender it has yet So long he fought with the many-headed coil found, out of its own ranks;-who, to bring of Lernean serpents; and, panting, wrestled about concord, are filling capital and province and wrang with it for life or death,—forty long with placards calculated to arm the rural dis-stern years; and now he has it under his tricts against the towns, if your deeds did not heel! The mountain tops are scaled, are refute your writings;-who, to prepare ways scaled; where the man climbed, on sharp of conciliation, protest against the royal Re- flinty precipices, slippery, abysmal; in dark gulation for convoking the States-General, ness, seen by no kind eye,-amid the brood because it grants the people as many deputies of dragons; and the heart, many times, was as both the other orders, and against all that like to fail within him, in his loneliness, in his the coming National Assembly shall do, unless extreme need: yet he climbed, and climbed, its laws secure the triumph of your preten-glueing his footsteps in his blood; and now, sions, the eternity of your privileges! Disin- behold, Hyperion-like he has scaled it, and on terested 'friends of peace! I have appealed the summit shakes his glittering shafts of war! to your honour, and summon you to state what expressions of mine have offended against either the respect we owe to the royal authority or to the nation's right? Nobles of Provence, Europe is attentive; weigh well your answer. Men of God, beware; God hears you! "And if you do not answer, but keep silence, shutting yourselves up in the vague declamations you have hurled at me, then allow me to add one word. "In all countries, in all times, aristocrats have implacably persecuted the people's friends; and if, by some singular combination of fortune, there chanced to arise such a one in their own circle, it was he above all whom they struck at, eager to inspire wider terror by the elevation of their victim. Thus perished the last of the Gracchi by the hands of the patricians; but, being struck with the mortal stab, he flung dust towards Heaven, and called on the Avenging Deities; and from this dust sprang Marius,-Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Noblesse!" There goes some foolish story of Mirabeau having now opened a cloth-shop in Marseilles, to ingratiate himself with the Third Estate; whereat we have often laughed. The image of Mirabeau measuring out drapery to mankind, and deftly snipping at tailors' measures, has something pleasant for the mind. So, that though there is not a shadow of truth in this story, the very lie may justly sustain itself for a while, in the character of lie. Far otherwise was the reality there: "voluntary guard of a hundred men" Provence crowding by the ten thousand round his chariot wheels; explosions of rejoicing musketry, heavenrending acclamation; "people paying two louis for a place at the window!" Hunger itself (very considerable in those days) he can pacify by speech. Violent meal mobs at Marseilles and at Aix, unmanageable by fire-arms and governors, he smooths down by the word of his mouth; the governor soliciting him, though unloved. It is as a Roman Trumph, and more. He is chosen deputy for two places; has to decline Marseilles, and honour Aix. Let his enemies look and won What a scene and new kingdom for him; all bathed in auroral radiance of Hope; far. stretching, solemn, joyful: what wild Memnon's music, from the depths of Nature, comes toning through the soul raised suddenly out of strangling death into victory and life! The very bystander, we think, might weep, with this Mirabeau, tears of joy. Which, alas, will become tears of sorrow! For know, O Son of Adam, (and Son of Locifer, with that accursed ambition of thine,) that they are all a delusion and piece of demonic necromancy, these same auroral splendours, enchantments and Memnon's tones! The thing thou as mortal wantest is equili brium, (what is called rest or peace:) which, God knows, thou wilt never get so. Happy they that find it without such searching. But in some twenty-three months more, of blazing solar splendour and conflagration, this Mirabeau will be ashes; and lie opaque, in the Pantheon of great men (or say, French-Pantheon of considerable, or even of considered, and small-noisy men,)-at rest nowhere, save on the lap of his mother earth. There are to whom the gods, in their bounty, give glory: but far oftener it is given in wrath, as a curse and a poison; disturbing the whole inner health and industry of the man; leading onward through dizzy staggerings and tarantula jiggings,-towards no saint's shrine. Truly, if Death did not intervene; or still more happily, if Life and the Public were not a blockhead, and sudden unreasonable oblivion were not to follow that sudden unreasonable glory, and beneficently, though most painfully, damp it down,-one sees not where many a por glorious man, still more many a poor glorious woman, (for it falls harder on the distin guished-female,) could terminate,-far short of Bedlam. On the 4th day of May, 1789, Madame de Staël, looking from a window in the main street of Versailles, amid an assembled word, as the Deputies walked in procession from the church of Notre-Dame to that of Saint Louis to hear High Mass, and be constituted State General, saw this: "Among these Nobles whe nad beer leputed to the Third Estate, above charmed with him," when it comes to tha all others, the Comte de Mirabeau. The opi- He is the man of the Revolution, while he nion men had of his genius was singularly lives; king of it; and only with life, as we augmented by the fear entertained of his im- compute, would have quitted his kingship of morality; and yet it was this very immorality it. Alone of all these Twelve Hundred, there which straitened the influence his astonishing is in him the faculty of a king. For, indeed, faculties were to secure him. You could not have we not seen how assiduously Destiny but look long at this man, when once you had had shaped him all along, as with an express noticed him his immense black head of hair eye to the work now in hand? O crabbed old distinguished him among them all; you would Friend of Men, whilst thou wert bolting this have said his force depended on it, like that man into Isles of Rhé, Castles of If, and trainof Samson: his face borrowed new expression ing him so sharply to be thyself, not himself,from its very ugliness; his whole person gave how little knewest thou what thou wert doing! you the idea of an irregular power, but a Let us add, that the brave old Marquis lived power such as you would figure in a Tribune to see his son's victory over Fate and men, of the People." Mirabeau's history through and rejoiced in it; and rebuked Barrel Mira the first twenty-three months of the Revolution beau for controverting such a Brother Gabriel. falls not to be written here: yet it is well In the invalid chimney-nook at Argenteuil, worth writing somewhere. The Constituent near Paris, he sat raying out curious observaAssembly, when his name was first read out, tions to the last; and died three days before received it with murmurs; not knowing what the Bastille fell, precisely when the Culbute they murmured at! This honourable member Générale was bursting out. they were murmuring over was the member But finally, the twenty-three allotted months of all members; the august Constituent, with- are over. Madame de Staël, on the 4th of May, out him, were no Constituent at all. Very 1789, saw the Roman Tribune of the People, notable, truly, is his procedure in this section and Samson with his long black hair: and on of world-history: by far the notablest single the 4th of April, 1791, there is a Funeral Proelement there: none like to him, or second to cession extending four miles: king's ministers, him. Once he is seen visibly to have saved, senators, national guards, and all Paris,as with his own force, the existence of the torchlight, wail of trombones and music, and Constituent Assembly; to have turned the the tears of men; mourning of a whole people, whole tide of things: in one of those moments-such mourning as no modern people ever which are cardinal; decisive for centuries. saw for one man. This Mirabeau's work then The royal Declaration of the Twenty-third of is done. He sleeps with the primeval giants. June is promulgated: there is military force He has gone over to the majority: Abiit aa enough; there is then the king's express order | plures. to disperse, to meet as separate Third Estate a great many things set forth concerning this on the morrow. Bastilles and scaffolds may In the way of eulogy and dyslogy, and sum be the penalty for disobeying. Mirabeau dis-ming up of character, there many doubtless be obeys; lifts his voice to encourage others, all pallid, panic-stricken, to disobey. Supreme Usher De Brézé enters, with the king's renewed order to depart. "Messieurs," said De Brézé, "you heard the king's order?" The Swallower of Formulas bellows out these words, that have become memorable: "Yes, Monsieur, we heard what the king was advised to say; and you, who cannot be interpreter of his meaning to the States-General; you, who Moral reflection first,-that, in these centuries have neither vote nor seat, nor right of speech men are not born demi-gods and perfect chabere, you are not the man to remind us of it. racters, but imperfect ones, and mere blamable Go, Monsieur, tell those who sent you that we men, namely, environed with such short-comare here by will of the Nation; and that no-ing and confusion of their own, and then with thing but the force of bayonets can drive us bence!" And poor De Brézé vanishes,back foremost, the Fils Adoptif says. such adscititious scandal and misjudgment (got in the work they did,) that they resemble less demi-gods than a sort of god-devils,-very imperfect characters indeed. The demi-god arrangement were the one which, at first sight, this reviewer might be inclined to prefer. But this, cardinal moment though it be, is perhaps intrinsically among his smaller feats. In general, we would say once more with emphasis, He has "humé toutes les formules." He Moral reflection second,-however, that pro goes through the Revolution like a substance bably men were never born demi-gods in any and a force, not like a formula of one. While century, but precisely god-devils as we see, innumerable barren Sièyeses and Constitution- certain of whom do become a kind of dem pedants are building, with such hammering gods! How many are the men, not censured, and troweling, their august paper constitution, (which endured eleven months,) this man looks not at cobwebs and Social-Contracts, but at things and men; discerning what is to be idone-proceeding straight to do it. He shivers out Usher De Brézé, back foremost, when hat is the problem. Marie Antoinette is misjudged, calumniated only, but tortured, crucified, hung on gibbets,-not as god-devils even, but as devils proper; who have never theless grown to seem respectable, or infinitely respectable! For the thing which was not they, which was not any thing, has fallen away piecemeal; and become avowedly babble and confused shadow, and no-thing: the thing, which | able grim bronze-figure, though it is yet only was they, remains. Depend on it, Harmodius a century and half since; of whom England and Aristogiton, as clear as they now look, seems proud rather than otherwise? had illegal plottings, conclaves at the Jacobins' Church (of Athens); and very intemperate things were spoken, and also done. Thus too, Marcus Brutus and the elder Junius, are they not palpable Heroes? Their praise is in all Debating Societies; but didst thou read what the Morning Papers said of those transactions of theirs, the week after? Nay, Old Noll, whose bones were dug up and hung in chains, here at home, as the just emblem of himself and his deserts, (the offal of Creation, at that time,) has not he too got to be a very respect Moral reflection third, and last,—that neither thou nor we, good Reader, had any hand in the making of this Mirabeau ; else who knows but we had objected, in our wisdom? But it was the Upper Powers that made him, without once consulting us; they and not we, so and not otherwise! To endeavour to understand a little what manner of Mirabeau he, so made, might be: this we, according to opportunity, have done; and therefore do now, with a lively satisfaction, take farewell of him, and leave him to fare as he can. PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FRENCH [LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1857.] were better now to begin understanding. Really there are innumerable reasons why we ought to know this same French Revcintion as it was: of which reasons (apart altogether from that of "Philosophy teaching by Experi ence," and so forth) is there not the best sum. mary in this one reason, that we so wish to know it? Considering the qualities of the matter, one may perhaps reasonably feel that since the time of the Crusades, or earlier, there is no chapter of history so well worth study. ing. Ir appears to be, if not stated in words, yet | be celebrated and psalmodied; but which it tacitly felt and understood everywhere, that the event of these modern ages is the French Revolution. A huge explosion bursting through all formulas and customs; confounding into wreck and chaos the ordered arrangements of earthly life; blotting out, one may say, the very firmament and skyey load-stars,-though only for a season. Once in the fifteen hundred years such a thing was ordained to come. To those who stood present in the actual midst of that smoke and thunder, the effect might well be too violent: blinding and deafening, into confused exasperation, almost into madness. These on-lookers have played their part, were it with the printing-press or with the battle-cannon, and are departed: their work, such as it was, remaining behind them;where the French Revolution also remains. And now, for us who have receded to the distance of some half-century, the explosion becomes a thing visible, surveyable: we see its flame and sulphur-smoke blend with the clear air, (far under the stars;) and hear its uproar as part of the sick noise of life,-loud indeed, yet imbosomed too, as all noise is, in the infinite of silence. It is an event which can be looked on; which may still be execrated, still Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française, ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales depuis 1789 jusqu'en 1815; contenant la Narration des Evénemens, les Débats, &c. &c. (Parliamentary History of the French Revo lution, or Journal of the National Assemblies from 1789 to 1815: containing a Narrative of the Occurrences; Debates of the Assemblies; Discussions in the chief Popular Societies, especially in that of the Jacobins; Records of the Commune of Paris; Sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal; Reports of the leading Political Trials; Detail of the Annual Budgets; Picture of the Moral Movement, extracted from the Newspapers, Pamphlets, &c., of each Period; preceded by an Introduction on the History of France till the Convocation of the States-General.) By P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux. (Tomes 1er-23 et seq.-Paris, 1533-1836.) Stated or not, we say, this persuasion is tacitly admitted, and acted upon. In these days everywhere you find it one of the most pressing duties for the writing guild, to produce history on history of the French Revolu tion. In France it would almost seem as if the young author felt that he must make this his proof-shot, and evidence of craftsmanship: accordingly they do fire off Histoires, Préns of Histoires, Annales, Fastes, (to say nothing of Historical Novels, Gil Blasses, Danions, Farnaves, Grangeneuves,) in rapid succession, with or without effect. At all events it is enrions to look upon: curious to contrast the picturing of the same fact by the men of this generation and position with the picturing of it by the men of the last. From Barruel and Fantin Desodoards to Thiers and Mignet there is a distance! Each individual takes up the Phe nomenon according to his own point of vision, to the structure of his optic organs, gives, consciously, some poor crotchetty picture of several things; unconsciously some picture of himself at least. And the Phenomenon, for its part, subsists there, all the while, unal tered; waiting to be pictured as often as you like, its entire meaning not li be compressed into any picture drawn by man. |