Part Second. French Revolutionists.

MIRABEAU.

ONE is sometimes tempted to suppose and to follow the footprints of their prothat our earth hangs between two centres, to which she is alternately attracted, like those planets which are said to be suspended between the double stars, and that she now nears a blue and mild, and now a blood-red and fiery sun. There are beautiful days and seasons, which stoop down upon us like doves from heaven, and give us exquisite but short-lived pleasure, in which our world appears a "pensive, but a happy place"-the sky the dome of a temple; Eden recalled, and the Millennium anticipated: we are then within the attraction of our milder Star. There are other days and seasons, the darkness of which is lighted up by the foam of general frenzy, like the lurid illumination lent by the spray to the tossed midnight ocean -when there is a crying, not for wine, but for blood, in the streets-when the mirth of the land is darkened, and when all hearts, not filled with madness, fail for fear. Such are our revolutionary eras, when our Red Sun is vertical over us, shedding disastrous day, and portending premature and preternatural night.

The value of revolutions lies more in the men they discover, than in the measures they produce. For a superior being how grand and interesting the attitude of standing, like John, on the sand of the sea-shore, and seeing the beasts, horned or crowned, fierce or tame, which arise from the waves which revolution has churned into fury, to watch them while yet fresh and dripping from the water,

gress! From the vantage-ground of aftertime, the human observer is able to take almost a similar point of view. He has this, too, in his favour. The lives of revolutionists, as well as of robbers, are generally short; their names are written laconically and in blood-their characters are intensified, and sharply defined by death-their footsteps are the few but forcible stamps of desperate courage and recklessness; and the artist, if at all competent for the task of depiction, is helped by the terrible unity and concentration of his subject. If, besides, he be fond of "searching dark bosoms," where are to be found darker bosoms than those of revolutionists? if he loves rock scenery, what rock like the Tarpeian, toppling over its Dead Sea? if he loves to botanise among the daring flowers of virtue, which border the giddiest precipices of guilt, let him come hither; if he wishes to brace his nerves, and strengthen his eyesight, and test his faith by sights and sounds of wo, here is his field; if he wishes to be read, and to send down a thrill from his redmargined page into the future, let him write worthily of revolutionists. The "History of Catiline's Conspiracy" has survived less from its intrinsic merit, than because it records the history and fate of one who aspired to be a revolutionist on a large scale, although he succeeded only in becoming the broken bust of one.

Our motive in the present series is somewhat different from any we have

serve.

now stated. We formerly drew portraits on his brow, or rod of divination in his of God's selected and inspired men. To hand. Of all Frenchmen (and he was bring out, by contrast, the colour and hardly one), Rousseau alone appears to tone of these, we are tempted now to us to have so risen out of French infludraw faithfully, yet charitably, the like-ences as to have caught on his wings an nesses of some generally supposed to be unearthly fire, not indeed streaming down the Devil's selected and inspired men. from heaven, but streaming up from hell. Nor are we indifferent, at the same time, His was a Pythonic frenzy. He spake to the moral purposes which such paint- to the ear of humanity falsely often, but ing, and the contrast implied in it, may earnestly and powerfully always. His dress might be that of a harlequin, but We begin with Mirabeau, the first-born his bosom was that of a man fanatically of the French Revolution-a revolution in earnest. He was the most sincere man in himself. In any age and country, Mi- France ever reared. To a pitch of prorabeau must have been an extraordinary phetic fury, Mirabeau neither rose by naman. We may wish the more because ture like Rousseau, nor, like Burke, was we wish in vain-that he had lived in stung by circumstances. He could at all an age of religious faith, when the solar times manage his thunderbolts with concentre of the idea of a God might have summate dexterity, could husband his enharmonised and subdued his cometary thusiasm, and never allowed himself to be powers. Had he lived in the time of the carried away all-powerful in his very helpReformation, he had been either a Hugue-lessness upon the torrent he had stirred. not of the Huguenots, or a fiercer Guise; He had genius hung up on the armoury but, thrown on an age and a country of of his mind, and could upon occasion take rampant denial and licentiousness, he down the bright weapon and dye it in must deny and be lewd on a colossal scale. blood; but genius never had him like a He was not, we must remark, of that high-spear in its blind and awful grasp. est order of minds, whose individualism, Which quality of the Frenchman was approaching the infinite, stands alone in wanting in Mirabeau? The versatility, whatever age, and which rejects or selects influences according to its pleasure. Mirabeau belonged to that class whose mission is to exaggerate with effect the tendency and spirit of their nation and period, and thus to precipitate either their sublimation or their reductio ad absurdum. In him the French beheld all their own peculiarities, passions, and powers magnified into magnificent caricature, even as they had seen them exhibited on a miniature scale in Voltaire; and hence their intoxicated admiration, and their wild sorrow at his death. When he fell, it was as the fall of the statue on the summit of their national column.

levity, brilliance, instability, irritability, volubility, the enthusiasm of moments, the coldness of years, the immorality, now springing from tempestuous passions, and now from the cool conclusions of atheism, the intuitive understanding, the declamatory force of the genuine Gaul, were all found in him, but all expanded into extraordinary dimensions through the combustion of his bosom, and all pointed by the romantic circumstances of his story. His originality, like Byron's, lay principally in that wild dark blood which had run down through generations of semimaniacs, till in him it was connected with talents as wondrous as it was hot.

all

Some of Mirabeau's admirers speak of Mirabeau, as the basis of his intellechim as if he were something better than tual character, possessed intuitive sagacity, a French idol-as if he partook of a uni- and sharp common sense. He was versal character-as if a certain fire of eye." His very arm outstretched, and inspiration burned within him, classing finger up-pointed, seemed to see. No him with Burns, and elevating him far gesture, no motion of such a man, is above Burke. We cannot, we must con- blind or insignificant. His very silence is fess, see any such stamp of universality full of meaning; his looks are as winged

as the words of others. Mirabeau's in- ture, and self-command than his brother sight was sharpened by experience, by revolutionists, and would have been a calamity, by vice, by the very despair butcher of genius, and scattered about which had once been the tenant of his his blood (as Virgil is said to do his dung bosom. "The glance of melancholy is a in the Georgics) more elegantly and gracefearful gift." Add the intellect of a fallen fully than they. But in him, too, slumdemi-god to the savage irritation of a bered the savage cruelty of a Marat, and flayed wild beast, and the result shall be in certain circumstances he would have the exasperated and hideous penetration been equally unscrupulous and unsparof a Mirabeau. The rasping recollections ing. of his persecuted childhood and wander

Mirabeau's imagination has been laing youth, the smouldering ashes of his vishly panegyrised. It does not, we think, hundred amours, the "sweltered venom" so far as we have been able to judge from collected in his long years of captivity, the specimens we have seen, appear to along with his uncertain prospects and have been very copious or creative. Its unsettled principles, had not only hard- figures were striking and electrical in ened his heart, but had given an un- effect, rather than poetical; they were natural stimulus to his understanding, always bold, but never beautiful, and selwhich united the coherence of sanity with dom, though sometimes, reached the suthe cunning, power, and fury of madness. blime. The grandest of them will be faThis wondrously endowed and frightfully miliar to our readers: "When the last of soured nature was by the Revolution- the Gracchi expired, he flung dust toits incidents, adventures, and characters-wards heaven, and from this dust sprung supplied with an abundance of food sure Marius!-Marius, less great for having to turn to poison the moment it was swal- exterminated the Cimbri, than for having lowed, and to nourish into keener activity prostrated in Rome the power of the nohis perverted powers. bility." A little imagination goes a far To counterbalance this strongly-stimu-way in a Frenchman. Edmund Burke lated, self-confident, and defiant intellect, has in almost every page of his "Regicide there was little or no moral sense. Whe- Peace" ten images as bold and magnifither, as we have heard it alleged of cer- cent as this, not to speak of his subtle tain characters, omitted in his composi- trains of thinking which underlie, or of tion, or burned out of him by the com- those epic swells of sustained splendour, bined fires of cruelty on the part of his which Mirabeau could not have equalled father, and excess on his own, we cannot in madness, in dreams, or in death. say, but it did become microscopically The oratory of Mirabeau seems to have small. Indeed, it seems to us to have been the most imposing of his powers. been a most merciful arrangement for Manageable and well managed as a conMirabeau's fame, that he died before summate race-horse, it was fiery and imthe revolutionary panic had come to its petuous as a lion from the swelling of height. In all probability, he would have Jordan. In the commencement of his acted the sanguinary tyrant on a larger speeches, he often hesitated and stamscale than any of the terrorists; for France mered; it was the fret of the torrent upon had come to such an apoplectic crisis, the rock, ere it rushes into its bed of that blood must relieve her. All that wrath and power; but once launched, was wanted, was a hand unprincipled and daring enough to apply the lancet. Who bolder and more unprincipled than Mirabeau? And who had passed through such an indurating and embittering process?

Possessed of a thousand wrongs, steeled by atheism, drained of humanity, he had undoubtedly more wisdom, cul

" torrents less rapid and less rash." His face as of a "tiger in small-pox"-his eye blazing with the threefold light of pride, passion, and genius-his fiery gesticulation-his voice of thunder-the strong points of war he blew ever and anonthe strong intellect, which was the solid basis below the sounding foam-all united

to render his eloquence irresistible. His the Frenchman, so the eccentricity of the audiences felt, that next to the power of one to the Herculean frenzy of the other. a great good man, inspired by patriotism, Mirabeau most, perhaps, resembles the genius, and virtue, was that of a great first Cæsar, if not in the cast of oratory, bad man, overflowing with the Furies, yet in private character, and in the comand addressing Pandemonium in its own manding power he exerted. That power Pandemonian speech. Even the dictates was, indeed, unparalleled; for here was and diction of mildness, sense, and mercy, a man ruling not creation, but chaos; as they issued from such lips, had an odd here was the old contest of Achilles with and yet awful affect. It was, indeed, the rivers renewed; here was a single greatly the gigantic but unludicrous od-man grappling in turn with every subdity of the man that enchanted France. ject and with every party, throwing all Having come from prison to reign, smell- in succession himself, or dashing the one ing of the rank odours of dungeons, with against the other-snatching from his nameless and shadowy crimes darkening enemies their own swords-hated and the air around him, with infamous books feared by all parties, himself hating all, of his composition, seen by the mind's eye but fearing none-knowing all—and himdangling from his side, there he stood, self as unknown in that stormy arena as rending up old institutions, thundering a monarch in his inmost pavilion-disagainst kings, and deciding on the fate secting all characters like a knife, himof millions. What figure more terribly self like that knife remaining one and telling and piquant could even France indivisible—and doing all this alone; for desire? Monster-loving she had always been, but no such magnificent monster had ever before sprung from her soil, or roared in her senate-house. Voltaire had been an ape of wondrous gifts; but here was a Creature from beyond chaos come to bellow over her for a season, and, unable and afraid to laugh, she was compelled to adore.

what followers, properly speaking, save a nation at a time, had Mirabeau? We hear of single men being separate "estates:" the language, as applied to him, has some meaning.

It has often been asked, What would have been his conduct, had he lived? Some say dogmatically, that because he was on terms with the king at the time As an orator, few form fit subjects for of his death, he would have saved the comparison with Mirabeau, because few monarchy; while a few suppose that he have triumphed over multitudes in spite would have rode upon the popular wave of, nay, by means of, the infamy of their to personal dominion. If it were not idle character added to the force of their to speculate upon impossibilities, we might genius. Fox is no full parallel. He was name it as our impression, that Mirabeau dissipated, but his name never went would have been, as all his life before, through Europe like an evil odour, nor guided by circumstances, or impelled by did he ever wield the condensed and passions, or overpowered by necessity, Jove-like power of Mirabeau. He was and become king's friend or king, as fate one-and not the brightest-of a con- or madness ruled the hour. Perhaps, stellation: the Frenchman walked his too, the revolution was getting beyond lurid heaven alone. Sheridan was a dex- even his guidance. He might have sought terous juggler, playing a petty personal to ride erect in the stirrups, and been game with boy-bowls; Mirabeau trundled cannon-balls along the quaking ground. Sheridan was commonplace in his vices; Mirabeau burst the limits of nature in search of pleasure, and then sat down to inoculate mankind, through his pen, with the monstrous venom. As the twitch of Brougham's nose is to the tiger face of

thrown; while Marat grasped the throat and mane of the desperate animal with a grasp which death only could sever. Perhaps the monarchy was not salvable; perhaps, while seeking to conserve this ripe corn, the sickle might have cropped the huge head of the defender; perhaps the revolution, which latterly "devoured its

own children," would have devoured him, |niments, and from the mere size of the leaving him the melancholy comfort of departing unclean spirit. A large rotten Ulysses in the Cyclop's cave-" Noman tree falls with a greater air than a small, shall be the last to be devoured." But all such inquiries and peradventures are for ever vain.

whose core is equally unsound. Nor was the grief of France more admirable than the death it bewailed. It was the howl of weak dependency, not of warm love. They mourned him, not for himself, but for the shade and shelter he gave them. Such a man must have been admired and feared, but could not have been sincerely or generally beloved. Mr Fox, on the other hand, having what Mirabeau wanted -a heart-fell amid the sincere sorrows of his very foes, and his country mourned not for itself, but for him, as one mourns

Mirabeau's death was invested with dramatic interest. He died in the midst of his career; he sank like an island; he died while all eyes in Europe were fixed upon him; he died while many saw a crown hovering over his head; he died undiscovered, concealing his future plans in the abyss of his bosom, and able to "adjust his mantle ere he fell;" he died, reluctant less at dying, than at not being permitted to live. All his properties for a first-born. seemed to rise up around him as he was We were amused at Lamartine's deleaving the world. His voluptuousness claration about Mirabeau: "Of all the must have one other full draught: "Crown qualities of the great man of his age, he me with flowers, sprinkle me with per- wanted only honesty"- —a parlous want! fumes, that I may thus enter on the Robin Hood was a very worthy fellow, if eternal sleep." His levity must have one he had been but honest. A great man demore ghastly smile: "What!" as he heard ficient in honesty, what is he but a great the cannon roaring, "have we the funeral charlatan, a sublime scamp, a Jove-Judas ere the Achilles be dead?" His vanity to apply, after Mirabeau's own fashion, must cry out, "They will miss me when I a compound nickname? am gone. Ay, support that head; would Such a Jove-Judas was Mirabeau. I could leave thee it!" His wild unbelief Without principle, without heart, without must once more flash up like a volcano religion; with the fiercest of demoniac and fading in the dawn: "If that sun be not the foulest of human passions mingled in God, he is his cousin-german." His in- his bosom; with an utter contempt for man, tellect had, perhaps, in the insight of ap- and an utter disbelief of God, he possessed proaching death, passed from previous un- the clearest of understandings, the most certainty and vacillation to some great potent of wills, the most iron of constituscheme of deliverance for his country; for tions, the most eloquent of tongueshe said, "I alone can save France from united the cool and calculating underthe calamities which on all sides are about standing of an arithmetician to the frento break upon her." And having thus zied energies and gestures of a Monad gathered his powers and passions in full-the heart and visage of a Pluto to pomp around his dying couch, he bade them and the world farewell.

something resembling the sun-glory and sun-shafts of a Phoebus. Long shall his France had many tears to shed for memory be preserved in the list of "Exhim; we have not now one tear to spare. traordinary (human) Meteors," but a still His death, indeed, was a tragedy, but and pure luminary he can never be countnot of a noble kind. It reminds us of ed. Nay, as the world advances in knowthe death of one of the evil giants in the ledge and virtue, his name will probably "Pilgrim's Progress," with their last grim deepen in ignominy. At present, his looks, hard-drawn breathings, and bellow-image stands on the plain of Dura with ings of baffled pride and fury. It was the head of gold and feet of iron, mingled with selfish death of one who had led an in-miry clay, and surrounded by not a few tensely selfish life. What grandeur it had prostrate admirers; but we are mistaken sprung from its melodramatic accompa- if, by and by, there be not millions to

VOL. I.-S