athers with amazement. As Burke said, in one of his sybilline
speeches the other night: 'The tempest had come, at once bending down the
summits of the forest and stirring up the depths of the pool.' One of the
aldermen, on being told that the French were preparing to pass the Waal,
said, that if the Dutch would take _his_ advice, and if iron spikes were
not enough, they should _glass_ their _wall_."

The newspapers now arrived, and France for a while engrossed the
conversation. The famous Mirabeau had just made an oration with which all
France was ringing.

"That man's character," said the prince, after reading some vehement
portions of his speech, "perplexes me more and more. An aristocrat by
birth, he is a democrat by passion; but he has palpably come into the
world too early, or too late, for power. Under Louis XIV., he would have
made a magnificent minister; under his successor, a splendid courtier; but
under the present unfortunate king, he must be either the brawler or the
buffoon, the incendiary, or the sport, of the people. Yet he is evidently
a man of singular ability, and if he knows how to manage his popularity,
he may yet do great things."

"I always," said Sheridan, "am inclined to predict well of the man who
takes advantage of his time. That is the true faculty for public life; the
true test of commanding capacity. There are thousands who have ability,
for one who knows how to make use of it; as we are told that there are
monsters in the depths of the ocean which never come up to the light. But
I prefer your leviathan, which, whether he slumbers in the calm or rushes
through the storm, shows all his magnitude to the eye."

"And gets himself harpooned for his pains," observed W----.

"Well, then, at least he dies the death of a hero," was the
reply--"tempesting the brine, and perhaps even sinking the harpooner." He
uttered this sentiment with such sudden ardour, that all listened while he
declaimed--"I can imagine no worse fate for a man of true talent than to
linger down into the grave; to find the world disappearing from him while
he remains in it; his political vision growing indistinct, his political
ear losing the voice of man, his passions growing stagnant, all his
sensibilities palpably paralyzing, while the world is as loud, busy, and
brilliant round him as ever--with but one sense remaining, the unhappy
consciousness that, though not _yet_ dead, he is buried; a figure, if not
of scorn, of pity,