most abstract, colourless,
and academic was Rousseau's disciple, who took the "Supreme Being"
under his protection, Robespierre. The fervid spirit of the Girondins
found its highest expression in Vergniaud, who, with infirm character,
few ideas, and a hesitating policy, yet possessed a power of vibrating
speech. Danton, the Mirabeau of the populace, was richer in ideas,
and with sudden accesses of imagination thundered in words which
tended to action; but in general the Mountain cared more for deeds
than words. The young Saint-Just thrilled the Convention with icy
apothegms which sounded each, short and sharp, like the fall of the
knife. Barnave, impetuous in his temper, was clear and measured in
discourse, and once in opposition to Mirabeau, defending the royal
prerogative, rose beyond himself to the height of a great occasion.

But it was MIRABEAU, and Mirabeau alone, who possessed the genius
of a great statesman united with the gifts of an incomparable orator.
Born in 1749, of the old Riquetti family, impulsive, proud, romantic,
yet clear of intellect and firmly grasping facts, a thinker and a
student, calmly indifferent to religion, irregular in his conduct,
the passionate foe of his father, the passionate lover of his Sophie
and of her child, he had conceived, and in a measure comprehended,
the Revolution long before the explosion came. Already he was a
copious author on political subjects. He knew that France needed
individual liberty and individual responsibility; he divined the
dangers of a democratic despotism. He hoped by the decentralisation
of power to balance Paris by the provinces, and quicken the political
life of the whole country; he desired to balance the constitution
by playing off the King against the Assembly, and the Assembly against
the King, and to control the action of each by the force of public
opinion. From Montesquieu he had learnt the gains of separating the
legislative, the executive, and the judicial functions. His hatred
of aristocracy, enhanced by the hardship of imprisonment at Vincennes,
led him to ignore an influence which might have assisted in the
equilibration of power. As an orator his ample and powerful rhetoric
rested upon a basis of logic; slow and embarrassed as he began to
speak, he warmed as he proceeded, negligent of formal correctness,
disdainful of the conventional classical decorations, magnificent
in gesture, weaving together ideas, imagery, and passion. His speech,
s