r any struggle
for the past, and thus to combine in his own person the twofold power of
chief of the nation, and chief of a party. The character of moderation
is only possible on the condition of having already acquired the
unreserved confidence of the party whom it is desired to control. Henri
IV. assumed this character, but it was _after_ victory; had he attempted
it _before_ Ivry, he would have lost, not only the kingdom of France,
but also of Navarre.

The court was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's
person the sources of its vanities,--profitable exactions. The clergy,
with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state,
its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical
establishment seemed to be wholly independent of the monarchical
establishment. It had only rallied round the monarchy, on the day it had
beheld its own fortune compromised; and then it had appealed to the
faith of the people, in order to preserve its wealth; but the people now
only saw in the monks mendicants, and in the bishops extortioners. The
nobility, effeminate by lengthened peace, emigrated in masses,
abandoning their king to his besetting perils, and fully trusting in the
prompt and decisive intervention of foreign powers. The third estate,
jealous and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights
amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly
comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these
vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the
Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a
waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for
his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been
wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human
crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide
them--the will of the event itself.

The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at
that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough
going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc
d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of
view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a
vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a
display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate
consumm