ve, models
itself upon the epoch in which it lives, and assumes all the
individuality of the nation to which it belongs. Mirabeau was a man of
this class: he did not invent the Revolution, but was its manifestation.
But for him it might perhaps have remained in a state of idea and
tendency. He was born, and it took in him the form, the passion, the
language which make a multitude say when they see a thing--There it is.

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugee and established
in Provence, but of Italian origin: the progenitors were Tuscan. The
family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the
stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his
country in such bitter strains for her exiles and persecutions. The
blood of Machiavel and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics
were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The
proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices,
passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or
perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as
emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar
correspondence the colour and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.

The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of
the quarrels of Marius and Sylla, of Caesar and Pompey. We perceive the
great men descending to trifling matters. Mirabeau inspired this
domestic majesty and virility in his very cradle. I dwell on these
details, which may seem foreign to this history, but explain it. The
source of genius is often in ancestry, and the blood of descent is
sometimes the prophecy of destiny.

III.

Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father,
who was styled the _friend of man_, but whose restless spirit and
selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of
all his family. The only virtue he was taught was honour, for by that
name in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanour which was
too frequently but the show of probity and the elegance of vice.
Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of military
habits except a love of licentiousness and play. The hand of his father
was constantly extended not to aid him in rising, but to depress him
still lower under the consequences of his errors: his youth was passed
in the prisons of the state; his passions, becoming envenomed