the
battle-hail, their neck to the guillotine; of whom it is so painful to
say that they too are still, in good part, manufactured Formalities, not
Facts but Hearsays!

Honour to the strong man, in these ages, who has shaken himself loose
of shams, and is something. For in the way of being worthy, the first
condition surely is that one be. Let Cant cease, at all risks and at all
costs: till Cant cease, nothing else can begin. Of human Criminals, in
these centuries, writes the Moralist, I find but one unforgivable: the
Quack. 'Hateful to God,' as divine Dante sings, 'and to the Enemies of
God,

'A Dio spiacente ed a' nemici sui!'

But whoever will, with sympathy, which is the first essential towards
insight, look at this questionable Mirabeau, may find that there
lay verily in him, as the basis of all, a Sincerity, a great free
Earnestness; nay call it Honesty, for the man did before all things see,
with that clear flashing vision, into what was, into what existed as
fact; and did, with his wild heart, follow that and no other. Whereby on
what ways soever he travels and struggles, often enough falling, he
is still a brother man. Hate him not; thou canst not hate him! Shining
through such soil and tarnish, and now victorious effulgent, and
oftenest struggling eclipsed, the light of genius itself is in this
man; which was never yet base and hateful: but at worst was lamentable,
loveable with pity. They say that he was ambitious, that he wanted to be
Minister. It is most true; and was he not simply the one man in France
who could have done any good as Minister? Not vanity alone, not pride
alone; far from that! Wild burstings of affection were in this great
heart; of fierce lightning, and soft dew of pity. So sunk, bemired in
wretchedest defacements, it may be said of him, like the Magdalen of
old, that he loved much: his Father the harshest of old crabbed men he
loved with warmth, with veneration.

Be it that his falls and follies are manifold,--as himself often
lamented even with tears. (Dumont, p. 287.) Alas, is not the Life of
every such man already a poetic Tragedy; made up 'of Fate and of one's
own Deservings,' of Schicksal und eigene Schuld; full of the elements of
Pity and Fear? This brother man, if not Epic for us, is Tragic; if not
great, is large; large in his qualities, world-large in his destinies.
Whom other men, recognising him as such, may, through long times,
remember, and draw nigh to examine and cons