or--simplicity is meanness. The truth of things
wants the picturesque, and thus wants every charm. I had listened to
some of their public speakers with strong interest, while they were
confined to detail. No man tells a story better than a French _conteur_.
There lies the natural talent of the people. Nothing can be happier than
their seizure of slight circumstances, passing colours of events, and
those transient thoughts which make a story as pretty as a piece of
ladies' embroidery--a delicate toil, a tasteful display of trivial
difficulties gracefully surmounted. But even in their higher order of
speakers, I could perceive a constant dissatisfaction with themselves,
unless they happened to produce some of those startling conceptions
which roused their auditory to a stare, a start, a clapping of hands. I
had seen Mirabeau, with all his conscious talent, look round in despair
for applause, as a sailor thrown overboard might look for a buoy; I had
seen him as much exhausted, and even overwhelmed, by the want of
applause, as if he had dropped into an exhausted receiver. If some lucky
epigram did not come to his rescue, he was undone.

I was now to be the spectator of a different scene. There was passion
and resentment, the keenness of rivalry and the ardour of triumph--but
there was no affectation. Men spoke as men speak when their essential
interests are engaged--plainly, boldly, and directly--vigorously always,
sometimes vehemently; but with that strong sincerity which administers
eloquence to even the most untaught orders of mankind, and without which
the most decorated eloquence is only the wooden sword and mask of
harlequin.

Pitt took the lead, in all senses of the phrase. He was magnificent. His
exposition of the state of Europe, perfectly unadorned, had yet an
effect upon the House not unlike that of opening a volume to a multitude
who had but just learned to read. All was novelty, conviction, and
amazement. His appeal to the principles by which a great people should
shape its conduct, had all the freshness and the strength of feelings
drawn at the moment from the depths of his own blameless bosom; and his
hopes of the victory of England over the temptations to public
overthrow, exhibited all the fire, and almost all the sacred assurance
of prophecy.

He described the system of France as "subversion on principle," its
purpose universal tumult, its instrument remorseless bloodshed, and its
success a general redu