over-emphasized
as to give a false impression of him. He was admirably sustained in
his action, and his political arguments were as direct as his
physical efforts were continuous, but the banal picture of fury
which is given you by so many writers is false. For fury is empty,
whereas Danton was full, and his energy was at first the force at
work upon a great mass of mind, and later its momentum. Save when
he had the direct purpose of convincing a crowd, his speech had no
violence, and even no metaphor; in the courts he was a close
reasoner, and one who put his points with ability and with
eloquence rather than with thunder. But in whatever he undertook,
vigour appeared as the taste of salt in a dish. He could not quite
hide this vigour: his convictions, his determination, his vision
all concentrate upon whatsoever thing he has in hand. He possessed
a singularly wide view of the Europe in which France stood. In this
he was like Mirabeau, and peculiarly unlike the men with whom
revolutionary government threw him into contact. He read and spoke
English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that the kings
were dilettanti, that the theory of the aristocracies was liberal.
He had no little sympathy with the philosophy which a leisurely
oligarchy had framed in England; it is one of the tragedies of the
Revolution that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least
peace, with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in foreign
policy, Danton was more than a sane--he was a just, and even a
diplomatic man. He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of
the philosophers; it ranged from Rabelais to the physiocrats in his
own tongue, from Adam Smith to the _Essay on Civil Government_ in
that of strangers; and of the Encyclopaedia he possessed all the
numbers steadily accumulated. When we consider the time, his
fortune, and the obvious personal interest in so small and
individual a collection, few shelves will be found more interesting
than those which Danton delighted to fill. In his politics he
desired above all actual, practical, and apparent reforms; changes
for the better expressed in material results. He differed from many
of his countrymen at that time, and from most of his political
countrymen now, in thus adopting the tangible. It was a part