r diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and
activity of which constitute for us at the present day the spectacle
of human things. Witnesses during thirty years of the greatest
revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the
movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or
the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny
of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their
simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We
require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man
is displayed in his completeness and excites our entire sympathy.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

Born in 1790, died in 1869; famous chiefly as a poet, being
one of the greatest in modern France, but successful as an
orator and prominent in political life during the troubled
period of 1848, when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs;
author of several historical works, among them the "History
of the Girondists."

OF MIRABEAU'S ORIGIN AND PLACE IN HISTORY[51]

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugees 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 prosecutions. The
blood of Machiavelli 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 color and tone of the heroic tongues of
Italy.

[Footnote 51: From Book I of the "History of the Girondists"--the
translation of R. T. Ryde in Bonn's Library, as revised for this
collection.]

The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch
of the quarrels of Marius and Sulla, 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 they explain it.
The source of genius is often in ancestry, and the b