with a longer life he could have carried his
counter-revolution to success, I will only remark, that, conceding that
in robust health he would have had it at heart as sincerely as in the
recorded hours of his sickness and despondency, it may be admitted, that
a struggle which, under every imprudence, seemed long to hang in doubt,
with the aid of his energetic and masterly polity might, perhaps, have
poised for royalty. But it is not to be concealed that the difficulty of
arresting and unmaking were even greater than those of creating and
consolidating the revolution. The king's aversion to decisive measures,
and well-known horror of civil war, made him the worst of colleagues for
the only policy his tool could wield with effect; and the great
demagogue himself, when obliged to discard the mask of democratic
hypocrisy that still partly hid the subtle and venal traitor of his
party, would have lost, like Strafford, many of the elements of his
potency; and despoiled, especially, of the miraculous resources of his
eloquence, must have contented himself with that lucid, common-sense,
consecutive daring, and power of strategic combination, which his new
friends were so ill-fitted to support.

Fortunately, perhaps, for his future fame, he died ere the structure his
arts had undermined tested his powers of reparation, and before that
wonderful magic of popularity which had so long survived, as it had,
indeed, so long anticipated, his deserts, had time to vanish under the
cock-crow of truth. His death was as well-timed as his political advent,
and has been praised by French wit as the best evidence of his tact; for
the expectations which the unparalleled rapidity, no less than the
innate marvelousness of his achievements had raised, no future activity
and fortune, scarcely those of a Napoleon, could have realized.

But if the retrospect of his career must convince us that one man in so
short a period never accomplished so much before, against such
disadvantages, so also must we admit that probably never before did any
one rest so wholly for his amazing achievements on the sole power of
intrinsic genius. It was intellect that did all with Mirabeau; and made
his head, according to his own boast, a power among European states. It
united almost every possible capacity and attainment. His rare and
penetrating powers of observation were sustained by the equal depth and
justness of his discrimination, and the rapidity and accuracy of