his
judgment. Uniting, to his admirable natural capacity, an activity and
habitual power of application, more marvelous almost in their extent
than even in their rare combination, he possessed an understanding full,
beyond precedent, both of the recorded knowledge of books, and of that
priceless experience of men and things, without which all else is
naught; and as the complement of these amazing and unparalleled
advantages, he had the still rarer advantage of a felicity and power of
diction every way worthy of so incomparable a genius.

Looking with contempt at the stiff, ornamental, and childishly
antithetical style of his day and nation, he welded the flimsy elements
of the French language into instruments of strength akin to his own
conceptions, and wrought out of them a style for himself in which a
Demosthenic simplicity and severity of language is sustained by an
earnest and straightforward power which vivifies and amplifies all that
it touches. Startled by an innovation far beyond the conceptions of the
French academy, the writer was smiled at and neglected by the critics;
and it was not till they heard him launching from the tribune the
thunders of justice, disposing at pleasure of the inclinations of the
multitude, and subjugating even the captious by the imperious power of
his eloquence, that they began to discover that there was a "power of
life"[10] in his rude and singular language; that "things, commonplace,
in his hand became of electric power;"[11] and that, standing "like a
giant among pigmies,"[12] his style, albeit "savage,"[13] dominated the
assembly, stupefying, and thundering down all opposition.

It is the affliction of history, that, while raising her monuments to
gigantic genius, she is compelled so often to record an immorality of
parallel proportions. It is right that the infamy of Mirabeau should be
as eternal as his greatness. He was a man who, in his political, as in
his private life, had no sense of right for its own sake, and from whom
conscience never won a sacrifice. With great and glorious aims at times,
he never had a disinterested one. His ambition, vanity, or passions,
were his only standard of conduct--a standard, be it added, which,
despite the wonderful justness of his judgments, the depravity of a
sunken nature kept always below even his needs. Policy with him was
often but a campaign of vengeance or market of venality, and the
glorious exercises of literature but a relaxation