As an author Mirabeau does not rank high.  His fame rests on his speeches.  His eloquence was transcendent, so far as it was rendered vivid by passion.  He knew how to move men; he understood human nature.  No orator ever did so much by a single word, by felicitous expressions.  In the tribune he was immovable.  His self-possession never left him in the greatest disorders.  He was always master of himself.  His voice was full, manly, and sonorous, and pleased the ear; always powerful, yet flexible, it could be as distinctly heard when he lowered it as when he raised it.  His knowledge was not remarkable, but he had an almost miraculous faculty of appropriating whatever he heard.  He paid the greatest attention to his dress, and wore an enormous quantity of hair dressed in the fashion of the day.  “When I shake my terrible locks,” said he, “no one dares interrupt me.”  Though he received pensions, he was too proud to be dishonest, in the ordinary sense.  He received large sums, but died insolvent.  He had, like most Frenchmen, an inordinate vanity, and loved incense from all ranks and conditions.  Although he was the first to support the Assembly against the King, he was essentially in favor of monarchy, and maintained the necessity of the absolute veto.  He would have given a constitution to his country as nearly resembling that of England as local circumstances would permit.  Had he lived, the destinies of France might have been different.

But his death gave courage to all the factions, and violence and crime were consummated by the Reign of Terror.  With the death of Mirabeau, closed the first epoch of the Revolution.  Thus far it had been earnest, but unscrupulous in the violation of rights and in the destruction of ancient abuses.  Yet if inexperienced and rash, it was not marked by deeds of blood.  In this first form it was marked by enthusiasm and hope and patriotic zeal; not, as afterwards, by fears and cruelty and usurpations.

Henceforth, the Revolution took another turn.  It was directed, not by men of genius, not by reformers seeking to rule by wisdom, but by demagogues and Jacobin clubs, and the mobs of the city of Paris.  What was called the “Left,” in the meetings of the Assembly,—­made up of fanatics whom Mirabeau despised and detested,—­gained a complete ascendency and adopted the extremest measures.  Under their guidance, the destruction of the monarchy was complete.  Feudalism and the Church property had been swept away, and the royal authority now received its final blow; nay, the King himself was slain, under the influence of fear, it is true, but accompanied by acts of cruelty and madness which shocked the whole civilized world and gave an eternal stain to the Revolution itself.