recalled by his part, and his bearing, to those democrats behind him, that from the time of the Gracchi to his own, the tribunes who most served the people had sprung from the ranks of the patricians.  His talent, unequalled for philosophy of thought, for depth of reflection, and loftiness of expression, was another kind of aristocracy, which could never be pardoned him.  Nature placed him in the foremost rank; and death only created a space around him for secondary minds.  They all endeavoured to acquire his position, and all endeavoured in vain.  The tears they shed upon his coffin were hypocritical.  The people only wept in all sincerity, because the people were too strong to be jealous, and they, far from reproaching Mirabeau with his birth, loved in him that nobility as though it were a spoil they had carried off from the aristocracy.  Moreover, the nation, disturbed at seeing its institutions crumbling away one by one, and dreading a total destruction, felt instinctively that the genius of a great man was the last stronghold left to them.  This genius quenched, it saw only darkness and precipices before the monarchy.  The Jacobins alone rejoiced loudly, for it was only he who could outweigh them.

It was on the 6th of April, 1791, that the National Assembly resumed its sittings.  Mirabeau’s place, left vacant, reminded each gazer of the impossibility of again filling it; consternation was impressed on every countenance in the tribunes, and a profound silence pervaded the meeting.  M. de Talleyrand announced to the Assembly a posthumous address of Mirabeau.  They would hear him though dead.  The weakened echo of his voice seemed to return to his country from the depths of the vaults of the Pantheon.  The reading was mournful.  Parties were burning to measure their strength free from any counterpoise.  Impatience and anxiety were paramount, and the struggle was imminent.  The arbitrator who controlled them was no more.

V.

Before we depict the state of these parties, let us throw a rapid glance over the commencement of the Revolution, the progress it had made, and the principal leaders who were about to attempt directing it in the way they desired to see it advance.

It was hardly two years since opinion had opened the breaches against the monarchy, yet it had already accomplished immense results.  The weak and vacillating spirit of the government had convoked the Assembly of Notables, whilst public spirit had placed its grasp on power and convoked the States General.  The States General being established, the nation had felt its omnipotence, and from this feeling to a legal insurrection there was but a word; that word Mirabeau had uttered.  The National Assembly had constituted itself in front of, and higher than, the throne itself.  The prodigious popularity of M. Necker was exhausted by concessions, and utterly vanished when he no longer had any of the spoils of monarchy to cast before the