ity. Like Punch, all belly and all back, but very ready on the occasion to imitate the tortoise, presenting the shell, and allowing himself to be struck. This big, ungainly Gabriel goes about everywhere soliciting alms in order to give charity to beggars; following in that respect the example of his mother, notwithstanding all I say about its being contrary to my principles. The other day at one of those fêtes given at my house when races are run, and prizes won, he gained a hat, and then turning to a child who had a cap on, he put his own on him, saying to the little peasant, Here, take it, I have not two heads!' That youth appeared to me then emperor of the world! I don't know what godlike expression passed over his face at the moment, but it haunted me in my dreams, and brought tears to my eyes. The lesson did me good."

As a fine specimen of his burning eloquence, we quote his beautiful eulogium on our immortal Franklin, pronounced on the 11th of June, 1790:

"Franklin is dead! Restored to the bosom of the divinity is that genius which gave freedom to America and rayed forth torrents of light upon Europe. The sage whom two worlds claim-the man whom the history of empires and the history of science alike contend for-occupied, it cannot be denied, a lofty rank among his species. Long enough have political cabinets signalised the death of those who were great in their funeral eulogies only. Long enough has the etiquette of courts prescribed hypocritical mournings. For their benefactors only should nations assume the emblems of grief; and the representatives of nations should commend only the heroes of humanity to public veneration.

"In the fourteen states of the confederacy, Congress has ordained a mourning of two months for the death of Franklin; and America is at this moment acquitting herself of this tribute of honour to one of the Fathers of her Constitution. Would it not become us, gentlemen, to unite in this religious act; to participate in this homage, publicly rendered, at once to the rights of man, and to the philosopher who has contributed most largely to their vindication

throughout the world? Antiquity would have erected altars to this great and powerful genius, who, to promote the welfare of mankind, comprehending both the heavens and the earth in the range of his thought, could at once snatch the bolt from the cloud and the scepter from tyrants. France, enlightened and free, owes at least the acknowledgement of her remembrance and regret to one of the greatest intellects that ever served the united cause of philosophy and liberty. I propose that it be now decreed that the national Assembly wear mourning, during three days, for Benjamin Franklin."

Mirabeau's capacity for hard work was simply marvellous. It is said that he did more in a day than the majority of men would do in a month. He carried on a prodigious amount of business simultaneously. No time was lost from his conception of a project to its execution. To-day, not to-morrow, seems to have been his motto. Conversation alone could seduce him from his work, and even that he converted into a means of labour.

He read very little, but with great rapidity. He discovered at a glance what was useful to him in a book. As fast as a speech was changed, he had fresh copies of it made. He was very impatient of delays. His secretary one day said to him, "The thing you require is impossible." Said Mirabeau, passionately starting from his chair, “Impossible! never again use that foolish word in my presence!'

Carmenin, an eloquent French writer says of Mirabeau : "Everywhere, in every thing, already Mirabeau reveals himself;-in his letters, in his pleadings, in his memorials, in his treatises on arbitrary imprisonments, on the liberty of the press, on the privileges of the nobility, on the inequality of distinctions, on the financial affairs and the situation of Europe enemy of every abuse, vehement, polemic, bold reformer; more remarkable, it is true, for elevation, hardihood, and originality of thought, for sagacity of observation, and vigour of reasoning, than for the graces of form; verbose, even loose, incorrect, unequal, but rapid and picturesque in style, a spoken, not a written style, as is that of most orators.

With what masculine eloquence he objurgates the King of Prussia! "Do but what the son of your slave will have done ten times a day, ten times better than you, the courtiers will tell you you have performed an extraordinary action. Give full reign to your passions, they will tell you, you do well. Squander the sweat and the blood of your subjects like the waters of the rivers, they will say you do well. If you descend to avenge yourself, you so powerful -they will say you do well. They have said so, when Alexander, in his drunkenness, tore open with his piognard the bosom of his friend. They have said so, when Nero assassinated his mother."

Is not this in the oratorical style?

The following picture of a legal constitution must have thrilled the popular heart:

"Too often are bayonets the only remedy applied to the convulsions of oppression and want. But bayonets never re-establish but the peace of terror, the silence of despotism. Ah! the people are not a furious herd which must be kept in chains! Always quiet and moderate, when they are truly free, they are violent and unruly but under those governments where they are systematically debased in order to have a pretext to despise them. When we consider what must result to the happiness of twenty-five millions of men, from a legal constitution in place of ministerial caprices,from the consent of all the wills and the co-operation of all the lights of the nation in the improvement of our laws, from the reform of abuses, from the reduction of taxes, from economy in the finances, from the mitigation of the penal laws, from regularity of procedure in the tribunals, from the abolition of a multitude of servitudes which shackle industry and mutilate the human faculties, in a word, from that grand system of liberty, which, planted on the firm basis of freely-elected municipalities, rises gradually to the provincial administrations, and receives its completion from the annual recurrence of the States-General-when we weigh all that must result from the restoration of this vast empire, who does not feel that the greatest of crimes, the darkest

outrage against humanity, would be to offer opposition to the rising destiny of our country and thrust her back into the depths of the abyss, there to hold her oppressed beneath the burthen of all her chains."

When he proposed that the thanks of the Assembly be voted to Bailly and Lafayette, he enumerated the difficulties of their civil and military administration with great accuracy and nicety of observation :

"What an administration! what an epoch, where all is to be feared and all to be braved! when tumult begets tumult, when an affray is produced by the very means taken to prevent it; -when moderation is unceasingly necessary, and moderation. appears pusillanimity, timidity, treason, when you are beset with a thousand counsels, and yet must take your own— when all persons are to be dreaded, even citizens whose intentions are pure, but whom distrust, excitement, exaggeration, render almost as formidable as conspirators-when one is obliged, even in critical circumstances, to yield up his wisdom, to lead anarchy in order to repress it, to assume an employment glorious, it is true, but environed with the most harassing alarms-when it is necessary besides, in the midst of such and so many difficulties, to show a serene countenance, to be always calm, to enforce order even in the smallest details, to offend no one, to heal all jealousies, to serve incessantly and seek to please, but without the appearance of being a servant."

When M. Necker, minister of finance, asked the Assembly for a vote of confidence, Mirabeau, in order to carry it by storm, displayed all the irony of his eloquence and all the might of his logic; and when he saw the auditory shaken, he hurled against bankruptcy the following fulminations:

"Oh! if declarations less solemn did not guarantee our respect for the public faith, our horror of the infamous word bankruptcy, I should say to those who familiarise themselves perhaps with the idea of repudiating the public engagements, through fear of excessive sacrifices, through terror of taxation: What, then, is bankruptcy, if it is not the

cruelest, the most iniquitous, the most disastrous of imposts? My friends, listen to me, a word, a single word!

"Two centuries of depredation and robbery have excavated the abyss wherein the kingdom is on the verge of being engulfed. This frightful gulf it is indispensable to fill up. Well, here is a list of the proprietors. Choose from among the richest, so as to sacrifice the smallest number of the citizens. But choose! for is it not expedient that a small number perish to save the mass of the people? Come -these two thousand notables possess wherewith to supply the deficit. Restore order to our finances, peace and prosperity to the kingdom. Strike, and immolate pitilessly these melancholy victims, precipitate them into the abyss; it is about to close. What, you recoil with horror! . . Inconsistent, pusillanimous men! And do you not see that in decreeing bankruptcy—or, what is more odious still, in rendering it inevitable without decreeing-you disgrace yourselves with an act a thousand times more criminal; for, in fact, that horrible sacrifice would remove the deficiency. But do you imagine, that because you refuse to pay, you shall cease to owe? Do you think the thousands, the millions of men who will lose in an instant by the dreadful explosion or its revulsions, all that constituted the comfort of their lives, and perhaps their sole means of subsistence, will leave you in the peaceable enjoyment of your crime! Stoical contemplators of the incalculable woes which this catastrophe will scatter over France; unfeeling egotists, who think these convulsions of despair and wretchedness will pass away like so many others, and pass the more rapidly as they will be the more violent, are you quite sure that so many men without bread will leave you tranquilly to luxuriate amid the viands which you will have been unwilling to curtail in either variety or delicacy? No, you will perish; and in the universal conflagration, which you do not tremble to kindle, the loss of your honour will not save you a single one of your detestable luxuries! Vote, then, this extraordinary subsidy, and may it prove sufficient! Vote it, because the class most interested in the sacrifice which the