Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ORATORS OF FRANCE. CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. M I R A B E A U. As Christopher Columbus, after having traversed a vast extent of ocean, was advancing tranquilly towards the continent of America, all of a sudden the wind blows, the lightning flashes, the thunder mutters, the cordage is rent, the pilot alarmed, and the vessel is on the verge of being lost, of being engulfed in the waves. But Columbus himself, while his soldiers and sailors gave themselves up to prayer and to despair, confiding in his high destinies, seized the helm, steered through the roarings of the tempest and the horrors of the deep night, and feeling the prow of his vessel ground upon the shores of the New World, he cried with a loud voice : " Land! land !" So, when the Revolution was losing its course with started anchors and torn sails, upon a rocky and tempestuous sea, Mirabeau taking his stand on the fore- deck, bade defiance to the flashing of the thunderbolt, and cheering the trembling passengers, raised in the midst of them his prophetic voice, and pointed them out the promised land of liberty. All things concurred to make Mirabeau the grand potentate of the tribune, his peculiar organization, his life, his studies, his domestic broils, the extraordinary times in which he appeared, the spirit and manner of deliberation of the Constituent Assembly, and the combination truly marvellous of his oratorical faculties. It is requisite, in an assembly of twelve hundred legislators, that the orator should be discernible from a distance, and Mirabeau was discernible from a distance. It is requisite that he be audible from adistance, and Mirabeau was thus audible. It is requisite that the details of his physiognomy should disappear in the general expression, that the internal man be revealed in the features, an...