EARLY LIFE OF MIRABEAU. 



AMONG the innumerable compilations under the title of Memoirs 

 which the Paris press has of late lavished with such profusion, our at- 

 tention has been attracted by a volume, purporting to be Memoirs 

 of Mirabeau, edited by his adopted son, M. de Montigny. Though 

 unable to vouch for the relationship or competency of the editor, we 

 fancied we perceived much in the work which might not be unin- 

 teresting to our readers. 



Gabriel Honore, Count de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon on the 

 9th of March, 1749. He was the fifth child of the Marquis de Mira- 

 beau, and such was the extraordinary size of all parts of his body, but 

 particularly of his head, that his mother almost lost her life in giving 

 him birth. He was born with a club-foot, a defect which has given 

 rise to a comparison with Byron, more distinguished for ingenuity 

 than accuracy. In addition to this defect, his tongue, fastened by the 

 fro3num, gave little promise of oratorical success. But the size and 

 vigour of his limbs, and the circumstance of two molar teeth being 

 already formed in his mouth, were sufficiently extraordinary. When 

 he had reached his third year, his life was endangered by a very ma- 

 lignant attack of the small pox. Vaccination had made but little 

 progress at that period. Impatient of the timid treatment of the 

 physicians, his mother was induced to try the virtue of some family 

 receipts on the swollen face of her son, and the result was that 

 it remained deeply disfigured and scarred with the marks of that 

 terrible disease. Hence the marquis his father observes, in a letter 

 to his brother the Bailli, " Your nephew is as ugly as one of Satan's 

 own." Indeed, the frequent recurrence of the marquis to this 

 topic in his letters, seems to warrant the suspicion that he had con- 

 ceived a kind of involuntary aversion to his disfigured son, espe- 

 cially as all his other children, thanks to vaccination, were re- 

 markably handsome. 



Mirabeau gave early indications of extraordinary faculties of mind. 

 A quick apprehension, a retentive memory, an inquisitive dispo- 

 sition, were strengthened and developed by careful cultivation. The 

 writers of the lives of men of genius have always pleased themselves 

 with discovering and exhibiting the man in the boy, and this, 

 even in cases where the comparison is but little countenanced by 

 facts. But the instances of precocity recorded of Mirabeau, in his 

 father's letters to the Bailli, surpass the usual measure of such ex- 

 amples, while they are of unquestionable authenticity. At a dinner 

 given to celebrate the event of his confirmation, when he was seven 

 years of age, he made the following singular distinction. They were 

 explaining to him that God could not perform what was contradictory 

 in itself; for instance, " a stick with but one end." " But is not a 

 miracle a stick with but one end ?" inquired Mirabeau with vivacity. 

 The piety of his uncle was shocked, and his grandmother never for- 

 gave him for this sally. 



