HIS PRINCIPLES AND CHARACTER. 403 
least introduction of true principles is generally attended by heavy 
sacrifices, which are too frequently to be apprehended, either from 
the mismanagement or incompetency of those whom accident or cir- 
cumstances have placed at the head of such momentous events. 
How seldom do we find the requisite proportions of discretion and 
courage in men holding elevated rank and commanding positions in 
society ! and even though nature should originally have been lavish 
in her disposition of these invaluable endowments, yet may their 
beneficial effects be lessened or neutralized, by the education after- 
wards acquired at school, or by the force of example received in 
subsequent life. Ardent, youthful minds, but too frequently admit 
fanciful impressions at school, having no foundation in reason ; 
whilst worldly experience, obtained in maturer years, deadens the 
noble impulses of the heart, giving place to avaricious and selfish 
motives. Reason, it is true, suggests the course to be pursued amid 
the complicated affairs of practical life ; but man is too often defi- 
cient of resolution and energy to adopt her friendly admonitions : 
hence we see persons of distinguished rank and talents degrading 
themselves from that high position in society, which they are emi- 
nently qualified to fill, and damning their fair fame by entering 
into intrigues with the meanest and most disreputable characters, 
for the purpose of acquiring influence and extending the sphere of 
their operations. Imagination, when uncontrolled by the intellec- 
tual powers of the mind, gradually transforms man into an enthusi- 
ast, who, soaring on high, and luxuriating in the unbounded space 
of an ideal world, regardless of the habits and feelings of the people 
by whom he is surrounded, and setting at nought the spirit and 
temper of the age, expects his contemporaries to join in his aerial 
flight, though they neither possess the capacity to understand, 
nor the desire to indulge, such credulous fancies. 
These elements, reason and imagination—the enlightening and 
animating principles, which conjunctively contribute to form the 
character usually designated “a great man”—were not discernible 
in an eminent degree among the leaders of the French Revolution : 
hence the disappointments and difficulties which encumbered the 
path of the wary, over-calculating Mirabeau, and those dire calami- 
ties which darkened the career of the fanatic Robespiérre, whom we 
may justly term a moral monster ! 
It will not be uninteresting that we should trace to its origin the 
extraordinary notion, regarding the regeneration of society, which, 
in taking such complete hold of Robespiérre’s imagination, prompted 
him to commit acts of atrocity little according with his moral cha- 
