the immensity of the scene, and the mediocrity of the heroes? Even Michelet confesses to this mediocrity of the heroes of 1792. Speaking of the Club des Jacobins, he tells us "that collective action was far more powerful there than individual action, that the strongest, the most heroic individual, lost his advantages. In such associations, active mediocrity rises to importance, genius weighs very little."[1] Mirabeau is left without a successor, and even in his lifetime it is now historically proven that his real influence was very limited, and that his fiery speeches seldom turned the votes of the Constituent Assembly. Even so in Russia. The scene extends from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean. The issues at stake are tremendous. And yet the chief actors are ordinary human beings like ourselves, honest and inconsistent, clever and weak, themselves led by events instead of being born leaders and rulers of men. We are still waiting for the one great Russian statesman to appear.
(i) And finally, both revolutions were greeted by the unanimous applause of a sympathetic world. At the beginning of the French Revolution, not only poets like Wordsworth
