It is when we come to the rank and file of reaction, that we find it hard to forgive the man of genius who made himself the organ of their selfishness, their timidity, and their blindness.

We know, alas, that the parts of his writings on French affairs to which they would fly, were not likely to be the parts which calm men now read with sympathy, but the scoldings, the screamings, the unworthy vituperation with which, especially in the latest of them, he attacked everybody who took part in the Revolution, from Condorcet and Lafayette down to Marat and Couthon.

It was the feet of clay that they adored in their image, and not the head of fine gold and the breasts and the arms of silver.
On the continent of Europe the excitement was as great among the ruling classes as it was at home.

Mirabeau, who had made Burke's acquaintance some years before in England, and even been his guest at Beaconsfield, now made the _Reflections_ the text of more than one tremendous philippic.

Louis XVI.