text:  How then the meaner spirits succeeded in the whirlwind of change to the mightier minds which first conjured and hoped to control it; how the Mirabeaux the Lally Tollendals the Mouniers of the Assembly were replaced and popularly displaced by the sophists and intriguers of the Gironde and the Constituent; how in the Convention and the hall of the Jacobins the coarser men of the whole movement--the Dantons the Robespierres the Marats the facetious as ferocious Bareres the stupid Anacharsis Clootzes--trampled under foot or finished with the guillotine the _phraseurs_ and _meneurs_ of the Gironde your orators of set speech glittering abstractions and hair-splitting definitions; the Brissots Vergniauds Condorcets and Rolands who could degrade dethrone and condemn a king to perpetual imprisonment but were just too dainty of conscience to go the whole hog of murder