Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/404

 regarded as the revolutionary leader, and we expected the most important results from the developments there, I took a lively interest in French politics and pursued with the intensest concern the struggle going on at that time between the Republicans and the President, Louis Napoleon, who was suspected of usurpatory designs. But I had to confess to myself that many of the things which, as a critical observer, I witnessed around me seriously modified my conception of the grandeur of the events of the revolutionary period, and shook my faith in the historic mission of France as to the future of the civilized world. I frequently visited the gallery of the National Assembly when debates of importance were announced. I had studied the history of the “Constituent Assembly” of 1789, of the “Legislative Body” and of the “Convention” of the first revolution with great diligence and thoroughness, knew by heart some of the most celebrated oratorical performances of Mirabeau and others, was well acquainted with the parliamentary discussions of that period, and hoped now to hear and see something similar to that which had moved me so powerfully in reading and which lived in my imagination as a heroic drama. My disappointment in visiting the National Assembly with this expectation was great. Indeed, high-sounding speeches and scenes of stormy and tumultuous excitement were not lacking; but with all this, as it seemed to me, there was too little of an earnest and thoughtful exchange of opinions between eminent men, and too much of theatrical attitudinizing and of declamatory phrasemongery. It happened to me—as it frequently happens—that the disappointment of expectations which had been pitched too high, will, in the conclusions we draw, lead us to underestimate the character and value of existing things and conditions as we see them before us. What in fact I did witness was the French way of doing things. That way did not