For a few months indeed Lamartine, from being a distinguished man of letters, an official of inferior rank in diplomacy, and an eloquent but unpractical speaker in parliament, became one of the foremost men in Europe.
At the same time he was full of schemes, practical and unpractical.
His inexperience in the routine work of government, the utterly unpractical nature of his colleagues, and the turbulence of the Parisian mob, proved fatal to his chances.
At no time in history were unpractical crotchets so rife in the heads of men as in 1848.
The Republicans were paean P P P P republic. men of culture and high character, but doctrinaire and unpractical, and they knew very little of the lower classes of their own country.