be inquired for from a writer absorbed in the difficult labour of discovering the event as it has come to appear under the fostering hand of a new republic. We may well be grateful for what we have got, for the most minute and careful account in the language of all that Ted to the establishment of the Reign of Terror. But the comfort derived from the praiseworthy avoidance of emotion and abuse is tempered by the fact that the author's moderation is not all due to self-government, but apparently to a rare and remarkable ethical indifference. Urbanity towards Robespierre and Marat is unquestionably meritorious. But the repose of reading about them without nickname or epithet is spoilt, when it appears that, if they are not treated like monsters at a show, it is because the author does not think them so very monstrous after all, but knows a good deal that may be said in their favour. He rightly holds that the royalists were often no better than their exterminators, and that the monotonous and interested representations of conservative writers call for redress. He is more shocked at their exaggerations than at those of Michelet or Hamel, and his sympathies with the latter lead him when he goes astray. He judges that the plot for seizing Strasburg justifies the decrees of the legislative assembly against the émigrés. In point of time the decree preceded the plot. It was vetoed by the king, and was renewed afterwards. Still the assembly was committed to the cruel policy before the transaction by which Mr. Stephens summarily justifies it. He is sorry for the king, and judges him, on the whole, equitably. But he insists that he was kindly treated in prison, and he calls attention to an item of twenty-two livres for the queen's washing. For her, indeed, he has little to urge, and he asks whether she would have been merciful had she conquered.
From the massacres of September the book degenerates. First, we are assured that the prisoners arrested on 30th August were men who, from their position, naturally disliked the progress of the Revolution. Afterwards it appears that they were murdered for fear they should
