IT

PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY OF

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION1

[1837]

It appears to be, if not stated in words, yet tacitly felt and understood everywhere, that the event of these modern ages. is the French Revolution. A huge explosion, bursting through all formulas and customs; confounding into wreck and chaos the ordered arrangements of earthly life; blotting-out, one may say, the very firmament and skyey loadstars,—though only for a season. Once in the fifteen-hundred years such a thing was ordained to come. To those who stood present in the actual midst of that smoke and thunder, the effect might well be too violent: blinding and deafening, into confused exasperation, almost into madness. These onlookers have

played their part, were it with the printing-press or with the battle-cannon, and are departed; their work, such as it was, remaining behind them;-where the French Revolution also remains. And now, for us who have receded to the distance of some half-century, the explosion becomes a thing visible, surveyable: we see its flame and sulphur-smoke blend

1 LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, No. 9.-Histoire Parlementaire de la Révolution Française; ou Journal des Assemblées Nationales depuis 1789 jusqu'en 1815: contenant la Narration des Evénemens, les Débats, etc. etc. (Parliamentary History of the French Revolution; or Journal of the National Assemblies from 1789 to 1815: containing a Narrative of the Occurrences; Debates of the Assemblies; Discussions in the chief Popular Societies, especially in that of the Jacobins; Records of the Commune of Paris; Sessions of the Revolutionary Tribunal; Reports of the leading Political Trials; Detail of the Annual Budgets; Picture of the Moral Movement, extracted from the Newspapers, Pamphlets, etc. of each Period: preceded by an Introduction on the History of France till the Convocation of the States-General). By P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux. Tomes 1er-23me et seq. Paris, 1833-36.

VOL. IV.

A

with the clear air (far under the stars); and hear its uproar as part of the sick noise of life,-loud, indeed, yet embosomed too, as all noise is, in the infinite of silence. It is an event which can be looked on; which may still be execrated, still be celebrated and psalmodied; but which it were better now to begin understanding. Really there are innumerable reasons why we ought to know this same French Revolution as it was: of which reasons (apart altogether from that of Philosophy teaching by Experience,' and so forth), is there not the best summary in this one reason, that we so wish to know it? Considering the qualities of the matter, one may perhaps reasonably feel that since the time of the Crusades, or earlier, there is no chapter of history so well worth studying.

Stated or not, we say, this persuasion is tacitly admitted, and acted upon. In these days everywhere you find it one of the most pressing duties for the writing guild, to produce history on history of the French Revolution. In France it would almost seem as if the young author felt that he must make this his proof-shot, and evidence of craftsmanship : accordingly they do fire-off Histoires, Précis of Histoires, Annales, Fastes (to say nothing of Historical Novels, Gil Blases, Dantons, Barnaves, Grangeneuves), in rapid succession, with or without effect. At all events it is curious to look upon; curious to contrast the picturing of the same fact by the men of this generation and position with the picturing of it by the men of the last. From Barruel and Fantin Desodoards to Thiers and Mignet there is a distance! Each individual takes up the Phenomenon according to his own point of vision, to the structure of his optic organs; —gives, consciously, some poor crotchety picture of several things; unconsciously some picture of himself at least. And the Phenomenon, for its part, subsists there, all the while, unaltered; waiting to be pictured as often as you like, its entire meaning not to be compressed into any picture drawn by man.

Thiers's History, in ten volumes foolscap-octavo, contains, if we remember rightly, one reference; and that to a book, not to the page or chapter of a book. It has, for these last seven or eight years, a wide or even high reputation; which latter it is as far as possible from meriting. A superficial air of order, of clearness, calm candour, is spread over the work; but inwardly, it is waste, inorganic; no human head that honestly tries can conceive the French Revolution so. A critic of our acquaintance undertook, by way of bet, to find four errors per hour in Thiers: he won amply on the first trial or two.1 And yet readers (we must add), taking all this along with them, may peruse Thiers with comfort in certain circumstances, nay, even with profit; for he is a brisk man of his sort; and does tell you much, if you knew nothing.

Mignet's, again, is a much more honestly-written book; yet also an eminently unsatisfactory one. His two volumes contain far more meditation and investigation in them than Thiers's ten their degree of preferability, therefore, is very high; for it may be said: Call a book diffuse, and you call it in all senses bad; the writer could not find the right word to say, and so said many more or less wrong ones: did not hit the nail on the head, only smote and bungled about it and about it. Mignet's book has a compactness, a rigour, as of riveted rods of iron: this also is an image of what symmetry it has;-symmetry, if not of a living earth-born Tree, yet of a firm well-manufactured Gridiron. Without life, without colour or verdure: that is to say, Mignet is heartily and altogether a prosaist; you are too happy that he is not a quack as well! It is very mortifying, also, to study his philosophical reflections; how he jingles and rumbles a

1 Thiers says, 'Notables consented with eagerness' (vol. i. p. 10), whereas they properly did not consent at all; 'Parlement recalled on the 10th of September' (for the 15th); and then 'Séance Royale took place on the 20th of the same month' (19th of quite a different month, not the same, nor next to the same); 'D'Espréménil a young Councillor' (of forty and odd); 'Duport a young

man' (turned of sixty), etc. etc.