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Reviews of Books

of distinct causation connecting the two". It was this belief that led to the publication as a separate volume of the portions of the Modern European History devoted to the French Revolution and Napoleon. The result has been a book outwardly attractive and charmingly written; it will probably be a popular text-book and, compared with other volumes of the same size, it will deserve to be popular. Tested by the ideal standard of what such a volume might be, it is more open to criticism. Correctness in the statement of fact and fundamental unity in the synthesis of facts should be the aim of every popular work and success in realizing these two aims should be the final test of the historical value of the book. In the volume under examination, there is a third criterion to be considered, namely the success with which the "instruction" of that period for the present is made clear.

As to the incorrect statements of facts, while there are fewer than in the majority of school-texts dealing with this same period, there are still more than necessary, more than should be allowed to stand in a revised edition of the work. Notwithstanding all that has been written upon the French Revolution the main facts have not yet been critically established; but few trustworthy monographs exist. It would be extremely difficult, even for the specialist on the period, to present the whole subject in a condensed synthesis and make no blunders in matters of fact. There are some trustworthy monographs and every writer on the Revolution should be familiar with them; facts should not be drawn, without critical examination, from general histories of the Revolution. Lack of space makes it impossible to do more than illustrate my point. A trustworthy account of the night of August 4, 1789, has been written by Aulard; Professor Hazen's account is evidently taken from Madelin's The French Revolution, and is full of inaccuracies. The insurrections of July and October, 1789, of June 20 and August 10, 1792, the massacres of September, 1792, the Worship of Reason of 1793 have all received monographic treatment and a knowledge of these monographs would have improved Professor Hazen's text. At times, the clan with which the narrative was written triumphed over historical accuracy. The statement (p. 185), for example, that "Louis was given a trial, a trial, however, before a packed jury, which had already shown its hatred of him", is not history but rhetoric. The same is true of the statement (p. 178) touching the September massacres.

The synthesis of the Revolution begins in a most promising manner with a treatment of the ancien régime, the beginnings of the Revolution, and the making of the constitution, and then reverts to the usual topics of the Legislative Assembly, the Convention, and Directory. The excellent chapter on the Making of the Constitution is, to my mind, an example of what the whole book should have been. The chapter devoted to the Convention is the least satisfactory of all, perhaps necessarily so. But it should have been made clear that from 1792 on and especially in the great year 1793 everything was conditioned by war and war should have been thrown into the foreground; it is the only method of treat-