thoughts were. But they do not appear. If the sentence upon him is unfair to any associate it is to Buzot, of whom Mr. Stephens dimly affirms that he had a system of his own, but leaves us to find out, when the dogs are devouring his remains, that he was a federalist. The fact is no doubt true, in theory as well as in policy ; but, as it has been questioned by the high authority of M. Taine, there was room for more, and the ugly word used in referring to the relations between Buzot and Madame Roland ought to be corrected or made good. Again, we are told that the iron safe furnished fresh arguments against the king. But it is not stated what they were. Now it chances that they were very serious arguments indeed, and they have been slurred over by so respectable a royalist as Barante. The list of omissions might be prolonged ; but, although the author's French is not entirely above reproach, inaccuracies are extremely rare. There is hardly anything in the Argonne that can fairly be called a mountain pass ; and Leopold of Tuscany is not fitly described when he is called one of the benevolent and intelligent despots of that epoch. The thing that distinguishes him from the rest, that distinguishes him favourably even from the King of England, is that, without necessity or even pressure, he desired to diminish his own despotic power. Following Lanfrey, Mr. Stephens has the courage to say that Carnot was no better than the rest ; and he follows still more illustrious examples when he calls Sieyès a shallow theorist. If he holds the supposed opinion of Burke, and means that in politics a theorist is shallow of necessity, because politics are insoluble by theory, the idea has a right to pass unchallenged in these pages ; otherwise it ought to be remembered that in the little band of true theorists, composed of Harrington and Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson, Hamilton and Mill, the rank of Sieyès is very far from being the lowest.
The philosophy of the Revolution, its causes in the region of thought, its long ancestry, its connection with like events, and its position in the series are not things to
