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Young's devoted and unflagging zeal, and his sanguine confidence in his principles is equally attractive, whatever the inconsistencies or rashness of his speculations. This must be remembered in reading his French travels. Young is generally cited as justifying the Revolution, and his later recantation regarded as one of the many instances of inconsistency due to the Reign of Terror. It must be observed, however, and it certainly does not diminish the value of his evidence, that Young was never a thorough political follower of the revolutionists. His real sympathy was with his Anglomaniac friends, Liancourt and his like. The question is, as he says in 1789, whether the French will adopt the British Constitution with improvements, or listen to speculative theorists. The result in the latter case would be 'inextricable confusion and civil wars.' Young's great merit is precisely that he records his impressions of fact so vividly and candidly that the value of his evidence is quite independent of the correctness of his political conclusions. I will not ask what those conclusions should be. Young's point of view is the characteristic point for us. The French conditions inverted his English experience. In England he has to be constantly lamenting the