apostles of equality established a tyranny of horror, labouring to
extirpate all who had committed the sin of being fortunate. The apostles
of fraternity carried fire and sword to the farthest confines of Europe,
demanding that a continent should submit to the arbitrary dictation of a
single people. And of the Revolution were born the most rigid of modern
codes of law, that spirit of militarism which to-day has caused a world to
mourn, that intolerance of intolerance which has armed anti-clerical
persecutions in all lands. Nor were the actors in the drama less varied
than the scenes enacted. The Revolution produced Mirabeau and Talleyrand,
Robespierre and Napoleon, Sieyes and Hebert. The marshals of the First
Empire, the doctrinaires of the Restoration, the journalists of the
Orleanist monarchy, all were alike the children of this generation of
storm and stress, of high idealism and gross brutality, of changing
fortunes and glory mingled with disaster.

To describe the whole character of a movement so complex, so diverse in
its promises and fulfilment, so crowded with incident, so rich in action,
may well be declared impossible. No sooner has some proposition been
apparently established, than a new aspect of the period is suddenly
revealed, and all judgments have forthwith to be revised. That the
Revolution was a great event is certain; all else seems to be uncertain.
For some it is, as it was for Charles Fox, much the greatest of all events
and much the best. For some it is, as it was for Burke, the accursed
thing, the abomination of desolation. If its dark side alone be regarded,
it oppresses the very soul of man. A king, guilty of little more than
amiable weakness and legitimate or pious affection; a queen whose gravest
fault was but the frivolity of youth and beauty, was done to death. For
loyalty to her friends, Madame Roland died; for loving her husband,
Lucille Desmoulins perished. The agents of the Terror spared neither age
nor sex; neither the eminence of high attainment nor the insignificance of