of history record. But this rhetorical success is not a triumph of
truth. There were those who were conquered at Waterloo; and, to judge by
what has been going on for some time past in Europe, it would seem that
those who were conquered are bent on taking their revenge. We may infer
from these facts that all triumphs are not good, since truth may be for
a moment overcome by a false philosophy tricked out in the deceitful
adornments of eloquence.

But let us admit, whatever our opinion on the subject, that the Waterloo
rock has been passed successfully; we have not yet pointed out the main
difficulty which rises up in the way of this system. If victory is
good, it seems at first sight that defeat is bad. But defeat is the
necessary condition of victory; and being the condition of good, it
seems therefore that it also is good; and the mind comes logically to
this conclusion: "Victory is good;--defeat is good, since it is the
condition of victory;--all is good." We set out with the glorification
of victory, and, lo! we are arrived at the glorification of fact. All
that is, has the right to be; in the eyes of the modern savant whatever
is, is right. M. Cousin laid down the principle; he laid it down in a
general manner in his philosophical eclecticism, of which it was easy to
make use, as has in fact been done, in a sense contrary to his real
intentions. Our young critics, wasting an inheritance of which they do
not appear always to recognize the origin, are doing nothing else, very
often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that
surpassing eloquence.

In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good: such is
the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had
prepared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another,
that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve. Let us