the insolence which treats the public men of France during a whole
generation as mere subjects for ribaldry and caricature. From this
uniform mockery, Mirabeau and Bonaparte, two of the least worthy of
them, are almost alone exempted. This is a blunder in art, as well as
a moral and historical offence. Men like Gondorcet, Danton, Hoche,
Carnot, not to name a score of other old Conventionels, soldiers, and
leaders were pure, enlightened, and valorous patriots--with a breadth
of soul and social sympathies and hopes that tower far above the
insular prejudices and Hebrew traditions of a Scotch Cameronian
_littérateur_--poet, genius, and moralist though he also was himself.

But though the _French Revolution_ is not to be accepted as
historical authority, it is profoundly stimulating and instructive,
when we look on it as a lyrical apologue. It is an historical
phantasmagoria--which, though hardly more literally true than
Aristophanes' _Knights_ or _Clouds_, may almost be placed beside these
immortal satires for its imagination, wisdom, and insight. The
personages and the events of the French Revolution in fact succeeded
each other with such startling rapidity and such bewildering variety,
that it is difficult for any but the most patient student to keep the
men and the phases steadily before the eye without confusion and in
distinct form. This Carlyle has done far better than any other
historian of the period, perhaps even better than any historian
whatever. That so many Englishmen are more familiar with the scenes
and the men and women of the French Revolution than they are with the
scenes and the men and women of their own history, is very largely the
work of Carlyle. And as to the vices and weakness of the Old Régime,
the electric contagion of the people of Paris, the indomitable
elasticity of the French spirit, the magnetic power of the French
genius, the famous _furia francese_, and the terrible rage into which