Such was the attitude of the French nation on the eve of the revolution, but when I consider this nation in itself it strikes me as more extraordinary than any event in its own annals.  Was there ever any nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in all its actions; more swayed by sensations, less by principles; led therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, sometimes greatly above it—­a people so unalterable in its leading instincts that its likeness may still be recognised in descriptions written two or three thousand years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily thoughts and in its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement to itself, and to be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the sight of what it has done—­a people beyond all others the child of home and the slave of habit, when left to itself; but when once torn against its will from the native hearth and from its daily pursuits, ready to go to the end of the world and to dare all things.

Such a nation could alone give birth to a revolution so sudden, so radical, so impetuous in its course, and yet so full of reactions, of contradictory incidents and of contrary examples.  Without the reasons I have related the French would never have made the revolution; but it must be confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed to account for such a revolution anywhere else but in France.

* * * * *

FRANCOIS MIGNET

History of the French Revolution

Francois Auguste Alexis Mignet was born at Aix, in Provence, on May 8, 1796, and began life at the Bar.  It soon became apparent that his true vocation was history, and in 1818 he left his native town for Paris, where he became attached to the “Courier Francais,” in the meantime delivering with considerable success a series of lectures on modern history at the Athenee.  Mignet may be said to be the first great specialist to devote himself to the study of particular periods of French history.  His “History of the French Revolution, from 1789 to 1814,” published in 1824, is a strikingly sane and lucid arrangement of facts that came into his hands in chaotic masses.  Eminently concise, exact, and clear, it is the first complete account by one other than an actor in the great drama.  Mignet was elected to the French Academy in 1836, and afterwards published a series of masterly studies dealing with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among which are “Antonio Perez and Philip II.,” and “The History of Mary, Queen of Scots,” and also biographies of Franklin and Charles V. He died on March 24, 1884.

I.—­The Last Resort of the Throne

I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English revolution had begun the era of new governments.