Harlequin and Doll Tearsheet in the Temple of Fancy, before whom a grand dance is performed, in the course of which the executants, by a variety of movements, thread their way through the multitudinous columns of the edifice.

After this, we doubt not that if in the dim future some Vandal has courage enough to brave the famous curse of Stratford, he will find the honoured bones of Shakespeare painfully contorted.

W. J. LAWRENCE

S°

TABLE TALK.

MR. J. H. MCCARTHY'S "FRENCH REVOLUTION."

O far as the original scheme is concerned, the History of the French Revolution,' undertaken by Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, is completed. Having just arisen from the perusal, not only of the two volumes recently issued, but of the two earlier which anticipated their appearance by seven years, I am in a position to commend them as a striking and brilliant study of the causes which led to that most gigantic of upheavals, and of the upheaval itself. To the immense literature on the subject, the stream of which goes broadening and deepening, England and America have largely contributed. To mention one work only, it is probable that three men out of four of the generation immediately past, and half that of to-day, derive their knowledge of the epoch and estimate of the principal actors from the powerful but prejudiced pages of Carlyle. That great thinker was, as Mr. McCarthy points out, much nearer the epoch depicted than is the writer of to-day. Not all gain is it that impressions were then probably more vivid than now they are. It was less easy to grasp the entire field of action, and much less easy to comprehend the momentous issues to which that huge outpouring of Gallic strength and weakness was to lead. Add to this, that from all sources, and notably from the Venetian archives, a flood of fresh light has poured upon the Revolution and the movers in it, and a full justification of Mr. McCarthy's work is furnished, as well as a conviction that in some respects at least the position of the latest historian is the most favourable,

Μ MR.

ITS SCHEME.

R. MCCARTHY'S book stands in need neither of apology nor justification. In many respects it is admirable, and in so far as its scheme, as at present exhibited, extends it is adequate. I know no pages in which men may with more ease and pleasure read the story of the events preceding the practical imprisonment of Louis XVI. The narration is vivacious and dramatic, and the story told is impressive and thrilling. That must indeed be the pen of an inexpert which could render dull in the telling the most exciting London: Chatto & Windus.

and terrible of stories. Mr. McCarthy's pages are, however, as bright as they can be, and records such as those of the "Fall of the Titan and the "Flight to Varennes" are profoundly stimulating. The summary, moreover, of the causes which led to the outbreak, though stronger from the literary than the philosophical standpoint, and revealing the undercurrent among the thinkers rather than among the workers, is eminently interesting and valuable. Mr. McCarthy dwells upon the darker rather than the lighter side of the eighteenthcentury life, which, in spite of its heartlessness and debauchery-not greater perhaps, though more carefully concealed, than those of to-day-had a certain delicacy, daintiness, and refinement. This, as an historian of the revolution, he was bound to do. Sorry, indeed, and degrading from more than one point of view was that eighteenthcentury life, and in one aspect-that of the immunities accorded the nobles—it was horrible. The present writer met with approval from those whose praise was worth having when, on being asked to point to a fouler page in history than the French Revolution, he advanced the page before.

THE NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.

R. MCCARTHY'S book is practically a history of the States

M General. It closes at the moment when the National

Constituent Assembly declared its labours at an end. The longdebated Constitution, with all its wild and abstract yet never ignoble declarations, had, after twenty-eight months of fierce and in a great measure futile debate, been passed. Louis, no longer, since his interrupted flight, master of his actions, or indeed anything except a prisoner, had-amidst public rejoicings which he could not and did not share, and protestations of loyalty the significance of which he had begun to grasp and was shortly to realise-pronounced his acceptance, and then retired to weep in such approach to solitude as was accorded him. He had then closed the session in an address, and heard the answer of the President. The mission of the Constituent Assembly was said to be closed, and such of the members as remained to the end dispersed. Wisest, if not loyallest, were those who had already taken refuge in flight. The curtain then fell on the first great act of what Mr. McCarthy calls "the great mystery or miracle-play of what may be called modern history." Exeunt Mirabeau-he had indeed just died-and Bailly, Lafayette, and the rest of those in whom men saw the champions of liberty. By the entrance stand Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and those by whom before many months had rolled by that unutterable iniquity, the

Reign of Terror, was to be established. It is a good point at which to break off, provided always that the history of the second act is in preparation.

AN ESTIMATE OF MIRABEAU.

HE one character that stands forward in Mr. McCarthy's pages

THE

in heroic proportions is Mirabeau. He was, it is said, "the one supremely great man whose name is recorded in the history of the early revolution." The saying is, indeed, accepted that "the history of the French Revolution is the history of Mirabeau so long as the life of the one and the life of the other ran together." Supremely great as an orator, resolute in his efforts at self-advancement, knowing his own mind and working steadily to his aims, he was the greatest man in the States-General and probably in France. He was, moreover, in spite of his difficulty in writing and the absence of style from his works, better equipped than any, it may almost be said than all, his competitors. His meannesses were, however, almost as conspicuous as his greatnesses. He borrowed money almost as recklessly as our own Sheridan, and his joy was indecent on learning that Louis XVI. had paid his debts and made him an allowance. His pride in his birth, inconsistent as it may appear in one who took part in the abolition of titles of nobility, and his shame at the contemplation of his poverty and his poor establishment with but one servant, are condonable enough, but are scarcely heroic. To these aspects of Mirabeau Mr. McCarthy assigns no prominence, and he is justified in so doing. Mirabeau's stupendous immorality' was characteristic of the age rather than of the individual. This the latest historian is at no pains to conceal, and he does not dispute the alleged fact, that the time immediately after the debate on the Regency and all but preceding his death was spent in reckless debauchery. Such was the France of the eighteenth century. It is for those better informed than I to say if it is not the France of to-day.

A CONTINUATION OF MR. MCCARTHY'S WORK TO BE DESIRED. N taking leave of Mr. McCarthy's fascinating volumes, I can but

chivalrous impartiality is not the least of his recommendations. He has dealt as yet with the time when Celtic passion was under the control of men who, while letting loose the torrent of revolution, believed in their power to dam its banks, or at least to guide its flow. The horrors to follow were as yet faintly indicated. The deaths on the lamp-posts, the tearing to pieces by the mob of those who had

made themselves unpopular, the carrying aloft of their heads upon pikes, and other even worse atrocities, were prophetic of the bloodfury which was to follow. While, however, we look upon these things with the loathing they must always beget in the minds of all except knaves and madmen, we must not draw comparisons wholly in our own favour. Our own revolutions were marked by no similar atrocities, and our nature is not capable of being easily roused, perhaps of being roused at all, to a similar frenzy. Neither in 1640, however, nor in 1688, had the public experienced such provocation or undergone such intolerable wrongs as goaded the peasants and the operative class into fury. No similar pinch of starvation had been experienced, no iniquities such as the condition of French law imposed had been known, and no hopes of a time of proletarian supremacy had been

Had our wrongs been those of the French, we should, I hope, have shown the moderation we have exhibited. The mob, however, of 1792 should be compared with that under Jack Cade rather than with the supporters of the Long Parliament.

AS

THE LAST (?) FRENCH BULL Fight.

S I have been dealing with the initial successes of the French Revolution, I may return to a subject on which I have more than once dwelt-the apparent incapacity of the French democracy to control the ferocious appetites of the populace. Again and again have I pointed out that the horrors of the bull fight, when permitted among the excitable Provençals and Languedociens, were certain to infect the North, and to sap the dignity, the health, and the very being of the whole French nation. Not with impunity can such things be tolerated; and if France takes the bull fight from Spain, she must be prepared to follow Spain into obscurity and extinction. I copy from the Pall Mall Gazette a portion of a description of a bull fight at Roubaix : "I witnessed on Sunday a spectacle of the most gruesome butchery that it has ever been my lot to see in the shape of a bull fight carried out strictly à l'espagnole ; but the country was fair France, and the fair daughters of France were present in their thousands, and seemed perfectly callous to the cruel murder of Spanish bulls and the impaling of feeble old horses that might often have given them a pleasurable ride on the Boulevards." A description of the horrors I spare my readers. I am told, and I hope with truth, that this is the last bull fight that the French Government will tolerate. If that is so, all is well, but action of the kind was more than expedient, it was imperative.

SYLVANUS URBAN.