(1796-1884), eminent for its research,
exactitude, clearness, ordonnance, has been censured for its
historical fatalism. In reality Mignet's mind was too studious of
facts to be dominated by a theory. He recognised the great forces
which guide and control events; he recognised also the power and
freedom of the individual will. His early _Histoire de la Revolution
Francaise_ is a sane and lucid arrangement of material that came to
his hands in chaotic masses. His later and more important writings
deal with his special province, the sixteenth century; his method,
as he advanced, grew more completely objective; we discern his ideas
through the lines of a well-proportioned architecture.

The analytic method of Guizot, supported by a method of patient
induction, was applied by ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE (1805-59) to the study
of the great phenomenon of modern democracy. Limiting the area of
investigation to America, which he had visited on a public mission,
he investigated the political organisation, the manners and morals,
the ideas, the habits of thought and feeling of the United States
as influenced by the democratic equality of conditions. He wrote as
a liberal in whom the spirit of individualism was active. He regarded
the progress of democracy in the modern world as inevitable; he
perceived the dangers--formidable for society and for individual
character--which accompany that progress; he believed that by
foresight and wise ordering many of the dangers could be averted.
The fears and hopes of the citizen guided and sustained in Tocqueville
a philosophical intelligence. Turning from America to France, he
designed to disengage from the tangle of events the true historical
significance of the Revolution. Only one volume, _L'Ancien Regime
et la Revolution_, was accomplished. It can stand alone as a work
of capital importance. In the great upheaval he saw that all was not
progress; the centralisation of power under the old regime remained,
and was rendered even more formidable than before; the sentiment of
equality continued to advance in its inevitable career; unhappily
the spirit of liberty was not always its companion, its moderator,
or its guide.

ADOLPHE THIERS (1797-1877) was engaged at the same time as Mignet,
his lifelong friend, upon a history of the French Revolution (1823-27).
The same liberal principles were held in common by the young authors.
Their methods differed widely: Mignet's orderly and compact
narration