e limitations
of things, its sense of the awful emergencies of the problem. When our
grandchildren have made up their minds, once for all, as to the merits
of the social transformation which dawned on Europe in 1789, then
Burke's _Reflections_ will become a mere literary antiquity, and not
before.

From the very beginning Burke looked upon the proceedings in France
with distrust. He had not a moment of enthusiasm or sympathy of which
to repent. When the news reached England that the insurgents of Paris
had stormed the Bastille, Fox exclaimed with exultation, how much it
was the greatest event that had ever happened in the world, how much
the best. Is it an infirmity to wish for an instant that some such
phrase of generous hope had escaped from Burke; that he had for a day
or an hour undergone that fine illusion which was lighted up in the
spirits of men like Wordsworth and Coleridge? Those great poets,
who were destined one day to preach even a wiser and a loftier
conservatism than his own, have told us what they felt--

When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared,
And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea,
Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free.

Burke from the first espied the looming shadow of a catastrophe. In
August he wrote to Lord Charlemont that the events in France had
something paradoxical and mysterious about them; that the outbreak of
the old Parisian ferocity might be no more than a sudden explosion,
but if it should happen to be _character_ rather than accident, then
the people would need a strong hand like that of their former masters
to coerce them; that all depended upon the French having wise heads
among them, and upon these wise heads, if such there were, acquiring
an authority to match their wisdom. There is nothing here but a calm
and sagacious suspense of judgment. It soon appeared that the old
Parisian ferocity was still alive. In the events of October 1789, when
the mob of Paris marched out to Versailles and marched back again with
the king and queen in triumphal procession, Burke felt in his heart
that the beginning of the end had come, and that the catastrophe was
already at hand. In October he wrote a long letter to the French
gentleman to whom he afterwards addressed the _Reflections_. "You
hope, sir," he said, "that I think the French deserving of liberty. I
certainly do. I certainly think that all men who desire it deserve it.
We cannot forfeit our right t