aining portion of very
fair novel interest--the visit of the "Super-Commissary" to the
Commissary; the history of the way in which, under the _regime_ of that
_atelier national_ which some wiseacres want now with us, a large body
of citizens was detailed to carry trees of liberty from a nursery garden
in the suburbs of Paris to the _boulevards_; how these were uprooted
without any regard to their arboreal welfare; how the national
working-men got mainly drunk and wholly skylarky on the way, and how the
unfortunate vegetables were good for nothing but firewood by the time
they reached their destination; the humours of the open-air feast of the
Republic; the storming of the Assembly by the clubs; the oratory of
Malvina (a very delectable morsel) in one of the said clubs devoted to
the Rights of Women;[293] the scene where Oscar, coming by his own
account from the barricades "with his hands and his feet and his raiment
all red," manifests a decided disinclination to return thither--all
these are admirable. But they would have to be dug out of a mass of
history and philosophy which the "lazy novel-reader" would, it is to be
feared, refuse with by no means lazy indignation and disgust.

[Sidenote: But an invaluable document.]

Yet one may venture, at the risk of the charge of stepping out of one's
proper sphere, to recommend the perusal of the book, very strongly, to
all who care either to understand its "moment" or to prepare themselves
for other moments which are at least announced as certain to come. The
French revolutionary period of 1848 and the following years was perhaps
the most perfect example in all history of a thing being allowed to show
itself, in all its natural and therefore ineluctable developments,
without disturbing influences of any kind. It was (if one may use
patristic if not classical Latin in the first word of the phrase)
_Revolutio sibi permissa_. There was, of course, a good deal of somewhat
similar trouble elsewhere in Europe at the time; but there was no
European war of much importance, and no other power threatened or was in
a position to threaten interference with French affairs--for the
excellent reason that all were too much occupied with their own. There
was no internal tyranny or trouble such as had undoubtedly caused--and
as has been held by some to justify--the outburst of sixty years
earlier, nor was there even any serious, though perhaps there was some
minor, maladministration. But there