that, Sybel and Taine being dead, Sorel is our highest living
authority. To-day I can no longer use those words.

On Ranke's ninetieth birthday, Mommsen paid him this compliment: "You
are probably the last of the universal historians. Undoubtedly you are
the first." This fine saying was double-edged, and intended to
disparage general histories; but it is with a general history that I
am going to conclude what I have to say on the literature of the
Revolution. In the eighth volume of the _General History_, now
appearing in France, Aulard gives the political outline of the
Revolution. It may be called the characteristic product of the year
1889. When the anniversary came round, for the hundredth time, and
found the Republic securely established, and wielding a power never
dreamed of by the founders, men began to study its history in a new
spirit. Vast pains and vast sums were expended in collecting,
arranging, printing, the most authentic and exact information; and
there was less violence and partiality, more moderation and sincerity,
as became the unresisted victor. In this new school the central figure
was M. Aulard. He occupies the chair of revolutionary history at
Paris; he is the head of the society for promoting it; the editor of
the review, _La Revolution_, now in its thirty-first volume; and he
has published the voluminous acts of the Jacobin Club and of the
Committee of Public Safety. Nobody has ever known the printed material
better than he, and nobody knows the unpublished material so well. The
cloven hoof of party preference appears in a few places. He says that
the people wrought vengeance after the manner of their kings; and he
denies the complicity of Danton in the crimes of September. As Danton
himself admitted his guilt to no less a witness than the future king
of the French, this is a defiance of a main rule of criticism that a
man shall be condemned out of his own mouth. Aulard's narrative is not
complete, and lacks detail; but it is intelligent and instructive
beyond all others, and shows the standard that has been reached by a
century of study.

Where then do we now stand, and what is the elevation that enables us
to look down on men who, the other day, were high authorities? We are
at the end, or near the end, of the supply of Memoirs; few are known
to exist in manuscript. Apart from Spain, we are advanced in respect
of diplomatic and international correspondence; and there is abundant
private corr