crificed for a simple
and concise statement of facts. Unfortunately the first volume was never
followed by a second. Had Mary finished the book, as she certainly
intended to do when she began it, it probably would still be ranked with
the standard works on the Revolution.

As the title demonstrates, her object in writing this history was to
explain the moral significance, as well as the historical value, of the
incidents which she recorded. This moral element is uppermost in every
page of her book. The determination to discover the truth at all hazards
is its key-note. This end Mary hoped to accomplish, first by tracing the
French troubles to their real causes, and then by giving an unprejudiced
account of them. The result of a thorough study and investigation of her
subject was the formation of doctrines which are in close sympathy with
those of the evolutionists of to-day. Nothing strikes the reader so much
as her firm belief in the theory of development, and her conclusion
therefrom that progress in government consists in the gradual
substitution of altruistic principles for the egotism which was the
primal foundation of law and order. Profession of this creed is at once
made in both the preface and first chapter of the "French Revolution." In
the former, she writes:--

"By ... attending to circumstances, we shall be able to discern
clearly that the Revolution was neither produced by the abilities
or the intrigues of a few individuals, nor was the effect of sudden
and short-lived enthusiasm; but the natural consequence of
intellectual improvement, gradually proceeding to perfection in the
advancement of communities from a state of barbarism to that of
polished society."

In considering this subject, she concludes that the civilization of the
ancients was deficient because it paid more attention to the cultivation
of taste in the few than to the development of understanding in the many,
and that that of the moderns is superior to it because of the more
general diffusion of knowledge which followed the invention of printing.
Her arguments in support of her theories are excellent.

"When," she writes, "learning was confined to a small number of the
citizens of a state, and the investigation of its privileges was
left to a number still smaller, governments seem to have acted as
if the people were formed only for them; and ingeniously
confounding their rights