e even went so close to the mark as to hint that it would arise
on the first occasion when it should be necessary to convoke the
States General. Rousseau, in a page of the _Confessions_, not only
divined a speedy revolution, but enumerated the operative causes of it
with real precision. There Is a striking prediction In Voltaire, and
another in Mercier de la Riviere. Other names might be quoted to
the same effect, including Maria Theresa, who described the ruined
condition of the French monarchy, and only hoped that the ruin might
not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the
privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn,
helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself,
but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human
history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to
erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a
view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation
in the minds of observant onlookers.

In passing, by the way, we are curious to know the writer's authority
for what he calls the odd circumstance that the Jacobins generally
borrowed their phrases from the legendary history of the early Roman
Republic, while the Girondins preferred to take metaphors from the
literature of Rousseau (p. 75). There was plenty of nonsense talked
about Brutus and Scaevola by both parties, and It Is not possible
to draw the line with precision. But the received view Is that the
Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton
was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and Hebert and Chaumette were
inspired by Holbach.

The author seems to us greatly to exaggerate the whole position of
Rousseau, and even in a certain sense to mistake the nature of his
influence. That Jean-Jacques was a far-reaching and important voice
the present writer is not at all likely to deny; but no estimate of
his influence in the world is correct which does not treat him rather
as moralist than publicist. _Emilius_ went deeper into men's minds in
France and in Europe at large, and did more to quicken the democratic
spirit, than the _Social Contract_ Apart from this, Sir Henry Maine
places Rousseau on an isolated eminence which does not really belong
to him. It did not fall within the limited scope of such an essay as
Sir Henry Maine's to trace the leading ideas of the _Social Contract_
to the various sour