mighty qualities; so
likely to provoke an exaggeration of those mannerisms of thought no
less than of phrase, which though never ignoble nor paltry, yet now
and then take something from the loftiness and sincerity of the
writer's work. Wisdom, however, is justified of her children, and M.
Hugo's genius has justified his choice of a difficult and perilous
subject. _Quatrevingt-treize_ is a monument of its author's finest
gifts; and while those who are happily endowed with the capacity of
taking delight in nobility and beauty of imaginative work will find
themselves in possession of a new treasure, the lover of historic
truth who hates to see abstractions passed off for actualities and
legend erected in the place of fact escapes with his sensibilities
almost unwounded.

The historic interlude at the beginning of the second volume is
undoubtedly open to criticism from the political student's point of
view. As a sketch of the Convention, the scene of its sittings, the
stormful dramas that were enacted there one after another for month
after month, the singular men who one after another rode triumphant
upon the whirlwind for a little space, and were then mercilessly in an
instant swept into outer darkness, the commoner men who cowered before
the fury of the storm, and were like "smoke driven hither and thither
by the wind," and laboured hard upon a thousand schemes for human
improvement, some admirable, others mere frenzy, while mobs filed in
and danced mad carmagnoles before them--all this is a magnificent
masterpiece of accurate, full, and vivid description. To the
philosophy of it we venture to demur. The mystic, supernatural view of
the French Revolution, which is so popular among French writers who
object to the supernatural and the mystical everywhere else, is to us
a thing most incredible, most puerile, most mischievous. People talk
of '93, as a Greek tragedian treats the Tale of Troy divine, or the
terrible fortunes of the house of Atreus, as the result of dark
invincible fate, as the unalterable decree of the immortal gods. Even
Victor Hugo's strong spirit does not quite overcome the demoralising
doctrine of a certain revolutionary school, though he has the poet's
excuse. Thus, of the Convention:--

"Minds all a prey to the wind. But this wind was a wind of miracle
and portent. To be a member of the Convention was to be a wave
of the ocean. And this was true of its greatest. The force of
impulsion