ART. X.-1. Frau von Staël, ihre Freunde und ihre Bedeutung in Politik und Literatur. Von Lady Blennerhassett, geb. Gräfin Leyden. 3 vols. Berlin, 1888. 2. Madame de Staël, her Friends, and her Influence in Politics and Literature. By Lady Blennerhassett. 1889.* ΟΝ 3 vols. London, N the 14th of July, the French nation, or rather that section of the nation which the Republican Government represents, will solemnly celebrate the centenary of the taking of the Bastille. The event to be thus commemorated hardly seems in itself a very heroic achievement. It was, in fact, a gigantic street insurrection, in which the scoundreldom of a great city possessed themselves of an unprovisioned fortress, murdering the commanding officer, and some half-dozen of his little garrison. In ethical dignity and worth, it appears to be upon a level with the Gordon riots. It differs from them in the capital fact, that it was successful. It was the first decisive victory of the Parisian mob over public authority. It meant the downfall of the political and social order in France. 'It is a revolt,' poor Louis XVI. exclaimed in consternation, when the Duke of Liancourt brought him the dismal tidings. 'Sire,' replied the Duke, 'it is a Revolution.' A Revolution, indeed; or rather the Revolution, the most momentous which the world has ever witnessed, and which therefore we are accustomed to speak of, not inappropriately, without qualifying date or national epithet; a Revolution which is even now in progress, and of which our own century can hardly expect to see the last act. The human race was confidently assured, when it broke out, that the golden year had at last dawned for mankind in general and France in particular. The bewildered monarch of that country received through Mayor Bailly the compliments of a people who had conquered their king,' -'a people' who were to murder their eloquent spokesman himself a year after, with circumstances of revolting crueltyand the promise of a statue in the character of 'The Restorer of French Liberty,' on the site of his demolished castle. The Place de la Révolution has not, however, as yet been adorned *We quote this title-page as we find it; but we feel bound to point out that it is misleading. The work to which it is prefixed is an abridged translation from the German. That is, indeed, acknowledged in a note on the next page, which, however, does not mention that this defective English version is wholly unauthorized by Lady Blennerhassett, who has not seen one line of it. We do not propose to notice it further. In the following article we have made use of Lady Blennerhassett's own work only. by by that work of art. And what are we to say concerning the liberty of which it was to be the memorial? A weighty question truly, and one which, for several reasons, is just now well worthy of careful examination. To read aright the signs of the times, is the problem with which each successive generation is confronted, the ever-renewed Sphinx's riddle, not to guess which is to die. In order to obtain that political instruction which Thucydides accounted the true object of historical research, our conceptions must be not only accurate, but architectonic; not only passionless, but philosophical. It is not enough to know merely the phenomena of history; we must know what the phenomena mean; we must discern the real things themselves, not merely the shadows, which, according to the Platonic apologue, they cast as they flit across the world's stage. 'Rassemblons les faits pour nous donner des idées,' says Buffon. The dictum applies as much to political as to natural history. 6 And assuredly we of this closing nineteenth century may claim to have sufficiently collected the facts of the French Revolution. Sufficiently, and perhaps more than sufficiently. The literature which has grown up about that great event is exhaustive; nay, exhausting. Thirty-six years ago Professor von Sybel spoke pathetically of the almost incalculable number of works,' 'the enormous mass of books and pamphlets,' with which he had, more or less, to make himself acquainted before setting about the composition of his History. The mass has grown much in enormity since then, and would require a fair-sized library to itself, for its decent accommodation. There is a real danger now that in this vast accumulation of details, the great lines of historical perspective may be lost sight of. We are by no means complaining of the close examination which has been bestowed upon the original sources of the Revolutionary history; of the critical accuracy with which the texts have been examined; of the scrupulous care with which the facts have been weighed. But certainly of every new book about the Revolution which comes before us, we may well inquire, with some strictness, whether it has any sufficient reason for existing. Unquestionably the answer in the case of the work which Lady Blennerhassett has just given to the world, must be an emphatic affirmative. Her subject is the remarkable woman whom Rivarol called 'The Bacchante of the Revolution.' Lady Blennerhassett would hardly acquiesce in that description of her heroine, nor do we. Certain it is, however, that Madame de Staël is one of the most notable figures of the Revolutionary period, a personality from the careful careful study of which much may be learnt concerning it. When we know what impression facts produced upon their contemporaries, we are better able to judge of their exact proportion, a scarcely less important matter than their historical verity. Although Madame de Staël's direct influence upon the course of events was not considerable, she belongs to history no less by her life than by her writings. To see the intellectual and political tendencies of her age as mirrored in her, is a help towards the correct appreciation of them. Lady Blennerhassett's work fills a vacant place in European literature. No adequate life of Madame de Staël has hitherto been given to the world. This book is executed with Teutonic thoroughness. Its materials have been gathered from every available source. They are congruously arranged and skilfully woven into the narrative. It must be the reader's own fault if he does not rise from the perusal of these volumes with a clear idea of what Madame de Staël was, and what her work in the world amounted to. For ourselves, indeed, we are hardly prepared to assign to her, as a literary artist, so high a place as that which her historian claims. M. Thiers would not concede to her more than the perfection of mediocrity-an estimate which, as Prince von Bismarck once grimly remarked, is far more applicable to himself. M. Caro, on the other hand, salutes her as 'l'éblouissante apparition de l'esprit français.' Possibly the two judgments are, after all, not so very irreconcilable. That, however, is a matter which we are not, just now, concerned to discuss. Our present point of view is the historical.* And, from that point of view, Lady Blennerhassett's book is certainly entitled to high commendation. She tells us in her preface, that her work is intended as a contribution of German literature to the centenary of the French Revolution. What makes it a particularly valuable contribution is that she possesses that capacity for political reflection which is so rare a gift; so especially rare among women. In what we are about to write we shall take occasion, from time to time, to refer to portions of it which appear to us especially excellent. Here we may call attention to her pages upon Necker and his statecraft, as being by far the best and completest account of the subject ever written; to her sketch of Turgot, which is also very good, although it contains less that is new-previous writers had done him substantial justice; to her most thoughtful and suggestive chapter on Rousseau, and to the very judicious contrast between French *We have already treated of the Life and Works of Madame de Staël, in a Review of Dr. Stevens's work on the subject, which appeared in these pages in July, 1881. and and German views of life, drawn at the end of the first chapter of her third volume. But now let us proceed to the inquiry before us, which perhaps we may best state thus: What has the French Revolution done for the advancement of human liberty? What has it failed to do? and what is the reason of that failure? But, at the outset, we are confronted with another question: what do we mean by human liberty? Shall we. with Mr. Herbert Spencer, take real freedom' to 'consist in the ability of each to carry on his own life without hindrance from others, so long as he does not hinder them?' Surely that is a most inadequate conception of 'real freedom.' For such freedom is merely negative. It has no root in itself. It is the freedom of the wild beast, the savage; physical, not rational; chaotic, not constructive. Real freedom, positive liberty, means a great deal more than that: it means the possession of an interior rule, of a moral curb. It is the endowment which specially distinguishes the civilized man. It is the peculiar product, the chief object of polity. And so Spinoza, The end of the State is not to transform men from reasonable beings into animals or automata ; its end is so to act that the citizens may develop in security soul and body, and make free use of their reason; the end of the State is, in truth, liberty.' The same thought has been admirably expressed, with greater amplitude, by an English writer, whom we regard as the most considerable philosopher that has arisen among us since Coleridge. 6 Freedom,' writes the late Professor Green, 'forms the true goal of social effort. . . . The ideal of true freedom is the maximum of power for all members of human society alike to make the best of themselves. . . . Freedom, in all the forms of doing what one will with one's own, is valuable only as a means to an end. That end is what I call freedom in the positive sense: in other words, the liberation of the powers of all men, equally, for contributions to a common good. When we speak of freedom as something to be so highly prized, we mean a positive power or capacity of doing or enjoying, something worth doing or enjoying, and that, too, something which we do or enjoy in common with others. We mean by it a power which each man exercises, through the help or security given him by his fellow men, and which he, in turn, helps to secure for them. When we measure the progress of a society by its growth in freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and exercise, on the whole of those powers of contributing to social good, with which we believe the members of the society to be endowed; in short, by the[ir] greater power as a body, to make the most and best of themselves.' 米 * Works,' vol. iii. pp. 371-2. The italics are our own. This is 'real freedom,' as we account of it. This is the only liberty worthy of that august name. This rational liberty all social institutions and political machinery should subserve; and they are of value only in proportion as they do subserve it. How far has the French Revolution vindicated such liberty? Its achievements may be divided into two classes: the destructive and the constructive. Certainly its power for destruction is without parallel in the world's history. It has gone as near as possible to the effacement of the France which existed before 1789. We say We say as near as possible.' For the past is really indestructible. You do not destroy it by destroying its symbols. Far off, yet ever nigh,' it lives in the present, in a thousand ways, and most notably in national character: in those instincts, aptitudes, passions, which heredity transmits in such ample measure. Each infant born into France to-day, unquestionably bears imprinted on its brain many of the intellectual dispositions, of the spiritual qualities, of the physical habits, of its parents, of its remote ancestors, of the whole race. It was no effervescence of rhetoric, but a simple statement of fact, when the French philosopher wrote, 'nous sommes non seulement les fils et la postérité, de ceux qui ont déjà vécu, mais au fond et réellement ces générations antérieures elles-mêmes.' The Revolutionary legislators could not 'unget' themselves—if we may borrow a phrase from Sir Anthony Absolute; they could not rid themselves of those things past of which they were made and moulded. But of the public institutions of their country which they found existing, hardly any escaped their rage for indiscriminate destruction. What is the gain to freedom? It may be easily summed up. The arbitrary power of the monarch has passed away. The outworn machinery of government, an expensive anarchy,' D'Argenson called it, has disappeared. The oppressive and irrational privileges of the aristocratic caste— privileges which, long divorced from duties, were justly and passionately hated by the great mass of Frenchmen-are gone for ever; the roturier is free from his birth's invidious bar': la carrière est ouverte aux talens.' The guilds and companies which, if they, in some sort, protected the individual artisan, also hampered him by antiquated restrictions, have ceased to exist. The peasant, too, like the skilled labourer, is lord of himself; he may do as he likes, so far as his fellow-men are concerned, and pursue his own good, or what he accounts such, in his own way. Add to this, that religious intolerance and religious persecution-we can hardly say the same of irreligious have vanished, together with the iniquities and cruelties of the old penal laws and the old criminal procedure and |