There is no work which has been published in France, of late years, which has met with anything like the success which his _History of the Girondists_ has had. We have heard that fifty thousand copies of it were sold in the first year. Beyond all doubt, it had a material effect in producing the Revolution of 1848, and precipitating Louis Philippe from the throne. It was thus popular, from the same cause which attracts boys to narratives of shipwrecks, or crowds to representations of woe on the theatre--deep interest in tragic events. He represented the heroes of the first great convulsion in such attractive colours, that men, and still more women, were not only fascinated by the narrative and deeply interested in the characters, but inspired by a desire to plunge into similar scenes of excitement themselves--just as boys become sailors from reading terrific tales of shipwreck, or soldiers, from stories of perils in the deadly breach. In his hands, vice equally with virtue, weakness with resolution, became attractive. He communicated the deepest interest to Robespierre himself, who is the real hero of his story, as Satan is of the _Paradise Lost_. He drew no veil over the weakness, the irresolution, the personal ambition of the Girondists, so fatal in their consequences to the cause of freedom in France, and through it to that of liberty over the whole world; but he contrived to make them interesting notwithstanding their faults--nay, in consequence of those very faults. He borrowed from romance, where it has been long understood and successfully practised, especially in France, the dangerous secret of making characters of _imperfect goodness_ the real heroes of his tale. He knew that none of the leading characters at Paris were Sir Charles Grandisons; and he knew that, if they had been so, their adventures would have excited, comparatively speaking, very little interest. But he knew that many of them were political Lovelaces; and he knew well that it is by such characters that in public, equally as private life, the weakness of the world is fascinated, and their feelings enchained. And it is in the deep interest which his genius has communicated to really worthless characters, and the brilliant colours in which he has clothed the most sinister and selfish enterprises, that the real danger of his work consists, and the secret of the terrible consequences with which its publication was followed is to be found.