Few movements have been more grotesquely misrepresented than the Commune of Paris. For many a long year afterwards almost the whole of the propertied classes in Europe spoke of the Communists as if they had been a gang of scoundrels and incendiaries, without a single redeeming quality; while Socialists naturally enough refused to listen to virulent abuse of men most of whom they well knew were inspired by the highest ideals and sacrificed themselves for what they believed to be the good of mankind. At the beginning Paris assuredly had no intention whatever of courting a struggle with the supporters of the Republic at Bordeaux, however reactionary they might be. Such men as Delescluze, Courbet, Beslay, Jourde, Camélinat, Vaillant, Longuet, to speak only of a few, were no mere hot-headed revolutionaries regardless of all the facts around them. Paris was admirably administered under their short rule--never nearly so well, according to the testimony of two quite conservative Englishmen who were there at the time. One of these was the famous Oxford sculler and athlete, E. B. Michell, an English barrister and a French _avocat_; the other was my late brother, Hugh, a Magdalen man like Michell. They both knew Paris well, and both were of the same opinion as to the municipal management under the Commune. Michell in an article in _Fraser's Magazine_, then an important review, wrote as follows: "It is extremely important that the serious lesson which the world may read in the history of the Revolution should not be weakened in its significance or interest by any ill-grounded contempt either for the acts of the Communal leaders or for the sincerity of their motives. We have seen that the army on which the Revolutionists relied, and by means of which they climbed to power, was not, as certain French statesmen pretended, and some English papers would have had us believe, a 'mere handful of disorderly rebels,' but a compact force, well drilled, well organised, and valiant when fighting for a cause that they really had at heart. It is equally false and unfair to regard the Communal Assembly as a crew of unintelligent and mischievous conspirators, guided by no definite or reasonable principle, and seeking only their own aggrandisement and the destruction of all the recognised laws of order. Yet it is certain that such an idea respecting the Commune is very generally entertained by ordinary English readers. It may be shown that the policy of this Government, though defaced by many gross abuses and errors, had much in it to deserve the consideration, and even to extort the admiration, of an intelligent and practical statesman. . . .