M. Taine's figure of the man who drains the poisonous draught, as having been previously 'a little weak in constitution, but still sound and of peaceful habits,' is entirely delusive. The whole evidence shows that France was not sound, but the very reverse of sound, and no inconsiderable portion of that evidence is to be found in the facts which M. Taine has so industriously collected in his own book. The description of France as a little weak in constitution, but still sound and of peaceful habits, is the more surprising to us because M. Taine himself had in an earlier page (p. 109), when summing up the results of Privilege, ended with these emphatic words: 'Deja avant l'ecroulement final, la France est dissoute, et elle est dissoute parce que les privilegies ont oublie leur caractere d'hommes publics.' But then is not this rather more than being only a little weak in constitution, and still sound? TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Page 269: Corrected "paragragh" to "paragraph." Page 281: Removed duplicate _and_ from the sentence: "'The nation,' wrote the wise and far-seeing ... and and so forth (_[OE]uv_. ii. 504)." Page 281: The "OE" ligature in OEuv is represented as [OE]. Page 287: Standardized punctuation in footnote 6. End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), by John Morley