The newspapers, of which a few have been mentioned in the text, were numerous. They are useful chiefly as illustrating the ideas and passions of the time, for they give comparatively little information as to facts and that little is peculiarly inaccurate. The ablest of the Royalist journals was Mallet du Pan's _Mercure de France_. Pamphlets of the Revolution period number many thousands. Such pamphlets as Mounier's _Nouvelles Observations sur les Etats-Generaux de France_ and Sieyes's _Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat_ had a notable influence on opinion. The richest collections of Revolution pamphlets are in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris and in the British Museum. The contemporary memoirs, &c., already published are numerous and fresh ones are always coming forth. A few of the best known and most useful are, for the Constituent Assembly, the memoirs of Bailly, of Ferrieres, of Malouet. The _Correspondence of Mirabeau with the Count de la Marck_, edited by Bacourt (3 vols., Paris, 1851), is especially valuable. Dumont's _Recollections of Mirabeau_ and the _Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris_ give the impressions of foreigners with peculiar advantages for observing. For the Legislative Assembly and the Convention the memoirs of Madame Roland, of Bertrand de Molleville, of Barbaroux, of Buzot, of Louvet, of Dumouriez are instructive. For the Directory the memoirs of Barras, of La Revelliere Lepeaux and of Thibaudeau deserve mention. The memoirs of Lafayette are useful. Those of Talleyrand are singularly barren, the result, no doubt, of deliberate suppression. The memoirs of the marquise de La Rochejacquelein are important for the war of La Vendee. The most notable Jacobins have seldom left memoirs, but the works of Robespierre and St Just enable us to form a clearer conception of the authors. The correspondence of the count of Mercy-Argenteau, the imperial ambassador, with Joseph II. and Kaunitz, and the correspondence of Mallet du Pan with the court of Vienna, are also instructive. But the contemporary literature of the French Revolution requires to be read in an unusually critical spirit. At no other historical crisis have passions been more fiercely excited; at none have shameless disregard of truth and blind credulity been more common.