extreme cleverness in one direction induces a little want of perception in another. The law of balance and compensation is so omnipresent, that Jane’s intensely clear vision in regard to near objects may have been paid for by absorption in them, somewhat to the exclusion of larger interests. In 1789, while she was yet but fourteen years old, there began that Revolution which, taking it altogether, is the most tremendous fact in the history of Europe. France was seething, but as yet the ferment had not affected other nations. In the July of that year the tricolour was adopted as the national flag, excess reigned supreme, and the nobles began to emigrate. It was not until 1792 that France began to grasp the lands of others, and reached forth the first of those tentacles, which, like those of an octopus, were to spread all over Europe. In the beginning Austria and Prussia opposed her, but after the murder of the French King, in January 1793, England was forced to join in to protect Holland, and to uphold the general status of nations. Treaties were signed between almost all the civilised nations of Europe, for the crushing of a common enemy; Switzerland alone, of those affected by France’s movements, remaining perfectly neutral. The echoes of the Reign of Terror that followed must have reached even to the remotest recesses of England, and it is impossible to believe that the Austens were not deeply affected. Walpole’s forcible language on the Revolution shows its effect on contemporary opinion: “I have wanted to vent myself, Madam [the Countess of Ossory], but the French have destroyed the power of words. There is neither substantive nor epithet that can express the horror they have excited! Brutal insolence, bloody ferocity, savage barbarity, malicious injustice, can no longer be used but of some civilised country, where there is still some appearance of government. Atrocious frenzy would, till these days, have sounded too outrageous to be pronounced of a whole city—now it is too temperate a phrase for Paris, and would seem to palliate the enormity of their guilt by supposing madness the spring of it—but though one pities a herd of swine that are actuated by demons to rush into the sea, even those diabolical vagaries are momentary, not stationary, they do not last for three years together nor infect a whole nation—thank God it is but one nation that has ever produced _two massacres_ of Paris.” “But of all their barbarities the most inhuman has been their _not_ putting the poor wretched King and Queen to death three years ago. If thousands have been murdered, tortured, broiled, it has been extempore; but Louis and his Queen have suffered daily deaths in apprehension for themselves and their children.”