It would need an essay, or rather a volume, on the French Revolution to enumerate all the wrong judgments and fallacies of Carlyle's book, if we bring it to the bar of sober and authentic history. First and foremost comes his fundamental misconception that the Revolution was an anarchical outburst against corruption and oppression, instead of being, as it was, the systematic foundation of a new order of society. Again, he takes it to be a purely French, local, and political movement, instead of seeing that it was an European, social, spiritual movement toward a more humane civilisation. And next, he regards the Revolution as taking place in the six years between the taking of the Bastille and the defeat of the Sections by Bonaparte; whereas the Revolution was preparing from the time of Louis XIV., and is not yet ended in the time of President Faure. Next to the capital mistake of misconceiving the entire character and result of the Revolution, comes the insolence which treats the public men of France during a whole generation as mere subjects for ribaldry and caricature. From this uniform mockery, Mirabeau and Bonaparte, two of the least worthy of them, are almost alone exempted. This is a blunder in art, as well as a moral and historical offence. Men like Gondorcet, Danton, Hoche, Carnot, not to name a score of other old Conventionels, soldiers, and leaders were pure, enlightened, and valorous patriots--with a breadth of soul and social sympathies and hopes that tower far above the insular prejudices and Hebrew traditions of a Scotch Cameronian _litterateur_--poet, genius, and moralist though he also was himself.