On certain points, indeed, one may notice a few omissions in his work, or raise a few objections, though they do not affect it as a whole. Space does not permit me to dwell on all particular instances; I must be satisfied with pointing out a few. While during the first months of the Revolution the agitation of the lower classes was identical in town and country, and the lawless violence of artisans and peasants pursued the same ends by the same means, one of the most prominent features of the later phase, the Terror, was the gradual introduction of a war of interest between the people of the capital and the villages. The more the power of the Mountain and the Parisian Commune increased, the more absolutely the booty of the Revolution fell to the share of the town proletaires, at the cost not only of the great landed proprietors, but the small farmers as well. Our first impression at the aspect of this rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the possibility of a class war. But for any disquisition on this subject, or allusion to the causes that, in the first years of the Revolution, prepared its way, we look through Taine's pages in vain. Again, in the representation of the Ancien Régime, his attention is pre-eminently turned to social relations connected with the land. Had he with an equally comprehensive and minute care studied the different strata, the interests and wants of the town population, the problem alluded to would have solved itself.