That a work of Henri Taine's displays literary ability of the first order there is no need to say. His representation of events is grounded on most industrious study; unpublished documents of all kinds are cited, as well as printed works, and among the latter we have not only French, but foreign authorities--English more especially--while German are hardly so much as noticed. At all events, the mass of thoroughly explored material is enormous, and our historical knowledge is frequently extended, rectified, and cleared thereby. We shall attempt to follow the general line of thought running through the book, and now and then to controvert it on certain points. It will be remembered to what pregnant results Tocqueville's inquiries led. The centralized government of France is by no means a creation of our century, but a production of the Ancien Régime. Since the days of Richelieu, ministers of finance and their intendants and delegates had taken the exclusive charge of police of every kind, public works and plans, the economic and spiritual welfare of the people. The elementary principles of political liberty and parliamentary constitution, of independent local administration and commercial freedom, were destroyed thereby. Spiritual and temporal magnates had been almost sovereigns in the districts in which they fulfilled the duties of government, preserved internal and external peace, protected local interests, and consequently imposed taxes and corvées upon their dependents, while often successfully resisting royal aggression--all these magnates were now as unconditionally as the mass of the people subjected to the royal bureaucracy and forced out of all political activity--thenceforth, as hated parasites, they had to live at the cost of the working people. The King, therefore, assembled them at his Court, where, in compensation for their loss of liberty and honour, pensions and presents--always at the cost of the people--were heaped upon them. Thus the popular hatred went on intensifying with every generation, and was at length the source and essential element of the great Revolution.