No recent writer of history has experienced these vicissitudes to a greater extent than the illustrious author of Les Origines de la France contemporaine.  That Taine should evoke the enthusiasm of any particular school of politicians, and still less the partisans of any particular regime in France, was from the very outset obviously impossible.  When we read his account of the ancien regime we think we are listening to the voice of a calm but convinced republican or constitutionalist.  When we note his scathing exposure of the criminal folly and ineptitude of the Jacobins we remain momentarily under the impression that we are being guided by a writer imbued with strong conservative or even monarchical sympathies.  The iconoclast both of the revolutionary and of the Napoleonic legends chills alike the heart of the worshippers at either shrine.  A writer who announces in the preface of his work that the only conclusion at which he is able to arrive, after a profound study of the most interesting and stormy period of modern history, is that the government of human beings is an extremely difficult task, will look in vain for sympathy from all who have adopted any special theory as to the best way in which that task should be accomplished.  Yet, in spite of Taine’s political nihilism, it would be a grave error to suppose that he has no general principle to enounce, or no plan of government to propound.  Such is far from being the case.  Though no politician, he was a profoundly analytical psychologist.  M. Le Bon, in his brilliant treatise on the psychological laws which govern national development, says, “Dans toutes manifestations de la vie d’une nation, nous retrouvons toujours l’ame immuable de la race tissant son propre destin.”  The commonplace method of stating the same proposition is to say that every nation gets the government it deserves.  This, in fact, is the gospel which Taine had to preach.  He thought, in Lady Blennerhassett’s words, that it was “the underlying characteristics of a people; and not their franchise, which determines their Constitution.”

After having enjoyed for long a high reputation amongst non-partisan students of revolutionary history, Taine’s claim to rank as an historian of the first order has of late been vigorously assailed by a school of writers, of whom M. Aulard is probably the best known and the most distinguished.  They impugn his authority, and even go so far as to maintain that his historical testimony is of little or no value.  How far is this view justified?  The question is one of real interest to the historical student, whatsoever may be his nationality, and it is, perhaps, for more than one reason, of special interest to Englishmen.  In the first place, Taine’s method of writing history is eminently calculated to commend itself to English readers.  His mind was eminently objective.  He avoided those brilliant and often somewhat specious a priori generalisations in which even the