best French authors are at times prone to indulge.  His process of reasoning was strictly inductive.  He only drew conclusions when he had laid an elaborate foundation of facts on which they could be based.  The spirit in which he wrote was more Teutonic than Latin.  Again, in the absence of any really complete English history of the French Revolution—­for Carlyle’s rhapsody, in spite of its unquestionable merits, can scarcely be held to supply the want—­most Englishmen have been accustomed to think that, with De Tocqueville and Taine as their guides, they would be able to secure an adequate grasp both of the history of the revolutionary period and of the main political lessons which that history tends to inculcate.

In a very interesting essay published in Lady Blennerhassett’s recent work, entitled Sidelights, which has been admirably translated into English by Mrs. Guelcher, she deals with the subject now under discussion.  No one could be more fitted to cope with the task.  Lady Blennerhassett’s previous contributions to literature, her encyclopaedic knowledge of historical facts, and her thorough grasp of the main political, religious, and economic considerations which moved the hearts and influenced the actions of men during the revolutionary convulsion give her a claim, which none will dare to dispute, to speak with authority on this subject.  Those who have heretofore looked for guidance to Taine will, therefore, rejoice to note that she is able to vindicate his reputation as an historian.  “The six volumes of the Origines,” she says, “are, like other human works, not free from errors and exaggerations, but in all essentials their author has proved himself right, and his singular merit remains.”

As the most suitable illustration of Taine’s historical methods Lady Blennerhassett selects his study of Napoleon.  That, she thinks, is “the severest test of the author’s skill.”  Taine did not, like Fournier and others, attempt to write a history of Napoleonic facts.  The strategical and tactical genius which enabled Napoleon to sweep across Europe and to crush Austria and Prussia on the fields of Austerlitz and Jena had no attraction for him.  He wrote a history of ideas.  True to his own psychological habit of thought, he endeavoured to “reconstruct the figure of Napoleon on psychological and physiological lines.”  The justification of this method is to be found in the fact, the truth of which cannot be gainsaid, that a right estimate of the character of Napoleon affords one of the principal keys to the true comprehension of European history for a period of some twenty stirring years.  History, Lord Acton said, “is often made by energetic men steadfastly following ideas, mostly wrong, that determine events.”  Napoleon is a case in point.  “The man in Napoleon explains his work.”  But what were the ideas of this remarkable man, and were those ideas “mostly wrong”?