arguments are well weighed and balanced, and flowers of rhetoric, with a few exceptions, are sacrificed for a simple and concise statement of facts. Unfortunately the first volume was never followed by a second. Had Mary finished the book, as she certainly intended to do when she began it, it probably would still be ranked with the standard works on the Revolution.
Among the most remarkable passages in the book are those relating to Marie Antoinette. As was the case when she wrote her answer to Burke, the misery of millions unjustly subjected moved Mary more than the woes of one woman justly deprived of an ill-used liberty. Her love and sympathy for the people made her perhaps a little too harsh in her judgment of the queen. "Some hard words, some very strong epithets, are indeed used of Marie Antoinette," Mr. Kegan Paul says in his short but appreciative criticism of this book, "showing that she, who could in those matters know nothing personally, could not but depend on Paris gossip; but this is interesting, as showing what the view taken of the queen was before passion rose to its highest, before the fury of the people, with all the ferocity of word and deed attendant on great popular movements, had broken out." The following lines, reflecting the feelings and opinions of the day, must be read with as much, if not more interest than those of later and better-informed historians:—
