and roll about in agony until they finally find themselves in circumstances, that is, adapt themselves to institutions, which suit them better.
The question whether France is now at rest, or whether we are to anticipate new political changes, and finally what end it will all take, amounts to this—What motive had the French in beginning a revolution, and have they obtained what they desired? To aid the reply I will discuss the beginning of the Revolution in my next article. This will be a doubly profitable occupation, since, while endeavouring to explain the present by the past, it will at the same time be shown how the past is made clear and in mutual understanding with the present, and how every day new light is thrown upon it, of which our writers of historical hand-books had no idea. They believed that the acts of the history of the Revolution had come to an end, and they had uttered their last judgment over men and things, when all at once there thundered the cannons of the great week, and the faculty of Göttingen remarked that there had been an appeal from the decision of its academic senate (academischen Spruchcollegium) to a higher jurisdiction, and that not only the French special revolution was not finished, but that the far more comprehensive universal revolution had begun. How terrified must these peaceable people have been when they, one fine morning, put their
