The clergy were the only class that enjoyed anything like self government in France. Externally, says Mr. Montague, they still held the position which was theirs in the Middle Ages, and, as a body, were possessed of immense riches. He estimates, upon grounds which he gives, the number of the secular clergy at about 70,000; while he hesitates to compute the number of religious, which had been rapidly shrinking during the eighteenth century, he submits Taine's view that, under Louis XVI., the number of monks and friars was about 23,cco, of nuns, 37,000. What was the amount of the Church's wealth? This question cannot be answered with confidence. Estimates vary from 170,000,000 livres to 200,000,000 livres. This wealth excited envy, not merely because of its vast extent, but even more because it was almost exempt from taxation. Its unequal distribution was another cause for dissatisfaction. The Church abounded in highly paid offices and lucrative sinecures. The stipends of the archbishops and bishops varied greatly; the average might be set down at £2,500; and the wealth of the powerful ones was often doubled by rich abbacies which they were allowed to retain for themselves. The tithes were diverted from their proper object, with the result that the parish clergy were shamefully underpaid. The authors contrasted pictures of the two classes of clergy, the "superior" and the "inferior," which are solidly justified by the evidence available, teach us that the sweeping denunciations of the Church and clergy as a whole, at this period indulged in by many writers, are as inaccurate as great generalizations upon large bodies of men usually are. "The superior clergy," writes Professor Montague, "taken in the gross, were courtiers and men of the world. Some notoriously disbelieved the religion which they were supposed to teach, and some were dissolute in their conduct. Yet the majority, even under Louis XV., observed outward decorum; and, here and there, was to be found a prelate of sterling piety and benevolence. Nor need it be denied that the pride of birth, and the feeling of assured independence, together with the tradition of Gallican liberties, gave to the French prelates a certain breadth and firmness of mind, and helped to save them from some failings which have been noted in their far more zealous successors. Professional talent and learning, it is true, were seldom found in this class, nor did any of them, in the age preceding the Revolution, gain glory by controver

sial or apologetic writings. They were silent and ineffective, while argument and wit and rhetoric were untiringly exerted. against the character of the clergy and the doctrines of Christianity."

The inferior clergy, writes Mr. Montague, offered a glaring contrast to their chiefs. "Drawn mostly from a humble middle class, or even from the peasantry, since their office had so few worldly allurements, and condemned to poverty and a monotonous routine, they were rarely men of wide culture or polished manners; but they were usually regular and edifying in their lives. In spite of occasional scandals, such as will occur in every large body of professional men, the parish priests appear to have enjoyed and deserved the good will of their flocks. They felt for the people from whom they sprang, and amid whom they labored; and they often entertained democratic opinions. They had, indeed, their own grievances, and they might be pardoned if they felt some bitterness in reflecting on what stamp of divine the richest preferments of the Church were so often lavished. Many of them regarded the Bishop as the common soldier regarded his noble colonel, and as the peasant regarded the lord of the manor. The abuses of the French system tended to alienate those whom both duty and interest should have drawn together; and the privileged orders, a mere handful among discontented millions, were themselves rent into hostile factions."

III.

After a fairly exhaustive chapter on finance and economic conditions, from another pen, the narrative proper is taken up in Chapter IV., at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI. and pursued, on a very detailed scale, through the election to the States General, the appearance of the National Assembly, the promulgation of the Constitution of 1791, by Mr. Montague, whose work is brilliant and striking, though somewhat lacking in depth, and characterized by a tendency to hasty generaliza

tion.

In Chapters VIII., IX., XII., and XIII., with Mr. MoretonMacdonald, who possesses a power of laying bare the inner springs of action in a higher measure than his confrère, we follow the course of internal events in the Legislative Assem

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bly and in the National Convention, the fall of the Gironde, the rise of Robespierre, and the Terror, the promulgation of the constitution of the year three, and the close of the Convention in the insurrection of Vendémiaire. Of the interjected chapters, by other writers, one is on the foreign policy of Pitt at the outbreak of the war with France. It is remarkable only in that it adopts a view of Pitt that most Englishmen have now come to look upon as vitiated by partizanship. The other is an endeavor, hardly sufficient, to carry on the story of concurrent European politics. In Chapter XIV. we go back to the beginning of the Revolution to take up the account of the general war of the Republic, opening with the campaign of Dumouriez and the battles of Valmy and Jemappes. The naval war, the Directory, the extinction of Poland, Bonaparte's con quest of Italy, the Egyptian expedition, the struggle for the Mediterranean, the second coalition, the fall of the Directory and the institution of the Consulate are so many separate stones worked out by various hands to make up the mosaic.

With one exception, beyond painstaking fidelity and unflag ging industry which gathers in every scrap of fact that can be crammed into the work, there is nothing remarkable in the treatment of the subjects. And the devotion to detail seems to have been carried too far. If we are to study history for the lessons that it teaches, and the light that it affords, we only want facts so far as they assist us to a comprehension of the underlying truths; and any fact that does not contribute to this end were better passed over in silence. Adherence to this rule would have very considerably diminished the size of this solid volume. The reservation that we have made above refers to the chapter on the events of Brumaire, contributed by Mr. Fisher, of Oxford, whose masterly handling of Sièyes and Bonaparte, in our opinion the best piece of work in the volume, shows him to be gifted with the qualities of a genuine historian.

The distribution of work, too, has not been without serious drawbacks. In his famous address on the study of history delivered at his inauguration as Regius Professor of History in Cambridge, Lord Acton expressed the guiding principle of the modern scholar; mastery is acquired by resolved limitation. Whoever would become a master in any branch of historical study, to-day, must, indeed, confine himself to a narrow field.

The enormous increase of material with which the present-day historical student, as compared with his predecessors, has to wrestle is but dimly suggested by the fact pointed out by Lord Acton in the following passage: "Every country opens its archives and invites us to penetrate the mysteries of State. When Hallam wrote his chapter on James II., France was the only power whose reports were available, Rome followed and the Hague; and then came the stores of the Italian States, and at last the Prussian and the Austrian papers, and partly those of Spain. Where Hallam and Lingard were dependent on Basillon, their successors consult the diplomacy of ten governments.”

In order to obtain the best results, Lord Acton, in planning the Cambridge History, determined that each topic should be intrusted to the man who, presumably, should have a claim to be considered an expert on it. But, in order that this method may succeed, the general subject must lend itself to dismemberment. This advantage was enjoyed by those who collaborated on the second volume dealing with the Reformation. Though, as far as the great lines were concerned, the Reformation was a homogeneous movement, yet its course in each country that it entered was, in a great measure, independent and distinct. It was like a campaign of separate armies acting against a common foe, but pursuing no combined tactics, and employing various weapons. Hence, when each writer covered completely the ground assigned to him, there was no danger of any part of the whole being neglected.

But the task undertaken in the present volume is, for the most part, of a different character. The various phases of the Revolution were too closely correlated, through the forces at work, and the men who played the leading parts in the mighty drama, to permit of it being treated properly by several writers, contemplating their work from as many different standpoints. It was not within the competence of editorial skill to make a division of the task that should assign to each worker a naturally or logically distinct part. The result is that the division, instead of being a skilful, anatomical dismemberment, looks more like a violent, clumsy mutilation. Events closely associated are to be looked for by the reader in different chapters. Separate, fragmentary, presentations of personages are met with instead of a complete sketch or picture, and sometimes a historical character, as in the case of Carnot, falls to one hand, while the op

erations whose conduct made him important falls to another. We are frequently provoked in the course of the narrative on being told that some matter which ought to find its place in the sequence "is treated elsewhere." Finally, the old adage, that what is everybody's business is nobody's business, is amply illustrated in the inadequate atttention paid to some subjects that fall within the purview of two or more of the collaborators, each one of whom seems to have been afraid of encroaching on the preserves of the other.

We must not close without referrring to one admirable chapter, an equivalent for which the English reader will find nowhere else. We mean the one dealing with French law during the age of the Revolution, by M. Paul Viollet. This eminent scholar, who is a devoted Catholic, has, as the readers. of THE CATHOLIC WORLD may have learned from its book reviews, recently published some able pamphlets treating of the extent of Papal infallibility. He demonstrates how, under the wild and criminal excesses of individuals and parties, there developed an unconscious trend towards better things, in the legislative efforts of the Revolutionary era: "The good lawgiver has not, indeed, more wit than Voltaire; but more good sense, more knowledge and true legal spirit than Montesquieu; and this lawgiver is-all the world." French legislation, he adds, because it has been a collective, universal work, the result of historical forces, not an artificial creation or a mere invention, has wielded a far-reaching influence in the century just passed.