Thus was achieved the Jacobin Conquest!'-the work of a small minority, strong only in the weakness of an enormously preponderating majority-to be celebrated during the next fourteen months by the dissolution of the last remnants of order and humanity, and by the quickening stroke of the guillotine, till that head which had laid so many innocent victims under the fatal knife was, in its turn, laid in the same place. The 'Conquest' had been obtained by no system but that of carefully organized brute-force, passing from hand to hand, till it reached and expired in the lowest. Rousseau's definition of a man-the favourite line in the Droits de l'homme '-' Un être qui a le désir de bonheur, et la faculté de raisonner'-had been doubly stultified in the aims and principles of the Revolution. Monarchy had been dethroned, not for the reign of a Republic, but for that of unmitigated anarchy. The Church had been overthrown, not for the introduction of greater enlightenment, but for that of the most imbecile atheism; and the traditions and forms of French society had been superseded, not by greater simplicity and purity of customs, but for the lowest license of immorality, and for an unprecedented grossness of manners.

It remains to add a few words respecting the recent works, the titles of which are placed at the head of this article. It may be said of them in general, that the efforts of the writers have been directed not only to collecting new materials, but also to verifying those already published. We have already mentioned the conflicting and, we may here add, the mendacious accounts of the Revolution long current. The chief journal of the period-the Moniteur-is now admitted to be the foremost delinquent in this respect, not only by falsifying the truth, but falsifying it knowingly. M. Mortimer-Terneaux, whose unfinished work has been completed by a Commission, represented by Baron de Layre, warns the reader especially against the private Memoirs of the time, which were sometimes written with the sole purpose of misleading posterity as to the part played by the autobiographers. For his own volumes he claims the distinction of entire trustworthiness, nine-tenths of their contents having been extracted from original, authentic, and hitherto unedited materials.

Of M. Wallon's and M. Schmidt's works we have already spoken. M. Taine's three volumes L'Ancien Régime,' ‘La Révolution,' and 'La Conquête Jacobine'-comprised under the general title of 'Origines de la France Contemporaine—are all parts of a great series, of which one volume is still due. The sources utilized by M. Taine differ in so far from M. Schmidt's, that they consist not so much of new as of fuller details, and are

culled

culled from all parts of France. His chief object, as he states, is to give the testimony of eye-witnesses, and there is no part too remote for him to track, to follow, and to appropriate them. Archives, standard works, memoirs, letters, reports, petitions, newspapers, minutes, speeches, are studied, dissected, sifted, weighed, and served up with a fertility of illustration, a multiplicity of metaphor, an ingenuity of synonym, and a redundance of rhetoric, which sometimes overlay and conceal the facts themselves, and almost take the reader's breath away. But we cannot lay down M. Taine's volumes without feeling that they lead to a more thorough understanding of the meaning of the terrible events of the French Revolution, and to a livelier sense of the lasting political lessons that they teach. We knew before that the selfish vanity and the social as well as political tyranny of the 'old régime' had sown the wind to reap the whirlwind; but we had scarcely recognized the true character of the harvest borne by the seeds of human passion thus spread abroad. The grand phrases of freedom and humanity had obscured the selfish aims, which were the natural fruit of material degradation, and which we now see developed from the very first into a system of insatiable plunder; so that M. Taine has pronounced the Revolution to have been, 'in its very essence, a transfer of property' (une translation de propriété). We now first see clearly why the redress of grievances gave no satisfaction; why the 'message of peace' was received only as a confession of former wrong and of present weakness, provoking new demands from those whom the concession taught to feel their power. And these demands were made in the face of a Government which had disarmed itself by proclaiming the reign of sentiment instead of the reign of law.

This complete abdication of the duties as well as the rights of government enabled-unless we ought rather to say invited-the handful of political agitators, whose insignificant number, as well as their true character, is now first clearly revealed, to usurp a dictatorship of force, which, in their hands, was assuredly no remedy,' and to satiate their vanity or cupidity, or both, by an organized Terror, which, in the absence of the lawful organized Power, cowed and crushed and victimized the real people. For we now know that the Jacobin 'faction' ruled, nay, existed, in defiance of and hated by the vast majority-in plain truth the whole nation-its wealth, intelligence, right feeling, true patriotism,-all but the very dregs, who were enrolled by the lowest self-interest as their ragged militia. The horrors of the guillotine, the massacres, and the noyades, have preoccupied men's minds, to the neglect of the organization Vol. 153. No. 305.

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which

which ruled the provinces from the hall of the Jacobins by means of the law of suspects' (the Boycotting of 1793), and the other methods by which a landlord, a neighbour, or even a kinsman, who was hated or envied, or whose property was coveted, could be handed over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or still more expeditiously disposed of. Some historians have accepted the self-complacent Parisian fallacy, that Paris is France, as an explanation of the acquiescence of the country in the excesses of the capital. But in truth the Paris of 1793 was the inflamed brain in the midst of a nervous system artificially stimulated to delirium; and, as the ramifications of the 'faction' went out into every city and department, making the 'terror' universal, so they in turn were always ready to pour in a force, small in number, but strong in union and reckless license, to overpower the unorganized majority and defy the suspended power of the law. In the provinces themselves we have long been familiar with the outrages of an insurgent peasantry against their oppressors under the old régime; but we have been told little of the indiscriminate attacks on nobles-not as nobles, but as landowners-not from wrongs to avenge, but from 'land-hunger' to appease; the nightly invasion of houses by masked ruffians, to murder, rob, and burn; the threats of death, not only against landlords who asked for their rents, but against tenants willing to pay them. And, while drawing a faithful picture of this system of terror, M. Taine has revealed in a few words the secret of its endurance: It is because a nation cannot defend itself against internal usurpation, as against foreign conquest, save through its government." And he points out that there arose, alongside of a legal government, which could neither repress nor gratify the passions of the people, an illegal government which sanctioned, excited, and directed them.'

ART.

ART. V.-The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the action of Worms, with observations on their Habits. By Charles Darwin, LL.D., F.R.S. London, 1881.

THIS

HIS work, which Mr. Darwin has produced at the age of seventy-two, is no unworthy culmination, notwithstanding its modest subject and moderate size, of the labours of one of the most remarkable of scientific careers. We have been obliged, on former occasions, to express our dissent from some important hypotheses with which Mr. Darwin's authority is associated, and we still remain convinced of the prematureness, to say no more, of what is commonly, whether with strict justice or not, styled the Darwinian theory of Evolution. But this difference of opinion respecting the conclusions to be drawn from Mr. Darwin's researches is no obstacle to our entertaining the highest admiration for those researches themselves; and we welcome an opportunity, such as the present work affords, for endeavouring to pay a tribute to them. They are marked by a continuity, alike of time and of subject, which is very rarely exhibited, and it would be difficult to say whether they are most distinguished by their industry or by the persistent purpose which pervades them. There is one other trait which is conspicuous in the volume before us, and which adds a particular grace to this single-minded career. Again and again Mr. Darwin refers to the researches of his sons as supplementing and assisting his own; and he seems to have inspired them with his own devotion, and to have enlisted filial sympathy and affection in the promotion of the scientific purposes of his life. It will be a great thing if they carry forward into another generation their father's methods of research and his habits of observation. We are not afraid of seeming fanciful, if we venture to say that science would be deeply benefited if there could be more of this kind of co-operation. It could rarely, of course, be afforded within the limits of a single family; but observations would be more likely to be successful if, instead of being conducted by one or two men of science, they could more often be carried out by companies, under the command of one skilled director. It needed more than even Mr. Darwin's extraordinary capacity for observation, to obtain the results of this book respecting so small a creature as an earthworm; and in proportion. to the complexity of the subject, the necessity for such combination among observers must increase. The same result is, indeed, attained to some extent by the frankness with which men of science communicate their knowledge to each other; but what is needed is not merely the combination of independent researches,

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searches, but the organization of research.

Mr. Darwin has the happiness to have reared a school of observers within his own household, and, though few can follow his example in this respect, it would be well if leading men of science could more often gather similar schools around them.

But we are mainly concerned with the unity and continuity of Mr. Darwin's own labours, which have now extended without interruption over a period of half a century. It was on the 27th of December, 1831, that at the age of twenty-two, just after taking his degree at Cambridge, Mr. Darwin sailed from Devonport on board H.M.S. 'Beagle,' upon his famous Naturalist's Voyage round the World.' It is seldom that a greater service has been unconsciously rendered to science and the world than when Captain FitzRoy, who commanded that expedition, asked that some scientific person might accompany him, and when the Lords of the Admiralty, at the instance of Captain Beaufort, accepted the offer which Mr. Darwin made of his voluntary services. The opportunity thus afforded him was not only the starting-point of his whole scientific career, but sowed in his mind the germs of the main ideas which he has since worked out with such patience and genius. Notwithstanding the long time which has elapsed since the publication of his Journal, it retains all its original instructiveness and interest, and few works are so calculated to give the reader a conception of the infinite variety and of the inexhaustible marvels of Nature. It exhibits all the closeness and accuracy of observation which have ever distinguished the author, and is marked at the same time by the lucidity and simplicity of style, which have contributed so largely to give currency to his speculations. His experience during the five years of that memorable voyage would seem to have contributed in more ways than one to the development of his scientific thought. It gave him, in the first place, a largeness of view which has checked any tendency to specialism, and which has taught him to discern the organic unity of Nature, and to realize the mutual co-operation of her innumerable forces in every part of her manifold productions. Those five years enabled Mr. Darwin to start upon his special researches with a wide survey, and a living personal knowledge, of the whole sphere of natural history and geology; and his work ever since has in great measure consisted in illustrating the incessant action and reaction of all the realms of Nature. His eye has ever been looking for unity and continuity of life, instead of being content to dwell on some distinct and separate field. Doubtless in this respect, as in others, he represents one of the most characteristic features of modern scientific thought.

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