g nothing else, very
often, than catching as they die away the last vibrations of that
surpassing eloquence.

In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right and good: such is
the axiom for which the labors of more than one modern historian had
prepared us. We are to seek for the relation of facts one to another,
that is to explain; and all that we explain, we must approve. Let us
follow out this thought in a few examples.

It was necessary that Louis XVI should be beheaded and the guillotine
permanently set up, in order to manifest the result of the disorders of
Louis XIV, of the shameful excesses of Louis XV, and of the licentious
immorality of French society. It was necessary for Louis XIV to be an
adulterer, Louis XV a debauchee, the clergy corrupt, and the nobility
depraved, to bring about the shocks of the revolution. The facts
mutually correspond; I explain, and I approve. In the eyes of the modern
savant everything is right.

It was necessary that Buonaparte should throw the _Corps legislatif_ out
of the window, that he should let loose his armies upon Europe, and
leave thousands of dead bodies in the snows of Russia, in order to end
the revolution, and extinguish the restless ardor of the French. It
needed the massacres of September, the gloomy days of the Terror, the
anarchy of the period of the Directory, to throw dismayed France into
the arms of the crowned soldier who was to carry to so high a pitch her
glory and her influence. The facts correspond; I explain, and I approve.
In the eyes of the modern savant, everything is right.

I consider the character of Nero. I take him at the commencement of his
reign, when, being forced to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, he
exclaimed--"Would I were unable to write!" And then again I regard him
after he has perpetrated acts such that to apply his name in future ages
to the cruellest of tyrants shall appear to them a cruel injury. What
has taken place in the interval? The development of his natural
character, Agrippina, Narcissus ... I understand the play of all the
springs which have made a monster. As I am out of his clutches, my
detestation vanishes with the danger. "I taste the very deep and very
pure pleasure of seeing a mind act according to a definite law." I
understand, I explain, I approve. In the eyes of the modern savant,
everything is right.

It would be impossible, Gentlemen, to pursue this reasoning to its
extreme limits without offending