markable work. Here we have a new phenomenon, history written for
the labouring class and from the point of {8} view of the labouring
class. And although not free from the taint of the party pamphlet, not
of the first rank for historical erudition, intellectual force or
artistic composition, Jaures' history presents the Revolution under the
aspect that gives most food for thought and that places it most
directly in touch with the problems of the present.

Last of all, what of the labours of the professed historian of to-day?
Few of the writers just named could stand the tests rigidly applied to
the young men sent out in large numbers of recent years by the
universities as technically trained historians. Of these many have
turned their attention to the vast field offered by the Revolution and
some have done good work. The trend of modern effort, however, is to
straighten out the details but to avoid the large issues; to establish
beyond question the precise shade of the colour of Robespierre's
breeches, but to give up as unattainable having any opinion whatever on
the French Revolution as a whole. Not but that, here and there,
excellent work is being done. Aulard has published an important
history of the Revolution which is a good corrective to Taine's; the
Ministry of Public Instruction helps the publication of the documents
drawn {9} up to guide the States-General, a vast undertaking that sheds
a flood of light on the economic condition of France in 1789. The
historians have, in fact, reached a moment of more impartiality, more
detachment, more strict setting out of facts; and with the general
result that the specialist benefits and the public loses.

What has been said should explain why it is that the Revolution appears
even more difficult to treat as a whole at the present day than it did
at the time of Thiers and Mignet. The event was so great, the shock
was so severe, that from that day to this France has continued to reel
and rock from the blow. It is only within the most recent years that
we can see going on under our eyes the last oscillations, the slow
attainment of the new democratic equilibrium. The end is not yet, but
what that end must eventually be now seems clear beyond a doubt. The
gradual political education and coming to power of the masses is a
process that is the logical outcome of the Revolution; and the joining
of hands of a wing of the intellectuals with the most radical section
of th