English Voices on the French Revolution [pp. 116-123]

i6 ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [Oct.,
ENGLISH VOICES ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
IF the capricious Muse of History wears as many colors as a
chameleon and as many shapes as Nereus, it is, perhaps, because
we are so seldom able to view her from a proper distance. Either
we stand too far off and find her vague and misty of outline, or
we venture too close and her vast proportions looming up before
us refuse to be contracted into the necessary coup d'ail. During
the onward rush of events there are few visions large enough to
embrace the whole area of action, and fewer minds serene enough
to record an impartial verdict for the benefit of posterity; and
when the struggle is over and the combatants vanished the field
of their exploits becomes a wrangling-ground for ever. Caesar,
indeed, could both make history and write it; but the force by
which he bound the world in fetters was no rarer than the skill
with which he tells us how he did it. Generally speaking, we
who look back with a certain degree of equity are amazed, not
so much by the character of events as by their influence over
those who lived and wrote during the tangle we are seeking to
unravel.
Especially is this the case when we read the records of those
Englishmen who from I789 to I794 watched with intentness the
storm that gathered and broke over dissolute and profligate
France. We who judge the French Revolution by the light of
its wanton cruelties, its savage blunders, and its pitiful failure
can hardly realize the superb promise with which it sprang into
its career. It seemed to those who looked and listened, as well
as to those who bore a helping hand, that the time had come at
last when humanity would raise itself from the dust and upon
the grave of a dead tyranny would lay the strong and sure
foundations of freedom and fraternal love. When the Bastile
fell there rang throughout all Europe a cry of joy and exulta tion, and good men drew a long sigh of relief that this monu ment of shame was wiped from the face of God's earth. Words worth, then young and impetuous, crossed over to France and
gathered from its ruins a fragment of fallen stone as a precious
relic of liberty; Blake walked the streets of London wearing the
bonnet rouge, and Godwin and the coterie of younger men who
listened to him as to an oracle lent their voices with one accord
to swell the paean of applause.