386 NEW SCHOOL OF HISTORY IN FRANCE. 



fault lies rather with the various writers of the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, whose object would seem to have been not so 

 much to write a true history as to bend facts at will to make them 

 square with their own opinions. Thus we have had successively, 

 according- to the dominant interest first, the prejudiced quasi-narra- 

 tives of historians who, actuated by the base motive of obtaining a 

 pension from the sovereign, have panegyrized the jus divinum and 

 absolute legitimacy, while they make the people, the mass of the na- 

 tion, to enact the part of a worthless herd, mere tools in the hands of the 

 despot; secondly, we had the history of theologians who call on nations 

 and kings to grovel in the dust before the Romish throne of incar- 

 nate infallibility ; and lastly, we had the dogmatisms of the soi-disant 

 philosophers who allowed none but themselves to be true historians, 

 and blinded the people while pretending to give them a blaze of 

 light, and who carried their rash speculations to excesses which 

 caused the blood to flow in torrents, which overwhelmed both the 

 philosophers and the people. 



Happily, our own age does justice to all these systems ; and if there 

 be any bias on the part of living historians, it is not that of panegy- 

 rizing monarchy, popery, or philosophy ; it is rather in favour of po- 

 litical economy, which, in our opinion, is allowed to take too wide a 

 range and to hold too high an importance, even at the expense of 

 dramatic narration. Notwithstanding this defect, however, we find 

 in France a greater proportion of excellent and admirable historians 

 than at any former time ; and we may name Sismondi, Guizot, Ville- 

 main, Thierry, and Mignet as furnishing a glorious proof of what we 

 have thus publicly asserted in favour of the literature of France in 

 the present day. Still it is somewhat curious that none except the 

 far-famed Sismonde de Sismondi, whose work is still incomplete, 

 has written a history of France, unless we reckon the few fragments 

 in M. de Barante's work, comprising rather less than two centuries of 

 the modern history, and only one of the literature. France, however, 

 will be content to take the historian of the dukes of Burgundy as its 

 Herodotus. Let him write an entire history on the same plan, and 

 his countrymen will no longer have cause to envy the Greeks and 

 Romans, so long respected as the great masters in this kind of com- 

 position. 



Want of space prevents us from making any lengthened extracts 

 from M. de Baranti's admirable work, but we cannot refrain from 

 quoting his account of the battle of Rosebeque, which will serve as a 

 specimen of his graphic and brilliant style. 



" Meanwhile Artavelde was preparing himself with the presump- 

 tuous hope of vanquishing the French ; a foolish enterprise, as the 

 bad season and all kinds of misery which must necessarily be en- 

 dured by these knights, would destroy their forces without the need 

 of a battle. It was then with great satisfaction that they saw the 

 enemy approach. This great army of 60,000 men was less terrible 

 to them than the rains of winter. The two armies encamped opposite 

 to each other at Rosebeque between Ypres and Courtray. Prepa- 

 rations for battle were made on both sides. Artavelde, on the eve of 

 the battle, invited his officers to supper, and addressed them as fol- 



