PREFACE, vil 
than such as have conceived a great attachment and curi- 
osity of enquiring into every thing that relates to parti~ 
cular characters. The Revolution, which we contemplate 
with mingled astonishment and terror, originated not in 
any private intrigue, nor with any individual character ; 
nor exclusively in Paris, nor France; but in the wide circles 
of Europe, and of civilization *. Its seeds, diffused over 
the earth, and long dormant or concealed, collecting force 
with the progress of Time, Commerce, and Knowledge, 
burst at length into a flame in the capital of the French 
monarchy. Fostered in that exuberant soil, fanned by am- 
bitious and discontented men of every rank, and spreading 
with velocity through all the channels of the state, it could 
neither be smothered nor extinguished. Neither the lapse 
_ of fourteen ages, nor the veneration which the French had 
always nourished for their princes, could protect the person 
of Louis XVI. The barriers which Richelieu and Louis 
XIV. had opposed to popular violence and innovation, were 
too feeble to prevent the conflagration; and some of them 
’ contributed to its excitement. After laying the ancient 
_ laws, constitution, and order of things in ruins, in still con- 
tinues to blaze, and to devour every thing with which it 
comes in contact, with unabated violence. The anxious 
and terrified attention of mankind is directed towards it, 
wherever it spreads. The old and the new world are both 
of them menaced by its progress. 
Instead, therefore, of looking to individual agents, or 
their measures, we consider the revolution itself as the 
beacon by whose awful coruscations we are to lead our 
readers through the history of the eventful year 1792. A 
retrospect of the events which have already been detailed 
* Many marked and vigorous characters arose out of the Revolution, 
but cannot be said to have created it. 
in 
