incurable infirmity.

Consider, indeed, the authentic monuments of Jacobin thought, the
"Journal des Amis de la Constitution," the gazettes of Loustalot,
Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Fréron and Marat, Robespierre's, and
St. Just's pamphlets and speeches, the debates in the Legislative
Assembly and in the Convention, the harangues, addresses and reports
of the Girondins and Montagnards, in brief, the forty volumes of
extracts compiled by Buchez and Roux. Never has so much been said to
so little purpose; all the truth that is uttered is drowned in the
monotony and inflation of empty verbiage and vociferous bombast. One
experience in this direction is sufficient.[17] The historian who
resorts this mass of rubbish for accurate information finds none of
any account; in vain will he read kilometers of it: hardly will he
there meet one fact, one instructive detail, one document which brings
before his eyes a distinct personality, which shows him the real
sentiments of a villager or of a gentleman, which vividly portrays the
interior of a hôtel-de-ville, of a soldier's barracks, of a municipal
chamber, or the character of an insurrection. To define fifteen or
twenty types and situations which sum up the history of the period, we
have been and shall be obliged to seek them elsewhere - in the
correspondence of local administrators, in affidavits on criminal
records, in confidential reports of the police,[18] and in the
narratives of foreigners,[19] who, prepared for it by a different
education, look behind words for things, and see France beyond the
"Contrat Social." This teeming France, this grand tragedy which
twenty-six millions of players are performing on a stage of 26 000
square leagues, is lost to the Jacobin. His literature, as well as his
brain, contain only insubstantial generalizations like those above
cited, rolling out in a mere play of ideas, sometimes in concise terms