Excerpt from Marie Antoinette There is present, therefore, in her united history a dual func tion of maintenance and of change such as can be discovered neither in any one of her component parts nor in civilisations exterior to her own. Europe alone of all human groups is capable of transforming herself ceaselessly, not by the copying of foreign models, but in some creative way from within. She alone has the gift of moderating all this violent energy, of pre serving her ancient life, and by an instinct Whose action is now abrupt, now imperceptibly slow, of dissolving whatever products of her own energy may not be normal to her being. These dual forces are not equally conspicuous: the force that preserves us is general, popular, Slow, silent, and beneath us all the force that makes us diversified and full of life shines out in peaks of action. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.