Excerpt from Pictures of the First French Revolution: Being Episodes From the History of the Girondists The American revolution, towards the close of the cen tury, hastened the development of the bold social theories advanced, by showing how successfully they might be realised; so that while the philosophers interpreted the vague, floating thoughts of the people in words, the American revolution revealed them in action. The new and exciting events of that war kindled all hearts, though none saw clearly the result. Louis XVI. Himself sent troops to aid Washington; and the young nobility joined the cry of Freedom, little thinking they were aiding the destruction of their own order and building the scaffold for the king. After the puerile frivolities and degrading immoralities of Louis xv.'s court, this new drama of life, so exciting in its progress, so serious and noble in its aim, had an irresistible charm for all those earnest minds whose strong passions and enthusiasm had hitherto found no adequate sphere of action. The fundamen tal principles, also, upon which the Americans proceeded to form their government, were peculiarly attractive to that age which analysed all traditions of belief, speculated upon all, but reverenced none. 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.