Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I

This is the best of Morley's essays I have so far read. It amounts to a short life of Robespierre, with astute observations on the time and the man. If Morley's broader observations on mankind's destiny hadn't been so naively pathetic, I would love it instead of liking it. "The King's good nature was no substitute for political capacity or insight. An instructive measure of the degree in which he possessed these two qualities may be found in that deplorable diary of his, where on such days as the Fourteenth of July, when the Bastille fell, and the Sixth of October, when he was carried in triumph from Versailles to the Tuileries, he made the simple entry, Rien.