Book Description

Excerpt from The History of the Restoration, Vol. 1: Monarchy in France The rapidity of time supplies the place of distance. When we are separated by many events from the period we undertake to illustrate, we fancy that a lapse of ages has intervened. The years that have flown by since my birth have been full of vicissitudes, of falling nations, of reigns, empires, and republics. Contemporary history has, in fact, ceased to exist; for the days that have just gone by, seem already to have sunk deep into the shadow of the past. The perspective recedes by the grandeur and the multitude of events which interpose between the eye and the memory. I scarcely exceed the middle age of man, and I have already lived under ten dominations, or ten different governments, in France. Between infancy and maturity I have witnessed ten revolutions: the Constitutional Government of Louis XVI., the first Republic, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire, the first Restoration in 1814, the Second Government of the "Hundred Days" by Napoleon, the Second Restoration in 1815, the Reign of Louis Philippe, and the Second Republic: - ten cataracts, by which the spirit of modern liberty and the stationary or obstructive spirit have endeavoured, by turns, to descend or to remount the declivity of revolutions. 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.