Messrs. Cape's new edition of Mr. Walter Geer's translation of
La Marquise de la Tour Du Pin's famous book, Recollections of the Revolution and the Empire (15s.), will be welcomed by all lovers of vivid autobiography. Madame de la Tour Du Pin wrote as little as possible about the Revolution and only casually referred to her own dangers and to the restlessness of the people. Her early attitude to life was a shrug of the shoulders, and one feels, on reading her rather bored comments on the Revolution, that it was a gigantic and bungling tres- passer upon her own domestic happiness. "If I were to relate events," she wrote, "a few sheets of paper would suffice for a record of so little interest. The journal of my heart is more. difficult, for to depict oneself, self-knowledge is essential, and one does not begin to acquire that at fifty years of age." She has, nevertheless, revealed a great deal of her own candour, ardour and philosophy, and has given us a glimpse of social France during the days of the Revolution. Her perspective was as remarkable as her Journal is fascinating.
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