ABSTRACT
The subject-matter of political memoirs covers a wider field of French interests; the romantic revival had encouraged the writing of personal records, and the analysis of personal experience. The conditions of French life during the eighteenth century were peculiarly favourable to the composition of memoirs. English society, for all its tradition of fine living and wealth of good sense and practical wisdom, was never as free, as quick, as graceful as the society of Paris in the years before the French Revolution. French bankers were at first unwilling to give important credits to the restored monarchy; they were converted by the readiness of foreign banks to take their place, and asked the government to give them a third part in the transaction. Talleyrand’s memoirs offer to the historian a problem which has been solved by Sorel with a completeness and delicacy of execution worthy of the best French tradition of scholarship.
