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PREFACE.

It is now more than four years since the first division of this catalogue-that on The Protestant Reformation and its Forerunners-was issued from the press. In the mean time the conditions attached to the gift of the President White Library to Cornell University have been fully complied with, and in the autumn of 1891 the library was transferred to its commodious and beautiful home in the new library building of the University.

The present division of the catalogue deals with the French Revolution, from the accession of Louis XVI, in 1774, to the overthrow of the Directory, at the 18th Brumaire (9 Nov. 1799). All that during this period had to do with the political history of France or of her colonies is counted within the scope of the catalogue. Of the contemporary politics of other lands, save as France was directly involved, the catalogue takes no account.

The gathering of this collection was begun by Mr. White while still a student in Yale College. From that time forward, there was no year but saw some increase. Many of its more important accessions it received during his various residences in Europe, especially in his stays at Paris. It was during such a sojourn that he bought from an old dealer on one of the Quais the great body of contemporary pamphlets -filling nearly five hundred classified and indexed cartons-which is still the bulkiest element of the collection. It was during such another visit, many years later, that most of the library's autograph documents and caricatures in this field were gathered. Much, of course, came to it at the breaking up of other private collections. That of the historian Buckle contributed a few volumes of rare interest. Much more was afforded by the rich libraries of Pochet-Deroche and of the Comte de Nadaillac, especially in the periodical literature of the Revolution. From that of Charles Brunet came ten cartons of carefully selected pamphlets illustrating the earliest years of the great struggle.

Though Mr. White's selection was catholic, his aim was from the first a practical one. For long he dreamed of attempting one day himself a history of the French Revolution. That hope has never seen other fruition in print than his little study on Paper-money inflation in France; but his university lectures on that epoch, to him as to his classes one of the most inspiring parts of his work as a teacher, gave him ample and ever-growing use for his library. Two things especially he sought in his choice of books: authorities and illustration-the most important critical works on the one hand, and on the other the contemporary publications which threw most light upon the spirit of the revolution or made its scenes most vivid to his students. Much as is lacking, therefore, there will be found wanting few of the histories of the Revolution, from Rabaut to Morse Stephens, which have seriously influenced the general knowledge or the general feeling regarding the great struggle. The greater documentary works, too, (as the Histoire parlementaire of Buchez and Roux, the Archives parlementaires of Mavidal and Laurent) and the great collections of contemporary memoirs (as those edited by Berville, Barrière, Lescure) will not be looked for in vain. Pictorial works, like the Tableaux historiques de la Révolution française, are of course not absent. Of the pamphlets and newspapers of the revolutionary time, those were most gladly acquired which filled a large place in the eyes of the contemporaries. It is perhaps in the latter -the revolutionary journals-that experts will count the collection most rich; yet not so much for the number of its titles as for their interest. Here are the sober and cautious Moniteur, the judicious Révolutions de Paris, the impersonal Feuille villageoise, not less than the journalistic mouthpieces of Mirabeau and of Robespierre, of Barère and of Camille Desmoulins, of Babeuf and of Richer-Sérisy. Here is the Ami du peuple of Marat, in all its varying forms, from its first issue to that which appeared on the morning after his execution; here, in rare completeness, the Père Duchêne of Lemaire and the viler

Père Duchêne of Hébert; here the royalist banter and billingsgate of the Actes des Apôtres, the PetitGautier, the Ami du roi, the republican rhetoric of the sundry "Journaux des Jacobins," the brutal terseness of the Bulletin du tribunal criminel and the Liste générale des conspirateurs, the placards and laws of the Bulletin de la Convention-all these, with much more of their sort. Of the speeches of the revolutionary era, the most notable series in the collection is doubtless that relating to the trial of the king (pp. 95–104). In the local history of the Revolution noteworthy is the library's wealth on the struggle in the American colony of Saint-Domingue-in part a fruit of Mr. White's sojourn in that island as a commissioner of the United States thither in 1871. For the individual rarities of the collection, too numerous for mention here, the curious must be referred to the catalogue itself.

Much, of course, that is of value to the student of the French Revolution-the histories of Europe, of France, of Paris and the provinces, and, in general, whatever treats the Revolution as but a part of a larger whole-can have no place in this catalogue. Thus, too, the library's considerable collections on the France of Louis XV and on the 18th-century philosophers have no recognition here. As an introduction to this wider literature, as well as to the narrower field covered by the catalogue, the student will find of especial interest the Abridged Bibliography of the French Revolution, by Mr. White himself, appended to Morris's little book on The French Revolution, in the Epochs of History' series. All the books named in this are, as might be expected, in the President White Library.

The cataloguing of the collection was begun, nearly a decade and a half ago, by the present librarian. Interrupted, while his task was still but a third done, by pressure of other duties, the work, though taken up here and there by other hands under his direction, made no substantial progress until, in 1890, Mr. William H. Hudson (now Associate Professor of English in the Stanford University) took it in hand and gave to its service a fruitful year, nearly completing its preparation for the printer. On his relinquishment of it, it fell into the hands of Mr. Alexis Babine, on whom has devolved the heaviest of the labor of seeing it through the press. Whatever of merit the catalogue may be found to have must be ascribed in great part to these two keen-sighted and painstaking scholars.

The bibliographical aids most used in the preparation of the catalogue have been Barbier's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes (3o éd., Paris, 1872–79), Quérard's Supercheries littéraires dévoilées (2o éd., Paris, 1869-70), Deschiens' Bibliographie des journaux (Paris, 1829), Hatin's Histoire de la presse en France (Paris, 1859-61), and the French National Library's Catalogue de l'histoire de France (Paris, 1855–79). Not too late to be of service came the opening volumes of the two exhaustive works now in progress of publication by the city of Paris, Tourneux's Bibliographie de l'histoire de Paris pendant la révolution française (vol. i, Paris, 1890) and Tuetey's Répertoire des sources manuscrites de l'histoire de Paris pendant la révolution française (vols. i, ii, Paris, 1890-92). Much use has also been made of the catalogues of private collections, such as the La Bédoyère, the Pochet-Deroche, and the Nadaillac. In the spelling of names the catalogue follows in general the Biographie universelle of Michaud (Paris, nouv. éd., 1854-65); but for those of the members of the Convention it has been glad to avail itself of the more accurate list, Les Conventionnels (Paris, 1889), compiled by Guiffrey for the Société de l'Histoire de la Révolution française.

Like its predecessor, the present division is an author-catalogue, with subject-entries under persons and places. The speeches and motions of deliberative bodies are entered both under the names of their authors and under that of the assembly. Clubs appear under the name of their town, except those of Paris, which are entered under their own titles. The several parlements of France will be found under the names of the cities where they sat.

Titles are given with scrupulous fidelity as to spelling, though not always in full. When an orthographic peculiarity is such as to suggest a printer's error, a “sic" has been inserted for the reader's assurance. There has been little attempt to retain the chaotic capitalization and punctuation; accents have been freely supplied where missing; and, in defiance of French usage, the article has for economy's sake been omitted from the dates at the end of titles. On the other hand, in the interest of the hurried student, there has been appended to every revolutionary date its Gregorian equivalent. Both in the names and in the notes French words and phrases are freely used in place of English ones, in the belief that accuracy and clearness are worth seeking even at the cost of pedantry, and that in any case a catalogue of French books can be of little use to one who does not read French.

The body of the catalogue includes only the titles of printed books. But there are appended (pp. 289-296) descriptive lists of the Autograph Documents and Letters, of the Caricatures, Portraits, etc., and of the Paper Money of the Revolution in the library's possession.

As in the preceding division, there has been included in the catalogue what little else the University

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