The magnitude of an event is too apt to lie with its reporter, and the reporter often fails in his sense of historical proportion. The nearer he is to the event the more authority he has as a witness, but the less authority as a judge. It is time alone can establish the relation and harmony of things. This is notably the case with the greatest event of modern European history, the French Revolution, and the first task of the historian writing a century later, is to attempt to catch its perspective. To do this the simplest course will be to see how the Revolution has been interpreted from the moment of its close to the present day.It was Madame de Staël, under the influence of Constant, who first made Europe listen to reason after the Bourbon restoration of 1815. Her Considérations sur la Révolution francaise, published in 1818, one year after her death, was a bold though temperate plea for the cause of political liberty.