The Seamy Side of History

Excerpt from The Seamy Side of History: L'envers De L'histoire Contemporaine The later idea is, of course, a far nobler one than the earlier it shows a saner, healthier, happier state of imagi nation; it coincides rather remarkably with an increasing tendency of the age ever since Balzac's time. Nay more, the working out of it contains none of those improbabi lities and childishnesses which, to any but very youthful tastes and judgments, mar the Histoire dc: Trez'ze. And it is also better written. Balzac, with that extraordinary 'long development' of his, as they say of wines, con stantly improved in this particular; and whatever may be the doubts on the point referred to above, we may say with some confidence that had he lived, he would have written, in the mere sense of writing, ever better and better. Yet again, we catch quaint and pleasant echoes of youth in these pages, and are carried back nearly fifty years in nominal date, and more than twenty in dates of actual invention, by such names as Montauran and pille-miche and marche-a-terre. 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.