His Narrative is drowned in beautiful seas of description and reflection; has neither dates nor references; and advances at an intolerable rate of slowness; in fact, rather turns on its axis than advances; produces on you the effect of a melodious Sonata, not of a lucid and comfortably instructive History.
"I forget for how long Rulhiere had been in Poland, as Ambassador's Assistant: but the Country, the King and leading Personages were personally known to him, more or less; Events with all details of them were known: 'Why not write a History of the Anarchy and Wreck they fell into ?' said the Official people to him, on his return home: 'For behoof of the Dauphin [who is to be Louis XVI.

shortly]; may not he perhaps draw profit from it?
At the top of the Universe, experience is sometimes wanted.

Here are the Archives, here is Salary, here are what appliances you like to name: Write!' It is well known he was appointed, on a Pension of 250 pounds a year, with access to all archives, documents and appliances in possession of the French Government, and express charge to delineate this subject for benefit of the Dauphin's young mind.

Nor can I wonder, considering everything, that the process on Rulhiere's part, being so full of difficulties, was extremely deliberate; that this Book did not grow so steadily or fast as the Dauphin did; and that in fact the poor Dauphin never got the least benefit from it,--being guillotined, he, in 1793, and the Book intended for him never coming to light for fourteen years afterwards, it too in a posthumous and still unfinished condition.
"Rulhiere has heard the voices of rumor, knows an infinitude of events that were talked of; but has not discriminated which were the vital, which were the insignificant; treats the vital and the insignificant alike; seldom with satisfactory precision; mournfully seldom giving any date, and by no chance any voucher or authority;--and instead of practical terrestrial scene of action, with distances, milestones, definite sequence of occurrences, and of causes and effects, paints us a rosy cloudland, which if true at all, as he well intends it to be, is little more than symbolically or allegorically so; and can satisfy no clear-headed Dauphin or man.

Rulhiere strives to be authentic, too; gives you no suspicion of his fairness.