Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/893

 Brad by : The Great Days of 1 Versailles 883 colonies the same principles which guide the search after truth in other subjects, and not before then. Clive Day. The Great Days of Versailles. By G. F. Br.dby. (London: Smith Elder and Company ; New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1906. Pp. viii, 384.) Mr. Bradby's title indicates accurately the contents of his book. The great days of Versailles were in the reign of Louis XIV., and the court life of Versailles in the latter years of Louis's reign our author has described. The subject is not new, but probably it will never lose its charm. The court life of Louis XIV. is not one of the great chapters of history, but it is devoid neither of interest nor importance. The sources from which information as to this period can be obtained are familiar, and Mr. Bradby has consulted them with care and with discrimination. The memoirs of Saint Simon will always be the most important, as it is the most interesting, record of the later days of Louis XIV., and yet, as Mr, Bradby justly says, no writer needs to be read in a more critical spirit. In addition to the many volumes indited by the Duke of Saint Simon, are the memoirs of Dangeau, the letters of Madame de Maintenon and of the Princess Palatine, and the numerous other memoirs of the period. Mr. Bradby has consulted those of most value, and he has used his material with good judgment. Occasionally some anecdote is told, some incident related, which a severely critical historian might reject, but in this there is no great harm. A collection of social gossip, a history of court life, of pageantry and parade, does not require, perhaps, to be investigated in so rigid a spirit of criticism, as if different and more important fields of historical research were under examination. In his book Mr. Bradby has told us much of the solemn splendor, of the minute ceremonial, which to those of this generation would seem so tedious, by which the existence of the great king was surrounded. He has described very fairly the character of the sovereign, who in many ways was an unusual man. Mr. Bradby does not exaggerate the foibles and frailties, the dullness and the limitations of the king, nor does he underestimate the elements of unusual strength that were found in that unusual combination. As he justly says, the character of Louis XIV. was " full of contradictions, beset with unexpected shallows and equally unexpected depths ". Apart from a description of the life of the court, of the splendors of Versailles, and its social etiquette, there is a detailed account of a few who were its most prominent figures. Some of them were wholly unprofitable and uninteresting, like Monsieur, Monseigneur, and the Duke of Berry. Others, like Madame de Maintenon, the Princess Palatine and the Duchess of Burgundy, would have been interesting to know when alive, and it is interesting to read of their careers. To all