He had strongly developed literary and artistic tastes, was an enthusiastic musician (even composing a little), and wrote both poetry and novels (La Grande Falaise, 1785–1793, Le Docteur Egra in 1873); but he was not a socialite.

Here again, in a position where he could observe and review affairs, he performed valuable service, especially under the presidency of Audiffret-Pasquier, who was glad to have Sorel's advice in the most serious crises of internal politics.

[4][5] His object was to repeat the work already done by Heinrich von Sybel but from a less restricted point of view and with a clearer and calmer understanding of the chessboard of Europe.

[2] Francis Herrick says, "it is still the best analysis of the European state system in the eighteenth century and the classic introduction to the study of revolutionary and Napoleonic diplomacy.

"[6] He was not merely a conscientious scholar; the analysis of the documents, mostly unpublished, on French diplomacy during the first years of the Revolution, which he published in the Revue historique (vol.

He drew men from the point of view of a psychologist as much as of a historian, observing them in their surroundings and being interested in showing how greatly they are slaves to the fatality of history.

It was this fatality which led the rashest of the Conventionals to resume the tradition of the ancien régime, and caused the revolutionary propaganda to end in a system of alliances and annexations which carried on the work of Louis XIV.

This view is certainly suggestive, but incomplete; it is largely true when applied to the men of the French Revolution, inexperienced or mediocre as they were, and incompetent to develop the enormous enterprises of Napoleon I.

The portrait which he draws of Montesquieu is all the more vivid for the intellectual affinities which existed between him and the author of the Lettres persanes (Persian Letters) and the Esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws).

[citation needed] His speeches on his two illustrious predecessors show how keenly sensible he was of beauty and how unbiased was his judgment, even in the case of those whom he most esteemed and loved.