Michael Marrinan

Literal/Literary/‘Lexie’: history, text, and authority in Napoleonic painting

Abstract There is, moreover, a part of history which mniot be learned fiwm books: the history or tirnis close to our own. No historian reaches the present; Tor any twenty-five year old man thcre is always an intcrval of fifty years preceding his birth for which there is no history. This gap produces many difficulties and much work—always incomplete and often in vain — is cceded to link successfully the pas1 to cunrnt events. 1

La Modernité et la métropole: Pour une lecture de l'espace urbain au XIXe siècle (review)

for themselves. One of its many parapolitical initiatives was the Musée Social. Placed somewhere between the invisible hand of political economists and the more visible hand of the state, the Musée encouraged beneficence and education through the new language of social rights which emerged in late nineteenth-century France. Horne’s book does much to illustrate the concern of the French state for the social question by using the Musée Social. Arguably, she could have offered further examples. In the realms of education and colonial policy, too, one could find the state’s attitude towards the penetrating social forces which both threatened and legitimized it. Likewise, Horne could have made better use of the comparative approach with Britain or the US, which she abandons after her introduction. That said, as a case study the book is rich and interesting, and it makes an excellent addition to reading lists and bibliographies on the French Third Republic, and late nineteenth-century social and political thought.