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Two wonderful essays from the passionate pen of Alison, these essays being major theoretical works of the Edinburgh enlightenment. Includes: Essay 1: of the nature of the emotions of sublimity and beauty, and Essay 2: of the sublimity and beauty of the material world. Armorial bookplates to front pastedowns. Sir Archibald Alison, first baronet (1792 1867) was a historian and lawyer. Alison declared it his life's work "to oppose the erroneous opinions which, since the French Revolution and in consequence of it, had, as I conceived, overspread the world, in political, economical and social concerns". It was through the gloomy foreboding with which he greeted all suggestion of constitutional change in Britain that he first came to public notice. On seeing that this was what the whigs intended, he made his name with a series of thirteen articles in Blackwood's, from January 1831 to January 1832 which, inevitably, linked parliamentary reform with the French revolution of 1830. Alison elaborated these sombre theses in the ten volumes of his History of Europe during the French Revolution (1833 42). The central failure he identified in the France of the ancien régime, as in present-day Britain, was the ruling class's reluctance to stand up to popular intimidation. Britain might have been spared the fate of France, but had no grounds for confidence in the future: whig ministries were practically treasonable, and 1832 heralded an era of democracy and the descent into anarchy. Despite the heavy political baggage, his work offered the first survey of the revolution in English, and several editions won huge sales on both sides of the Atlantic, with translations into French, German, and even Arabic. DNB In full marbled calf bindings. Externally attractive although a trifle rubbed, joints cracked. Internally, firmly bound. Bright and generally clean aside from some light scattered spotting. Mild off-setting from the text to adjacent pages. Good. Seller Inventory # LTH20-E-9
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