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To make the story of 19th-century culture start in the year of the French Revolution is at once convenient and accurate, even though nothing in history “starts” at a precise moment. For although the revolution itself had its beginnings in ideas and conditions preceding that date, it is clear that the events of 1789 brought together and crystallized a multitude of hopes, fears, and desires into something visible, potent, and irreversible. To say that in 1789 reform becomes revolt is to record a positive change, a genuine starting point. One who lived through the change, the duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, ...(100 of 156573 words)