royalty, an enlightened priesthood, a mild aristocracy, and a free-spirited, yet controlled, commonalty,' will be fully realized. Futurity may reap the benefit of this ideal conception of a Christian State, when the wildest theories of Condorcet are no longer matters of speculation, but of well-authenticated history. When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More is to be found on earth, or when we meet with the human perfectibility of which Godwin and Shelley dreamed, the unquestioned supremacy of that 'Divine corporation, embracing all social relations,' in which Schlegel believed, may be acknowledged and valued as a solid basis of peace. Till then, the theory must remain as impracticable as it is grand.

If a single domination were to extend over modern Europe analogous to the orbis Romanus of ancient times, the interests of justice would be sacrificed to the maintenance of order, and the foundations of truth would be sapped. To the principle of diversity, as an invincible barrier to such a domination, the vitality of modern society may to some extent be ascribed. The division of Europe into separate States is the chief guarantee of its liberty; it is this division which preserves the world from the fate of Babylon and Greece. A divided civilization has a thousand resources within itself; whilst every society which, by disorganizing tyranny within, makes an apparent approximation to unity, is fated to hopeless degeneracy, having no elements of reform within its narrow circle.

From an early period in English history, feudality bore its fruit in parliamentary freedom of opinion, and the healthy division of power. The civilians were rarely trammelled by the dogmas of the ecclesiastics. Side by side with the teaching of the monks, advanced a bold and independent feudalism, which spoke in liberal and undaunted language as early as the days of Wycliffe.

The error of the French aristocracy, on the contrary, from the commencement of the dynasty of Valois, was to neglect its legitimate function to limit the prerogative of the King, and prevent the exaggerated development of the idea of State. Brilliant, frivolous, and indolent, the French nobility lost sight of their true vocation. From the commencement of the seventeenth century, all their duties seemed to be merged in serving the King. All their superiority consisted in antagonism to the bourgeoisie. The consequence of this mistake was the servile and voluptuous Court of Versailles.

Nor was this all. Roman Catholicism, in accustoming her adherents to abdicate their personal responsibility, and to shift upon her shoulders all care for the education of their children,

and the direction of their own consciences, had offered the most serious impediments to national liberty. Virtue and religion in a people must develope, like the petals of a plant, from within; they cannot be imposed by unnatural pressure from without. The institution of a government invested with the power of setting the world to rights,' remarks a modern French writer, 'appears at first sight a great benefit. It has only one fault, that is, that at the end of fifty years it will have enfeebled the nation a hundred times more than a long series of exterminating wars.' A nation kept in perpetual pupilage will probably lapse into a dull lethargy, or a vulgar materialism. The conservatism and organization of the Chinese empire have produced a state of decrepitude without parallel in the annals of mankind. Every nation is the builder of its own destinies. The French character at the present time still contains in itself the essential elements of Rome and Gaul; but the Roman ideas have ever triumphed in France over the Germanic and the Gallic. The centralizing spirit of ancient Rome is still to be found amidst the brilliant inconsistency of the Gauls. Liberty is dependent on character as much as on intelligence. The ardour, the sociability, the love of war, and the fickle vivacity which still animate the French, are singularly distinct from the pride, dignity, and patience which are the fundamental virtues of the Saxon race. The French, as it has been said, have coveted liberty too much as a mistress; and, weary of their fanciful pursuit, she still continues to elude their grasp. Their fiery impulse and impetuosity have been succeeded by periods of lassitude and torpor. They are rather vain than proud, and more ambitious than moderate. It was the lust of conquest which destroyed ancient Rome. Liberty is slow to contract alliances with those who are amorous of glory, and eager for the excitement of war.

'L'ennui,' remarked Boileau, 'naquit un jour de l'uniformité.' The absorption of the individual by the State is fatal to the independence of the subject. We have no better instance of the excessive uniformity which renders the productions of their best writers fatiguing and monotonous, than in the brilliant literary mechanism of the age of Louis XIV. All progress, as Mr. Buckle has remarked, is impossible with an exaggerated centralization. The sentiment of a paternal government, anxious for the welfare of its children, is charming only at a distance. On a nearer view this æsthetic and irreproachable system, this masterpiece of political architecture, is only a magnificent ruin. There are, as it has been said, two methods of national decay: dissolution, when all political power

The Revolution the Consequence of exaggerated Centralization. 7

is merged in democracy; and crystallization, when the individuality of the person is lost in the will of the State. It is difficult to find the medium between these two extremes; it is hard to strike the balance between immobility and anarchy. A certain centralization is necessary for the maintenance of law and justice, but its legitimate rules are not to be exaggerated. The State is not to be confounded with society. If we examine the history of France from its commencement to the present day, we shall find the Latin spirit continually tending to the same disastrous results. Richelieu and Louis XIV. prepared the Revolution, and the Revolution in its turn became the precursor of the Empire,-a gradual prostration succeeding to its most violent convulsions, and its reforms being without lasting root. Louis XIV. and the first Napoleon-paradoxical as it may seem to class the two names together-were both representatives of the centralizing spirit which has been fated to crush the independence and stifle the energies of France.

When France, following her taste for uniformity, and the theocratical tendencies of Roman Catholicism, had at last succeeded in realizing the strangest phenomenon of modern times, -the monarchy of Louis XIV.,-(a sort of Mongolian ideal, when the astonished world beheld a King, seated on a Christian throne, vested with the rights of an Eastern despot,) the Revolution of 1789 was the immediate consequence of such an aberration.

'Perfection in outward life,' remarks Dr. Arnold, 'is the fruit of perfection in the life within us. The history of a nation's internal life is the history of its institutions and its laws.' The French Revolution was a force put in movement by the most opposite impulses, whilst its results have been scarcely perceptible either for good or for evil. In the eyes of a school only too well known, it was less a period of political development than an epoch of grand moral progress, intended to introduce to the world truths which Christianity had not taught. Mirabeau and Robespierre, no less than Rousseau and Condorcet, hoped to transform humanity, and to render this world a paradise of happiness and eternal joy. According to the interpretation of this Utopian school, everything changes place. Crime becomes virtue, and virtue crime. But, according to another dogmatic opinion, the Revolution was emphatically the work of the evil one; and it opened a new era of sophisms and lies, as closely interlaced as the circles of Dante's hell. Both these opinions are more or less one-sided. There was that in the Revolution common to all eras, in which good and evil have been closely intermingled, and in which the evil has triumphed through the

depravity of man; yet it may be historically considered as an impulsion independent of the will of the nation at large. It bears, as De Tocqueville has observed, a striking analogy to those religious revolutions whose intense excitement will bring together or separate the most various characters of every language and climate. Just as Schiller has remarked, that the Thirty Years' War had the effect of uniting the most different people in the closest bonds of sympathy; so the French Revolution operated in a similar manner through the violent passions of the time.

In studying the early history of the European nations, we have remarked that England is the country where feudality has borne the most lasting fruit in its parliamentary government and equable division of power. Thus, in examining the political institutions of the Middle Ages in England, France, and Germany, we are struck by the marvellous similitude between the laws and institutions of peoples so different. But we soon approach the transformation period, when the fusion of races becomes more complete, and the old servants are dominators of the soil. The enfranchisement of the Tiers Etát marks an important transition period in French history. The bourgeoisie,' remarks Augustin Thierry, 'became a new nation.' It elevated itself between the nobility and the serfs, and destroyed for ever the social duality of the feudal times. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be considered as the heroic period of the Middle Ages in France as elsewhere. The Chronicles of Geoffry de Villehardouin, who gives an account of the Crusades under Innocent III., allow us a curious insight into the history of this period. The spirit of the thirteenth century, the romantic age of religion and war, when everything was done by impulse, was calculated to manifest the peculiar traits of French character. The knights of these times were Christians without theology, simple and artless, believing in the Pope, and at the same time waging war with his agents. The moral of these Chronicles was the will of God, chastising all sin by temporary reverses; while success in war was considered as synonymous with His favour. A century elapsed between these Memoirs and those of De Joinville, during which time two hundred poets and troubadours sang of love or the glories of the monarchy, and Christianity was allowed to rule over Christendom in one hierarchy of unquestioned supremacy. The theory of the Papal Church gradually arose, shaping itself according to the emergencies of the times. Joinville accompanied St. Louis in his first crusade. He seemed to have some touches of classical culture, and delighted in comparing Louis IX. to Titus.

We get a

First Insurrection of the Jacquerie.

9

clearer view of real history through the details of Froissart. In his time, France alternately suffered war and amused herself by fêtes, without caring to look into the prospects of the future. We may mark the slow and insensible labour after national unity even amidst the confusion of feudal society. Froissart loved like a child everything that appertained to the nobility. Social franchise and municipal rights having been partly obtained by the influence of towns on the country, the idea most prevalent in the second period of the Middle Ages was the intense devotion of the middle class to the monarchy. This sentiment was carefully inspired by private interest, since the feudal monarchy could not better strengthen its power than by raising new men, and placing them in direct antagonism to the nobility and the army. The affranchised descendants of the serfs consecrated their blood and their noblest efforts to protect St. Louis against his barons, and to extend his royal prerogative. However, irreparable disasters, provoked by the rash follies of the nobility, and the improvidence of royalty in the fourteenth century, opened France to her enemies, and destroyed the resources of the kingdom. A notable change then took place in the spirit of the bourgeoisie, who were at once transformed into defiance, and promulgated bold and liberal opinions like those which were asserted by the feudal barons of John. Side by side with the tyranny of the monarchy and the Church, the antagonistic and self-dependent spirit of the civilians had been advancing, which, breaking loose from laws and dogmas which had not been established in the hearts and wills of the people, soon developed a powerful counteractive force.

This was one of the most important crises in the history of the French constitution. To the reiterated demands for subsidies, provoked by the calamities of war, the representatives of the towns replied by complaints, soon followed by menaces and projects for the entire reformation of the State. When, after the battle of Poictiers, France saw her King a prisoner, and her noblemen killed or captives, the bourgeoisie, as Froissart tells us, began to murmur, 'A tant haïr les chevaliers et les escuyers retournis de la bataille.' This general fermentation was increased every day by new misfortunes, when eight hundred deputies (of whom four hundred were burgesses) took the matter into their own hands with an ardour which overreached its object. Deliberating without order, and with revolutionary violence, the assembly of 1356 formed a stormy committee for the public welfare, and notified to royalty (represented by a young prince in his minority) its own decrees and resolutions. Thus, in the fourteenth century, the monarchy of France was