PREFACE.

THESE "impressions and experiences" of French life have been so kindly received and so considerately judged, even by those who differ from me, that it will not be out of place in a few words to express my thanks and clear up some misapprehensions.

The beginning, nay, the bulk of this little book was written in the summer of 1872, when the impressions of the great war were still fresh in men's minds, while the last chapter dates from December 1878, when the decisive victory of the French Radicals over the Conservatives had been won. The French translation of it was published in 1880, and the English makes its appearance in 1881. It is but natural that the disposition of mind in which the author wrote and the public read these pages should have undergone great alterations in this long space of time, and that, if the book were to be entirely rewritten, the tone would be different, although it would be impossible for the author to change any of the views or statements which he has put before the public. It was indeed his constant endeavour, even in the midst of all the passions roused by the war, to keep himself free from those passions, though his efforts may not have been

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entirely successful. He sought to indicate the points in which the intellect, character, and manners of the French differ from those of the Germans, not to allege any superiority of the one over the other, and (in accordance with Spinoza's counsel, neither to praise nor to blame, but to understand), he has never thought of making his sympathy or antipathy for particular views on moral subjects the standard of their worth. He would, indeed, be most unwilling to be suspected of having assumed a hostile attitude towards France, when he has a lively sense of the debt he owes to that great country, and gladly acknowledges to her—

"Quod spiro et placeo (si placeo) tuum est."

A lady once reproached him because this little book was "too French for a German, and too German for a Frenchman." No praise ever gratified him so much as this blame. Had his friend added, that it was too liberal for an absolutist, too absolutist for a liberal, too freethinking for a religious person, and too religious for a freethinker, his satisfaction would have been complete. For if a writer has made it the task of his life to study the history of his time, it must be his highest aim to attain and preserve a point of view which places him outside and above the prejudices of a national, religious, or political partisan.

The reader must also remember it is only of modern France-a country which has been convulsed by eighty years of revolution-that the author is speaking; for ancient France he has as sincere an admiration as any one, Every cultivated person knows what she once did