Chapter IV…

Chapter IV

THE PROTECTIVE SPIRIT CARRIED BY LOUIS XIV. INTO LITERATURE. EXAMINATION OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THIS ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE INTELLECTUAL CLASSES AND THE GOVERNING CLASSES.

The reader will now be able to understand how it was that the protective system, and the notions of subordination connected with it, gained in France a strength unknown in England, and caused an essential divergence between the two countries. To complete the comparison, it seems necessary to examine how this same spirit influenced the purely intellectual history of France as well as its social and political history. For the ideas of dependence upon which the protective scheme is based, encouraged a belief that the subordination which existed in politics and in society ought also to exist in literature; and that the paternal, inquisitive, and centralizing system which regulated the material interests of the country, should likewise regulate the interests of its knowledge. When, therefore, the Fronde was finally overthrown, everything was prepared for that singular intellectual polity which, during fifty years characterised the reign of Louis XIV., and which was to French literature what feudalism was to French politics. In both cases, homage was paid by one party, and protection and favour accorded by the other. Every man of letters became a vassal of the French crown. Every book was written with a view to the royal favour; and to obtain the patronage of the king was considered the most decisive proof of intellectual eminence. The effects produced by this system will be examined in the present chapter. The apparent cause of the system was the personal character of Louis XIV.; but the real and overruling causes were those circumstances which I have already pointed out, and which established in the French mind associations that remained undisturbed until the eighteenth century. To invigorate those associations, and to carry them into every department of life, was the great aim of Louis XIV.; and in that he was completely successful. It is on this account that the history of his reign becomes highly instructive, because we see in it the most remarkable instance of despotism which has ever occurred; a despotism of the largest and most comprehensive kind; a despotism of fifty years over one of the most civilized people in Europe, who not only bore the yoke without repining, but submitted with cheerfulness, and even with gratitude, to him by whom it was imposed.[433]

[433] On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. pp. 41, 42, 116; and on the feeling of the people, Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says, 'mais les Français, accoutumés à l'esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur de leurs chaînes.' Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. vi. p. 670. Foreigners were equally amazed at the general, and still more, at the willing servility. Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter dated February 1704-5, passes a glowing eulogy upon liberty; but he adds, that in France 'you will hardly find this argument understood; for whatever flashes may now and then appear, I never yet knew one single Frenchman a free man.' Forster's Original Letters of Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury, 1830, p. 205. In the same year, De Foe makes a similar remark in regard to the French nobles, Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 209; and, in 1699, Addison writes from Blois a letter which strikingly illustrates the degradation of the French. Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 80. Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 365, on 'the gross excess of flattery to which the French have run, beyond the examples of former ages, in honour of their king.'

What makes this the more strange is, that the reign of Louis XIV. must be utterly condemned if it is tried even by the lowest standard of morals, of honour, or of interest. A coarse and unbridled profligacy, followed by the meanest and most grovelling superstition, characterized his private life, while in his public career he displayed an arrogance and a systematic perfidy which eventually roused the anger of all Europe, and brought upon France sharp and signal retribution. As to his domestic policy, he formed a strict alliance with the church; and although he resisted the authority of the Pope, he willingly left his subjects to be oppressed by the tyranny of the clergy.[434] To them he abandoned everything except the exercise of his own prerogative.[435] Led on by them, he, from the moment he assumed the Government, began to encroach upon those religious liberties of which Henry IV. had laid the foundation, and which down to this period had been preserved intact.[436] It was at the instigation of the clergy that he revoked the Edict of Nantes, by which the principle of toleration had for nearly a century been incorporated with the law of the land.[437] It was at their instigation that, just before this outrage upon the most sacred rights of his subjects, he, in order to terrify the Protestants into conversion, suddenly let loose upon them whole troops of dissolute soldiers, who were allowed to practise the most revolting cruelties. The frightful barbarities which followed are related by authentic writers;[438] and of the effect produced on the material interests of the nation, some idea may be formed from the fact, that these religious persecutions cost France half a million of her most industrious inhabitants, who fled to different parts, taking with them those habits of labour, and that knowledge and experience in their respective trades, which had hitherto been employed in enriching their own country.[439] These things are notorious, they are incontestable, and they lie on the surface of history. Yet, in the face of them there are still found men who hold up for admiration the age of Louis XIV. Although it is well known that in his reign every vestige of liberty was destroyed; that the people were weighed down by an insufferable taxation; that their children were torn from them by tens of thousands to swell the royal armies; that the resources of the country were squandered to an unprecedented extent; that a despotism of the worst kind was firmly established;--although all this is universally admitted, yet there are writers, even in our own day, who are so infatuated with the glories of literature, as to balance them against the most enormous crimes, and who will forgive every injury inflicted by a prince during whose life there were produced the Letters of Pascal, the orations of Bossuet, the Comedies of Molière, and the Tragedies of Racine.

[434] The terms of this compact between the crown and the church are fairly stated by M. Ranke: 'Wir sehen, die beiden Gewalten unterstützten einander. Der König ward von den Einwirkungen der weltlichen, der Clerus von der unbedingten Autorität der geistlichen Gewalt des Papstthums freigesprochen.' Die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 168.

[435] This part of his character is skilfully drawn by Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 43.

[436] Flasson supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: 'Des l'année 1679 les concessions faites aux protestans avaient été graduellement restreintes.' Diplomatie Française, vol. iv. p. 92. But the fact is, that these laws began in 1662, the year after the death of Mazarin. See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 167; Benoist, Edit. de Nantes, vol. iii. pp. 460-462, 481. In 1667, a letter from Thynne to Lord Clarendon (Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 446) mentions 'the horrid persecutions the reformed religion undergoes in France;' and Locke, who travelled in France in 1675 and 1676, states in his Journal (King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 110) that the Protestants were losing 'every day some privilege or other.'

[437] An account of the revocation will be found in all the French historians; but I do not remember that any of them have noticed that there was a rumour of it in Paris twenty years before it occurred. In March 1665 Patin writes, 'On dit que, pour miner les huguenots, le roi veut supprimer les chambres de l'édit, et abolir l'édit de Nantes.' Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. p. 516.

[438] Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. pp. 73-76, with Siècle de Louis XIV, in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 377, 378. Voltaire says that the Protestants who persisted in their religion 'étaient livrés aux soldats, qui eurent toute licence, excepté celle de tuer. Il y eut pourtant plusieurs personnes si cruellement maltraitées qu'elles en moururent.' And Burnet, who was in France in 1685, says, 'all men set their thoughts on work to invent new methods of cruelty.' What some of those methods were, I shall now relate; because the evidence, however painful it may be, is necessary to enable us to understand the reign of Louis XIV. It is necessary that the veil should be rent; and that the squeamish delicacy which would hide such facts, should give way before the obligation which the historian is under of holding up to public opprobrium, and branding with public infamy, the church by which the measures were instigated, the sovereign by whom they were enforced, and the age in which they were permitted.

The two original sources for our knowledge of these events are, Quick's Synodicon in Gallia, 1692, folio; and Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, 1695, 4to. From these works I extract the following accounts of what happened in France in 1685. 'Afterwards they fall upon the persons of the Protestants; and there was no wickedness, though never so horrid, which they did not put in practice, that they might enforce them to change their religion.... They bound them as criminals are when they be put to the rack; and in that posture, putting a funnel into their mouths, they poured wine down their throats till its fumes had deprived them of their reason, and they had in that condition made them consent to become Catholics. Some they stripped stark naked, and after they had offered them a thousand indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot; they cut them with pen-knives, tear them by the noses with red-hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to become Roman Catholics, or that the doleful outcries of these poor tormented creatures, calling upon God for mercy, constrained them to let them go.... In some places they tied fathers and husbands to the bed-posts, and ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes.... From others they pluck off the nails of their hands and toes, which must needs cause an intolerable pain. They burnt the feet of others. They blew up men and women with bellows, till they were ready to burst in pieces. If these horrid usages could not prevail upon them to violate their consciences, and abandon their religion, they did then imprison them in close and noisome dungeons, in which they exercised all kinds of inhumanities upon them.' Quick's Synodicon, vol. i. pp. cxxx. cxxxi. 'Cependant les troupes exerçoient partout de cruautez inouies. Tout leur étoit permis, pourveu qu'ils ne fissent pas mourir. Ils faisoient danser quelquefois leurs hôtes, jusqu'à ce qu'ils tombassent en défaillance. Ils bernoient les autres jusqu'à ce qu'ils n'en pouvoient plus.... Il y en eut quelques-uns à qui on versa de l'eau bouillante dans la bouche.... Il y en eut plusieurs à qui on donna des coups de bâton sous les pieds, pour éprouver si ce supplice est aussi cruel que les relations le publient. On arrachoit à d'autres le poil de la barbe.... D'autres brûloient à la chandelle le poil des bras et des jambes de leurs hôtes. D'autres faisoient brûler de la poudre, si près du visage de ceux qui leur resistoient, qu'elle leur grilloit toute la peau. Ils mettoient à d'autres des charbons allumez dans les mains, et les contraignoient de les tenir fermées, jusqu'à ce que les charbons fussent éteints.... On brûla les pieds à plusieurs, tenant les uns long-tems devant un grand feu; appliquant aux autres une pelle ardente sous les pieds; liant les pieds des autres dans des bottines pleines de graisse, qu'on faisoit fondre et chauffer peu à peu devant un brasier ardent.' Benoist, Hist. de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 887-889. One of the Protestants, named Ryau, they 'lièrent fort étroitement; lui sevrèrent les doigts des mains; lui fichèrent des épingles sous les ongles; lui firent brûler de la poudre dans les oreilles; lui percèrent les cuisses en plusieurs lieux, et versèrent du vinaigre et du sel dans ses blessures. Par ce tourment ils épuisèrent sa patience en deux jours; et le forcèrent à changer de religion,' p. 890. 'Ses dragons étoient les mêmes en tous lieux. Ils battoient, ils étourdissoient, ils brûloient en Bourgogne comme en Poitou, en Champagne comme en Guyenne, en Normandie comme en Languedoc. Mais ils n'avoient pour les femmes ni plus de respect, ni plus de pitié que pour les hommes. Au contraire, ils abusoient de la tendre pudeur qui est une des propriétez de leur sexe; et ils s'en prevaloient pour leur faire de plus sensibles outrages. On leur levoit quelquefois leurs juppes par dessus la tête, et on leur jetoit des seaux d'eau sur le corps. Il y en eut plusieurs que les soldats mirent en chemise, et qu'ils forcèrent de danser avec eux dans cet état.... Deux filles de Calais, nommées le Noble, furent mises toutes nuës sur le pavé, et furent ainsi exposées à la mocquerie et aux outrages des passans.... Des dragons ayant lié la dame de Vezençai à la quenouille de son lit, lui crachoient dans la bouche quand elle l'ouvroit pour parler ou pour soupirer.' pp. 891, 892. At p. 917 are other details, far more horrible, respecting the treatment of women, and which indignation rather than shame prevents me from transcribing. Indeed, the shame can only light on the church and the government under whose united authority such scandalous outrages could be openly perpetrated, merely for the sake of compelling men to change their religious opinions.

[439] M. Blanqui (Hist. de l'Economie Politique, vol. ii. p. 10) says, that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes cost France 'cinq cent mille de ses enfants les plus industrieux,' who carried into other countries 'les habitudes d'ordre et de travail dont ils étaient imbus.' See also Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xxxvi., in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 380, 381. Several of them emigrated to North America. Compare Godwin on Population, pp. 388, 389, with Benoist, l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 973, 974, and Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, edit. 1849, vol. ii. p. 159. See also, on the effects of the Revocation, Lettres inédites de Voltaire, vol. ii. p. 473.

This method of estimating the merits of a sovereign is, indeed, so rapidly dying away, that I shall not spend any words in refuting it. But it is connected with a more widely diffused error respecting the influence of royal patronage upon national literature. This is a delusion which men of letters have themselves been the first to propagate. From the language too many of them are in the habit of employing, we might be led to believe that there is some magical power in the smiles of a king which stimulates the intellect of the fortunate individual whose heart they are permitted to gladden. Nor must this be despised as one of those harmless prejudices that still linger round the person of the sovereign. It is not only founded on a misconception of the nature of things, but it is in its practical consequences very injurious. It is injurious to the independent spirit which literature should always possess; and it is injurious to princes themselves, because it strengthens that vanity of which they generally have too large a share. Indeed, if we consider the position they now occupy in the most civilized countries, we shall at once see the absurdity of an opinion which, in the present state of knowledge, is unfit to be held by educated men.

From the moment that there was finally abandoned the theological fiction of the divine right of kings, it necessarily followed that the respect felt for them should suffer a corresponding diminution.[440] The superstitious reverence with which they were formerly regarded is extinct, and at the present day we are no longer awed by that divinity with which their persons were once supposed to be hedged.[441] The standard, therefore, by which we should measure them is obvious. We should applaud their conduct in proportion as they contribute towards the happiness of the nation over which they are intrusted with power; but we ought to remember that, from the manner in which they are educated, and from the childish homage always paid to them, their information must be very inaccurate, and their prejudices very numerous.[442] On this account, so far from expecting that they should be judicious patrons of literature, or should in any way head their age, we ought to be satisfied if they do not obstinately oppose the spirit of their time, and if they do not attempt to stop the march of society. For, unless the sovereign, in spite of the intellectual disadvantages of his position, is a man of very enlarged mind, it must usually happen that he will reward, not those who are most able, but those who are most compliant; and that while he refuses his patronage to a profound and independent thinker, he will grant it to an author who cherishes ancient prejudices and defends ancient abuses. In this way, the practice of conferring on men of letters either honorary or pecuniary rewards, is agreeable, no doubt, to those who receive them; but has a manifest tendency to weaken the boldness and energy of their sentiments, and therefore to impair the value of their works. This might be made evident by publishing a list of those literary pensions which have been granted by European princes. If this were done, the mischief produced by these and similar rewards would be clearly seen. After a careful study of the history of literature, I think myself authorised to say, that for one instance in which a sovereign has recompensed a man who is before his age, there are at least twenty instances of his recompensing one who is behind his age. The result is, that in every country where royal patronage has been long and generally bestowed, the spirit of literature, instead of being progressive, has become reactionary. An alliance has been struck up between those who give and those who receive. By a system of bounties, there has been artificially engendered a greedy and necessitous class; who, eager for pensions, and offices, and titles, have made the pursuit of truth subordinate to the desire of gain, and have infused into their writings the prejudices of the court to which they cling. Hence it is, that the marks of favour have become the badge of servitude. Hence it is, that the acquisition of knowledge, by far the noblest of all occupations, an occupation which of all others raises the dignity of man, has been debased to the level of a common profession, where the chances of success are measured by the number of rewards, and where the highest honours are in the gift of whoever happens to be the minister or sovereign of the day.

[440] On the diminished respect for kings, caused by the abandonment of divine right, see Spencer's Social Statics, pp. 423, 424; and on the influence of the clergy in propagating the old doctrine, see Allen's learned work on the Royal Prerogative, edit. 1849, p. 156. See also some striking remarks by Locke, in King's Life of Locke, vol ii. p. 90.

[441] 'Qu'est devenu, en effet, le droit divin, cette pensée, autrefois acceptée par les masses, que les rois étaient les représentants de Dieu sur la terre, que la racine de leur pouvoir était dans le ciel? Elle s'est évanouie devant cette autre pensée, qu'aucun nuage, aucun mysticisme n'obscurcit; devant cette pensée si naturelle et brillant d'une clarté si nette et si vive, que la souveraine puissance, sur la terre, appartient au peuple entier, et non à une fraction, et moins encore à un seul homme.' Rey, Science Sociale, vol. iii. p. 308. Compare Manning on the Law of Nations, p. 101; Laing's Sweden, p. 408; Laing's Denmark, p. 196; Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 391.

[442] In this, as in all instances, the language of respect long survives the feeling to which the language owed its origin. Lord Brougham (Political Philosophy, vol. i. p. 42, Lond. 1849) observes, that 'all their titles are derived from a divine original--all refer to them as representing the Deity on earth. They are called "Grace," "Majesty." They are termed "The Lord's anointed," "The Vicegerent of God upon earth;" with many other names which are either nonsensical or blasphemous, but which are outdone in absurdity by the kings of the East.' True enough: but if Lord Brougham had written thus three centuries ago, he would have had his ears cut off for his pains.

This tendency forms of itself a decisive objection to the views of those who wish to entrust the executive government with the means of rewarding literary men. But there is also another objection, in some respects still more serious. Every nation which is allowed to pursue its course uncontrolled, will easily satisfy the wants of its own intellect, and will produce such a literature as is best suited to its actual condition. And it is evidently for the interest of all classes that the production shall not be greater than the want; that the supply shall not exceed the demand. It is, moreover, necessary to the well-being of society that a healthy proportion should be kept up between the intellectual classes and the practical classes. It is necessary that there should be a certain ratio between those who are most inclined to think, and those who are most inclined to act. If we were all authors, our material interests would suffer; if we were all men of business, our mental pleasures would be abridged. In the first case, we should be famished philosophers; in the other case, we should be wealthy fools. Now, it is obvious that, according to the commonest principles of human action the relative numbers of these two classes will be adjusted, without effort, by the natural, or, as we call it, the spontaneous movement of society. But if a government takes upon itself to pension literary men, it disturbs this movement; it troubles the harmony of things. This is the unavoidable result of that spirit of interference, or, as it is termed, protection, by which every country has been greatly injured. If, for instance, a fund were set apart by the state for rewarding butchers and tailors, it is certain that the number of those useful men would be needlessly augmented. If another fund is appropriated for the literary classes, it is as certain that men of letters will increase more rapidly than the exigencies of the country require. In both cases, an artificial stimulus will produce an unhealthy action. Surely, food and clothes are as necessary for the body as literature is for the mind. Why, then, should we call upon government to encourage those who write our books, any more than to encourage those who kill our mutton and mend our garments? The truth is, that the intellectual march of society is, in this respect, exactly analogous to its physical march. In some instances a forced supply may, indeed, create an unnatural want. But this is an artificial state of things, which indicates a diseased action. In a healthy condition, it is not the supply which causes the want, but it is the want which gives rise to the supply. To suppose, therefore, that an increase of authors would necessarily be followed by a diffusion of knowledge, is as if we were to suppose that an increase of butchers must be followed by a diffusion of food. This is not the way in which things are ordered. Men must have appetite before they will eat; they must have money before they can buy; they must be inquisitive before they will read. The two great principles which move the world are, the love of wealth and the love of knowledge. These two principles respectively represent and govern the two most important classes into which every civilized country is divided. What a government gives to one of these classes, it must take from the other. What it gives to literature, it must take from wealth. This can never be done to any great extent, without entailing the most ruinous consequences. For, the natural proportions of society being destroyed, society itself will be thrown into confusion. While men of letters are protected, men of industry will be depressed. The lower classes can count for little in the eyes of those to whom literature is the first consideration. The idea of the liberty of the people will be discouraged; their persons will be oppressed; their labour will be taxed. The arts necessary to life will be despised, in order that those which embellish life may be favoured. The many will be ruined, that the few may be pleased. While every thing is splendid above, all will be rotten below. Fine pictures, noble palaces, touching dramas--these may for a time be produced in profusion, but it will be at the cost of the heart and strength of the nation. Even the class for whom the sacrifice has been made, will soon decay. Poets may continue to sing the praises of the prince who has bought them with his gold. It is, however, certain that men who begin by losing their independence, will end by losing their energy. Their intellect must be robust indeed, if it does not wither in the sickly atmosphere of a court. Their attention being concentrated on their master, they insensibly contract those habits of servility which are suited to their position; and, as the range of their sympathies is diminished, the use and action of their genius become impaired. To them submission is a custom, and servitude a pleasure. In their hands, literature soon loses its boldness, tradition is appealed to as the ground of truth, and the spirit of inquiry is extinguished. Then it is, that there comes one of those sad moments in which, no outlet being left for public opinion, the minds of men are unable to find a vent; their discontents, having no voice, slowly rankle into a deadly hatred; their passions accumulate in silence, until at length, losing all patience, they are goaded into one of those terrible revolutions, by which they humble the pride of their rulers, and carry retribution even into the heart of the palace.

The truth of this picture is well known to those who have studied the history of Louis XIV., and the connection between it and the French Revolution. That prince adopted, during his long reign, the mischievous practice of rewarding literary men with large sums of money, and of conferring on them numerous marks of personal favour. As this was done for more than half a century; and as the wealth which he thus unscrupulously employed was of course taken from his other subjects, we can find no better illustration of the results which such patronage is likely to produce. He, indeed, has the merit of organizing into a system that protection of literature which some are so anxious to restore. What the effect of this was upon the general interests of knowledge, we shall presently see. But its effect upon authors themselves should be particularly attended to by those men of letters who, with little regard to their own dignity, are constantly reproaching the English government for neglecting the profession of which they themselves are members. In no age have literary men been awarded with such profuseness as in the reign of Louis XIV.; and in no age have they been so mean-spirited, so servile, so utterly unfit to fulfil their great vocation as the apostles of knowledge and the missionaries of truth. The history of the most celebrated authors of that time proves that, notwithstanding their acquirements, and the power of their minds, they were unable to resist the surrounding corruption. To gain the favour of the king, they sacrificed that independent spirit which should have been dearer to them than life. They gave away the inheritance of genius; they sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. What happened then, would under the same circumstances happen now. A few eminent thinkers may be able for a certain time to resist the pressure of their age. But, looking at mankind generally, society can have no hold on any class except through the medium of their interests. It behoves, therefore, every people to take heed, that the interests of literary men are on their side rather than on the side of their rulers. For, literature is the representative of intellect, which is progressive; government is the representative of order, which is stationary. As long as these two great powers are separate, they will correct and react upon each other, and the people may hold the balance. If, however, these powers coalesce, if the government can corrupt the intellect, and if the intellect will yield to the government, the inevitable result must be, despotism in politics, and servility in literature. This was the history of France under Louis XIV.: and this, we may rest assured, will be the history of every country that shall be tempted to follow so attractive but so fatal an example.

The reputation of Louis XIV. originated in the gratitude of men of letters; but it is now supported by a popular notion that the celebrated literature of his age is mainly to be ascribed to his fostering care. If, however, we examine this opinion, we shall find that, like many of the traditions of which history is full, it is entirely devoid of truth. We shall find two leading circumstances, which will prove that the literary splendour of his reign was not the result of his efforts, but was the work of that great generation which preceded him; and that the intellect of France, so far from being benefited by his munificence, was hampered by his protection.

I. The first circumstance is, that the immense impulse which, during the administrations of Richelieu and of Mazarin, had been given to the highest branches of knowledge, was suddenly stopped. In 1661 Louis XIV. assumed the government;[443] and from that moment until his death, in 1715, the history of France, so far as great discoveries are concerned, is a blank in the annals of Europe. If, putting aside all preconceived notions respecting the supposed glory of that age, we examine the matter fairly, it will be seen that in every department there was a manifest dearth of original thinkers. There was much that was elegant, much that was attractive. The senses of men were soothed and flattered by the creations of art, by paintings, by palaces, by poems; but scarcely any thing of moment was added to the sum of human knowledge. If we take the mathematics, and those mixed sciences to which they are applicable, it will be universally admitted that their most successful cultivators in France during the seventeenth century were Descartes, Pascal, Fermat, Gassendi, and Mersenne. But, so far from Louis XIV. having any share in the honour due to them, these eminent men were engaged in their investigations while the king was still in his cradle, and completed them before he assumed the government, and therefore before his system of protection came into play. Descartes died in 1650,[444] when the king was twelve years old. Pascal, whose name, like that of Descartes, is commonly associated with the age of Louis XIV., had gained an European reputation while Louis, occupied in the nursery with his toys, was not aware that any such man existed. His treatise on conic sections was written in 1639;[445] his decisive experiments on the weight of air were made in 1648;[446] and his researches on the cycloid, the last great inquiry he ever undertook, were in 1658,[447] when Louis, still under the tutelage of Mazarin, had no sort of authority. Fermat was one of the most profound thinkers of the seventeenth century, particularly as a geometrician, in which respect he was second only to Descartes.[448] The most important steps he took are those concerning the geometry of infinites, applied to the ordinates and tangents of curves; which, however, he completed in or before 1636.[449] As to Gassendi and Mersenne, it is enough to say that Gassendi died in 1655,[450] six years before Louis was at the head of affairs; while Mersenne died in 1648,[451] when the great king was ten years old.

[443] 'La première période du gouvernement de Louis XIV commence donc en 1661.' Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. p. 4.

[444] Biog. Univ. vol. xi. p. 157.

[445] In Biog. Univ. vol. xxxiii. p. 50, he is said to have composed it 'à l'âge de seize ans;' and at p. 46, to have been born in 1623.

[446] Leslie's Natural Philosophy, p. 201; Bordas Demoulin, Le Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 310. Sir John Herschel (Disc. on Nat. Philos. pp. 229, 230) calls this 'one of the first, if not the very first,' crucial instance recorded in physics; and he thinks that it 'tended, more powerfully than any thing which had previously been done in science, to confirm in the minds of men that disposition to experimental verification which had scarcely yet taken full and secure root.' In this point of view, the addition it actually made to knowledge is the smallest part of its merit.

[447] Montucla (Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. ii. p. 61) says, 'vers 1658;' and at p. 65, 'il se mit, vers le commencement de 1658, à considérer plus profondément les propriétés de cette courbe.'

[448] Montucla (Hist. des Mathémat. vol. ii. p. 136) enthusiastically declares that 'si Descartes eût manqué à l'esprit humain, Fermat l'eût remplacé en géométrie.' Simson, the celebrated restorer of Greek geometry, said that Fermat was the only modern who understood porisms. See Trail's Account of Simson, 1812, 4to. pp. 18, 41. On the connexion between his views and the subsequent discovery of the differential calculus, see Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. ii. pp. 7, 8; and compare Comte, Philosophie Positive, vol. i. pp. 228, 229, 726, 727.

[449] See extracts from two letters written by Fermat to Roberval, in 1636, in Montucla, Hist. des Mathématiques, vol. ii. pp. 136, 137; respecting which there is no notice in the meagre article on Fermat, in Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary, vol. i. p. 510, 4to. 1815. It is a disgrace to English mathematicians that this unsatisfactory work of Hutton's should still remain the best they have produced on the history of their own science. The same disregard of dates is shown in the hasty remarks on Fermat by Playfair. See Playfair's Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical Science, Encyclop. Brit. vol. i. p. 440, 7th edition.

[450] Hutton's Mathemat. Dict. vol. i. p. 572.

[451] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 46.

These were the men who flourished in France just before the system of Louis XIV. came into operation. Shortly after their death the patronage of the king began to tell upon the national intellect; and during the next fifty years no addition of importance was made to either branch of the mathematics, or, with the single exception of acoustics,[452] to any of the sciences to which the mathematics are applied.[453] The further the seventeenth century advanced, the more evident did the decline become, and the more clearly can we trace the connexion between the waning powers of the French, and that protective spirit which enfeebled the energies it wished to strengthen. Louis had heard that astronomy is a noble study; he was therefore anxious, by encouraging its cultivation in France, to add to the glories of his own name.[454] With this view, he rewarded its professors with unexampled profusion; he built the splendid Observatory of Paris; he invited to his court the most eminent foreign astronomers, Cassini from Italy, Römer from Denmark, Huygens from Holland. But, as to native ability, France did not produce a single man who made even one of those various discoveries which mark the epochs of astronomical science. In other countries vast progress was made; and Newton in particular, by his immense generalizations, reformed nearly every branch of physics, and remodelled astronomy by carrying the laws of gravitation to the extremity of the solar system. On the other hand, France had fallen into such a torpor, that these wonderful discoveries, which changed the face of knowledge, were entirely neglected, there being no instance of any French astronomer adopting them until 1732, that is, forty-five years after they had been published by their immortal author.[455] Even in matters of detail, the most valuable improvement made by French astronomers during the power of Louis XIV. was not original. They laid claim to the invention of the micrometer; an admirable resource, which, as they supposed, was first contrived by Picard and Auzout.[456] The truth, however, is, that here again they were anticipated by the activity of a freer and less protected people; since the micrometer was invented by Gascoigne in or just before 1639, when the English monarch, so far from having leisure to patronize science, was about to embark in that struggle which, ten years later, cost him his crown and his life.[457]

[452] Of which Sauveur may be considered the creator. Compare Eloge de Sauveur, in [OE]uvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. v. p. 435, with Whewell's Hist. of the Induc. Sciences, vol. ii. p. 334; Comte, Philos. Pos. vol. ii. pp. 627, 628.

[453] In the report presented to Napoleon by the French Institute, it is said of the reign of Louis XIV., 'les sciences exactes et les sciences physiques peu cultivées en France dans un siècle qui paroissoit ne trouver de charmes que dans la littérature.' Dacier, Rapport Historique, p. 24. Or, as Lacretelle expresses it (Dix-huitième Siècle, vol. ii. p. 10), 'La France, après avoir fourni Descartes et Pascal, eut pendant quelque temps à envier aux nations étrangères la gloire de produire des génies créateurs dans les sciences.'

[454] A writer late in the seventeenth century says, with some simplicity, 'the present king of France is reputed an encourager of choice and able men, in all faculties, who can attribute to his greatness.' Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii. p. 624.

[455] The Principia of Newton appeared in 1687; and Maupertuis, in 1732, 'was the first astronomer of France who undertook a critical defence of the theory of gravitation.' Grant's Hist. of Physical Astronomy, pp. 31, 43. In 1738, Voltaire writes, 'La France est jusqu'à présent le seul pays où les théories de Newton en physique, et de Boerhaave en médecine, soient combattues. Nous n'avons pas encore de bons éléments de physique; nous avons pour toute astronomie le livre de Bion, qui n'est qu'un ramas informe de quelques mémoires de l'académie.' Correspond. in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xlvii. p. 340. On the tardy reception of Newton's discoveries in France, compare Eloge de Lacaille, in [OE]uvres de Bailly, Paris, 1790, vol. i. pp. 175, 176. All this is the more remarkable, because several of the conclusions at which Newton had arrived were divulged before they were embodied in the Principia; and it appears from Brewster's Life of Newton (vol. i. pp. 25, 26, 290), that his speculations concerning gravity began in 1666, or perhaps in the autumn of 1665.

[456] 'L'abbé Picard fut en société avec Auzout, l'inventeur du micromètre.' Biog. Univ. vol. xxxiv. p. 253. See also Préface de l'Hist. de l'Acad. des Sciences, in [OE]uvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. x. p. 20.

[457] The best account I have seen of the invention of the micrometer, is in Mr. Grant's recent work, History of Physical Astronomy, pp. 428, 450-453, where it is proved that Gascoigne invented it in 1639, or possibly a year or two earlier. Compare Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 52; who also ascribes it to Gascoigne, but erroneously dates it in 1640. Montucla (Hist. des Mathémat. vol. ii. pp. 570, 571) admits the priority of Gascoigne; but underrates his merit, being apparently unacquainted with the evidence which Mr. Grant subsequently adduced.

The absence in France, during this period, not only of great discoveries, but also of mere practical ingenuity, is certainly very striking. In investigations requiring minute accuracy, the necessary tools, if at all complicated, were made by foreigners, the native workmen being too unskilled to construct them; and Dr. Lister, who was a very competent judge,[458] and who was in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, supplies evidence that the best mathematical instruments sold in that city were made, not by a Frenchman, but by Butterfield, an Englishman residing there.[459] Nor did they succeed better in matters of immediate and obvious utility. The improvements effected in manufactures were few and insignificant, and were calculated, not for the comfort of the people, but for the luxury of the idle classes.[460] What was really valuable was neglected; no great invention was made; and by the end of the reign of Louis XIV. scarcely anything had been done in machinery, or in those other contrivances which, by economising national labour, increase national wealth.[461]

[458] For a short account of this able man, see Lankester's Mem. of Ray, p. 17.

[459] Notwithstanding the strong prejudice then existing against Englishmen, Butterfield was employed by 'the king and all the princes.' Lister's Account of Paris at the close of the Seventeenth Century, edited by Dr. Henning, p. 85. Fontenelle mentions 'M. Hubin,' as one of the most celebrated makers in Paris in 1687 (Eloge d'Amoltons, in [OE]uvres de Fontenelle, Paris, 1766, vol. v. p. 113); but has forgotten to state that he too was an Englishman. 'Lutetiæ sedem posuerat ante aliquod tempus Anglus quidam nomine Hubinus, vir ingeniosus, atque hujusmodi machinationum peritus opifex et industrius. Hominem adii,' &c. Huetii Commentarius de Rebus ad eum pertinentibus, p. 346. Thus, again, in regard to time-keepers, the vast superiority of the English makers, late in the reign of Louis XIV., was equally incontestable. Compare Biog. Univ. vol. xxiv. pp. 242, 243, with Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. ii. p. 262; and as to the middle of the reign of Louis XIV., see Eloge de Sebastien, in [OE]uvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi. pp. 332, 333.

[460] 'Les manufactures étaient plutôt dirigées vers le brillant que vers l'utile. On s'efforça, par un arrêt du mois de mars 1700, d'extirper, ou du moins de réduire beaucoup les fabriques de bas au métier. Malgré cette fausse direction, les objets d'un luxe très-recherché faisaient des progrès bien lents. En 1687, après la mort de Colbert, la cour soldait encore l'industrie des barbares, et faisait fabriquer et broder ses plus beaux habits à Constantinople.' Lemontey, Etablissement de Louis XIV, p. 364. Lacretelle (Dix-huitième Siècle, vol. ii. p. 5) says, that during the last thirty years of the reign of Louis XIV. 'les manufactures tombaient.'

[461] Cuvier (Biog. Univ. vol. xxxvii. p. 199) thus describes the condition of France only seven years after the death of Louis XIV.: 'Nos forges étaient alors presque dans l'enfance; et nous ne faisions point d'acier: tout celui qu'exigeaient les différents métiers nous venait de l'étranger.... Nous ne faisions point non plus alors de fer-blanc, et il ne nous venait que de l'Allemagne.'

While such was the state, not only of mathematical and astronomical science, but also of mechanical and inventive arts, corresponding symptoms of declining power were seen in other departments. In physiology, in anatomy and in medicine, we look in vain for any men equal to those by whom France had once been honoured. The greatest discovery of this kind ever made by a Frenchman, was that of the receptacle of the chyle; a discovery which, in the opinion of a high authority, is not inferior to that of the circulation of the blood by Harvey.[462] This important step in our knowledge is constantly assigned to the age of Louis XIV., as if it were one of the results of his gracious bounty; but it would be difficult to tell what Louis had to do with it, since the discovery was made by Pecquet in 1647,[463] when the great king was nine years old. After Pecquet, the most eminent of the French anatomists in the seventeenth century was Riolan; and his name we also find among the illustrious men who adorned the reign of Louis XIV. But the principal works of Riolan were written before Louis XIV. was born; his last work was published in 1652; and he himself died in 1657.[464] Then there came a pause, and, during three generations, the French did nothing for these great subjects: they wrote no work upon them which is now read, they made no discoveries, and they seemed to have lost all heart, until that revival of knowledge, which, as we shall presently see, took place in France about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the practical parts of medicine, in its speculative parts, and in the arts connected with surgery, the same law prevails. The French, in these, as in other matters, had formerly produced men of great eminence, who had won for themselves an European reputation, and whose works are still remembered. Thus, only to mention two or three instances, they had a long line of illustrious physicians, among whom Fernel and Joubert were the earliest;[465] they had, in surgery, Ambroise Paré, who not only introduced important practical improvements,[466] but who has the still rarer merit of being one of the founders of comparative osteology;[467] and they had Baillou, who late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, advanced pathology, by connecting it with the study of morbid anatomy.[468] Under Louis XIV. all this was changed. Under him, surgery was neglected, though in other countries its progress was rapid.[469] The English, by the middle of the seventeenth century, had taken considerable steps in medicine: its therapeutical branch being reformed chiefly by Sydenham, its physiological branch by Glisson.[470] But the age of Louis XIV. cannot boast of a single medical writer who can be compared to these; not even one whose name is now known as having made any specific addition to our knowledge. In Paris, the practice of medicine was notoriously inferior to that in the capitals of Germany, Italy, and England; while in the French provinces, the ignorance, even of the best physicians, was scandalous.[471] Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, during the whole of this long period, the French in these matters effected comparatively nothing; they made no contributions to clinical literature,[472] and scarcely any to therapeutics, to pathology, to physiology, or to anatomy.[473]

[462] 'Certainement la découverte de Pecquet ne brille pas moins dans l'histoire de notre art que la vérité démontrée pour la première fois par Harvey.' Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. p. 208.

[463] Henle (Anatomie Générale, vol. ii. p. 106) says, that the discovery was made in 1649; but the historians of medicine assign it to 1647. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. pp. 207, 405; Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 173.

[464] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxviii. pp. 123, 124.

[465] Some of the great steps taken by Joubert are concisely stated in Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. pp. 293, 294, vol. iii. p. 361. Compare Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iii. p. 210. Fernel, though enthusiastically praised by Patin, was probably hardly equal to Joubert. Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. pp. 59, 199, 648. At p. 106, Patin calls Fernel 'le premier médecin de son temps, et peut-être le plus grand qui sera jamais.'

[466] See a summary of them in Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iii. pp. 405, 406, vol. vii. pp. 14, 15. Sir Benjamin Brodie (Lectures on Surgery, p. 21) says, 'Few greater benefits have been conferred on mankind than that for which we are indebted to Ambrose Parey--the application of a ligature to a bleeding artery.'

[467] 'C'était là une vue très-ingénieuse et très-juste qu'Ambroise Paré donnait pour la première fois. C'était un commencement d'ostéologie comparée.' Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part. ii. p. 42. To this I may add, that he is the first French writer on medical jurisprudence. See Paris and Fonblanque's Medical Jurisprudence, 1823, vol. i. p. xviii.

[468] 'L'un des premiers auteurs à qui l'on doit des observations cadavériques sur les maladies, est le fameux Baillou.' Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. ii. p. 218. See also vol. iii. p. 362; and Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 89. The value of his services is recognized in a recent able work, Phillips on Scrofula, 1846, p. 16.

[469] 'The most celebrated surgeon of the sixteenth century was Ambroise Paré.... From the time of Paré until the commencement of the eighteenth century, surgery was but little cultivated in France. Mauriceau, Saviard, and Belloste, were the only French surgeons of note who could be contrasted with so many eminent men of other nations. During the eighteenth century, France produced two surgeons of extraordinary genius; these are Petit and Desault.' Bowman's Surgery, in Encyclop. of Medical Sciences, 1847, 4to. pp. 829, 830.

[470] It is unnecessary to adduce evidence respecting the services rendered by Sydenham, as they are universally admitted; but what, perhaps, is less generally known, is, that Glisson anticipated those important views concerning irritability, which were afterwards developed by Haller and Gorter. Compare Renouard, Hist. de le Médecine, vol. ii. p. 192; Elliotson's Human Physiol. p. 471; Bordas Demoulin, Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 170; In Wagner's Physiol. 1841, p. 655, the theory is too exclusively ascribed to Haller.

[471] Of this we have numerous complaints from foreigners who visited France. I will quote the testimony of one celebrated man. In 1699, Addison writes from Blois: 'I made use of one of the physicians of this place, who are as cheap as our English farriers, and generally as ignorant.' Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 74.

[472] Indeed, France was the last great country in Europe in which a chair of clinical medicine was established. See Renouard, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. ii. p. 312; and Bouillaud, Philos. Médicale, p. 114.

[473] M. Bouillaud, in his account of the state of medicine in the seventeenth century, does not mention a single Frenchman during this period. See Bouillaud, Philosophie Médicale, pp. 13 seq. During many years of the power of Louis XIV., the French Academy only possessed one anatomist; and of him, few students of physiology have ever heard: 'M. du Verney fut assez long-temps le seul anatomiste de l'académie, et ce ne fut qu'en 1684 qu'on lui joignit M. Mery.' Eloge de Du Verney, in [OE]uvres de Fontenelle, vol. vi. p. 392.

In what are called the natural sciences, we also find the French now brought to a stand. In zoology, they had formerly possessed remarkable men, among whom Belon and Rondelet were the most conspicuous:[474] but, under Louis XIV., they did not produce one original observer in this great field of inquiry.[475] In chemistry, again, Rey had, in the reign of Louis XIII., struck out views of such vast importance, that he anticipated some of those generalizations which formed the glory of the French intellect in the eighteenth century.[476] During the corrupt and frivolous age of Louis XIV., all this was forgotten; the labours of Rey were neglected; and so complete was the indifference, that even the celebrated experiments of Boyle remained unknown in France for more than forty years after they were published.[477]

[474] Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. pp. 64-73, 76-80.

[475] After Belon, nothing was done in France for the natural history of animals until 1734, when there appeared the first volume of Reaumur's great work. See Swainson on the Study of Nat. Hist. pp. 24, 43.

[476] On this remarkable man, who was the first philosophic chemist Europe produced, and who, so early as 1630, anticipated some of the generalizations made a hundred and fifty years later by Lavoisier, see Liebig's Letters on Chemistry, pp. 46, 47; Thomson's Hist. of Chemistry, vol. ii. pp. 95, 96; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 729; Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30.

[477] Cuvier (Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. p. 30) says of Rey, 'son écrit était tombé dans l'oubli le plus profond;' and, in another work, the same great authority writes (Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 333): 'Il y avait plus de quarante ans que Becker avait présenté sa nouvelle théorie, développée par Stahl; il y avait encore plus long-temps que les expériences de Boyle sur la chimie pneumatique avaient été publiées, et cependant, rien de tout cela n'entrait encore dans l'enseignement général de la chimie, du moins en France.'

Connected with zoology, and, to a philosophic mind, inseparable from it, is botany: which, occupying a middle place between the animal and mineral world, indicates their relation to each other, and at different points touches the confines of both. It also throws great light on the functions of nutrition,[478] and on the laws of development; while, from the marked analogy between animals and vegetables, we have every reason to hope that its further progress, assisted by that of electricity, will prepare the way for a comprehensive theory of life, to which the resources of our knowledge are still unequal, but towards which the movements of modern science are manifestly tending. On these grounds, far more than for the sake of practical advantages, botany will always attract the attention of thinking men; who, neglecting views of immediate utility, look to large and ultimate results, and only value particular facts in so far as they facilitate the discovery of general truths. The first step in this noble study was taken towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when authors, instead of copying what previous writers had said, began to observe nature for themselves.[479] The next step was, to add experiment to observation: but it required another hundred years before this could be done with accuracy; because the microscope, which is essential to such inquiries, was only invented about 1620, and the labour of a whole generation was needed to make it available for minute investigations.[480] So soon, however, as this resource was sufficiently matured to be applied to plants, the march of botany became rapid, at least as far as details are concerned; for it was not until the eighteenth century that the facts were actually generalized. But, in the preliminary work of accumulating the facts, great energy was shown; and, for reasons stated in an earlier part of the Introduction, this, like other studies relating to the external world, advanced with peculiar speed during the reign of Charles II. The tracheæ of plants were discovered by Henshaw in 1661;[481] and their cellular tissue by Hooke in 1667.[482] These were considerable approaches towards establishing the analogy between plants and animals; and, within a few years, Grew effected still more of the same kind. He made such minute and extensive dissections, as to raise the anatomy of vegetables to a separate study, and prove that their organization is scarcely less complicated than that possessed by animals.[483] His first work was written in 1670;[484] and, in 1676, another Englishman, Millington, ascertained the existence of a distinction of sexes;[485] thus supplying further evidence of the harmony between the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and of the unity of idea which regulates their composition.

[478] The highest present generalizations of the laws of nutrition are those by M. Chevreul; which are thus summed up by MM. Robin et Verdeil, in their admirable work, Chimie Anatomique, vol. i. p. 203, Paris, 1853: 'En passant des plantes aux animaux, nous voyons que plus l'organisation de ces derniers est compliquée, plus les aliments dont ils se nourrissent sont complexes et analogues par leurs principes immédiats aux principes des organes qu'ils doivent entretenir.

'En définitive, on voit que les végétaux se nourrissent d'eau, d'acide carbonique, d'autres gaz et de matières organiques à l'état d'engrais, ou en d'autres termes altérées, c'est-à-dire ramenées à l'état de principes plus simples, plus solubles. Au contraire, les animaux plus élevés dans l'échelle organique ont besoin de matières bien plus complexes quant aux principes immédiats qui les composent, et plus variées dans leurs propriétés.'

[479] Brunfels in 1530, and Fuchs in 1542, were the two first writers who observed the vegetable kingdom for themselves, instead of copying what the ancients had said. Compare Whewell's Hist. of the Sciences, vol. iii. pp. 305, 306, with Pulteney's Hist. of Botany, vol. i. p. 38.

[480] The microscope was exhibited in London, by Drebbel, about 1620; and this appears to be the earliest unquestionable notice of its use, though some writers assert that it was invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or even in 1590. Compare the different statements, in Pouillet, Elémens de Physique, vol. ii. p. 357; Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. pp. 699, 700; Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. iv. p. 337; Winckler, Gesch. der Botanik, p. 136; Quekett's Treatise on the Microscope, 1848, p. 2; Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 470; Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 202; Leslie's Nat. Philos. p. 52. On the subsequent improvement of the microscope during the seventeenth century, see Brewster's Life of Newton, vol. i. pp. 29, 242, 243.

[481] See Balfour's Botany, p. 15. In Pulteney's Progress of Botany in England, this beautiful discovery is, if I rightly remember, not even alluded to; but it appears, from a letter written in 1672, that it was then becoming generally known, and had been confirmed by Grew and Malpighi. Ray's Correspond. edit. 1848, p. 98. Compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, p. 46; where, however, M. Richard erroneously supposes that Grew did not know of the tracheæ till 1682.

[482] Compare Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 471, with Thomson's Vegetable Chemistry, p. 950.

[483] Dr. Thomson (Vegetable Chemistry, p. 950) says: 'But the person to whom we are indebted for the first attempt to ascertain the structure of plants by dissection and microscopical observations, was Dr. Nathaniel Grew.' The character of Grew's inquiries, as 'viewing the internal, as well as external parts of plants,' is also noticed in Ray's Correspond. p. 188; and M. Winckler (Gesch. der Botanik, p. 382) ascribes to him and Malpighi the 'neuen Aufschwung' taken by vegetable physiology late in the seventeenth century. See also, on Grew, Lindley's Botany, vol. i. p. 93; and Third Report of Brit. Assoc. p. 27.

[484] The first book of his Anatomy of Plants was laid before the Royal Society in 1670, and printed in 1671. Hallam's Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 580; and Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Society, p. 44.

[485] 'The presence of sexual organs in plants was first shown in 1676, by Sir Thomas Millington; and it was afterwards confirmed by Grew, Malpighi, and Ray.' Balfour's Botany, p. 236. See also Pulteney's Progress of Botany, vol. i. pp. 336, 337; and Lindley's Botany, vol. ii. p. 217: and, as to Ray, who was rather slow in admitting the discovery, see Lankester's Mem. of Ray, p. 100. Before this, the sexual system of vegetables had been empirically known to several of the ancients, but never raised to a scientific truth. Compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, pp. 353, 427, 428, with Matter, Hist. de l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. ii. p. 9.

This is what was effected in England during the reign of Charles II.; and we now ask what was done in France, during the same period, under the munificent patronage of Louis XIV. The answer is, nothing; no discovery, no idea, which forms an epoch in this important department of natural science. The son of the celebrated Sir Thomas Brown visited Paris in the hope of making some additions to his knowledge of botany, which he thought he could not fail to do in a country where science was held in such honour, its professors so caressed by the court, and its researches so bountifully encouraged. To his surprise, he, in 1665, found in that great city no one capable of teaching his favourite pursuit, and even the public lectures on it miserably meagre and unsatisfactory.[486] Neither then, nor at a much later period, did the French possess a good popular treatise on botany: still less did they make any improvement in it. Indeed, so completely was the philosophy of the subject misunderstood, that Tournefort, the only French botanist of repute in the reign of Louis, actually rejected that discovery of the sexes of plants, which had been made before he began to write, and which afterwards became the corner-stone of the Linnæan system.[487] This showed his incapacity for those large views respecting the unity of the organic world, which alone give to botany a scientific value; and we find, accordingly, that he did nothing for the physiology of plants, and that his only merit was as a collector and classifier of them.[488] And even in his classification he was guided, not by a comprehensive comparison of their various parts, but by considerations drawn from the mere appearance of the flower:[489] thus depriving botany of its real grandeur, degrading it into an arrangement of beautiful objects, and supplying another instance of the way in which the Frenchmen of that generation impoverished what they sought to enrich, and dwarfed every topic, until they suited the intellect and pleased the eye of that ignorant and luxurious court, to whose favour they looked for reward, and whose applause it was the business of their life to gain.

[486] In July 1665 he writes from Paris to his father, 'The lecture of plants here is only the naming of them, their degrees in heat and cold, and sometimes their use in physick; scarce a word more than may be seen in every herball.' Browne's Works, vol. i. p. 108.

[487] Cuvier mentioning the inferiority of Tournefort's views to those of his predecessors, gives as an instance, 'puisqu'il a rejeté les sexes des plantes.' Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 496. Hence he held that the farina was ex-crementitious. Pulteney's Progress of Botany, vol. i. p. 340.

[488] This is admitted even by his eulogist Duvau. Biog. Univ. vol. xlvi. p. 363.

[489] On the method of Tournefort, which was that of a corrollist, compare Richard, Eléments de Botanique, p. 547; Jussieu's Botany, edit. Wilson, 1849, p. 516; Ray's Correspond. pp. 381, 382; Lankester's Mem. of Ray, p. 49; Winckler, Gesch. der Botanik, p. 142. Cuvier (Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 496), with quiet irony, says of it, 'vous voyez, messieurs, que cette méthode a le mérite d'une grande clarté; qu'elle est fondée sur la forme de la fleur, et par conséquent sur des considérations agréables à saisir.... Ce qui en fit le succès, c'est que Tournefort joignit à son ouvrage une figure de fleur et de fruit appartenant à chacun de ses genres.' Even in this, he appears to have been careless, and is said to have described 'a great many plants he never examined nor saw.' Letter from Dr. Sherard, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 356.

The truth is, that in these, as in all matters of real importance, in questions requiring independent thought, and in questions of practical utility, the age of Louis XIV. was an age of decay: it was an age of misery, of intolerance, and oppression; it was an age of bondage, of ignominy, of incompetence. This would long since have been universally admitted, if those who have written the history of that period had taken the trouble to study subjects without which no history can be understood; or, I should rather say, without which no history can exist. If this had been done, the reputation of Louis XIV. would at once have shrunk to its natural size. Even at the risk of exposing myself to the charge of unduly estimating my own labours, I cannot avoid saying, that the facts which I have just pointed out have never before been collected, but have remained isolated in the text-books and repertories of the sciences to which they belong. Yet without them it is impossible to study the age of Louis XIV. It is impossible to estimate the character of any period except by tracing its development; in other words, by measuring the extent of its knowledge. Therefore it is, that to write the history of a country without regard to its intellectual progress, is as if an astronomer should compose a planetary system without regard to the sun, by whose light alone the planets can be seen, and by whose attraction they are held in their course, and compelled to run in the path of their appointed orbits. For the great luminary, even as it shines in the heaven, is not a more noble or a more powerful object than is the intellect of man in this nether world. It is to the human intellect, and to that alone, that every country owes its knowledge. And what is it but the progress and diffusion of knowledge which has given us our arts, our sciences, our manufactures, our laws, our opinions, our manners, our comforts, our luxuries, our civilization; in short, everything that raises us above the savages, who by their ignorance are degraded to the level of the brutes with which they herd? Surely, then, the time has now arrived when they who undertake to write the history of a great nation should occupy themselves with those matters by which alone the destiny of men is regulated, and should abandon the petty and insignificant details by which we have too long been wearied; details respecting the lives of kings, the intrigues of ministers, the vices and the gossip of courts.

It is precisely these higher considerations which furnish the key to the history of the reign of Louis XIV. In that time, as in all others, the misery of the people and the degradation of the country followed the decline of the national intellect; while this last was, in its turn, the result of the protective spirit--that mischievous spirit which weakens whatever it touches. If in the long course and compass of history there is one thing more clear than another, it is, that whenever a government undertakes to protect intellectual pursuits, it will almost always protect them in the wrong place, and reward the wrong men. Nor is it surprising that this should be the case. What can kings and ministers know about those immense branches of knowledge, to cultivate which with success is often the business of an entire life? How can they, constantly occupied with their lofty pursuits, have leisure for such inferior matters? Is it to be supposed that such acquirements will be found among statesmen, who are always engaged in the most weighty concerns; sometimes writing despatches, sometimes making speeches, sometimes organising a party in the parliament, sometimes baffling an intrigue in the privy-chamber? Or if the sovereign should graciously bestow his patronage according to his own judgment, are we to expect that mere philosophy and science should be familiar to high and mighty princes, who have their own peculiar and arduous studies, and who have to learn the mysteries of heraldry, the nature and dignities of rank, the comparative value of the different orders, decorations, and titles, the laws of precedence, the prerogatives of noble birth, the names and powers of ribbons, stars, and garters, the various modes of conferring an honour or installing into an office, the adjustment of ceremonies, the subtleties of etiquette, and all those other courtly accomplishments necessary to the exalted functions which they perform?

The mere statement of such questions proves the absurdity of the principle which they involve. For, unless we believe that kings are omniscient as well as immaculate, it is evident that in the bestowal of rewards they must be guided either by personal caprice or by the testimony of competent judges. And since no one is a competent judge of scientific excellence unless he is himself scientific, we are driven to this monstrous alternative, that the rewards of intellectual labour must be conferred injudiciously, or else that they must be given according to the verdict of that very class by whom they are received. In the first case, the reward will be ridiculous; in the latter case, it will be disgraceful. In the former case, weak men will be benefited by wealth which is taken from industry to be lavished on idleness. But in the latter case, those men of real genius, those great and illustrious thinkers, who are the masters and teachers of the human race, are to be tricked out with trumpery titles; and after scrambling in miserable rivalry for the sordid favours of a court, they are then to be turned into beggars of the state, who not only clamour for their share of the spoil, but even regulate the proportions into which the shares are to be divided.

Under such a system, the natural results are, first, the impoverishment and servility of genius: then the decay of knowledge; then the decline of the country. Three times in the history of the world has this experiment been tried. In the ages of Augustus, of Leo X., and of Louis XIV., the same method was adopted, and the same result ensued. In each of these ages, there was much apparent splendour, immediately succeeded by sudden ruin. In each instance, the brilliancy survived the independence; and in each instance, the national spirit sank under that pernicious alliance between government and literature, by virtue of which the political classes become very powerful, and the intellectual classes very weak, simply because they who dispense the patronage will, of course, receive the homage; and if, on the one hand, government is always ready to reward literature, so on the other hand, will literature be always ready to succumb to government.

Of these three ages, that of Louis XIV. was incomparably the worst; and nothing but the amazing energy of the French people could have enabled them to rally, as they afterwards did, from the effects of so enfeebling a system. But though they rallied, the effort cost them dear. The struggle, as we shall presently see, lasted two generations, and was only ended by that frightful Revolution which formed its natural climax. What the real history of that struggle was, I shall endeavour to ascertain towards the conclusion of this volume. Without, however, anticipating the course of affairs, we will now proceed to what I have already mentioned as the second great characteristic of the reign of Louis XIV.

II. The second intellectual characteristic of the reign of Louis XIV. is, in importance, hardly inferior to the first. We have already seen that the national intellect, stunted by the protection of the court, was so diverted from the noblest branches of knowledge, that in none of them did it produce anything worthy of being recorded. As a natural consequence, the minds of men, driven from the higher departments, took refuge in the lower, and concentrated themselves upon those inferior subjects, where the discovery of truth is not the main object, but where beauty of form and expression are the things chiefly pursued. Thus, the first consequence of the patronage of Louis XIV. was, to diminish the field for genius, and to sacrifice science to art. The second consequence was, that, even in art itself, there was soon seen a marked decay. For a short time, the stimulus produced its effect; but was followed by that collapse which is its natural result. So essentially vicious is the whole system of patronage and reward, that after the death of those writers and artists, whose works form the only redeeming point in the reign of Louis, there was found no one capable of even imitating their excellences. The poets, dramatists, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, were, with hardly an exception, not only born, but educated under that freer policy, which existed before his time. When they began their labours, they benefited by a munificence which encouraged the activity of their genius. But in a few years, that generation having died off, the hollowness of the whole system was clearly exposed. More than a quarter of a century before the death of Louis XIV., most of these eminent men had ceased to live; and then it was seen to how miserable a plight the country was reduced under the boasted patronage of the great king. At the moment when Louis XIV. died, there was scarcely a writer or an artist in France who enjoyed an European reputation. This is a circumstance well worth our notice. If we compare the different classes of literature, we shall find that sacred oratory, being the least influenced by the king, was able the longest to bear up against his system. Massillon belongs partly to the subsequent reign; but even of the other great divines, Bossuet and Bourdaloue both lived to 1704,[490] Mascaron to 1703,[491] and Flechier to 1710.[492] As, however, the king, particularly in his latter years, was very fearful of meddling with the church, it is in profane matters that we can best trace the workings of his policy, because it is there that his interference was most active. With a view to this, the simplest plan will be, to look, in the first place, into the history of the fine arts; and after ascertaining who the greatest artists were, observe the year in which they died, remembering that the government of Louis XIV. began in 1661, and ended in 1715.

[490] Biog. Univ. vol. v. pp. 236, 358.

[491] Ibid. xxvii. p. 351.

[492] Ibid. xv. p. 35.

If, now, we examine this period of fifty-four years, we shall be struck by the remarkable fact, that everything which is celebrated was effected in the first half of it; while more than twenty years before its close, the most eminent masters all died without leaving any successors. The six greatest painters in the reign of Louis XIV. were Poussin, Lesueur, Claude Lorraine, Le Brun, and the two Mignards. Of these, Le Brun died in 1690;[493] the elder Mignard in 1668;[494] the younger in 1695;[495] Claude Lorraine in 1682;[496] Lesueur in 1655;[497] and Poussin, perhaps the most distinguished of all the French school, died in 1665.[498] The two greatest architects were, Claude Perrault and Francis Mansart; but Perrault died in 1688;[499] Mansart in 1666;[500] and Blondel, the next in fame, died in 1686.[501] The greatest of all the sculptors was Puget, who died in 1694.[502] Lulli, the founder of French music, died in 1687.[503] Quinault, the greatest poet of French music, died in 1688.[504] Under these eminent men, the fine arts, in the reign of Louis XIV., reached their zenith; and during the last thirty years of his life, their decline was portentously rapid. This was the case, not only in architecture and music, but even in painting, which, being more subservient than they are to personal vanity, is more likely to flourish under a rich and despotic government. The genius, however, of painters fell so low, that long before the death of Louis XIV., France ceased to possess one of any merit; and when his successor came to the throne, this beautiful art was, in that great country, almost extinct.[505]

[493] Ibid. xxiii. p. 496.

[494] Ibid. xxix. p. 17.

[495] Ibid. xxix. p. 19.

[496] 'His best pictures were painted from about 1640 to 1660; he died in 1682.' Wornum's Epochs of Painting, Lond. 1847. p. 399. Voltaire (Siècle de Louis XIV, in [OE]uvres, vol. xix. p. 205) says that he died in 1678.

[497] Biog. Univ. vol. xxiv. p. 327; Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. ii. pp. 454, 455.

[498] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxv. p. 579. Poussin was Barry's 'favourite' painter. Letter from Barry, in Burke's Correspond. vol. i. p. 88. Compare Otter's Life of Clarke, vol. ii. p. 55. Sir Joshua Reynolds (Works, vol. i. pp. 97, 351, 376) appears to have preferred him to any of the French school; and in the report presented to Napoleon by the Institute, he is the only French painter mentioned by the side of the Greek and Italian artists. Dacier, Rapport Historique, p. 23.

[499] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxiii. p. 411; Siècle de Louis XIV, in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xix. p. 158.

[500] Biog. Univ. vol. xxvi. p. 503.

[501] Ibid. vol. iv. p. 593.

[502] Ibid. vol. xxxvi. p. 300. Respecting him, see Lady Morgan's France, vol. ii. pp. 30, 31.

[503] M. Capefigue (Louis XIV, vol. ii. p. 79) says, 'Lulli mourut en 1689;' but 1687 is the date assigned in Biog. Univ. vol. xxv. p. 425; in Chalmer's Biog. Dict. vol. xx. p. 483; in Rose's Biog. Dict. vol. ix. p. 350; and in Monteil, Divers Etats, vol. vii p. 63. In [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xix. p. 200, he is called 'le père de la vraie musique en France.' He was admired by Louis XIV. Lettres de Sévigné, vol. ii. pp. 162, 163.

[504] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxvi. p. 42. Voltaire ([OE]uvres, vol. xix. p. 162) says, 'personne n'a jamais égalé Quinault;' and Mr. Hallam (Lit. of Europe, vol. iii. p. 507), 'the unrivalled poet of French music.' See also Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, vol. ii. p. 432.

[505] When Louis XV. ascended the throne, painting in France was in the lowest state of degradation. Lady Morgan's France, vol. ii. p. 31. Lacretelle (Dix-huitième Siècle, vol. ii. p. 11) says 'Les beaux arts dégénérèrent plus sensiblement que les lettres pendant la seconde partie du siècle de Louis XIV.... Il est certain que les vingt-cinq dernières années du règne de Louis XIV n'offrirent que des productions très-inférieures,' &c. Thus too Barrington (Observations on the Statutes, p. 377), 'It is very remarkable that the French school hath not produced any very capital painters since the expensive establishment by Louis XIV. of the academies at Rome and Paris.'

These are startling facts; not matters of opinion, which may be disputed, but stubborn dates, supported by irrefragable testimony. And if we examine in the same manner the literature of the age of Louis XIV., we shall arrive at similar conclusions. If we ascertain the dates of those masterpieces which adorn his reign, we shall find that during the last five-and-twenty years of his life, when his patronage had been the longest in operation, it was entirely barren of results; in other words, that when the French had been most habituated to his protection, they were least able to effect great things. Louis XIV. died in 1715. Racine produced Phedre in 1677; Andromaque in 1667; Athelie in 1691.[506] Molière published the Misanthrope in 1666; Tartuffe in 1667; the Avare in 1668.[507] The Lutrin of Boileau was written in 1674; his best Satires in 1666.[508] The last Fables of La Fontaine appeared in 1678, and his last Tales in 1671.[509] The Inquiry respecting Truth, by Malebranche, was published in 1674;[510] the Caractères of La Bruyère in 1687;[511] the Maximes of Rochefoucauld in 1665.[512] The Provincial Letters of Pascal were written 1656, and he himself died in 1662.[513] As to Corneille, his great Tragedies were composed, some while Louis was still a boy, and the others before the king was born.[514] Such were the dates of the masterpieces of the age of Louis XIV. The authors of these immortal works all ceased to write, and nearly all ceased to live, before the close of the seventeenth century; and we may fairly ask the admirers of Louis XIV. who those men were that succeeded them. Where have their names been registered? Where are their works to be found? Who is there that now reads the books of those obscure hirelings, who for so many years thronged the court of the great king? Who has heard anything of Campistron, La Chapelle, Genest, Ducerceau, Dancourt, Danchet, Vergier, Catrou, Chaulieu, Legendre, Valincour, Lamotte, and the other ignoble compilers, who long remained the brightest ornaments of France? Was this, then, the consequence of the royal bounty? Was this the fruit of the royal patronage? If the system of reward and protection is really advantageous to literature and to art, how is it that it should have produced the meanest results when it had been the longest in operation? If the favour of kings is, as their flatterers tell us, of such importance, how comes it that the more the favour was displayed, the more the effects were contemptible?

[506] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxvi. pp. 499, 502; Hallam's Lit. vol. iii. p. 493.

[507] Biog. Univ. vol. xxix. pp. 306, 308.

[508] Rose's Biog. Dict. vol. iv. p. 376; and Biog. Univ. vol. v. pp. 7, 8, where it is said that 'ses meilleures satires' were those published in 1666.

[509] Ibid. vol. xxiii. p. 127.

[510] Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. vol. x. p. 322.

[511] Biog. Univ. vol. vi. p. 175.

[512] Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, vol. iv. p. 105, Paris 1843; and note in Lettres de Patin, vol. i. p. 421.

[513] Biog. Univ. vol. xxxiii. pp. 64, 71; Palissot, Mém. pour l'Hist. de Lit. vol. ii. pp. 239, 241.

[514] Polyeucte, which is probably his greatest work, appeared in 1640; Médée in 1635; The Cid in 1636; Horace and Cinna both in 1639. Biog. Univ. vol. ix. pp. 609-613.

Nor was this almost inconceivable penury compensated by superiority in any other department. The simple fact is that Louis XIV. survived the entire intellect of the French nation, except that small part of it which grew up in opposition to his principles, and afterwards shook the throne of his successor.[515] Several years before his death, and when his protective system had been in full force for nearly half a century, there was not to be found in the whole of France a statesman who could develop the resources of the country, or a general who could defend it against its enemies. Both in the civil service and in the military service, every thing had fallen into disorder. At home there was nothing but confusion; abroad there was nothing but disaster. The spirit of France succumbed, and was laid prostrate. The men of letters, pensioned and decorated by the court, had degenerated into a fawning and hypocritical race, who, to meet the wishes of their masters, opposed all improvement, and exerted themselves in support of every old abuse. The end of all this was, a corruption, a servility, and a loss of power more complete than has ever been witnessed in any of the great countries of Europe. There was no popular liberty; there were no great men; there was no science; there was no literature; there were no arts. Within, there was a discontented people, a rapacious government, and a beggared exchequer. Without, there were foreign armies, which pressed upon all the frontiers, and which nothing but their mutual jealousies, and a change in the English cabinet, prevented from dismembering the monarchy of France.[516]

[515] Voltaire (Siècle de Louis XIV, in [OE]uvres, vol. xx. pp. 319-322) reluctantly confesses the decline of the French intellect in the latter part of the reign of Louis; and Flassan (Diplomat. Franç. vol. iv. p. 400) calls it 'remarquable.' See also Barante, Littérature Française, p. 28; Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxvi. p. 217.

[516] Oppressed by defeats abroad, and by famine and misery at home, Louis was laid at the mercy of his enemies; and 'was only saved by a party revolution in the English ministry.' Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, p. 137. Compare Fragments sur l'Histoire, article xxiii. in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxvii. p. 345, with De Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. p. 86.

Such was the forlorn position of that noble country towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV.[517] The misfortunes which embittered the declining years of the king were, indeed, so serious, that they could not fail to excite our sympathy, if we did not know that they were the result of his own turbulent ambition, of his insufferable arrogance, but, above all, of a grasping and restless vanity, which, making him eager to concentrate on his single person all the glory of France, gave rise to that insidious policy, which, with gifts, with honours, and with honied words, began by gaining the admiration of the intellectual classes, then made them courtly and time-serving, and ended by destroying all their boldness, stifling every effort of original thought, and thus postponing for an indefinite period the progress of national civilization.

[517] For evidence of the depression and, indeed, utter exhaustion of France during the latter years of Louis XIV., compare Duclos, Mémoires, vol. i. pp. 11-18, with Marmontel, Hist. de la Régence, Paris, 1826, pp. 79-97. The Lettres inédites de Madame de Maintenon (vol. i. pp. 263, 284, 358, 389, 393, 408, 414, 422, 426, 447, 457, 463, vol. ii. pp. 19, 23, 33, 46, 56, and numerous other passages) fully confirm this, and, moreover, prove that in Paris, early in the eighteenth century, the resources, even of the wealthy classes, were beginning to fail; while both public and private credit were so shaken, that it was hardly possible to obtain money on any terms. In 1710, she, the wife of Louis XIV., complains of her inability to borrow 500 livres: 'Tout mon crédit échoue souvent auprès de M. Desmaretz pour une somme de cinq cents livres.' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 33. In 1709, she writes (vol. i. p. 447): 'Le jeu devient insipide, parce qu'il n'y a presque plus d'argent.' See also vol. ii. p. 112; and in February 1711 (p. 151): 'Ce n'est pas l'abondance mais l'avarice qui fait jouer nos courtisans; on met le tout pour le tout pour avoir quelque argent, et les tables de lansquenet ont plus l'air d'un triste commerce que d'un divertissement.'Return to passage

In regard to the people generally, the French writers supply us with little information, because in that age they were too much occupied with their great king and their showy literature, to pay attention to mere popular interests. But I have collected from other sources some information which I will now put together, and which I recommend to the notice of the next French author who undertakes to compose a history of Louis XIV.

Locke, who was travelling in France in 1676 and 1677, writes in his journal, 'The rent of land in France fallen one-half in these few years, by reason of the poverty of the people.' King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 139. About the same time, Sir William Temple says (Works, vol. ii. p. 268), 'The French peasantry are wholly dispirited by labour and want.' In 1691, another observer, proceeding from Calais, writes, 'From hence, travelling to Paris, there was opportunity enough to observe what a prodigious state of poverty the ambition and absoluteness of a tyrant can reduce an opulent and fertile country to. There were visible all the marks and signs of a growing misfortune; all the dismal indications of an overwhelming calamity. The fields were uncultivated, the villages unpeopled, the houses dropping to decay.' Burton's Diary, note by Rutt, vol. iv. p. 79. In a tract published in 1689, the author says (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 264), 'I have known in France poor people sell their beds, and lie upon straw; sell their pots, kettles, and all their necessary household goods, to content the unmerciful collectors of the king's taxes.' Dr. Lister, who visited Paris in 1698, says, 'Such is the vast multitude of poor wretches in all parts of this city, that whether a person is in a carriage or on foot, in the street, or even in a shop, he is alike unable to transact business, on account of the importunities of mendicants.' Lister's Account of Paris, p. 46. Compare a Letter from Prior, in Ellis's Letters of Literary Men, p. 213. In 1708, Addison, who, from personal observation, was well acquainted with France, writes: 'We think here as you do in the country, that France is on her last legs.' Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 233. Finally, in 1718--that is, three years after the death of Louis--Lady Mary Montagu gives the following account of the result of his reign, in a letter to Lady Rich, dated Paris, 10th October, 1718: 'I think nothing so terrible as objects of misery, except one had the god-like attribute of being able to redress them; and all the country villages of France show nothing else. While the post-horses are changed, the whole town comes out to beg, with such miserable starved faces, and thin, tattered clothes, they need no other eloquence to persuade one of the wretchedness of their condition.' Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, vol. iii. p. 74, edit. 1803.

Chapter V

DEATH OF LOUIS XIV. REACTION AGAINST THE PROTECTIVE SPIRIT, AND PREPARATIONS FOR THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

At length Louis XIV. died. When it was positively known that the old king had ceased to breathe, the people went almost mad with joy.[518] The tyranny which had weighed them down was removed; and there at once followed a reaction which, for sudden violence, has no parallel in modern history.[519] The great majority indemnified themselves for their forced hypocrisy by indulging in the grossest licentiousness. But among the generation then forming, there were some high-spirited youths, who had far higher views, and whose notions of liberty were not confined to the license of the gaming-house and the brothel. Devoted to the great idea of restoring to France that freedom of utterance which it had lost, they naturally turned their eyes towards the only country where the freedom was practised. Their determination to search for liberty in the place where alone it could be found, gave rise to that junction of the French and English intellects, which, looking at the immense chain of its effects, is by far the most important fact in the history of the eighteenth century.

[518] 'L'annonce de la mort du grand roi ne produisit chez le peuple français qu'une explosion de joie.' Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxvii. p. 220. 'Le jour des obsèques de Louis XIV, on établit des guinguettes sur le chemin de Saint-Denis. Voltaire, que la curiosité avoit mené aux funérailles du souverain, vit dans ces guinguettes le peuple ivre de vin et de joie de la mort de Louis XIV.' Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 29: see also Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 118; De Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. p. 18; Duclos, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 221; Lemontey, Etablissement de Louis XIV, pp. 311, 388.

[519] 'Kaum hatte er aber die Augen geschlossen, als alles umschlug. Der reprimirte Geist warf sich in eine zügellose Bewegung.' Ranke, die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 192.

During the reign of Louis XIV., the French, puffed up by national vanity, despised the barbarism of a people who were so uncivilized as to be always turning on their rulers, and who, within the space of forty years, had executed one king, and deposed another.[520] They could not believe that such a restless horde possessed anything worthy the attention of enlightened men. Our laws, our literature, and our manners, were perfectly unknown to them; and I doubt if at the end of the seventeenth century there were, either in literature or in science, five persons in France acquainted with the English language.[521] But a long experience of the reign of Louis XIV. induced the French to reconsider many of their opinions. It induced them to suspect that despotism may have its disadvantages, and that a government composed of princes and bishops is not necessarily the best for a civilized country. They began to look, first with complacency, and then with respect, upon that strange and outlandish people, who, though only separated from themselves by a narrow sea, appeared to be of an altogether different kind; and who, having punished their oppressors, had carried their liberties and their prosperity to a height of which the world had seen no example. These feelings, which before the Revolution broke out, were entertained by the whole of the educated classes in France, were in the beginning, confined to those men whose intellects placed them at the head of their age. During the two generations which elapsed between the death of Louis XIV. and the outbreak of the Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either visit England or learn English; while many of them did both. Buffon, Brissot, Broussonnet, Condamine, Delisle, Elie de Beaumont, Gournay, Helvétius, Jussieu, Lalande, Lafayette, Larcher, L'Héritier, Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Nollet, Raynal, the celebrated Roland, and his still more celebrated wife, Rousseau, Ségur, Suard, Voltaire--all these remarkable persons flocked to London, as also did others of inferior ability, but of considerable influence, such as Brequiny, Bordes, Calonne, Coyer, Cormatin, Dufay, Dumarest, Dezallier, Favier, Girod, Grosley, Godin, D'Hancarville, Hunauld, Jars, Le Blanc, Ledru, Lescallier, Linguet, Lesuire, Lemonnier, Levesque de Pouilly, Montgolfier, Morand, Patu, Poissonier, Reveillon, Septchènes, Silhouette, Siret, Soulavie, Soulès, and Valmont de Brienne.

[520] The shock which these events gave to the delicacy of the French mind was very serious. The learned Saumaise declared that the English are 'more savage than their own mastiffs.' Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. i. p. 444. Another writer said that we were 'barbares révoltés;' and 'les barbares sujets du roi.' Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. pp. 105, 362. Patin likened us to the Turks; and said, that having executed one king, we should probably hang the next. Lettres de Patin, vol. i. p. 261, vol. ii. p. 518, vol. iii. p. 148. Compare Mém. de Campion, p. 213. After we had sent away James II., the indignation of the French rose still higher, and even the amiable Madame Sévigné, having occasion to mention Mary the wife of William III., could find no better name for her than Tullia: 'la joie est universelle de la déroute de ce prince, dont la femme est une Tullie.' Lettres de Sévigné, vol. v. p. 179. Another influential French lady mentions 'la férocité des anglais.' Lettres inédites de Maintenon, vol. i. p. 303; and elsewhere (p. 109), 'je hais les anglais comme le peuple.... Véritablement je ne les puis souffrir.'

I will only give two more illustrations of the wide diffusion of such feelings. In 1679, an attempt was made to bring bark into discredit as a 'remède anglais' (Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine, vol. v. p. 430): and at the end of the seventeenth century, one of the arguments in Paris against coffee was that the English liked it. Monteil, Divers Etats, vol. vii. p. 216.

[521] 'Au temps de Boileau, personne en France n'apprenait l'anglais.' [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxviii. p. 337, and see vol. xix. p. 159. 'Parmi nos grands écrivains du xvii^e siècle, il n'en est aucun, je crois, ou l'on puisse reconnaître un souvenir, une impression de l'esprit anglais.' Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. iii. p. 324. Compare Barante, XVIII^e Siècle, p. 47, Grimm, and Correspond. vol. v. p. 135, vol. xvii. p. 2.

The French, during the reign of Louis XIV., principally knew us from the accounts given by two of their countrymen, Monconys and Sorbière; both of whom published their travels in England, but neither of whom were acquainted with the English language. For proof of this, see Monconys, Voyages, vol. iii. pp. 34, 69, 70, 96; and Sorbière, Voyage, pp. 45, 70.

When Prior arrived at the court of Louis XIV. as plenipotentiary, no one in Paris was aware that he had written poetry (Lettres sur les Anglais, in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxvi. p. 130); and when Addison, being in Paris, presented Boileau with a copy of the Musæ Anglicanæ, the Frenchman learnt for the first time that we had any good poets: 'first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry.' Tickell's statement, in Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 65. Finally, it is said that Milton's Paradise Lost was not even by report in France until after the death of Louis XIV., though the poem was published in 1667, and the king died in 1715; 'Nous n'avions jamais entendu parler de ce poëme en France, avant que l'auteur de la Henriade nous en eût donné une idée dans le neuvième chapitre de son Essai sur la poésie épique. Dict. Philos. article Epopée, in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxix. p. 175; see also vol. lxvi. p. 249.

Nearly all of these carefully studied our language, and most of them seized the spirit of our literature. Voltaire, in particular, devoted himself with his usual ardour to the new pursuit, and acquired in England a knowledge of those doctrines, the promulgation of which, afterwards won for him so great a reputation.[522] He was the first who popularized in France the philosophy of Newton, where it rapidly superseded that of Descartes.[523] He recommended to his countrymen the writings of Locke;[524] which soon gained immense popularity, and which supplied materials to Condillac for his system of metaphysics,[525] and to Rousseau for his theory of education.[526] Besides this, Voltaire was the first Frenchman who studied Shakespeare; to whose works he was greatly indebted, though he afterwards wished to lessen what he considered the exorbitant respect paid to them in France.[527] Indeed, so intimate was his knowledge of the English language,[528] that we can trace his obligations to Butler,[529] one of the most difficult of our poets, and to Tillotson,[530] one of the dullest of our theologians. He was acquainted with the speculations of Berkeley,[531] the most subtle metaphysician who has ever written in English; and he had read the works, not only of Shaftesbury,[532] but even of Chubb,[533] Garth,[534] Mandeville,[535] and Woolston.[536] Montesquieu imbibed in our country many of his principles; he studied our language; and he always expressed admiration for England, not only in his writings, but also in his private conversation.[537] Buffon learnt English, and his first appearance as an author was as the translator of Newton and of Hales.[538] Diderot, following in the same course, was an enthusiastic admirer of the novels of Richardson;[539] he took the idea of several of his plays from the English dramatists, particularly from Lillo; he borrowed many of his arguments from Shaftesbury and Collins, and his earliest publication was a translation of Stanyan's History of Greece.[540] Helvétius, who visited London, was never weary of praising the people; many of the views in his great work on the Mind are drawn from Mandeville; and he constantly refers to the authority of Locke, whose principles hardly any Frenchman would at an earlier period have dared to recommend.[541] The works of Bacon, previously little known, were now translated into French; and his classification of the human faculties was made the basis of that celebrated Encyclopædia, which is justly regarded as one of the greatest productions of the eighteenth century.[542] The Theory of Moral Sentiments, by Adam Smith, was during thirty-four years translated three different times, by three different French authors.[543] And such was the general eagerness, that directly the Wealth of Nations, by the same great writer, appeared, Morellet, who was then high in reputation, began to turn it into French; and was only prevented from printing his translation by the circumstance, that before it could be completed, another version of it was published in a French periodical.[544] Coyer, who is still remembered for his Life of Sobieski, visited England; and after returning to his own country, showed the direction of his studies by rendering into French the Commentaries of Blackstone.[545] Le Blanc travelled in England, wrote a work expressly upon the English, and translated into French the Political Discourses of Hume.[546] Holbach was certainly one of the most active leaders of the liberal party in Paris; but a large part of his very numerous writings consists solely in translations of English authors.[547] Indeed, it may be broadly stated, that while, at the end of the seventeenth century, it would have been difficult to find, even among the most educated Frenchmen, a single person acquainted with English, it would, in the eighteenth century, have been nearly as difficult to find in the same class one who was ignorant of it. Men of all tastes, and of the most opposite pursuits, were on this point united as by a common bond. Poets, geometricians, historians, naturalists, all seemed to agree as to the necessity of studying a literature on which no one before had wasted a thought. In the course of general reading, I have met with proofs that the English language was known, not only to those eminent Frenchmen whom I have already mentioned, but also to mathematicians, as D'Alembert,[548] Darquier,[549] Du Val le Roy,[550] Jurain,[551] Lachapelle,[552] Lalande,[553] Le Cozic,[554] Montucla,[555] Pezenas,[556] Prony,[557] Romme,[558] and Roger Martin;[559] to anatomists, physiologists, and writers on medicine, as Barthèz,[560] Bichat,[561] Bordeu,[562] Barbeu Dubourg,[563] Bosquillon,[564] Bourru,[565] Begue de Presle,[566] Cabanis,[567] Demours,[568] Duplanil,[569] Fouquet,[570] Goulin,[571] Lavirotte,[572] Lassus,[573] Petit Radel,[574] Pinel,[575] Roux,[576] Sauvages,[577] and Sue;[578] to naturalists, as Alyon,[579] Brémond,[580] Brisson,[581] Broussonnet,[582] Dalibard,[583] Haüy,[584] Latapie,[585] Richard,[586] Rigaud,[587] and Romé de Lisle;[588] to historians, philologists, and antiquaries, as Barthélemy,[589] Butel Dumont,[590] De Brosses,[591] Foucher,[592] Freret,[593] Larcher,[594] Le Coc de Villeray,[595] Millot,[596] Targe,[597] Velly,[598] Volney,[599] and Wailly;[600] to poets and dramatists, as Chéron,[601] Colardeau,[602] Delille,[603] Desforges,[604] Ducis,[605] Florian,[606] Laborde,[607] Lefèvre de Beauvray,[608] Mercier,[609] Patu,[610] Pompignan,[611] Quétant,[612] Roucher,[613] and Saint Ange;[614] to miscellaneous writers, as Bassinet,[615] Baudeau,[616] Beaulaton,[617] Benoist,[618] Bergier,[619] Blavet,[620] Bouchaud,[621] Bougainville,[622] Bruté,[623] Castera,[624] Chantreau,[625] Charpentier,[626] Chastellux,[627] Contant d'Orville,[628] De Bissy,[629] Demeunier,[630] Desfontaines,[631] Devienne,[632] Dubocage,[633] Dupré,[634] Duresnel,[635] Eidous,[636] Estienne,[637] Favier,[638] Flavigny,[639] Fontanelle,[640] Fontenay,[641] Framery,[642] Fresnais,[643] Fréville,[644] Frossard,[645] Galtier,[646] Garsault,[647] Goddard,[648] Goudar,[649] Guénée,[650] Guillemard,[651] Guyard,[652] Jault,[653] Imbert,[654] Joncourt,[655] Kéralio,[656] Laboreau,[657] Lacombe,[658] Lafargue,[659] La Montagne,[660] Lanjuinais,[661] Lasalle,[662] Lasteyrie,[663] Le Breton,[664] Lécuy,[665] Léonard des Malpeines,[666] Letourneur,[667] Linguet,[668] Lottin,[669] Luneau,[670] Maillet Duclairon,[671] Mandrillon,[672] Marsy,[673] Moet,[674] Monod,[675] Mosneron,[676] Nagot,[677] Peyron,[678] Prévost,[679] Puisieux,[680] Rivoire,[681] Robinet,[682] Roger,[683] Roubaud,[684] Salaville,[685] Sauseuil,[686] Secondat,[687] Septchènes,[688] Simon,[689] Soulès,[690] Suard,[691] Tannevot,[692] Thurot,[693] Toussaint,[694] Tressan,[695] Trochereau,[696] Turpin,[697] Ussieux,[698] Vaugeois,[699] Verlac,[700] and Virloys.[701] Indeed, Le Blanc, who wrote shortly before the middle of the eighteenth century, says: 'We have placed English in the rank of the learned languages; our women study it, and have abandoned Italian in order to study the language of this philosophic people; nor is there to be found among us any one who does not desire to learn it.'[702]

[522] 'Le vrai roi du xviii^e siècle, c'est Voltaire; mais Voltaire à son tour est un écolier de l'Angleterre. Avant que Voltaire eût connu l'Angleterre, soit par ses voyages, soit part ses amitiés, il n'était pas Voltaire, et le xviii^e siècle se cherchait encore.' Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. I^{re} série, vol. iii. pp. 38, 39. Compare Damiron, Hist. de la Philos. en France, Paris, 1828, vol. i. p. 34.

[523] 'J'avais été le premier qui eût osé développer à ma nation les découvertes de Newton, en langage intelligible.' [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. i. p. 315; see also vol. xix. p. 87, vol. xxvi. p. 71; Whewell's Hist. of Induc. Sciences, vol. ii. p. 206; Weld's Hist. of the Royal Society, vol. i. p. 441. After this, the Cartesian physics lost ground every day; and in Grimm's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 148, there is a letter, dated Paris, 1757, which says, 'Il n'y a guère plus ici de partisans de Descartes que M. de Mairan.' Compare Observations et Pensées, in [OE]uvres de Turgot, vol. iii. p. 298.

[524] Which he was never weary of praising; so that, as M. Cousin says (Hist. de la Philos. II. série, vol. ii. pp. 311, 312), 'Locke est le vrai maître de Voltaire.' Locke was one of the authors he put into the hands of Madame du Châtelet. Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, p. 296.

[525] Morell's Hist. of Philos. 1846, vol. i. p. 134; Hamilton's Discuss. p. 3.

[526] 'Rousseau tira des ouvrages de Locke une grande partie de ses idées sur la politique et l'éducation; Condillac toute sa philosophie.' Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. i. p. 83. See also, on the obligations of Rousseau to Locke, Grimm, Correspond. vol. v. p. 97; Musset Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, vol. i. p. 38, vol. ii. p. 394; Mém. de Morellet, vol. i. p. 113; Romilly's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 211, 212.

[527] In 1768, Voltaire ([OE]uvres, vol. lxvi. p. 249) writes to Horace Walpole, 'Je suie le premier qui ait fait connaître Shakespeare aux français.' See also his Lettres inédites, vol. ii. p. 500; Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. iii. p. 325; and Grimm, Correspond. vol. xii. pp. 124, 125, 133.

[528] There are extant many English letters written by Voltaire, which, though of course containing several errors, also contain abundant evidence of the spirit with which he seized our idiomatic expressions. In addition to his Lettres inédites, published at Paris in the present year (1856), see Chatham Correspond. vol. ii. pp. 131-133; and Phillimore's Mém. of Lyttelton, vol. i. pp. 323-325, vol. ii. pp. 555, 556, 558.

[529] Grimm, Correspond. vol. i. p. 332; Voltaire, Lettres inédites, vol. ii. p. 258; and the account of Hudibras, with translations from it, in [OE]uvres, vol. xxvi. pp. 132-137; also a conversation between Voltaire and Townley, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 722.

[530] Compare Mackintosh's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 341, with [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxix. p. 259, vol. xlvii. p. 85.

[531] [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxxviii. pp. 216-218, vol. xlvi. p. 282, vol. xlvii. p. 439, vol. lvii. p. 178.

[532] Ibid. vol. xxxvii. p. 353, vol. lvii. p. 66; Correspond. inédite de Dudeffand, vol. ii. p. 230.

[533] [OE]uvres, vol. xxxiv. p. 294, vol. lvii. p. 121.

[534] Ibid. vol. xxxvii. pp. 407, 441.

[535] Ibid. vol. xxxvi. p. 46.

[536] Ibid. vol. xxxiv. p. 288, vol. xli. pp. 212-217; Biog. Univ. vol. li. pp. 199, 200.

[537] Lerminier, Philos. du Droit, vol. i. p. 221; Klimrath, Hist. du Droit, vol. ii. p. 502; Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. ii. p. 398, vol. iii. pp. 432-434; Mém. de Diderot, vol. ii. pp. 193, 194; Lacretelle, XVIII^e Siècle, vol. ii. p. 24.

[538] Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. ii. p. 182; _Biog. Univ._ vol. vi. p. 235; Le Blanc, Lettres, vol. i. p. 93, vol. ii. pp. 159, 160.

[539] 'Admirateur passionné du romancier anglais.' Biog. Univ. vol. xxxvii. p. 581. Compare Diderot, Corresp. vol. i. p. 352, vol. ii. pp. 44, 52, 53; Mercier sur Rousseau, vol. i. p. 44.

[540] Villemain, Lit. vol. ii. p. 115; Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 34, 42; Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. vol. xi. p. 314; Biog. Univ. vol. xi. p. 314; Grimm, Correspond. vol. xv. p. 81. Stanyan's History of Greece was once famous, and even so late as 1804, I find Dr. Parr recommending it. Parr's Works, vol. viii. p. 422. Diderot told Sir Samuel Romilly that he had collected materials for a history of the trial of Charles I. Life of Romilly, vol. i. p. 46.

[541] Diderot, Mém. vol. ii. p. 286; Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. II^e série, vol. ii. p. 331; Helvétius de l'Esprit, vol. i. pp. 31, 38, 46, 65, 114, 169, 193, 266, 268, vol. ii. pp. 144, 163, 165, 195, 212; Letters addressed to Hume, Edinb. 1849, pp. 9, 10.

[542] This is the arrangement of our knowledge under the heads of Memory, Reason, and Imagination, which D'Alembert took from Bacon. Compare Whewell's Philos. of the Sciences, vol. ii. p. 306; Cuvier, Hist. des Sciences, part ii. p. 276; Georgel, Mém. vol. ii. p. 241; Bordas Demoulin, Cartésianisme, vol. i. p. 18.

[543] Quérard, France Lit. ix. 193.

[544] Mém de. Morellet, i. 236, 237.

[545] [OE]uvres de Voltaire, lxv. 161, 190, 212; Biog. Univ. x. 158, 159.

[546] Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i. pp. 365, 366, 406.

[547] See the list, in Biog. Univ. vol. xx. pp. 463-466; and compare Mém. de Diderot, vol. iii. p. 49, from which it seems that Holbach was indebted to Toland, though Diderot speaks rather doubtingly. In Almon's Mem. of Wilkes 1805, vol. iv. pp. 176, 177, there is an English letter, tolerably well written, from Holbach to Wilkes.

[548] Musset Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, ii. 10, 175; [OE]uvres de Voltaire, liv. 207.

[549] Biog. Univ. x. 556.

[550] Ibid. xii. 418.

[551] Quérard, France Lit. iv. 34, 272.

[552] Ibid. iv. 361.

[553] Biog. Univ. xxiii. 226.

[554] Montucla, Hist. des Mathém. ii. 170.

[555] Montucla, ii. 120, iv. 662, 665, 670.

[556] Biog. Univ. iii. 253, xxxiii. 564.

[557] Quérard, France Lit. vii. 353.

[558] Biog. Univ. xxxviii. 530.

[559] Ibid. xxxviii. 411.

[560] Ibid. iii. 450.

[561] Bichat sur la Vie, 244.

[562] Quérard, i. 416.

[563] Biog. Univ. iii. 345.

[564] Quérard, i. 260, 425, ii. 354.

[565] Ibid. i. 476.

[566] Biog. Univ. iv. 55, 56.

[567] Notice sur Cabanis, p. viii. in his Physique et Moral.

[568] Biog. Univ. xi. 65, 66.

[569] Ibid. xii. 276.

[570] Ibid. xv. 359.

[571] Ibid. xviii. 187.

[572] Quérard, iv. 641, vi. 9, 398.

[573] Cuvier, Eloges, i. 354.

[574] Quérard, vii. 95.

[575] Cuvier, Eloges, iii. 382.

[576] Biog. Univ. xxxix. 174.

[577] Le Blanc, Lettres, i. 93.

[578] Quérard, ix. 286.

[579] Robin et Verdeil, Chim. Anat. ii. 416.

[580] Biog. Univ. v. 530, 531.

[581] Cuvier, Eloges, i. 196.

[582] Biog. Univ. vi. 47.

[583] Quérard, ii. 372.

[584] Haüy, Minéralogie, ii. 247, 267, 295, 327, 529, 609, iii. 75, 293, 307, 447, 575, iv. 45, 280, 292, 362.

[585] Quérard, iv. 598.

[586] Ibid. viii. 22.

[587] Swainson, Disc. on Nat. Hist. 52; Cuvier, Règne Animal, iii. 415.

[588] De Lisle, Cristallographie, 1772, xviii. xx. xxiii. xxv. xxvii. 78, 206, 254.

[589] Albemarle's Rockingham, ii. 156; Campbell's Chancellors, v. 365.

[590] Biog. Univ. vi. 386.

[591] Letters to Hume, Edin. 1849, 276, 278.

[592] Biog. Univ. xv. 332.

[593] Brewster's Life of Newton, ii. 302.

[594] Palissot, Mém. ii. 56.

[595] Biog. Univ. ix. 549.

[596] Ibid. xxix. 51, 53.

[597] Ibid. xliv. 534.

[598] Ibid. xlviii. 93.

[599] Volney, Syrie et Egypte, ii. 100, 157; Quérard, x. 271, 273.

[600] Biog. Univ. i. 42.

[601] Ibid. viii. 340, 341.

[602] Mém. de Genlis, i. 276.

[603] Palissot, Mém. i. 243.

[604] Biog. Univ. xi. 281, xi. 172, 173.

[605] Quérard, ii. 626, 627.

[606] Ibid. iii. 141.

[607] Quérard, iv. 342.

[608] Ibid. v. 83.

[609] Ibid. vi. 62.

[610] Garrick Correspond. 4to, 1832, ii. 385, 395, 416.

[611] Biog. Univ. xxxv. 314.

[612] Quérard, vii. 399.

[613] Biog. Univ. xxxix. 93.

[614] Ibid. xxxix. 530.

[615] Quérard, i. 209.

[616] Biog. Univ. iii. 533.

[617] Ibid. iii. 631.

[618] Cuvier, Règne Animal, iii. 334.

[619] Quérard, i. 284, vii. 287.

[620] Mém. de Morellet, i. 237.

[621] Biog. Univ. v. 264.

[622] Dutens, Mém. iii. 32.

[623] Biog. Univ. vi. 165.

[624] Murray's Life of Bruce, 121; Biog. Univ. vi. 79.

[625] Ibid. viii. 46.

[626] Ibid. viii. 246.

[627] Ibid. viii. 266.

[628] Ibid. ix. 497.

[629] Ibid. xlv. 394.

[630] Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, iii. 184.

[631] [OE]uvres de Voltaire. lvi. 527.

[632] Biog. Univ. xi. 264.

[633] Quérard, ii. 598.

[634] Biog. Univ. xii. 313, 314.

[635] Nichols's Lit. Anec. ii. 154; Palissot, Mém. ii. 311.

[636] Biog. Univ. iv. 547, xii. 595.

[637] Ibid. xiii. 399.

[638] Quérard, iii. 79.

[639] Biog. Univ. xv. 29.

[640] Ibid. xv. 203.

[641] Ibid. 218.

[642] Quérard, i. 525.

[643] Biog. Univ. xvi. 48.

[644] Ibid. li. 508.

[645] Smith's Tour on the Continent in 1786, i. 143.

[646] Biog. Univ. xvi. 388.

[647] Ibid. xvi. 502.

[648] Sinclair's Correspond. i. 157.

[649] Quérard, iii. 418.

[650] Biog. Univ. xix. 13.

[651] Quérard, i. 10, iii. 536.

[652] Ibid. iii. 469.

[653] Biog. Univ. xxi. 419.

[654] Ibid. xxi. 200.

[655] [OE]uvres de Voltaire, xxxviii. 244.

[656] Palissot, Mém. i. 425.

[657] Biog. Univ. xxiii. 34.

[658] Ibid. xxiii. 56.

[659] Ibid. xxiii. 111.

[660] Quérard, iv. 503.

[661] Biog. Univ. xxiii. 373.

[662] Quérard, iv. 579.

[663] Sinclair's Correspond. ii. 139.

[664] Mem. and Correspond. of Sir. J. E. Smith, i. 163.

[665] Biog. des Hommes Vivants, iv. 164.

[666] Quérard, v. 177.

[667] Nichols's Lit. Anec. iv. 583; Longchamp et Wagnière, Mém. i. 395.

[668] Quérard, v. 316.

[669] Biog. Univ. xxv. 87.

[670] Ibid. xxv. 432.

[671] Ibid. xxvi. 244.

[672] Ibid. xxvi. 468.

[673] Ibid. xxvii. 269.

[674] Ibid. xxix. 208.

[675] Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, i. 222.

[676] Quérard, vi. 330.

[677] Biog. Univ. xxx. 539.

[678] Ibid. xxxiii. 553.

[679] Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, i. 22, iii. 307, iv. 207.

[680] Biog. Univ. xxxvi. 305, 306.

[681] Ibid. xxxviii. 174.

[682] Peignot, Dict. des Livres, ii. 233.

[683] Quérard, viii. 111.

[684] Biog. Univ. xxxix. 84.

[685] Biog. des Hommes Vivants, v. 294.

[686] Quérard, viii. 474.

[687] Biog. Univ. xli. 426.

[688] Ibid. xlii. 45, 46.

[689] Ibid. xlii. 389.

[690] Ibid. xliii. 181.

[691] Garrick Correspond. ii. 604; Mém. de Genlis, vi. 205.

[692] Biog. Univ. xliv. 512.

[693] Life of Roscoe, by his Son, i. 200.

[694] Biog. Univ. xlvi. 398, 399.

[695] Ibid. xlvi. 497.

[696] Quérard, iv. 45, ix. 558.

[697] Biog. Univ. xlvii. 98.

[698] Ibid. xlvii. 232.

[699] Mém. de Brissot, i. 78.

[700] Biog. Univ. xlviii. 217, 218.

[701] Ibid. xlix. 223.

[702] 'Nous avons mis depuis peu leur langue au rang des langues savantes; les femmes même l'apprennent, et ont renoncé à l'italien pour étudier celle de ce peuple philosophe. Il n'est point dans la province d'Armande et de Belise qui ne veuille savoir l'anglois.' Le Blanc, Lettres, vol. ii. p. 465. Compare Grimm, Corresp. vol. xiv. p. 484; and Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. pp. 460, 461.

Such was the eagerness with which the French imbibed the literature of a people whom but a few years before they had heartily despised. The truth is, that in this new state of things they had no alternative. For where but in England was a literature to be found that could satisfy those bold and inquisitive thinkers who arose in France after the death of Louis XIV.? In their own country there had no doubt been great displays of eloquence, of fine dramas, and of poetry, which, though never reaching the highest point of excellence, is of finished and admirable beauty. But it is an unquestionable fact, and one melancholy to contemplate, that during the sixty years which succeeded the death of Descartes, France had not possessed a single man who dared to think for himself. Metaphysicians, moralists, historians, all had become tainted by the servility of that bad age. During two generations, no Frenchman had been allowed to discuss with freedom any question, either of politics or of religion. The consequence was, that the largest intellects, excluded from their legitimate field, lost their energy; the national spirit died away; the very materials and nutriment of thought seemed to be wanting. No wonder then, if the great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century sought that aliment abroad which they were unable to find at home. No wonder if they turned from their own land, and gazed with admiration at the only people who, pushing their inquiries into the highest departments, had shown the same fearlessness in politics as in religion; a people who, having punished their kings and controlled their clergy, were storing the treasures of their experience in that noble literature which never can perish, and of which it may be said in sober truth, that it has stimulated the intellect of the most distant races, and that, planted in America and in India, it has already fertilized the two extremities of the world.

There are, in fact, few things in history so instructive as the extent to which France was influenced by this new pursuit. Even those who took part in actually consummating the Revolution, were moved by the prevailing spirit. The English language was familiar to Carra,[703] Dumouriez,[704] Lafayette,[705] and Lanthénas.[706] Camille Desmoulins had cultivated his mind from the same source.[707] Marat travelled in Scotland as well as in England, and was so profoundly versed in our language that he wrote two works in it; one of which, called The Chains of Slavery, was afterwards translated into French.[708] Mirabeau is declared by a high authority to have owed part of his power to a careful study of the English constitution;[709] he translated not only Watson's History of Philip II., but also some parts of Milton;[710] and it is said that when he was in the National Assembly, he delivered, as his own, passages from the speeches of Burke.[711] Mounier was well acquainted with our language, and with our political institutions both in theory and in practice;[712] and in a work, which exercised considerable influence, he proposed for his own country the establishment of two chambers, to form that balance of power of which England supplied the example.[713] The same idea, derived from the same source, was advocated by Le Brun, who was a friend of Mounier's, and who, like him, had paid attention to the literature and government of the English people.[714] Brissot knew English; he had studied in London the working of the English institutions, and he himself mentions that, in his treatise on criminal law, he was mainly guided by the course of English legislation.[715] Condorcet also proposed as a model our system of criminal jurisprudence,[716] which, bad as it was, certainly surpassed that possessed by France. Madame Roland, whose position, as well as ability, made her one of the leaders of the democratic party, was an ardent student of the language and literature of the English people.[717] She too, moved by the universal curiosity, came to our country; and, as if to show that persons of every shade and of every rank were actuated by the same spirit, the Duke of Orleans likewise visited England; nor did his visit fail to produce its natural results. 'It was,' says a celebrated writer, 'in the society of London that he acquired a taste for liberty; and it was on his return from there that he brought into France a love of popular agitation, a contempt for his own rank, and a familiarity with those beneath him.'[718]

[703] Williams's Letters from France, vol. iii. p. 68, 2nd edit. 1796; Biog. Univ. vol. vii. p. 192.

[704] Adolphus's Biog. Mem. 1799, vol. i. p. 352.

[705] Lady Morgan's France, vol. ii. p. 304; Mém. de Lafayette, vol. i. pp. 41, 49, 70, vol. ii. pp. 26, 74, 83, 89.

[706] Quérard, France Littéraire, vol. iv. p. 540.

[707] The last authors he read, shortly before his execution, were Young and Hervey. Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. viii. p. 45. In 1769 Madame Riccoboni writes from Paris, that Young's Night Thoughts had become very popular there; and she justly adds, 'c'est une preuve sans réplique du changement de l'esprit français.' Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 566, 4to. 1832.

[708] Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. iv. p. 119; Mém. de Brissot, vol. i. pp. 336, 337, vol. ii. p. 3.

[709] 'Une des supériorités secondaires, une des supériorités d'étude qui appartenaient à Mirabeau, c'était la profonde connaissance, la vive intelligence de la constitution anglaise, de ses ressorts publics et de ses ressorts cachés.' Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. iv. p. 153.

[710] Particularly the democratic passages, 'un corps de doctrine de tous ses écrits républicains.' Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 119. As to his translation of Watson, see Alison's Europe, vol. i. p. 452. He also intended to translate Sinclair's History of the Revenue. Correspond. of Sir J. Sinclair, vol. ii. p. 119.

[711] Prior's Life of Burke, p. 546, 3rd edit. 1839.

[712] 'Il étudiait leur langue, la théorie et plus encore la pratique de leurs institutions.' Biog. Univ. vol. xxx. p. 310.

[713] Continuation de Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxx. p. 434. Montlosier (Monarchie Française, vol. ii. p. 340) says that this idea was borrowed from England; but he does not mention who suggested it.

[714] Du Mesnil, Mém. sur Le Brun, pp. 10, 14, 29, 82, 180, 182.

[715] Mém. de Brissot, vol. i. pp. 63, 64, vol. ii. pp. 25, 40, 188, 206, 260, 313.

[716] Dupont de Nemours (Mém. sur Turgot, p. 117) says of criminal jurisprudence, 'M. de Condorcet proposait en modèle celle des Anglais.'

[717] Mém. de Roland, vol. i. pp. 27, 55, 89, 136, vol. ii. pp. 99, 135, 253.

[718] 'Le duc d'Orléans puisa ainsi le goût de la liberté dans la vie de Londres. Il en rapporta en France les habitudes d'insolence contre la cour, l'appétit des agitations populaires, le mépris pour son propre rang, la familiarité avec la foule,' &c. Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. ii. p. 102.

This language, strong as it is, will not appear exaggerated to any one who has carefully studied the history of the eighteenth century. It is no doubt certain, that the French Revolution was essentially a reaction against that protective and interfering spirit which reached its zenith under Louis XIV., but which, centuries before his reign, had exercised a most injurious influence over the national prosperity. While, however, this must be fully conceded, it is equally certain that the impetus to which the reaction owed its strength, proceeded from England; and that it was English literature which taught the lessons of political liberty, first to France, and through France to the rest of Europe.[719] On this account, and not at all from mere literary curiosity, I have traced with some minuteness that union between the French and English minds, which, though often noticed, has never been examined with the care its importance deserves. The circumstances which reinforced this vast movement will be related towards the end of the volume; at present I will confine myself to its first great consequence, namely, the establishment of a complete schism between the literary men of France, and the classes who exclusively governed the country.

[719] M. Lerminier (Philos. du Droit, vol. i. p. 19) says of England, 'cette île célèbre donne à l'Europe l'enseignement de la liberté politique; elle en fut l'école au dix-huitième siècle pour tout ce que l'Europe eut de penseurs.' See also Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. iii. p. 161; Mém. de Marmontel, vol. iv. pp. 38, 39; Stäudlin, Gesch. der theolog. Wissenschaften, vol. ii. p. 291.

Those eminent Frenchmen who now turned their attention to England, found in its literature, in the structure of its society, and in its government, many peculiarities of which their own country furnished no example. They heard political and religious questions of the greatest moment debated with a boldness unknown in any other part of Europe. They heard dissenters and churchmen, whigs and tories, handling the most dangerous topics, and treating them with unlimited freedom. They heard public disputes respecting matters which no one in France dared to discuss; mysteries of state and mysteries of creed unfolded and rudely exposed to the popular gaze. And, what to Frenchmen of that age must have been equally amazing, they not only found a public press possessing some degree of freedom, but they found that within the very walls of parliament the administration of the crown was assailed with complete impunity, the character of its chosen servants constantly aspersed, and, strange to say, even the management of its revenues effectually controlled.[720]

[720] Hume, who was acquainted with several eminent Frenchmen who visited England, says (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 8), 'nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country, of communicating whatever we please to the public, and of openly censuring every measure entered into by the king or his ministers.'

The successors of the age of Louis XIV., seeing these things, and seeing, moreover, that the civilization of the country increased as the authority of the upper classes and of the crown diminished, were unable to restrain their wonder at so novel and exciting a spectacle. 'The English nation,' says Voltaire, 'is the only one on the earth, which, by resisting its kings, has succeeded in lessening their power.[721] How I love the boldness of the English! how I love men who say what they think!'[722] The English, says Le Blanc, are willing to have a king, provided they are not obliged to obey him.[723] The immediate object of their government, says Montesquieu, is political liberty;[724] they possess more freedom than any republic;[725] and their system is in fact a republic disguised as a monarchy.[726] Grosley, struck with amazement, exclaims, 'Property is in England a thing sacred, which the laws protect from all encroachment, not only from engineers, inspectors, and other people of that stamp, but even from the king himself.'[727] Mably, in the most celebrated of all his works, says, 'The Hanoverians are only able to reign in England because the people are free, and believe they have a right to dispose of the crown. But if the kings were to claim the same powers as the Stuarts, if they were to believe that the crown belonged to them by divine right, they would be condemning themselves and confessing that they were occupying a place which is not their own.'[728] In England, says Helvétius, the people are respected; every citizen can take some part in the management of affairs; and authors are allowed to enlighten the public respecting its own interests.[729] And Brissot, who had made these matters his especial study, cries out, 'Admirable constitution! which can only be disparaged either by men who know it not, or else by those whose tongues are bridled by slavery.'[730]

[721] 'La nation anglaise est la seule de la terre qui soit parvenue à régler le pouvoir des rois en leur résistant.' Lettre VIII sur les Anglais, in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xxvi. p. 37.

[722] 'Que j'aime la hardiesse anglaise! que j'aime les gens qui disent ce qu'ils pensent!' Letter from Voltaire, in Correspond. de Dudeffand, vol. ii. p. 263. For other instances of his admiration of England, see [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. xl. pp. 105-109; vol. li. pp. 137, 390; vol. liv. pp. 298, 392; vol. lvi. pp. 162, 163, 195, 196, 270; vol. lvii. p. 500; vol. lviii. pp. 128, 267; vol. lix. pp. 265, 361; vol. lx. p. 501; vol. lxi. pp. 43, 73, 129, 140, 474, 475; vol. lxii. pp. 343, 379, 392; vol. lxiii. pp. 128, 146, 190, 196, 226, 237, 415; vol. lxiv. pp. 36, 96, 269; vol. lxvi. pp. 93, 159; vol. lxvii. pp. 353, 484.

[723] 'Ils veulent un roi, aux conditions, pour ainsi dire, de ne lui point obéir.' Le Blanc, Lettres d'un François, vol. i. p. 210.

[724] 'Il y a aussi une nation dans le monde qui a pour objet direct de sa constitution la liberté politique.' Esprit des Lois, livre xi. chap. v. in [OE]uvres de Montesquieu, p. 264. Conversely De Staël (Consid. sur la Rév. vol. iii. p. 261), 'la liberté politique est le moyen suprême.'

[725] 'L'Angleterre est à présent le plus libre pays qui soit au monde, je n'en excepte aucune république.' Notes sur l'Angleterre, in [OE]uvres de Montesquieu, p. 632.

[726] 'Une nation où la république se cache sous la forme de la monarchie.' Esprit des Lois, livre v. chap. xix. in [OE]uvres de Montesquieu, page 225; also quoted in Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. ii. p. 36.

[727] Grosley's Tour to London, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.

[728] Mably, Observ. sur l'Hist. de France, vol. ii. p. 185.

[729] Helvétius de l'Esprit. vol. i. pp. 102, 199: 'un pays où le peuple est respecté comme en Angleterre; ... un pays où chaque citoyen a part au maniement des affaires générales, où tout homme d'esprit peut éclairer le public sur ses véritables intérêts.'

[730] Mém. de Brissot, vol. ii. p. 25.

Such were the opinions of some of the most celebrated Frenchmen of that time; and it would be easy to fill a volume with similar extracts. But, what I now rather wish to do, is, to point out the first great consequence of this new and sudden admiration for a country which, in the preceding age, had been held in profound contempt. The events which followed are, indeed, of an importance impossible to exaggerate; since they brought about that rupture between the intellectual and governing classes, of which the revolution itself was but a temporary episode.

The great Frenchmen of the eighteenth century being stimulated by the example of England into a love of progress, naturally came into collision with the governing classes, among whom the old stationary spirit still prevailed. This opposition was a wholesome reaction against that disgraceful servility for which, in the reign of Louis XIV., literary men had been remarkable; and if the contest which ensued had been conducted with anything approaching to moderation, the ultimate result would have been highly beneficial; since it would have secured that divergence between the speculative and practical classes which, as we have already seen, is essential to maintain the balance of civilization, and to prevent either side from acquiring a dangerous predominance. But, unfortunately, the nobles and clergy had been so long accustomed to power, that they could not brook the slightest contradiction from those great writers, whom they ignorantly despised as their inferiors. Hence it was, that when the most illustrious Frenchmen of the eighteenth century attempted to infuse into the literature of their country a spirit of inquiry similar to that which existed in England, the ruling classes became roused into a hatred and jealousy which broke all bounds, and gave rise to that crusade against knowledge which forms the second principal precursor of the French Revolution.

The extent of that cruel persecution to which literature was now exposed, can only be fully appreciated by those who have minutely studied the history of France in the eighteenth century. For it was not a stray case of oppression, which occurred here and there; but it was a prolonged and systematic attempt to stifle all inquiry, and punish all inquirers. If a list were drawn up of all the literary men who wrote during the seventy years succeeding the death of Louis XIV., it would be found, that at least nine out of every ten had suffered from the government some grievous injury; and that a majority of them had been actually thrown into prison. Indeed, in saying thus much, I am understating the real facts of the case; for I question if one literary man out of fifty escaped with entire impunity. Certainly, my own knowledge of those times, though carefully collected, is not so complete as I could have wished; but, among those authors who were punished, I find the name of nearly every Frenchman whose writings have survived the age in which they were produced. Among those who suffered either confiscation, or imprisonment, or exile, or fines, or the suppression of their works, or the ignominy of being forced to recant what they had written, I find, besides a host of inferior writers, the names of Beaumarchais, Berruyer, Bougeant, Buffon, D'Alembert, Diderot, Duclos, Freret, Helvétius, La Harpe, Linguet, Mably, Marmontel, Montesquieu, Mercier, Morellet, Raynal, Rousseau, Suard, Thomas, and Voltaire.

The mere recital of this list is pregnant with instruction. To suppose that all these eminent men deserved the treatment they received, would, even in the absence of direct evidence, be a manifest absurdity; since it would involve the supposition, that a schism having taken place between two classes, the weaker class was altogether wrong, and the stronger altogether right. Fortunately, however, there is no necessity for resorting to any merely speculative argument respecting the probable merits of the two parties. The accusations brought against these great men are before the world; the penalties inflicted are equally well known; and, by putting these together, we may form some idea of the state of society, in which such things could be openly practised.

Voltaire, almost immediately after the death of Louis XIV., was falsely charged with having composed a libel on that prince; and, for this imaginary offence, he, without the pretence of a trial, and without even the shadow of a proof, was thrown into the Bastille, where he was confined more than twelve months.[731] Shortly after he was released, there was put upon him a still more grievous insult; the occurrence, and, above all, the impunity of which, supply striking evidence as to the state of society in which such things were permitted. Voltaire, at the table of the Duke de Sully, was deliberately insulted by the Chevalier de Rohan Chabot, one of those impudent and dissolute nobles who then abounded in Paris. The duke, though the outrage was committed in his own house, in his own presence, and upon his own guest, would not interfere; but seemed to consider that a poor poet was honoured by being in any way noticed by a man of rank. But, as Voltaire, in the heat of the moment, let fall one of those stinging retorts which were the terror of his enemies, the chevalier determined to visit him with further punishment. The course he adopted was characteristic of the man, and of the class to which he belonged. He caused Voltaire to be seized in the streets of Paris, and in his presence ignominiously beaten, he himself regulating the number of blows of which the chastisement was to consist. Voltaire, smarting under the insult, demanded that satisfaction which it was customary to give. This, however, did not enter into the plan of his noble assailer, who not only refused to meet him in the field, but actually obtained an order, by which he was confined in the Bastille for six months, and at the end of that time was directed to quit the country.[732]

[731] Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 118, 119; Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 30, 32; Longchamp et Wagnière, Mém. sur Voltaire, vol. i. p. 22.

[732] Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 46-48; Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 125, 126. Compare vol. lvi. p. 162; Lepan, Vie de Voltaire, 1837, pp. 70, 71; and Biog. Univ. vol. xlix. p. 468. Duvernet, who, writing from materials supplied by Voltaire, had the best means of information, gives a specimen of the fine feeling of a French duke in the eighteenth century. He says, that, directly after Rohan had inflicted this public chastisement, 'Voltaire rentre dans l'hôtel, demande au duc de Sully de regarder cet outrage fait à l'un de ses convives, comme fait à lui-même: il le sollicite de se joindre à lui pour en poursuivre la vengeance, et de venir chez un commissaire en certifier la déposition. Le duc de Sully se refuse à tout.'

Thus it was that Voltaire, having first been imprisoned for a libel which he never wrote, and having then been publicly beaten because he retorted an insult wantonly put upon him, was now sentenced to another imprisonment, through the influence of the very man by whom he had been attacked. The exile which followed the imprisonment seems to have been soon remitted; as, shortly after these events, we find Voltaire again in France, preparing for publication his first historical work, a life of Charles XII. In this, there are none of those attacks on Christianity which gave offence in his subsequent writings; nor does it contain the least reflection upon the arbitrary government under which he had suffered. The French authorities at first granted that permission, without which no book could then be published; but as soon as it was actually printed, the license was withdrawn, and the history forbidden to be circulated.[733] The next attempt of Voltaire was one of much greater value: it was therefore repulsed still more sharply. During his residence in England, his inquisitive mind had been deeply interested by a state of things so different from any he had hitherto seen; and he now published an account of that remarkable people, from whose literature he had learned many important truths. His work, which he called Philosophic Letters, was received with general applause; but, unfortunately for himself, he adopted in it the arguments of Locke against innate ideas. The rulers of France, though not likely to know much about innate ideas, had a suspicion that the doctrine of Locke was in some way dangerous; and, as they were told that it was a novelty, they felt themselves bound to prevent its promulgation. Their remedy was very simple. They ordered that Voltaire should be again arrested and that his work should be burned by the common hangman.[734]

[733] 'L'Histoire de Charles XII, dont on avait arrêté une première édition après l'avoir autorisée.' Biog. Univ. vol. xlix. p. 470. Comp. Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. i. p. 388.

[734] Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 63-65; Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 138-140; Lepan, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 93, 381.

These repeated injuries might well have moved a more patient spirit than that of Voltaire.[735] Certainly, those who reproach this illustrious man, as if he were the instigator of unprovoked attacks upon the existing state of things, must know very little of the age in which it was his misfortune to live. Even on what has been always considered the neutral ground of physical science, there was displayed the same despotic and persecuting spirit. Voltaire, among other schemes for benefiting France, wished to make known to his countrymen the wonderful discoveries of Newton, of which they were completely ignorant. With this view, he drew up an account of the labours of that extraordinary thinker; but here again the authorities interposed, and forbade the work to be printed.[736] Indeed, the rulers of France, as if sensible that their only security was the ignorance of the people, obstinately set their face against every description of knowledge. Several eminent authors had undertaken to execute, on a magnificent scale, an Encyclopædia, which should contain a summary of all the branches of science and of art. This, undoubtedly the most splendid enterprise ever started by a body of literary men, was at first discouraged by the government, and afterwards entirely prohibited.[737] On other occasions, the same tendency was shown in matters so trifling that nothing but the gravity of their ultimate results prevents them from being ridiculous. In 1770, Imbert translated Clarke's Letters on Spain: one of the best works then existing on that country. This book, however, was suppressed as soon as it appeared; and the only reason assigned for such a stretch of power is, that it contained some remarks respecting the passion of Charles III. for hunting, which were considered disrespectful to the French crown, because Louis XV. was himself a great hunter.[738] Several years before this, La Bletterie, who was favourably known in France by his works, was elected a member of the French Academy. But he, it seems, was a Jansenist, and had, moreover, ventured to assert that the Emperor Julian, notwithstanding his apostacy, was not entirely devoid of good qualities. Such offences could not be overlooked in so pure an age; and the king obliged the Academy to exclude La Bletterie from their society.[739] That the punishment extended no further, was an instance of remarkable leniency; for Fréret, an eminent critic and scholar,[740] was confined in the Bastille, because he stated in one of his memoirs, that the earliest Frankish chiefs had received their titles from the Romans.[741] The same penalty was inflicted four different times upon Lenglet du Fresnoy.[742] In the case of this amiable and accomplished man, there seems to have been hardly the shadow of a pretext for the cruelty with which he was treated; though, on one occasion, the alleged offence was, that he had published a supplement to the History of De Thou.[743]

[735] The indignation of Voltaire appears in many of his letters; and he often announced to his friends his intention of quitting for ever a country where he was liable to such treatment. See [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. liv. pp. 58, 335, 336, vol. lv. p. 229, vol. lvi. pp. 162, 163, 358, 447, 464, 465, vol. lvii. pp. 144, 145, 155, 156, vol. lviii. pp. 36, 222, 223, 516, 517, 519, 520, 525, 526, 563, vol. lix. pp. 107, 116, 188, 208.

[736] [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. i. pp. 147, 315, vol. lvii. pp. 211, 215, 219, 247, 295; Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. i. p. 14; Brougham's Men of Letters, vol. i. pp. 53, 60.

[737] Grimm, Correspond. vol. i. pp. 90-95, vol. ii. p. 399; _Biog. Univ._ vol. xi. p. 316; Brougham's Men of Letters, vol. ii. p. 439.

[738] Boucher de la Richarderie, Bibliothèque des Voyages, vol. iii. pp. 390-393, Paris, 1808: 'La distribution en France de la traduction de ce voyage fut arrêtée pendant quelque temps par des ordres supérieurs du gouvernement.... Il y a tout lieu de croire que les ministres de France crurent, ou feignirent de croire, que le passage en question pouvoit donner lieu à des applications sur le goût effréné de Louis XV pour la chasse, et inspirèrent aisément cette prévention à un prince très-sensible, comme on sait, aux censures les plus indirectes de sa passion pour ce genre d'amusement.' See also the account of Imbert, the translator, in Biog. Univ. vol. xxi. p. 200.

[739] Grimm, Correspond. vol. vi. pp. 161, 162; the crime being, 'qu'un janséniste avait osé imprimer que Julien, apostat exécrable aux yeux d'un bon chrétien, n'était pourtant pas un homme sans quelques bonnes qualités à en juger mondainement.'

[740] M. Bunsen (Egypt, vol. i. p. 14) refers to Fréret's 'acute treatise on the Babylonian year;' and Turgot, in his Etymologie, says ([OE]uvres de Turgot, vol. iii. p. 83), 'l'illustre Fréret, un des savans qui ont su le mieux appliquer la philosophie à l'érudition.'

[741] This was at the very outset of his career: 'En 1715, l'homme qui devait illustrer l'érudition française au xviii^e siècle, Fréret, était mis à la Bastille pour avoir avancé, dans un mémoire sur l'origine des Français, que les Francs ne formaient pas une nation à part, et que leurs premiers chefs avaient reçu de l'empire romain le titre de patrices.' Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. ii. p. 30: see also Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. ii. p. 510.

[742] He was imprisoned in the Bastille, for the first time, in 1725; then in 1743, in 1750, and finally in 1751. Biographie Universelle, vol. xxiv. p. 85.

[743] In 1743, Voltaire writes: 'On vient de mettre à la Bastille l'abbé Lenglet, pour avoir publié des mémoires déjà très-connus, qui servent de supplément à l'histoire de notre célèbre De Thou. L'infatigable et malheureux Lenglet rendait un signalé service aux bons citoyens, et aux amateurs des recherches historiques. Il méritait des récompenses; on l'emprisonne cruellement à l'âge de soixante-huit ans.' [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. i. pp. 400, 401, vol. lviii. pp. 207, 208.

Indeed, we have only to open the biographies and correspondence of that time, to find instances crowding upon us from all quarters. Rousseau was threatened with imprisonment, was driven from France, and his works were publicly burned.[744] The celebrated treatise of Helvétius on the mind was suppressed by an order from the royal council: it was burned by the common hangman, and the author was compelled to write two letters, retracting his opinions.[745] Some of the geological views of Buffon having offended the clergy, that illustrious naturalist was obliged to publish a formal recantation of doctrines which are now known to be perfectly accurate.[746] The learned Observations on the History of France, by Mably, were suppressed as soon as they appeared;[747] for what reason it would be hard to say, since M. Guizot, certainly no friend either to anarchy or to irreligion, has thought it worth while to republish them, and thus stamp them with the authority of his own great name. The History of the Indies, by Raynal, was condemned to the flames, and the author ordered to be arrested.[748] Lanjuinais, in his well-known work on Joseph II., advocated not only religious toleration, but even the abolition of slavery; his book, therefore, was declared to be 'seditious;' it was pronounced 'destructive of all subordination,' and was sentenced to be burned.[749] The Analysis of Bayle, by Marsy, was suppressed, and the author was imprisoned.[750] The History of the Jesuits, by Linguet, was delivered to the flames; eight years later his Journal was suppressed; and, three years after that, as he still persisted in writing, his Political Annals were suppressed, and he himself was thrown into the Bastille.[751] Delisle de Sales was sentenced to perpetual exile, and confiscation of all his property, on account of his work on the Philosophy of Nature.[752] The treatise by Mey, on French Law, was suppressed;[753] that by Boncerf, on Feudal Law, was burned.[754] The Memoirs of Beaumarchais were likewise burned;[755] the Eloge on Fénelon by La Harpe was merely suppressed.[756] Duvernet having written a History of the Sorbonne, which was still unpublished, was seized and thrown into the Bastille, while the manuscript was yet in his own possession.[757] The celebrated work of De Lolme on the English constitution was suppressed by edict directly it appeared.[758] The fate of being suppressed, or prohibited, also awaited the Letters of Gervaise, in 1724;[759] the Dissertations of Courayer, in 1727;[760] the Letters of Montgon, in 1732;[761] the History of Tamerlane, by Margat, also in 1732;[762] the Essay on Taste, by Cartaud, in 1736;[763] the Life of Domat, by Prévost de la Jannès, in 1742;[764] the History of Louis XI., by Duclos, in 1745;[765] the Letters of Bargeton, in 1750;[766] the Memoirs on Troyes, by Grosley, in the same year;[767] the History of Clement XI., by Reboulet, in 1752;[768] the School of Man, by Génard, also in 1752;[769] the Therapeutics of Garlon, in 1756;[770] the celebrated thesis of Louis, on Generation, in 1754;[771] the Treatise on Presidial Jurisdiction, by Jousse, in 1755;[772] the Ericie of Fontanelle, in 1768;[773] the Thoughts of Jamin, in 1769;[774] the History of Siam, by Turpin, and the Eloge of Marcus Aurelius, by Thomas, both in 1770;[775] the works on Finance by Darigrand in 1764; and by Le Trosne, in 1779;[776] the Essay on Military Tactics, by Guibert, in 1772; the Letters of Boucquet, in the same year;[777] and the Memoirs of Terrai, by Coquereau, in 1776.[778] Such wanton destruction of property was, however, mercy itself, compared to the treatment experienced by other literary men in France. Desforges, for example, having written against the arrest of the Pretender to the English throne, was, solely on that account, buried in a dungeon eight feet square, and confined there for three years.[779] This happened in 1749; and in 1770, Audra, professor at the college of Toulouse, and a man of some reputation, published the first volume of his Abridgment of General History. Beyond this, the work never proceeded; it was at once condemned by the archbishop of the diocese, and the author was deprived of his office. Audra, held up to public opprobrium, the whole of his labours rendered useless, and the prospects of his life suddenly blighted, was unable to survive the shock. He was struck with apoplexy, and within twenty-four hours was lying a corpse in his own house.[780]

[744] Musset Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, vol. i. pp. 68, 99, 296, 377, vol. ii. pp. 111, 385, 390; Mercier sur Rousseau, vol. i. p. 14, vol. ii. pp. 179, 314.

[745] Grimm, Corresp. vol. ii. p. 349; Walpole's Letters, 1840, vol. iii. p. 418.

[746] Lyell's Principles of Geology, pp. 39, 40; Mém. of Mallet du Pan, vol. i. p. 125.

[747] Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. ii. p. 214; Williams's Letters from France, vol. ii. p. 86, 3rd edit. 1796.

[748] Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. p. 253; Mém. de Lafayette, vol. ii. p. 34 note; Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, vol. ii. p. 365. On Raynal's flight, compare a letter from Marseilles, written in 1786, and printed in Mem. and Correspond. of Sir J. E. Smith, vol. i. p. 194.

[749] See the proceedings of the avocat-général, in Peignot, Livres condamnés, vol. i. pp. 230, 231; and in Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. iii. pp. 93-97.

[750] Quérard, France Lit. vol. v. p. 565.

[751] Peignot, Livres condamnés, vol. i. pp. 241, 242.

[752] Biog. Univ. vol. xxiv. p. 561; [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. lxix. pp. 374, 375; Lettres inédites de Voltaire, vol. ii. p. 528; Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, pp. 202, 203. According to some of these authorities, parliament afterwards revoked this sentence; but there is no doubt that the sentence was passed, and De Sales imprisoned, if not banished.

[753] Peignot, Livres condamnés, vol. i. pp. 314, 316.

[754] [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. lxix. p. 204; Lettres de Dudeffand à Walpole, vol. iii. p. 260.

[755] 'Quatre mémoires ... condamnés à être lacérés et brûlés par la main du bourreau.' Peignot, vol. i. p. 24.

[756] Biog. Univ. vol. xxiii. p. 187.

[757] Duvernet, Hist. de la Sorbonne, vol. i. p. vi.

[758] 'Supprimée par arrêt du conseil' in 1771, which was the year of its publication. Compare Cassagnac's Révolution, vol. i. p. 33; Biog. Univ. vol. xxiv. p. 634.

[759] Quérard, France Lit. vol. iii. p. 337.

[760] Biog. Univ. vol. x. p. 97.

[761] Peignot, vol. i. p. 328.

[762] ibid. vol. i. p. 289.

[763] Biog. Univ. vol. vii. p. 227.

[764] Lettres d'Aguesseau, vol. ii. pp. 320, 321.

[765] Cassagnac, Causes de la Rév. vol. i. p. 32.

[766] Biog. Univ. vol. iii. p. 375.

[767] Quérard, vol. iii. p. 489.

[768] Ibid. vol. vii. pp. 483, 484.

[769] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 302.

[770] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 261.

[771] On the importance of this remarkable thesis, and on its prohibition, see Saint-Hilaire, Anomalies de l'Organisation, vol. i. p. 355.

[772] Quérard, vol. iv. p. 255.

[773] Biog. Univ. vol. xv. p. 203.

[774] Ibid. vol. xxi. p. 391.

[775] Ibid. vol. xlv. p. 462, vol. xlvii. p. 98.

[776] Peignot, vol. i. pp. 90, 91, vol. ii. p. 164.

[777] Ibid. vol. i. p. 170, vol. ii. p. 57.

[778] Ibid. vol. ii. p. 214.

[779] 'Il resta trois ans dans la cage; c'est un caveau creusé dans le roc, de huit pieds en carré, où le prisonnier ne reçoit le jour que par les crevasses des marches de l'église.' Biog. Univ. vol. xi. p. 171.

[780] Peignot, Livres condamnés, vol. i. pp. 14, 15.

It will probably be allowed that I have collected sufficient evidence to substantiate my assertion respecting the persecutions directed against every description of literature; but the carelessness with which the antecedents of the French Revolution have been studied, has given rise to such erroneous opinions on this subject, that I am anxious to add a few more instances, so as to put beyond the possibility of doubt the nature of the provocations habitually received by the most eminent Frenchmen of the eighteenth century.

Among the many celebrated authors who, though, inferior to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Buffon, and Rousseau, were second only to them, three of the most remarkable were Diderot, Marmontel, and Morellet. The first two are known to every reader; while Morellet, though comparatively forgotten, had in his own time considerable influence, and had, moreover, the distinguished merit of being the first who popularized in France those great truths which had been recently discovered in political economy by Adam Smith, and in jurisprudence by Beccaria.

A certain M. Cury wrote a satire upon the Duke d'Aumont, which he showed to his friend Marmontel, who, struck by its power, repeated it to a small circle of his acquaintance. The duke, hearing of this, was full of indignation, and insisted upon the name of the author being given up. This, of course, was impossible without a gross breach of confidence; but Marmontel, to do everything in his power, wrote to the duke, stating, what was really the fact, that the lines in question had not been printed, that there was no intention of making them public, and that they had only been communicated to a few of his own particular friends. It might have been supposed that this would have satisfied even a French noble; but Marmontel, still doubting the result, sought an audience of the minister, in the hope of procuring the protection of the crown. All, however, was in vain. It will hardly be believed, that Marmontel, who was then at the height of his reputation, was seized in the middle of Paris, and because he refused to betray his friend, was thrown into the Bastille. Nay, so implacable were his persecutors, that after his liberation from prison they, in the hope of reducing him to beggary, deprived him of the right of publishing the Mercure, upon which nearly the whole of his income depended.[781]

[781] Mémoires de Marmontel, vol. ii. pp. 143-176; and see vol. iii. pp. 30-46, 95, for the treatment he afterwards received from the Sorbonne, because he advocated religious toleration. See also [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. liv. p. 258; and Letters of Eminent Persons addressed to Hume, pp. 207, 212, 213.

To the Abbé Morellet a somewhat similar circumstance occurred. A miserable scribbler, named Palissot, had written a comedy ridiculing some of the ablest Frenchmen then living. To this Morellet replied by a pleasant little satire, in which he made a very harmless allusion to the Princess de Robeck, one of Palissot's patrons. She, amazed at such presumption, complained to the minister, who immediately ordered the abbé to be confined in the Bastille, where he remained for some months, although he had not only been guilty of no scandal, but had not even mentioned the name of the princess.[782]

[782] Mém. de Morellet, vol. i. pp. 86-89; Mélanges par Morellet, vol. ii. pp. 3-12; [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. liv. pp. 106, 111, 114, 122, 183.

The treatment of Diderot was still more severe. This remarkable man owed his influence chiefly to his immense correspondence, and to the brilliancy of a conversation for which, even in Paris, he was unrivalled, and which he used to display with considerable effect at those celebrated dinners where, during a quarter of a century, Holbach assembled the most illustrious thinkers in France.[783] Besides this, he is the author of several works of interest, most of which are well known to the students of French literature.[784] His independent spirit, and the reputation he obtained, earned for him a share in the general persecution. The first work he wrote was ordered to be publicly burned by the common hangman.[785] This, indeed, was the fate of nearly all the best literary productions of that time; and Diderot might esteem himself fortunate in merely losing his property, provided he saved himself from imprisonment. But, a few years later, he wrote another work, in which he said that people who are born blind have some ideas different from those who are possessed of their eyesight. This assertion is by no means improbable,[786] and it contains nothing by which any one need be startled. The men, however, who then governed France discovered in it some hidden danger. Whether they suspected that the mention of blindness was an allusion to themselves, or whether they were merely instigated by the perversity of their temper, is uncertain; at all events, the unfortunate Diderot, for having hazarded this opinion, was arrested, and without even the form of a trial, was confined in the dungeon of Vincennes.[787] The natural results followed. The works of Diderot rose in popularity;[788] and he, burning with hatred against his persecutors, redoubled his efforts to overthrow those institutions, under shelter of which such monstrous tyranny could be safely practised.

[783] Marmontel (Mém. vol. ii. p. 313) says, 'qui n'a connu Diderot que dans ses écrits ne l'a point connu:' meaning that his works were inferior to his talk. His conversational powers are noticed by Ségur, who disliked him, and by Georgel, who hated him. Ségur, Souvenirs, vol. iii. p. 34; Georgel, Mém. vol. ii. p. 246. Compare Forster's Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 69; Musset Pathay, Vie de Rousseau, vol. i. p. 95, vol. ii. p. 227; Mémoires d'Epinay, vol. ii. pp. 73, 74, 88; Grimm, Corresp. vol. xv. pp. 79-90; Morellet, Mém. vol. i. p. 28; Villemain, Lit. au XVIII^e Siècle, vol. i. p. 82.

As to Holbach's dinners, on which Madame de Genlis wrote a well-known libel, see Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 166; Biog. Univ. vol. xx. p. 462; Jesse's Selwyn, vol. ii. p. 9; Walpole's Letters to Mann, vol. iv. p. 283; Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, p. 73.

[784] It is also stated by the editor of his correspondence, that he wrote a great deal for authors, which they published under their name. Mém. et Corresp. de Diderot, vol. iii. p. 102.

[785] This was the Pensées Philosophiques, in 1746, his first original work; the previous ones being translations from English. Biog. Univ. xi. p. 314. Duvernet (Vie de Voltaire, p. 240) says, that he was imprisoned for writing it, but this I believe is a mistake; at least I do not remember to have met with the statement elsewhere, and Duvernet is frequently careless.

[786] Dugald Stewart, who has collected some important evidence on this subject, has confirmed several of the views put forward by Diderot. Philos. of the Mind, vol. iii. pp. 401 seq.; comp. pp. 57, 407, 435. Since then still greater attention has been paid to the education of the blind, and it has been remarked that 'it is an exceedingly difficult task to teach them to think accurately.' M. Alister's Essay on the Blind, in Jour. of Stat. Soc. vol. i. p. 378: see also Dr. Fowler, in Report of Brit. Assoc. for 1847; Transac. of Sec. pp. 92, 93, and for 1848, p. 88. These passages unconsciously testify to the sagacity of Diderot; and they also testify to the stupid ignorance of a government, which sought to put an end to such inquiries by punishing their author.

[787] Mém. et Corresp. de Diderot, vol. i. pp. 26-29; Musset Pathay, Vie de Rousseu, vol. i. p. 47, vol. ii. p. 276; Letter to d'Argental in [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. lviii. p. 454; Lacretelle, Dix-huitième Siècle, vol. ii. p. 54.

[788] A happy arrangement, by which curiosity baffles despotism. In 1767, an acute observer wrote, 'Il n'y a plus de livres qu'on imprime plusieurs fois, que les livres condamnés. Il faut aujourd'hui qu'un libraire prie les magistrate de brûler son livre pour le faire vendre.' Grimm, Corresp. vol. v. p. 498. To the same effect, Mém. de Ségur, vol. i. pp. 15, 16; Mém. de Georgel, vol. ii. p. 256.

It seems hardly necessary to say more respecting the incredible folly with which the rulers of France, by turning every able man into a personal enemy,[789] at length arrayed against the government all the intellect of the country, and made the Revolution a matter not of choice but of necessity. I will, however, as a fitting sequel to the preceding facts, give one instance of the way in which, to gratify the caprice of the higher classes, even the most private affections of domestic life, could be publicly outraged. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an actress on the French stage of the name of Chantilly. She, though beloved by Maurice de Saxe, preferred a more honourable attachment, and married Favart, the well-known writer of songs and of comic operas. Maurice, amazed at her boldness, applied for aid to the French crown. That he should have made such an application is sufficiently strange; but the result of it is hardly to be paralleled except in some Eastern despotism. The government of France, on hearing the circumstance, had the inconceivable baseness to issue an order directing Favart to abandon his wife, and intrust her to the charge of Maurice, to whose embraces she was compelled to submit.[790]

[789] 'Quel est aujourd'hui parmi nous l'homme de lettres de quelque mérite qui n'ait éprouvé plus ou moins les fureurs de la calomnie et de la persécution?' etc. Grimm, Corresp. vol. v. p. 451. This was written in 1767, and during more than forty years previously we find similar expressions; the earliest I have met with being in a letter to Thiriot, in 1723, in which Voltaire says ([OE]uvres, vol. lvi. p. 94), 'la sévérité devient plus grande de jour en jour dans l'inquisition de la librairie.' For other instances, see his letter to De Formont, pp. 423-425, also vol. lvii. pp. 144, 351, vol. lviii. p. 222; his Lettres inédites, vol. i. p. 547; Mém. de Diderot, vol. ii. p. 215; Letters of Eminent Persons to Hume, pp. 14, 15.

[790] Part of this is related, rather inaccurately, in Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 483. The fullest account is in Grimm, Corresp. Lit. vol. viii. pp. 231-233: 'Le grand Maurice, irrité d'une résistance qu'il n'avait jamais éprouvée nulle part, eut la faiblesse de demander une lettre de cachet pour enlever à un mari sa femme, et pour la contraindre d'être sa concubine; et, chose remarquable, cette lettre de cachet fut accordée et exécutée. Les deux époux plièrent sous le joug de la nécessité, et la petite Chantilly fut à la fois femme de Favart et maîtresse de Maurice de Saxe.'

These are among the insufferable provocations, by which the blood of men is made to boil in their veins. Who can wonder that the greatest and noblest minds in France were filled with loathing at the government by whom such things were done? If we, notwithstanding the distance of time and country, are moved to indignation by the mere mention of them, what must have been felt by those before whose eyes they actually occurred? And when, to the horror they naturally inspired, there was added that apprehension of being the next victim which every one might personally feel; when, moreover, we remember that the authors of these persecutions had none of the abilities by which even vice itself is sometimes ennobled;--when we thus contrast the poverty of their understandings with the greatness of their crimes, we, instead of being astonished that there was a revolution, by which all the machinery of the state was swept away, should rather be amazed at that unexampled patience by which alone the revolution was so long deferred.

To me, indeed, it has always appeared, that the delay of the Revolution is one of the most striking proofs history affords of the force of established habits, and of the tenacity with which the human mind clings to old associations. For, if ever there existed a government inherently and radically bad, it was the government of France in the eighteenth century. If ever there existed a state of society likely, by its crying and accumulated evils, to madden men to desperation, France was in that state. The people, despised and enslaved, were sunk in abject poverty, and were curbed by laws of stringent cruelty, enforced with merciless barbarism. A supreme and irresponsible control was exercised over the whole country by the clergy, the nobles, and the crown. The intellect of France was placed under the ban of a ruthless proscription, its literature prohibited and burned, its authors plundered and imprisoned. Nor was there the least symptom that these evils were likely to be remedied. The upper classes, whose arrogance was increased by the long tenure of their power, only thought of present enjoyment: they took no heed of the future: they saw not that day of reckoning, the bitterness of which they were soon to experience. The people remained in slavery until the Revolution actually occurred; while as to the literature, nearly every year witnessed some new effort to deprive it of that share of liberty which it still retained. Having, in 1764, issued a decree forbidding any work to be published in which questions of government were discussed;[791] having, in 1767, made it a capital offence to write a book likely to excite the public mind;[792] and having, moreover, denounced the same penalty of death against any one who attacked religion,[793] as also against any one who spoke of matters of finance;[794]--having taken these steps, the rulers of France, very shortly before their final fall, contemplated another measure still more comprehensive. It is, indeed, a singular fact, that only nine years before the Revolution, and when no power on earth could have saved the institutions of the country, the government was so ignorant of the real state of affairs, and so confident that it could quell the spirit which its own despotism had raised, that a proposal was made by an officer of the crown to do away with all the publishers, and not allow any books to be printed except those which were issued from a press paid, appointed, and controlled by the executive magistrate.[795] This monstrous proposition, if carried into effect, would of course have invested the king with all the influence which literature can command; it would have been as fatal to the national intellect as the other measures were to national liberty; and it would have consummated the ruin of France, either by reducing its greatest men to complete silence, or else by degrading them into mere advocates of those opinions which the government might wish to propagate.

[791] 'L'Averdy was no sooner named controller of finance than he published a decree, in 1764 (arrêt du conseil),--which, according to the state of the then existing constitution, had the force of a law,--by which every man was forbidden to print, or cause to be printed, anything whatever upon administrative affairs, or government regulations in general, under the penalty of a breach of the police laws; by which the man was liable to be punished without defence, and not as was the case before the law courts, where he might defend himself, and could only be judged according to law.' Schlosser's Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 166: see also Mém. de Morellet, vol. i. p. 141, vol. ii. p. 75, 'un arrêt du conseil, qui défendait d'imprimer sur les matières d'administration.'

[792] 'L'ordonnance de 1767, rendue sous le ministère du chancelier Maupeou, portait la peine de mort contre tout auteur d'écrits tendant à émouvoir les esprits.' Cassagnac, Causes de la Révolution, vol. i. p. 313.

[793] In April 1757, D'Alembert writes from Paris, 'on vient de publier une déclaration qui inflige la peine de mort à tous ceux qui auront publié des écrits tendants à attaquer la religion.' [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. liv. p. 34. This, I suppose, is the same edict as that mentioned by M. Amédée Renée, in his continuation of Sismondi, Histoire des Français, vol. xxx. p. 247.

[794] 'Il avait été défendu, sous peine de mort, aux écrivains de parler de finances.' Lavallée, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. p. 490.

[795] This was the suggestion of the avocat-général in 1780. See the proposal, in his own words, in Grimm, Correspond. vol. xi. pp. 143, 144. On the important functions of the avocats-généraux in the eighteenth century, see a note in Lettres d'Aguesseau, vol. i. p. 264.

For these are by no means to be considered as trifling matters, merely interesting to men of letters. In France, in the eighteenth century, literature was the last resource of liberty. In England, if our great authors should prostitute their abilities by inculcating servile opinions, the danger would no doubt be considerable, because other parts of society might find it difficult to escape the contagion. Still, before the corruption had spread, there would be time to stop its course, so long as we possessed those free political institutions, by the mere mention of which the generous imagination of a bold people is easily fired. And although such institutions are the consequence, not the cause, of liberty, they do unquestionably react upon it, and from the force of habit they could for a while survive that from which they originally sprung. So long as a country retains its political freedom, there will always remain associations by which, even in the midst of mental degradation, and out of the depths of the lowest superstition, the minds of men may be recalled to better things. But in France such associations had no existence. In France everything was for the governors and nothing for the governed. There was neither free press, nor free parliament, nor free debates. There were no public meetings; there was no popular suffrage; there was no discussion on the hustings; there was no habeas-corpus act; there was no trial by jury. The voice of liberty, thus silenced in every department of the state, could only be heard in the appeals of those great men, who, by their writings, inspirited the people to resistance. This is the point of view from which we ought to estimate the character of those who are often accused of having wantonly disturbed the ancient fabric.[796] They, as well as the people at large, were cruelly oppressed by the crown, the nobles, and the church; and they used their abilities to retaliate the injury. There can be no doubt that this was the best course open to them. There can be no doubt that rebellion is the last remedy against tyranny, and that a despotic system should be encountered by a revolutionary literature. The upper classes were to blame, because they struck the first blow; but we must by no means censure those great men, who, having defended themselves from aggression, eventually succeeded in smiting the government by whom the aggression was originally made.

[796] And we should also remember what the circumstances were under which the accusation was first heard in France. 'Les reproches d'avoir tout détruit, adressés aux philosophes du dix-huitième siècle, ont commencé le jour où il s'est trouvé en France un gouvernement qui a voulu rétablir les abus dont les écrivains de cette époque avaient accéléré la destruction.' Comte, Traité de Législation, vol. i. p. 72.

Without, however, stopping to vindicate their conduct, we have now to consider what is much more important, namely, the origin of that crusade against Christianity, in which, unhappily for France, they were compelled to embark, and the occurrence of which forms the third great antecedent of the French Revolution. A knowledge of the causes of this hostility against Christianity is essential to a right understanding of the philosophy of the eighteenth century, and it will throw some light on the general theory of ecclesiastical power.

It is a circumstance well worthy of remark, that the revolutionary literature which eventually overturned all the institutions of France, was at first directed against those which were religious, rather than against those which were political. The great writers who rose into notice soon after the death of Louis XIV., exerted themselves against spiritual despotism; while the overthrow of secular despotism was left to their immediate successors.[797] This is not the course which would be pursued in a healthy state of society; and there is no doubt, that to this peculiarity the crimes and the lawless violence of the French Revolution are in no small degree to be ascribed. It is evident, that in the legitimate progress of a nation, political innovations should keep pace with religious innovations, so that the people may increase their liberty while they diminish their superstition. In France, on the contrary, during nearly forty years, the church was attacked, and the government was spared. The consequence was, that the order and balance of the country were destroyed; the minds of men became habituated to the most daring speculations, while their acts were controlled by the most oppressive despotism; and they felt themselves possessed of capacities which their rulers would not allow them to employ. When, therefore, the French Revolution broke out, it was not a mere rising of ignorant slaves against educated masters, but it was a rising of men in whom the despair caused by slavery was quickened by the resources of advancing knowledge; men who were in that frightful condition when the progress of intellect outstrips the progress of liberty, and when a desire is felt, not only to remove a tyranny, but also to avenge an insult.

[797] The nature of this change, and the circumstances under which it happened, will be examined in the last chapter of the present volume; but that the revolutionary movement, while headed by Voltaire and his coadjutors, was directed against the church, and not against the state, is noticed by many writers; some of whom have also observed, that soon after the middle of the reign of Louis XV. the ground began to be shifted, and a disposition was first shown to attack political abuses. On this remarkable fact, indicated by several authors, but explained by none, compare Lacretelle, XVIII^e Siècle, vol. ii. p. 305; Barruel, Mém. pour l'Hist. du Jacobinisme, vol. i. p. xviii., vol. ii. p. 113; Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime, p. 241; Alison's Europe, vol. i. p. 165, vol. xiv. p. 286; Mém. de Rivarol, p. 35; Soulavie, Règne de Louis XVI, vol. iv. p. 397; Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. i. p. 183; [OE]uvres de Voltaire, vol. lx. p. 307, vol. lxvi. p. 34.

There can be no doubt that to this we must ascribe some of the most hideous peculiarities of the French Revolution. It, therefore, becomes a matter of great interest to inquire how it was, that while in England political freedom and religious sceptism have accompanied and aided each other, there should, on the other hand, have taken place in France a vast movement, in which, during nearly forty years, the ablest men neglected the freedom, while they encouraged the scepticism, and diminished the power of the church, without increasing the liberties of the people.

The first reason of this appears to be, the nature of those ideas out of which the French had long constructed the traditions of their glory. A train of circumstances which, when treating of the protective spirit, I attempted to indicate, had secured to the French kings an authority which, by making all classes subordinate to the crown, flattered the popular vanity.[798] Hence it was, that in France the feelings of loyalty worked into the national mind deeper than in any other country of Europe, Spain alone excepted.[799] The difference between this spirit and that observable in England has been already noticed, and may be still further illustrated by the different ways in which the two nations have dealt with the posthumous reputation of their sovereigns. With the exception of Alfred, who is sometimes called the Great,[800] we in England have not sufficiently loved any of our princes to bestow upon them titles expressive of personal admiration. But the French have decorated their kings with every variety of panegyric. Thus, to take only a single name, one king is Louis the Mild, another is Louis the Saint, another is Louis the Just, another is Louis the Great, and the most hopelessly vicious of all was called Louis the Beloved.

[798] See some striking remarks in M. Tocqueville's great work, De la Démocratie, vol. i. p. 5; which should be compared with the observation of Horace Walpole, who was well acquainted with French society, and who says, happily enough, that the French 'love themselves in their kings.' Walpole's Mem. of George III, vol. ii. p. 240.

[799] Not only the political history of Spain, but also its literature, contains melancholy evidence of the extraordinary loyalty of the Spaniards, and of the injurious results produced by it. See, on this, some useful reflections in Ticknor's Hist. of Spanish Literature, vol. i. pp. 95, 96, 133, vol. iii. pp. 191-193.

[800] Our admiration of Alfred is greatly increased by the fact, that we know very little about him. The principal authority referred to for his reign is Asser, whose work, there is reason to believe, is not genuine. See the arguments in Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. vol. i. pp. 408-412. It moreover appears, that some of the institutions popularly ascribed to him, existed before his time. Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. i. pp. 247, 248.

These are facts which, insignificant as they seem, form most important materials for real history, since they are unequivocal symptoms of the state of the country in which they exist.[801] Their relation to the subject before us is obvious. For, by them, and by the circumstances from which they sprung, an intimate and hereditary association was engendered in the minds of Frenchmen, between the glory of their nation and the personal reputation of their sovereign. The consequence was, that the political conduct of the rulers of France was protected against censure by a fence far more impassable than any that could be erected by the most stringent laws. It was protected by those prejudices which each generation bequeathed to its successor. It was protected by that halo which time had thrown round the oldest monarchy in Europe.[802] And above all, it was protected by that miserable national vanity, which made men submit to taxation and to slavery, in order that foreign princes might be dazzled by the splendour of their sovereign, and foreign countries intimidated by the greatness of his victories.

[801] The French writers, under the old régime, constantly boast that loyalty was the characteristic of their nation, and taunt the English with their opposite and insubordinate spirit. 'Il n'est pas ici question des François, qui se sont toujours distingués des autres nations par leur amour pour leurs rois.' Le Blanc, Lettres d'un François, vol. iii. p. 523. 'The English do not love their sovereigns as much as could be desired.' Sorbière's Voyage to England, p. 58. 'Le respect de la majesté royale, caractère distinctif des Français.' Mém. de Montbarey, vol. ii. p. 54. 'L'amour et la fidélité que les Français ont naturellement pour leurs princes.' Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 3. 'Les Français, qui aiment leurs princes.' De Thou, Hist. Univ. vol. iii. p. 381; and see vol. xi. p. 729. For further evidence, see Sully, [OE]conomies, vol. iv. p. 346; Monteil, Divers Etats, vol. vii. p. 105; Ségur, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 32; Lamartine, Hist. des Girondins, vol. iv. p. 58.

Now, contrast with all this the sentiments contained in one of the most celebrated histories in the English language: 'There is not any one thing more certain and more evident, than that princes are made for the people, and not the people for them; and perhaps there is no nation under heaven that is more entirely possessed with this notion of princes than the English nation is in this age; so that they will soon be uneasy to a prince who does not govern himself by this maxim, and in time grow very unkind to him.' Burnet's History of his Own Time, vol. vi. p. 223. This manly and wholesome passage was written while the French were licking the dust from the feet of Louis XIV.

[802] 'La race des rois la plus ancienne.' Mém. de Genlis, vol. ix. p. 281. 'Nos rois, issus de la plus grande race du monde, et devant qui les Césars, et la plus grande partie des princes qui jadis ont commandé tant de nations, ne sont que des roturiers.' Mém. de Motteville, vol. ii. p. 417. And a Venetian ambassador, in the sixteenth century, says, that France is 'il regno più antico d'ogn' altro che sia in essere al presente.' Relat. des Ambassad. vol. i. p. 470. Compare Boullier, Maison Militaire des Rois de France, p. 360.

The upshot of all this was, that when, early in the eighteenth century, the intellect of France began to be roused into action, the idea of attacking the abuses of the monarchy never occurred even to the boldest thinker. But, under the protection of the crown, there had grown up another institution, about which less delicacy was felt. The clergy, who for so long a period had been allowed to oppress the consciences of men, were not sheltered by those national associations which surrounded the person of the sovereign; nor had any of them, with the single exception of Bossuet, done much to increase the general reputation of France. Indeed, the French church, though during the reign of Louis XIV. it possessed immense authority, had always exercised it in subordination to the crown, at whose bidding it had not feared to oppose even the pope himself.[803] It was, therefore, natural, that in France the ecclesiastical power should be attacked before the temporal power; because, while it was as despotic, it was less influential, and because it was unprotected by those popular traditions which form the principal support of every ancient institution.

[803] Capefigue's Louis XIV, vol. i. pp. 204, 301; Koch, Tableau des Révolutions, vol. ii. p. 16. M. Ranke (Die Päpste, vol. ii. p. 257) ascribes this to the circumstances attending the apostasy of Henry IV.; but the cause lies much deeper, being connected with that triumph of the secular interests over the spiritual, of which the policy of Henry IV. was itself a consequence.

These considerations are sufficient to explain why it was that, in this respect, the French and English intellects adopted courses so entirely different. In England, the minds of men, being less hampered with the prejudices of an indiscriminate loyalty, have been able at each successive step in the great progress to direct their doubts and inquiries on politics as well as on religion; and thus establishing their freedom as they diminished their superstition, they have maintained the balance of the national intellect, without allowing to either of its divisions an excessive preponderance. But in France the admiration for royalty had become so great, that this balance was disturbed; the inquiries of men not daring to settle on politics, were fixed on religion, and gave rise to the singular phenomenon of a rich and powerful literature, in which unanimous hostility to the church was unaccompanied by a single voice against the enormous abuses of the state.

There was likewise another circumstance which increased this peculiar tendency. During the reign of Louis XIV. the personal character of the hierarchy had done much to secure their dominion. All the leaders of the church were men of virtue, and many were men of ability. Their conduct, tyrannical as it was, seems to have been conscientious; and the evils which it produced are merely to be ascribed to the gross impolicy of entrusting ecclesiastics with power. But after the death of Louis XIV. a great change took place. The Clergy, from causes which it would be tedious to investigate, became extremely dissolute, and often very ignorant. This made their tyranny more oppressive, because to submit to it was more disgraceful. The great abilities and unblemished morals of men like Bossuet, Fénélon, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, and Mascaron, diminished in some degree the ignominy which is always connected with blind obedience. But when they were succeeded by such bishops and cardinals as Dubois, Lafiteau, Tencin, and others who flourished under the regency, it became difficult to respect the heads of the church, tainted as they were with open and notorious depravity.[804] At the same time that there occurred this unfavourable change among the ecclesiastical rulers, there also occurred that immense reaction of which I have endeavoured to trace the early workings. It was therefore, at the very moment when the spirit of inquiry became stronger that the character of the Clergy became more contemptible.[805] The great writers who were now rising in France, were moved to indignation when they saw that those who usurped unlimited power over consciences had themselves no consciences at all. It is evident, that every argument which they borrowed from England against ecclesiastical power, would gain additional force when directed against men whose personal unfitness was universally acknowledged.[806]

[804] Lavallée, Hist. des Français, vol. iii. p. 408; Flassan, Hist. de la Diplomatie, vol. v. p. 3; Tocqueville, Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. pp. 35, 347; Duclos, Mémoires, vol. ii. pp. 42, 43, 154, 155, 223, 224. What was, if possible, still more scandalous, was, that in 1723 the assembly of the clergy elected as their president, unanimously ('d'une voix unanime'), the infamous Dubois, the most notoriously immoral man of his time. Duclos, Mém. vol. ii. p. 262.

[805] On this decline of the French clergy, see Villemain, XVIII^e Siècle, vol. iii. pp. 178, 179; Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. II^e série, vol. i. p. 301. Tocqueville (Règne de Louis XV, vol. i. pp. 35-38, 365) says, 'le clergé prêchait une morale qu'il compromettait par sa conduite;' a noticeable remark, when made by an opponent of the sceptical philosophy, like the elder M. Tocqueville. Among this profligate crew, Massillon stood alone; he being the last French bishop who was remarkable for virtue as well as for ability.

[806] Voltaire says of the English, 'quand ils apprennent qu'en France de jeunes gens connus par leurs débauches, et élevés à la prélature par des intrigues de femmes, font publiquement l'amour, s'égaient à composer des chansons tendres, donnent tous les jours des soupers délicats et longs, et de là vont implorer les lumières du Saint-Esprit, et se nomment hardiment les successeures des apôtres ils remercient Dieu d'être protestants.' Lettres sur les Anglais, in [OE]uvres, vol. xxvi. p. 29.

Such was the position of the rival parties, when, almost immediately after the death of Louis XIV., there began that great struggle between authority and reason, which is still unfinished, although in the present state of knowledge its result is no longer doubtful. On the one side there was a compact and numerous priesthood, supported by the prescription of centuries and by the authority of the crown. On the other side there was a small body of men, without rank, without wealth, and as yet without reputation, but animated by a love of liberty, and by a just confidence in their own abilities. Unfortunately, they at the very outset committed a serious error. In attacking the clergy, they lost their respect for religion. In their determination to weaken ecclesiastical power, they attempted to undermine the foundations of Christianity. This is deeply to be regretted for their own sake, as well as for its ultimate effects in France; but it must not be imputed to them as a crime, since it was forced on them by the exigencies of their position. They saw the frightful evils which their country was suffering from the institution of priesthood as it then existed; and yet they were told that the preservation of that institution in its actual form was essential to the very being of Christianity. They had always been taught that the interests of the clergy were identical with the interests of religion; how then could they avoid including both clergy and religion in the same hostility? The alternative was cruel; but it was one from which, in common honesty, they had no escape. We, judging these things by another standard, possess a measure which they could not possibly have. We should not now commit such an error, because we know that there is no connexion between any one particular form of priesthood and the interests of Christianity. We know that the clergy are made for the people, and not the people for the clergy. We know that all questions of church government are matters, not of religion, but of policy, and should be settled, not according to traditional dogmas, but according to large views of general expediency. It is because these propositions are now admitted by all enlightened men, that in our country the truths of religion are rarely attacked except by superficial thinkers. If, for instance, we were to find that the existence of our bishops, with their privileges and their wealth, is unfavourable to the progress of society, we should not on that account feel enmity against Christianity; because we should remember that episcopacy is its accident, and not its essential, and that we could do away with the institution and yet retain the religion. In the same way, if we should ever find, what was formerly found in France, that the clergy were tyrannical, this would excite in us an opposition, not to Christianity, but merely to the external form which Christianity assumed. So long as our clergy confine themselves to the beneficent duties of their calling, to the alleviation of pain and distress, either bodily or mental, so long will we respect them as the ministers of peace and of charity. But if they should ever again entrench on the rights of the laity,--if they should ever again interfere with an authoritative voice in the government of the state,--it will then be for the people to inquire, whether the time has not come to effect a revision of the ecclesiastical constitution of the country. This, therefore, is the manner in which we now view these things. What we think of the clergy will depend upon themselves; but will have no connection with what we think of Christianity. We look on the clergy as a body of men who, notwithstanding their disposition to intolerance, and notwithstanding a certain narrowness incidental to their profession, do undoubtedly form part of a vast and noble institution, by which the manners of men have been softened, their sufferings assuaged, their distresses relieved. As long as this institution performs its functions, we are well content to let it stand. If, however, it should be out of repair, or if it should be found inadequate to the shifting circumstances of an advancing society, we retain both the power and the right of remedying its faults; we may, if need be, remove some of its parts; but we would not, we dare not, tamper with those great religious truths which are altogether independent of it; truths which comfort the mind of man, raise him above the instincts of the hour, and infuse into him those lofty aspirations which, revealing to him his own immortality, are the measure and the symptom of a future life.

Unfortunately, this was not the way in which these matters were considered in France. The government of that country, by investing the clergy with great immunities, by treating them as if there were something sacred about their persons, and by punishing as heresy the attacks which were made on them, had established in the national mind an indissoluble connexion between their interests and the interests of Christianity. The consequence was, that when the struggle began, the ministers of religion, and religion itself, were both assailed with equal zeal. The ridicule, and even the abuse, heaped on the clergy, will surprise no one who is acquainted with the provocation that had been received. And although, in the indiscriminate onslaught which soon followed, Christianity was, for a time, subjected to a fate which ought to have been reserved for those who called themselves her ministers; this, while it moves us to regret, ought by no means to excite our astonishment. The destruction of Christianity in France was the necessary result of those opinions which bound up the destiny of the national priesthood with the destiny of the national religion. If both were connected by the same origin, both should fall in the same ruin. If that which is the tree of life, were, in reality, so corrupt that it could only bear poisonous fruits, then it availed little to lop off the boughs and cut down the branches; but it were better, by one mighty effort, to root it up from the ground, and secure the health of society by stopping the very source of the contagion.

These are reflections which must make us pause before we censure the deistical writers of the eighteenth century. So perverted, however, are the reasonings to which some minds are accustomed, that those who judge them most uncharitably are precisely those whose conduct forms their best excuse. Such are the men who, by putting forth the most extravagant claims in favour of the clergy, are seeking to establish the principle, by the operation of which the clergy were destroyed. Their scheme for restoring the old system of ecclesiastical authority depends on the supposition of its divine origin: a supposition which, if inseparable from Christianity, will at once justify the infidelity which they hotly attack. The increase of the power of the clergy is incompatible with the interests of civilization. If, therefore, any religion adopts as its creed the necessity of such an increase, it becomes the bounden duty of every friend to humanity to do his utmost, either to destroy the creed, or failing in that, to overturn the religion. If pretensions of this sort are an essential part of Christianity, it behoves us at once to make our choice; since the only option can be, between abjuring our faith or sacrificing our liberty. Fortunately, we are not driven to so hard a strait; and we know that these claims are as false in theory, as they would be pernicious in practice. It is, indeed, certain, that if they were put into execution, the clergy, though they might enjoy a momentary triumph, would have consummated their own ruin, by preparing the way among us for scenes as disastrous as those which occurred in France.

The truth is, that what is most blamed in the great French writers, was the natural consequence of the development of their age. Never was there a more striking illustration of the social law already noticed, that, if government will allow religious scepticism to run its course, it will issue in great things, and will hasten the march of civilization; but that, if an attempt is made to put it down with a strong hand, it may, no doubt, be repressed for a time, but eventually will rise with such force as to endanger the foundation of society. In England, we adopted the first of these courses; in France, they adopted the second. In England, men were allowed to exercise their own judgment on the most sacred subjects; and, as soon as the diminution of their credulity had made them set bounds to the power of the clergy, toleration immediately followed, and the national prosperity has never been disturbed. In France, the authority of the clergy was increased by a superstitious king; faith usurped the place of reason, not a whisper of doubt was allowed to be heard, and the spirit of inquiry was stifled, until the country fell to the brink of ruin. If Louis XIV. had not interfered with the natural progress, France, like England, would have continued to advance. After his death, it was, indeed, too late to save the clergy, against whom all the intellect of the nation was soon arrayed. But the force of the storm might still have been broken, if the government of Louis XV. had conciliated what it was impossible to resist; and, instead of madly attempting to restrain opinions by laws, had altered the laws to suit the opinions. If the rulers of France, instead of exerting themselves to silence the national literature, had yielded to its suggestions, and had receded before the pressure of advancing knowledge, the fatal collision would have been avoided; because the passions which caused the collision would have been appeased. In such case, the church would have fallen somewhat earlier; but the state itself would have been saved. In such case, France would, in all probability, have secured her liberties, without increasing her crimes; and that great country, which, from her position and resources, ought to be the pattern of European civilization, might have escaped the ordeal of those terrible atrocities, through which she was compelled to pass, and from the effects of which she has not yet recovered.

It must, I think, be admitted that, during, at all events, the first half of the reign of Louis XV., it was possible, by timely concessions, still to preserve the political institutions of France. Reforms there must have been; and reforms too of a large and uncompromising character. So far, however, as I am able to understand the real history of that period, I make no doubt that, if these had been granted in a frank and ungrudging spirit, everything could have been retained necessary for the only two objects at which government ought to aim, namely, the preservation of order, and the prevention of crime. But, by the middle of the reign of Louis XV., or, at all events, immediately afterwards, the state of affairs began to alter; and, in the course of a few years, the spirit of France became so democratic, that it was impossible even to delay a revolution, which, in the preceding generation, might have been altogether averted. This remarkable change is connected with that other change already noticed, by virtue of which, the French intellect began, about the same period, to direct its hostility against the state, rather than, as heretofore, against the church. As soon as this, which may be called the second epoch of the eighteenth century, had been fairly entered, the movement became irresistible. Event after event followed each other in rapid succession; each one linked to its antecedent, and the whole forming a tendency impossible to withstand. It was in vain that the government, yielding some points of real importance, adopted measures by which the church was controlled, the power of the clergy diminished, and even the order of the jesuits suppressed. It was in vain that the crown now called to its councils, for the first time, men imbued with the spirit of reform; men, like Turgot and Necker, whose wise and liberal proposals would, in calmer days, have stilled the agitation of the popular mind. It was in vain that promises were made to equalize the taxes, to redress some of the most crying grievances, to repeal some of the most obnoxious laws. It was even in vain that the states-general were summoned; and that thus, after the lapse of a hundred and seventy years, the people were again admitted to take part in the management of their own affairs. All these things were in vain; because the time for treaty had gone by, and the time for battle had come. The most liberal concessions that could possibly have been devised would have failed to avert that deadly struggle, which the course of preceding events made inevitable. For the measure of that age was now full. The upper classes, intoxicated by the long possession of power, had provoked the crisis; and it was needful that they should abide the issue. There was no time for mercy; there was no pause, no compassion, no sympathy. The only question that remained was, to see whether they who had raised the storm could ride the whirlwind; or, whether it was not rather likely that they should be the first victims of that frightful hurricane, in which, for a moment, laws, religion, morals, all perished, the lowest vestiges of humanity were effaced, and the civilization of France not only submerged, but, as it then appeared, irretrievably ruined.

To ascertain the successive changes of this, the second epoch of the eighteenth century, is an undertaking full of difficulty; not only on account of the rapidity with which the events occurred, but also on account of their extreme complication, and of the way in which they acted and reacted upon each other. The materials, however, for such an inquiry are very numerous; and, as they consist of evidence supplied by all classes and all interests, it has appeared to me possible to reconstruct the history of that time, according to the only manner in which history deserves to be studied; that is to say, according to the order of its social and intellectual development. In the seventh chapter of the present volume, I shall, therefore, attempt to trace the antecedents of the French Revolution during that remarkable period, in which the hostility of men, slackening in regard to the abuses of the church, was, for the first time, turned against the abuses of the state. But, before entering into this, which may be distinguished as the political epoch of the eighteenth century, it will be necessary, according to the plan which I have sketched, to examine the changes that occurred in the method of writing history, and to indicate the way in which those changes were affected by the tendencies of the earlier, or, as it may be termed, the ecclesiastical epoch. In this manner, we shall the more easily understand the activity of that prodigious movement which led to the French Revolution; because we shall see that it not only affected the opinions of men in regard to what was passing under their eyes, but that it also biased their speculative views in regard to the events of preceding ages; and thus gave rise to that new school of historical literature, the formation of which is by no means the least of the many benefits which we owe to the great thinkers of the eighteenth century.