Nantes, years crowded with events, par-accidents of such a despotism as France ticularly for the military historian, but had fallen under, that nothing but conover the details of which we shall not summate genius can save it from ruin; linger on this occasion. The brilliant and the accession of genius to the throne reign becomes unbearably wearisome in in such circumstances is a physiological its final period. The monotonous repeti- impossibility. The house of Bourbon tion of the same faults and the same had become as effete as the house of crimes profligate extravagance, revolt- Valois in the sixteenth century; as effete ing cruelty, and tottering incapacity is as the Merovingians and Carlovingians as fatiguing as it is uninstructive. Louis had become in a previous age; but the became a mere mummy embalmed in strong chain of hereditary right bound up etiquette, the puppet of his women and the fortunes of a great empire with the shavelings. The misery in the provinces feeble brain and bestial instincts of a grew apace, but there was no disturbance, Louis XV. This was the result of conFrance was too prostrate even to groan. centrating all the active force of the State In 1712 the expenditure amounted to in one predestined irremovable human 240 millions, and the revenue to 113 mil-being. This was the logical and neceslions; but from this no less than 76 sary outcome of the labours of Philip millions had to be deducted for various Augustus, Philip the Fair, of Louis XI., liabilities the Government had incurred, of Henry IV., and Richelieu. They had leaving only a net income of 37 millions reared the Monarchy like a solitary obethat is to say, the outlay was more than lisk in the midst of a desert; but it had six times the income. The armies were to stand or fall alone, no one was there neither paid nor fed, the officers received to help it, as no one was there to pull it "food tickets" (billets de subsistance), down. This consideration enables us to which they got cashed at a discount of 80 pass into a higher and more reposing per cent. The Government had antici- order of reflection, to leave the sterile pated by ten years its revenues from the impeachment of individual incapacity, towns. Still this pale corpse of France and rise to the broader question, and ask must needs be bled anew to gratify the why and how that incapacity was endowed inexorable Jesuits, who had again made with such fatal potency for evil. As it has themselves complete masters of Louis been well remarked, the loss of a battle XIV.'s mind. He had lost his confessor, may lead to the loss of a state; but then, Père la Chaise (who died in 1709), and what are the deeper reasons which exhad replaced him by the hideous Letel- plain why the loss of a battle should lead lier, a blind and fierce fanatic, with a hor- to the loss of a state? It is not enough rible squint and a countenance fit for the to say that Louis XIV. was an improvigallows. He would have frightened any dent and passionate ruler, that Louis XV. one, says St. Simon, who met him at the was a dreary and revolting voluptuary. corner of a wood. This repulsive per- The problem is rather this. Why were sonage revived the persecution of the improvidence, passion, and debauchery Protestants into a fiercer heat than ever, in two men able to bring down in utter and obtained from the moribund King ruin one of the greatest monarchies the edict of March 8, 1715, considered by the world has ever seen? In other words, competent judges the clear masterpiece what was the cause of the consummate of clerical injustice and cruelty. Five failure, the unexampled collapse of the months later Louis XIV. died, forsaken French Monarchy? No personal insuffiby his intriguing wife, his beloved bas- ciency of individual rulers will explain it ; tard (the Duc de Maine), and his dreaded and, besides, the French Monarchy repriest. peatedly disposed of the services of admirable rulers. History has recorded few more able kings than Louis le Gros, Philip Augustus, Philip le Bel, Louis XI., and Henry IV.; few abler ministers than Sully, Richelieu, Colbert, and Turgot. Yet the efforts of all these distinguished men resulted in leading the nation straight into the most astounding catastrophe in human annals. Whatever view we take of the Revolution, whether we regard it as a blessing or as a curse, we must needs admit it was a reaction of the

The French Monarchy never recovered from the strain to which it had been subjected during the long and exhausting reign of Louis XIV. Whether it could have recovered in the hands of a great statesman summoned in time is a curious question. Could Frederic the Great have saved it had he been par impossible Louis XIV.'s successor? We can hardly doubt that he would have adjourned, if not have averted, the great catastrophe of 1789. But it is one of the inseparable

most violent kinda reaction contrary to geneous body politic was the result. We the preceding action. The Old Mon- are able hence to understand why the archy can only claim to have produced growth of a public spirit in France was the Revolution in the sense of having so long delayed-why, in fact, it never provoked it; as intemperance has been truly arose till the great intellectual exknown to produce sobriety, and extrav- pansion of the eighteenth century, the agance parsimony. If the ancien régime precursor of the Revolution. The provled in the result to an abrupt transition inces remained egotistically provincial to the Modern Era, it was only because down to the end of the seventeenth cenit had rendered the Old Era so utterly tury. We also see how the French kings execrable to mankind, that escape in any were able to defeat the Tiers Etat in its direction seemed a relief, were it over a efforts to acquire a permanent influence precipice. in the national councils. There was too little sense of common brotherhood, of common interest, and common danger, between Norman and Burgundian, between Poitevin and Provençal, to allow of a steady persisting pressure being put upon the King. The Third Estate in the States-General often showed an admirable political instinct of the real needs of France, and of the conditions of good government; but after they had formulated their demands and grievances in their cahiers the matter ended — the King promised everything and performed nothing.

An adequate answer to these questions would need a treatise. All that can be said here, at the end of an article already too long is, that the kingly power, or rather the whole political system in France, from the early Middle Ages downwards, was smitten with radical and incurable vices of constitution, which time aggravated instead of healing. These were to be so brief as to risk obscurity -the feebleness and insecurity of the Monarchy during the whole medieval period, and the anarchic power and independence of the feudal nobles. These two factors in their various action and combination produced the historical France of which we read.

The kingly power grew slowly but steadily. Its central position, its unity of purpose, made it more than a match in the long run for the erratic uncombined From the time when Louis VI., sur- hostility of the nobles, who, although they named le Gros, or the Fat, durst not ride constituted a most pernicious anti-social from his good city of Paris to his good caste, never rose to the height of an aris city of Orleans without strong escort, for tocracy. They were as disunited among fear of the Lord of Montlhéri, down to themselves as the provinces they ruled the time of the Fronde, the French mon- over. One of their most cherished priviarchs were engaged in a ceaseless con- leges was their right of private wars with test with the fierce unscrupulous nobles, one another. The commons were kept of whom they were the nominal superiors. isolated and feeble by different causes, When the nobles had sense and self-con- but with the same result. In the Statestrol enough to coalesce, the King was General of 1484, assembled by the subtle forced to yield to them at discretion, as and politic Anne de Beaujeu, the worthy was seen in the case of the most politic daughter of Louis XI., provincial jealousof the French kings, Louis XI., at the ies and rivalries produced all the divitreaty of Conflans; but, as was also seen sions and powerlessness that the Crown in the events which followed that treaty, could desire. "The question of money the King, if he were an able man, could (to be voted for the Taille) disunited us," generally get the advantage of them sin- says a contemporary and deputy, "and gly. The pale prestige of the throne was made us enemies of one another, each a permanent quantity, and the anarchic man struggling for his own province, and outbursts of the nobles a very uncertain striving to obtain for it the lowest taxaone; but these circumstances gave to tion." Then the kings saw straight bethe royal policy a character of duplicity, fore them a road leading directly to irrefraud, and intrigue, which by no means sponsible power. The maxim "divide excluded resort to violence when it could and govern" has been practised in all be employed with safety. And thus the ages in some degree, but it was never French monarchy was gradually com- carried to such lengths as in France. To pacted together. First this great feuda- gain adherents in their precarious pository, and then that, was circumvented, tion, the kings resorted to fraud, violence, and their territories annexed to the and corruption. They then began that Crown; but it was a juxtaposition of colossal system of Privilege, which exfragments, not a real union-no homo- listed down to the Revolution - privileges

to provinces, to classes, to corporations, It was not only between tradesmen and to individuals. Every trade, every pro-artisans that these fierce rivalries existed. fession, every business in France was Up to the steps of the throne, Privilege held in a more or less interested allegiance asserted its rights with unflinching vigor. to the Crown, by some special exemp- When Louis XIV. was out shooting on tion, monopoly, or favouritism, and the one occasion, in a drenching rain, his hat individuals in each class were attached was so saturated that an officious courby similar personal immunities. Some tier was prompted to offer him a dry one were exempted from the Taille, and we of his own. A noble duke at his Majescan appreciate how that was valued; ty's side promptly resented this encroachsome from the Gabelle (they were called ment on his privilege of giving the King Francs-salés); others were ennobled, his hat; and Louis, in all his glory, was which lifted them at once out of the com- forced to go bare-headed till the covering mon herd of oppressed taxpayers. The came to him through the proper privizeal for these exemptions and privileges leged channel. was so intense, especially among the cor- Thus did the French kings succeed in porate trades, that it led to the most gi- disintegrating and pulverising the society gantic lawsuits on record. One of these they ruled over in the interest, as it ap(between the second-hand clothiers and peared to them, of their throne. They the tailors) lasted three hundred years, certainly rid themselves, for a time, of all and gave rise to over four thousand de- united opposition to their authority: crees. It might be going on still, but they destroyed the very conception of for the Revolution. Some of these hos- citizenship in France, they cultivated a tile trades spent a million a year in law proceedings against their rivals. The publishers were at perpetual war with the second-hand booksellers; the question to be decided was when a book was new and when it was second-hand. The saddlers quarrelled with the wheelwrights, the makers of hardware with the blacksmiths, the nailers with the locksmiths. An amusing battle between the roasters and poulterers lasted sixty-nine years. The honourable body of roasters had commenced with the unique privilege of selling roast goose. As their business prospered they extended it, and added to the attractiveness of their shops by exposing roast fowls and roast game for sale; but at this point they crossed the privileges of the poulterers, who found their cold uncooked fowls quite unable to compete with the smoking dainties of their rivals. A lawsuit ensued, which ended in a judgment for the poulterers, and the roasters were bidden to confine themselves to their geese. The poulterers, made giddy by their success, then roasted their fowls, which was a clear infringement of the exclusive privilege of roasting enjoyed by the roasters. They again appealed to the law, and this time were worsted, and forbidden to offer for sale any meat "on which there was the smell of fire." The roasters were victorious in the end, as the richer and more popular corporation; but the litigation, begun in 1509, did not terminate till 1578.*

"Histoire des Classes Ouvrières en France," vol. ii. p. 85, par E. Levasseur.

hateful spirit of envy and self-seeking, and laid the foundations of that deep mutual distrust which is so marked and pernicious a feature in French public life at the present day. While the Monarchy was rich and could pay its way, while it could answer with largesse the perpetual cry of "Give, give," which assailed it from all sides, it stood firmly, nay, it was worshipped devoutly; but when with the growing expense of gov ernment in the eighteenth century the growing incompetence of the Administion and extravagance of the Court kept more than equal pace, when the evil day at last dawned, and it was visible to even Bourbon imbecility that reforms must be made, then came a great change. Like the prodigal who has spent his substance in riotous living, the Crown found itself without a friend or a support. Who was there to support it? Not the hordes of nobles and privileged who had lived upon it, and the abrogation of whose unjust exemptions constituted the first step of reform. Not the dumb toilers who had been taught by long experience to look on the Monarchy as the incarnation of evil. The Kingship had elected to live alone and reign alone; it was forced at last to die alone and unbefriended. At the bare suggestion of efficient reform by Turgot, the army of the privileged glared so fiercely on the minister and his feeble master that the attempt was at once given up. Soon after the mighty moan of a maddened people was borne upon the air, announcing that the day of wrath and vengeance had at last dawned; and the

exalted Monarchy of Louis XIV. fell down in hideous ruin, and the dust thereof went up as the smoke of a furnace.

JAMES COTTER MORISON.

From Blackwood's Magazine.
DISORDER IN DREAMLAND.

would never do to remain longer inactive. Still he had his doubts about presenting himself suddenly before her in her weak condition. A rash move might, he saw, damage him materially. The only middle course was to write to her by some safe envoy, through whom the billet would be sure to reach her own hands, assure her of his admiration and unswerving affection, and bid her not to allow her spirits LIEUTENANT HARDINGE took leave of to fail; also to state his readiness to set all his friends and departed from Wet-off immediately for Scarborough if she ton; and he was succeeded by a young should inform him that she deemed that man who, though far more restless, was course advisable. Yes, the letter was the much less liked. The summer came on right thing; what a pity that he had not quietly, and was rolling away without thought of it before! So Ben sat down much incident, except that Mrs. and Miss to indite a letter, which did not prove to Fulford went to Scarborough or some-be an easy task. Three or four times where in the north for a thorough change, over he revised it and wrote it out fair; and Mr. Norcott and Miss Tarraway were and when he could imagine no further formally announced as an engaged couple. improvement in its terms, he was still Mr. Ben Saunders, very much influenced dissatisfied with it, and did not despatch by his dream, and influenced no doubt by it, but kept it by him and read it over his own silly conceit, had built up a little every two or three hours without liking romantic edifice in which he mentally re- it any better. At length, seeing that sided a great deal. He persuaded him- he had done all that his own skill self that, as the vision had indicated, Miss could accomplish, he determined relucFulford was certainly very favourably tantly to get the assistance of a friend, disposed towards him, but that family pride and other obstacles operated powerfully against her attachment. She had been taken away from the beloved object to other scenes and other company, perhaps herself willing to eradicate her passion if she could. Now, if this were the case, Ben thought the way to thwart the opposition to the match would be to follow the young lady to her retreat and let her see him day by day. But there were objections to this plan: it would be inconvenient to the business, and it would be a departure from the resolution he had come to not to interfere too actively with the work which the pixies had undertaken and were carrying out. The ladies would be at home again in the autumn, which was not far off, and he didn't generally strike so superficially that an impression could be effaced in two or three months. But, unfortunately, as the autumn drew near, unfavourable accounts were received in Wetton of Miss Fulford's health; coming, I believe, through Admiral Tautbrace, who was also absent from home, and probably not far from the young lady. She was reported to be very weak and ill; then, a week or two later, unable to return to Colkatton at present; and at last, before the end of September, it was announced that the doctors had ordered her to Madeira for the winter. When Ben heard of this he thought it

and with that intention summoned Tom Coryton to council, who had been away for some time, but was now in Wetton again. Without mentioning names, Ben informed Tom of the state of his affections, and of the necessity of epistolary communication: but he admitted that he had not yet explained himself on paper, and that his attempts to do so had not been satisfactory to himself. "So Tom, old chap," said he, "I want you to look over the thing and advise me a little, and help me where I've come short. I hardly think it's ardent enough."

"H'm," answered Tom, "I don't know much about ardour, but I'll tell you whether any step in the argument is incorrect; let's see now. Dearest Angle. Why, I thought it was a young woman that you were addressing. An angle is the inclination of two lines to each other, and may be either obtuse

"None of your nonsense, Tom, about angles. I can't stand it; hang me if I can! What have angles to do with this?"

66

Only this, that if the angle in question happens to be at all acute, she'll think the letter comes from a madman." Why, what on earth do you mean, Tom?"

66

"I mean that, though an angle is a very good thing in its way, and not at all to be despised, yet it isn't quite a term to be applied to one's sweetheart. We have

"Yes, that's easily altered, perhaps ; but the whole thing seems to me to abound with blunders of the same kind; for instance, it is not usual to say to ato do with a scheme in which some of the lady that you hope to be able to seduce her to write you a line;' neither is it