tendency which, even in the midst of the struggle, kept alive the habits of their old subservience. Thus it was that, while the war went on, there still remained a constant inclination on the part of the people to look up to the nobles, on the part of the nobles to look up to the crown. Both classes relied upon what they saw immediately above them. The people believed that without the nobles there was no safety; the nobles believed that without the crown there was no honour. In the case of the nobles, this opinion can hardly be blamed; for as their distinctions proceed from the crown, they have a direct interest in upholding the ancient notion that the sovereign is the fountain of honour. They have a direct interest in that preposterous doctrine, according to which, the true source of honour being overlooked, our attention is directed to an imaginary source, by whose operation it is believed, that in a moment, and at the mere will of a prince, the highest honours may be conferred upon the meanest men. This, indeed, is but part of the old scheme to create distinctions for which nature has given no warrant; to substitute a superiority which is conventional for that which is real; and thus try to raise little minds above the level of great ones. The utter failure, and, as society advances, the eventual cessation of all such attempts, is certain; but it is evident, that as long as the attempts are made, they who profit by them must be inclined to value those from whom they proceed. Unless counteracting circumstances interpose, there must be between the two parties that sympathy which is caused by the memory of past favours, and the hope of future ones. In France, this natural feeling being strengthened by that protective spirit which induced men to cling to those above them, it is not strange that the nobles, even in the midst of their turbulence, should seek the slightest favours of the crown with an eagerness of which some examples have just been given. They had been so long accustomed to look up to the sovereign as the source of their own dignity, that they believed there was some hidden dignity even in his commonest actions; so that, to their minds, it was a matter of the greatst importance which of them should hand him his napkin, which of them should hold his basin, and which of them should put on his shirt. 80 It is not, however, for the sake of casting ridicule upon these idle and frivolous men, that I have collected evidence respecting the disputes with which they were engrossed. So far from this, they are rather to be pitied

80 Even just before the French Revolution, these feelings still existed. See, for instance, the extraordinary details in Campan, Mém. sur Marie Antoinette, vol. i. pp. 98, 99; which should be compared with an extract from Prudhomme's Miroir de Paris, in Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, 1850, p. 251, no. 165.

than blamed; they acted according to their instincts; they even exerted such slender abilities as nature had given to them. But we may well feel for that great country whose interests depended on their care. And it is solely in reference to the fate of the French people that the historian need trouble himself with the history of the French nobles. At the same time, evidence of this sort, by disclosing the tendencies of the old nobility, displays in one of its most active forms that protective and aristocratic spirit, of which they know little who only know it in its present reduced and waning condition. Such facts are to be regarded as the symptoms of a cruel disease, by which Europe is indeed still afflicted, but which we now see only in a very mitigated form, and of whose native virulence no one can have an idea, unless he has studied it in those early stages, when, raging uncontrolled, it obtained such a mastery as to check the growth of liberty, stop the progress of nations, and dwarf the energies of the human mind.

It is hardly necessary to trace at greater length the way in which France and England diverged from each other, or to point out, what I hope will henceforth be considered the obvious difference between the civil wars in the two countries. It is evident that the low-born and plebeian leaders of our rebellion could have no sympathy with those matters which perplexed the understanding of the great French nobles. Men like Cromwell and his coadjutors, were not much versed in the mysteries of genealogy, or in the subtleties of heraldic lore. They had paid small attention to the etiquette of courts; they had not even studied the rules of precedence. All this was foreign to their design. On the other hand, what they did was done thoroughly. They knew that they had a great work to perform; and they performed it well. They had risen in arms against a corrupt and despotic government, and they would not stay their hands until they had pulled down those who were in high places; until they had not only removed the evil, but had likewise chastised those bad men by whom the evil was committed. And although in this, their glorious undertaking, they did undoubtedly display some of the infirmities to which even the highest minds are subject; we, at least, ought never to speak of them but with that

1 Ludlow thus expresses the sentiments which induced him to make war upon the crown: "The question in dispute between the king's party and us being, as I apprehended, whether the king should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts? or whether the people should be governed by aws made by themselves, and live under a government derived from their own consent? being fully persuaded, that an accommodation with the king was unsafe to the people of England, and unjust and wicked in the nature of it." Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 230. Compare Whitelocke's spirited speech to Christina, in Jour nal of the Swedish Embassy, vol. i. v. 238; and see pp. 390, 391.

unfeigned respect which is due to those who taught the first great lesson to the kings of Europe, and who, in language not to be mistaken, proclaimed to them that the impunity which they had long enjoyed was now come to an end, and that against their transgressions the people possessed a remedy, sharper, and more decisive, than any they had hitherto ventured to use.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PROTECTIVE SPIRIT CARRIED BY LOUIS XIV. INTO LITERATURE. EXAMIN ATION 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, every thing was prepared for that singular intellectual polity, which during fifty years characterized 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 in

structive, 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.1

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. To them he abandoned every thing except the exercise of his own prerogative.3 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. It was at the instigation of the

On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see Capefique'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 chaines." 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."

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 Papsthums freigesprochen." Die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 168.

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

Flassan supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: "Dès 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 worrid persecutions the reformed religion undergoes in France;" and Locke, who