religious world, as well as the political world, with a catastrophe which rarely leaves power standing when faith is staggered. Monarchical Europe was the handiwork of catholicism; politics were fashioned after the image of the Church; authority was founded on a mystery. Rights came to it from on high, and power, like faith, was reputed divine. The obedience of the people was consecrated to it, and from that very reason inquiry was a blasphemy, and servitude a virtue. The spirit of philosophy, which had silently revolted against this for three centuries, as a doctrine which the scandals, tyrannies, and crimes of the two powers belied daily, refused any longer to recognise a divine title in those authorities which deny reason and subjugate a people. So long as catholicism had been the sole legal doctrine in Europe, these murmuring revolts of mind had not overset empires. They had been punished by the hands of rulers. Dungeons, punishments, inquisitions, fire, and faggot, had intimidated reason, and preserved erect the two-fold dogma on which the two governments reposed.

But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the people a second revelation. Employed at first exclusively for the Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them. The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly assailed by these floods of light, could not be long without being shaken, first in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very foundations. Guttemberg; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World. In creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the independence of reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers, contained in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the thunders of pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language. These two powers were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of mankind. The intellectual world was born of a material invention, and it had grown rapidly. The reformed religion was one of its early offspring.

The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England, whole provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of religious authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination. Divine authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of the throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more potent than sedition, approached it more and more near, with less respect, less fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and crimes of kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the people to draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by their real value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement. Fénélon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in favour of the weak, had glided from the lips of Louis XIV. into the ear of his grandson. Fénélon educated another revolution in the Duke of Burgundy. This the king perceived when too late, and expelled the divine seduction from his palace. But the revolutionary policy was born there; there the people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to be, thanks to Louis XIV. and Fénélon, at once the palace of despotism and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the institutions, and analysed the laws of all people. By classing governments, he had compared them, by comparing he passed judgment on them; and this judgment brought out, in its bold relief, and contrast, on every page, right and force, privilege and equality, tyranny and liberty.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, less ingenious, but more eloquent, had studied politics, not in the laws, but in nature. A free but oppressed and suffering mind, the palpitation of his noble heart had made every heart beat that had been ulcerated by the odious inequality of social conditions. It was the revolt of the ideal against the real. He had been the tribune of nature, the Gracchus of philosophy—he had not produced the history of institutions, only its vision—but that vision descended from heaven and returned thither. There was to be seen the design of God and the excess of his love—but there was not enough seen of the infirmity of men. It was the Utopia of government; but by this Rousseau led further astray. To impel the people to passion there must be some slight illusion mingled with the truth; reality alone was too chilling to fanaticise the human mind; it is only roused to enthusiasm by things something out of nature. What is termed the ideal is the attraction and force of religions, which always aspire higher than they mount; this is how fanaticism is produced, that delirium of virtue. Rousseau was the ideal of politics, as Fénélon was the ideal of Christianity.

Voltaire had the genius of criticism, that power of raillery which withers all it overthrows. He had made human nature laugh at itself, had felled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors, prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it to rebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal but by sheer contempt. Destiny gave him eighty years of existence, that he might slowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat against time, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filled courts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic and visionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been the fortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was the secret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was the book of all oppressed and tender souls. Unhappy and devotee himself, he had placed God by the side of the people; his doctrines sanctified the mind, whilst they led the heart to rebellion. There was vengeance in his very accent, but there was piety also. Voltaire's followers would have overturned altars, those of Rousseau would have raised them. The one could have done without virtues, and made arrangements with thrones; the other had absolute need of a God, and could only have founded republics.

Their numerous disciples progressed with their missions, and possessed all the organs of public thought. From the seat of geometry to the consecrated pulpit, the philosophy of the 18th century invaded or altered every thing. D'Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Buffon, Condorcet, Bernardin Saint Pierre, Helvetius, Saint Lambert, La Harpe, were the church of the new era. One sole thought animated these diverse minds—the renovation of human ideas. Arithmetic, science, history, economy, politics, the stage, morals, poetry, all served as the vehicle of modern philosophy; it ran in all the veins of the times; it had enlisted every genius, it spoke every language. Chance or Providence had decided that this period, which elsewhere was almost barren, should be the age of France. From the end of the reign of Louis XIV. to the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., nature had been prodigal of men to France. This brilliancy continued by so many geniuses of the first order, from Corneille to Voltaire, from Bossuet to Rousseau, from Fénélon to Bernardin Saint Pierre, had accustomed the people to look on this side. The focus of the ideas of the world shed thence its brilliancy. The moral authority of the human mind was no longer at