ment, no one appears to have calculated the explosive force which would be developed when these barriers were removed, or the singe-tigre aspect under which the human character, left to the guidance of its own wild impulses, would present itself. The votaries of the new philosophy flattered themselves, that self-interest, rightly understood, was a sufficient guarantee for the continued peace and happiness of society; that as philosophy had raised the storm, she could always allay it at pleasure; and that henceforth all mankind were to be united under the peaceful sway of the Goddess of Reason. No one had foreseen the tempests which were to close the day, of which the morning had appeared SO bright and promising; nor, perhaps, could even a deeper forecast have enabled any one to conjecture that opinions, many of which appeared so innocent, if not beneficent in their application, would result in the general corruption of society, the subversion of all order, the developement of a spirit of ferocity, which the incessant employment of the guillotine was unable to satiate without the aid of the more wholesale massacre of the Noyades, and the ex. citement of a bloody war of opinions, carried on under the revolutionary watchword-Fraternity or Death. "L'aimable siecle où l'homme dit à l'homme, Soyons frères- ou je t'assomme!" *

But to whatever causes we are to impute the supremacy of French literature in Europe during the whole of the eighteenth century, its universal diffusion and powerful influence in all quarters are incontestable. If the spirit of bold speculation in morals and political science, which had been so characteristic of the French literature of this period, had received its first impulse from England, it soon reacted, with no common energy, upon the literature of our own country. Against the irreligious doctrines of the French school, though advocated with all the subtilty of Hume and the learning of Gibbon, a noble and effectual stand was made, and sophistry refuted with those very weapons of reasoning, and appeals to common sense, which it had been the first to invoke. But our school of philosophical historians was undoubtedly called into existence by the example

of Voltaire; and if Hobbes, Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke, furnished hints for the Essai sur les Mœurs, or the Age of Louis XIV., the obligation was more than repaid by the breadth of views, the lucid arrangement, the artful union ofreflexion with narrative, the skill in character drawing, and the elegance of composition, which the study of French models imparted to the histories of Hume, Robertson, Gibbon, and Ferguson. The influence of the French drama, again, over our own, during the period which ranges from the commencement of the reign of Anne down to the close of that of George II., appears in the declining taste for the older writers, the comparative unpopularity even of Shakspeare himself, whom Garrick or Tate were allowed to mutilate, not merely with impunity but with applause, and the growth of that so-called classic school, in which Addison, Thomson, Young, Phillips, and Murphy, were labourers the school of Roman fathers and Grecian daughters, and distressed mothers and rival brothers, most of them avowed translations, or slenderly disguised imitations of Racine and Voltaire; in which the want of simplicity and natural feeling was retained, while the tender. ness or dramatic point of the original disappeared in the process of transla. tion. The other departments of poetry were not less unfavourably affected by French influence: for the return to a less artificial taste in Thomson was not followed out wit, correctness, or a certain stilted and pseudo-classic tone continued to be the qualities aimed at; and the accents of nature, once so powerful in English poetry, like the successive reverberations of an echo, grew fainter and fainter, till they sunk into silence.

If we turn to Italy, we trace the ideas of Montesquieu and Voltaire, nay, even of Helvetius, in the political or moral speculations of Beccaria, Genovesi, Verri, and Filangieri. The reverence, indeed, with which Beccaria speaks of Helvetius and Holbach, appears at the present day not a little unaccountable. We see the principle of social, political, and even religious reform disseminated through the press, from Milan to Naples, "con licenza de superiori"-encouraged by absolute princes, and if not favoured,

doni is, in his whole spirit, essentially French-latterly, indeed, he wrote for the French stage; and Alfieri, while hating the French nation, adopts the conventional limitations of its drama, with a rigour which even French critics themselves had hardly exacted.

Even Spain, with all its strong nationality, yields to the general infec. tion, and submits its chivalrous drama and its oriental tastes, to the restraint of the rules and the studied decorum of French dramatic verse. During the 18th century that romantic theatre, so truly in unison with the national spirit, which Lope had created to which the highest perfection of which its irregular character was susceptible, had been given by Calderon, and which, by the brilliant facility of its poetry, the picturesque and stately character of the manners represented, and the deep interest and curiosity which its plots awakened, had for a long time influenced the dramatic literature of all Europe, and strongly coloured that of France itself, as the Cid and Heraclius of Corneille, and Moliere's Festin de Pierre sufficiently show, was abandoned for lifeless imitations of the French drama, constructed on those principles of criticism which Luzan had borrowed, partly from the Poetics of Aristotle, partly from the prefaces of Corneille and Voltaire, until a feeble, and indeed unsuccessful, rally was made in 1778, in favour of the older drama by La Huerta in his Raquel. Even the political innovations of the French philosophers found a favourable reception at the Court of Charles III., and the policy of Aranda, Cam

pomanes, and Florida Blanca, both in its errors and in the advantages it conferred on Spain, may be traced to those theories of national education and reform of political institutions, to which the agitation of opinions in France had given birth; and thus Spain, with a singular contradiction, borrowed from that quarter at once the principles of political liberty and of poetical restraint.

Nearly the same state of things may be traced in Portugal under the reign of Joseph I. and the sombre administration of Pombal; who, filled with the ideas of French philosophy, advocated with a species of fanatical intolerance the doctrines of toleration, labouring, not to direct or restrain, but to subvert the power of the Jesuits, and to force upon the nation, by the unsparing use of arbitrary and oppressive means, the Utopian schemes of improvement which that philosophy had inspired.

In Germany, while the opinions of the French philosophers, so far as regarded religious indifference and experiments in government, found enthusiastic converts in Frederick the Great and Joseph II., and powerfully affected the policy of these sovereigns, the influence of French literature was far less felt. Frederick, imitating the sneer of Voltaire, was content to wish his countrymen more wit and fewer consonants; while he prac tically laboured to decry and discountenance his native literature and his native language. But, even under his military despotism, he could not render French literature "the order of the day;" his attempts to naturalize it in Prussia, only created a reaction which hastened the developement of that varied and inventive native literature which adorned in Germany the close of the 18th century and the commencement of the 19th. "Von dem grossten Deutschen sohne, Von des grossen Friedrichs throne,

Ging sie schutzlos, ungeehrt. Rühmend darfs der Deutsche sagen, Höher darf das herz ihm schlagen,

Selbst erschuf er sich den werth."*

Traces of French influence are visible in Lessing, whose deistical views were undoubtedly derived from Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopedists; and in many of the second-rate German writers of the time, the imitation of the polish and coldness of the French models is sufficiently perceptible. But one man only, of superior ability as a classic writer, was completely formed in the school of the French. We refer to Wieland, whom the influence of Voltaire and the other sceptical philosophers of France, suddenly converted for a time from a religious mystic into the apologist of the Helvetian system of selfishness-the painter of voluptuous pictures-thescandalous chronicler of antiquity-the imitator of that irony which pervades the lighter poetry of Voltaire, which throws disbelief or ridicule on all enthusiastic feeling, and all exertions of human virtue-but who lived long enough to become a sadder and a wiser man, and to make a tardy atonement to those virtuous sentiments which he had outraged or depreciated, by his beautiful poem of

Oberon.

If the ascendency of France was thus felt in countries where science had long flourished, where literature had long assumed a settled and national form, and which had outstrip. ped even France itself in the earlier stages of the march of civilisation, it may easily be conceived that the great states of the North, still struggling with comparative barbarism of manners, and with a literature which yet remained to be created, should readily yield to the general contagion. France, accordingly, was the source from which Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, in the eighteenth century, borrowed refinement of manners and the impulse of scientific and social improvement. Such civilisation and literature as Russia possessed, were in truth entirely French. We see the Semiramis of the North, as she was styled by Voltaire (with a nearer approach to truth than was generally to be found in his compliments to crowned heads), creating academies on the French model, adopting the language and the manners of the court of France, affecting the character of a philosophic monarch, translating Belisarius, (the chapters of which she portioned out among her court favourites, reserving what she considered the most striking to her

self,) engaging in an interchange of flatteries with Voltaire, talking of liberating the serfs of Russia, and actually transmitting to Paris a copy of a grand code of laws for the Tartars and Cossacks, which she had not the most distant intention of ever carrying into effect. In the case of Catharine, this pretended zeal for toleration and political liberty was probably partly sincere, partly affected, as a blind to cover her ambitious designs against Poland and Turkey, and to secure the quiet enjoyment of a real despotism while pretending an anxious desire for the emancipation and improvement of her subjects. The same adoption of French philosophy and literature (and probably with more sincerity) as the reigning tone of the day, appears in the writings of the weak and unfortunate Gustavus III. of Sweden. To throw aside the native lan. guage, and the remains of its early literature, as relics of barbarism; to obliterate the traces of the homely and simple manners of old, as far as that was possible; and to convert the court of Sweden into a miniature representation of that of France, with all its vices, intrigues, and some portion of its external varnish of elegance-were objects after which he appears to have laboured with more energy than discretion. And in truth he had his reward: for, to the profligacy engendered by his own example, and the principles he had laboured to popularize, he probably owed the blow which terminated his existence.

Most extensive and imposing, then, was the influence of French literature on other countries from 1750 to the close of the eighteenth century. "The works of the French writers," says Villemain, "and particularly the work of Montesquieu, a genius combining boldness with moderation, issuing from Paris, became the reason of state' with most sovereigns, or at least the public official reason of state. The ancient Machiavelism, no doubt, remained as a concealed spring-as a secret of the cabinet; but what was avowed, what was proclaimed to the people, were the ideas of tolerance and humanity, professed by Montesquieu and Voltaire. Voltaire, the most popular of writers, whose profundity is concealed under his power of pleasing, whose audacity is masked by frivolity, exercised the more extended influence over the elevated ranks of society in all countries of Europe. The authority of Montesquieu purified the ostensible policy of the governments."

But while the energies which France had awakened by her literature continued to work thus powerfully, both for good and evil, among the other governments of Europe, that literature itself had ceased to display the vigour of maturity, and to those who looked beneath the surface, wore an appearance of exhaustion and decay. In fact, influences peculiarly calculated to lower the tone of national morality, and to paralyse the creative powers of the imagination, had been at work during the very period when France presented so imposing an aspect to other nations, and, in literature as well as manners, seemed to give laws to the world.

In every class of society, and in every institution, from the throne to the humblest department of literature, the progress of decline may be detected. Louis XIV. succeeding to a throne to which the policy of Richelieu, in crushing the power of the nobles, had lent a stability and authority hitherto unknown, had invested it with grace as well as dignity, by surrounding it in the days of his youth with the combined lustre of arts and arms. His patronage of literature, though in some measure resulting from the mere vanity of making even genius subservient to the splendour of the crown, was also unquestionably to some extent sincere. To his steady protection, Moliere was indebted for the discomfiture of more than one court intrigue against him. "Remember," he used to say to Boileau, " I shall always have half an hour at your service." The glories of that literature to which he had lent his patronage, indeed descended to his successor; but the earlier triumphs of arms had been tarnished by later reverses, till the very memory of those sieges which Boileau has pompously praised in the most prosaic of odes, had been effaced by the disasters of Ramilies and Blenheim, which Addison has commemorated in strains scarcely more poetical than those of his rival. On the whole, however, Louis had not merely sustained but raised the character and reputation of France: and if there was a want of true nobleness and simplicity in his character, he must be admitted to have at least played the part of a dignified monarch

from first to last, with more than ordinary plausibility and address.

The character of Louis XV. was ill calculated to sustain the sinking dig. nity of the crown. Without the energy of his predecessor, who sincerely wished to elevate France, so far as that could be done without lowering the royal authority; without the strength of mind which Louis XIV. conspicuously developed in misfortune; indifferent to glory and to the arts, sunk in sensual pleasures, a prey to the intrigues and the favouritism of successive mistresses; he saw the foundations of the monarchy, and of society itself, undermined in all directions with unconsciousness or indiffer

ence.

The church, the best bulwark of the monarchy, had ceased to be the depository of the highest genius and virtue. The age of Louis XIV. had inherited that great secret by which the Papal power had so long supported the dignity of its hierarchy-that of making ecclesiastical promotion the reward of merit, independently of birth or interest. France could not have furnished names of more exalted ability or purer character thau Bossuet, Fenélon, Massillon, and Fléchier. The latter had commenced his humble career in the shop of a candlemaker : he closed it in the Episcopal chair of Nismes.

This principle of honest and impartial selection, which had conferred on the church the authority and influence resulting from the combination of genius, learning, and character, was soon abandoned under the short-sighted and selfish policy of Louis XV. Rank, influence, interest at court, the graces of manner, subserviency to the interests of the reigning favourite, sometimes even the production of compositions discreditable to any one, and doubly so to a minister of the church, became the passports to promotion. The natural result was, that the pulpit soon ceased to be illustrated by any superior talent; the impressive or affecting eloquence of Bossuet and Fénélon was succeeded by the dry moral discussions or academic theology of the Abbé Poulle or the Père Neuville; "The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed;" and thus one of the chief pillars on which the monarchy should have rested in the hour of need, was itself crumbling to its fall. Nor could the character and influence of the other great bulwark of monarchical power, the nobility, supply that support to the throne which the church was no longer in a condition to afford; for they too had survived their greatness. In drawing them from their ancestral castles and their military governments in the provinces, where each had been a little monarch among his vassals, dispensing patronage and diffusing industry, to domesticate them as dependents of a court, and appendages to the splendour of the throne, Louis XIV. had deprived them of their real authority and influence on opinion. They themselves, now accustomed to court the smiles of a monarch, or even a mistress, and to employ the crooked arts of intrigue in order to distance each other in the race

of royal favour, had lost that selfrespect, that confidence in their own rights and importance, in which the strength of such a privileged body resides. And the transition from the want of honourable employment and noble emulation to the adoption of all the vices of the court, was but too easy, where the church no longer ventured to speak the language of authoritative rebuke,

" And the prince of all the land
Led them on."

The judicial bodies which in the earlier days of French history had played so all-important a part, and either determined or influenced every change to which the monarchy had been subjected, had also shared in a great degree the fall of the nobility. The engrossing power of the crown under Louis XIV. had humbled the parliaments. They had become little more than instruments for registering the edicts and giving the appearance of a judicial sanetion to the mandates of the sovereign, The show of independence evinced by their first step after the death of Louis XIV., that of annulling his testament, was followed up by no corresponding act of firmness. "Occupied with miserable theological disputes, sometimes combating the Molinists, sometimes the philosophers, the parliaments, who had become Jansenists through mere hatred to the Jesuits, were no longer influenced or guided by any great interest, social or political." Indecision in all cases marked their conduct; while in some instances, as in the celebrated case of La Barre, they seemed to have sanctioned acts of ju

dicial cruelty worthy of the darkest times, and against which the feelings of Europe, now rendered particularly sensitive on the subject of torture by the philanthropic maxims which were every where abroad, most powerfully revolted.

Something might perhaps have been done to infuse fresh vigour into the exhausted condition of French society, had the administration of affairs been guided by any man of commanding talent, able to perceive the consequences to which these corruptions and this confusion were tending, and determined to meet them by vigorous and unsparing remedies-"vincentem strepitus et natum rebus agendis." But the ministry of Choiseul was a ministry of expedients: he pursued no great great or or regular plan either of foreign policy or internal administration; thought only of meeting the daily exigency, evading the immediate difficulty, escaping the most pressing danger. "We see him," says Villemain, "struggling with rebellious materials which would not yield to his hand; forming a thousand projects: now striving to arrest the progress of the Empress, now of the King of Prussia; trying to prop up the ancient colossus of Turkey, which was already meditating his fall; and, in the midst of his diplomatic ambition, hurled from power by the most scandalous of palace intrigues; at the same time that the parliaments, which, in spite of their prejudices, were becoming too powerful for an expiring government, were suppressed by a coup d'etat of the chancellor Maupeau."

Amidst this general progress towards decay, the state of literature and of literary men presented nothing which was of a more cheering and elevated character. At first, literature had been upheld by that very fanaticism in favour of change, which, operating as an animating principle, gave to its productions warmth and an air of reality. The infidel philosophy of France, by which all existing opinions and institutions were assailed, was indeed the only portion of its literature which at this time wore any thing like the stamp of conviction, or an appearance of power. For the instinct of destruction in some degree supplied, for a time, the want of that ancient inspiration derived from faith and reverence for authority; and the number and strength of the forces "that durst