to a certain degree; but people do not perceive that there will be other and pre-existent causes, which will influence the tastes, and the feelings, and the judgment, which writing and reading are calculated to produce—and that history, and society, and conquest, and even geographical position, all exercise as great an influence upon the knowledge derived from writing and reading, as the mere knowledge of writing and reading exercises upon the mind itself. They do not see this; neither do they see that writing and reading form but a small part of the education of the man who also sees, and hears, and acts. No, nor do they even recognize that the natural perceptions of some men, and of some races of men, are quicker, and keener, and more acute, than others -more likely to be acted upon by what pleases the senses than by what excites the mind-more likely to be affected by the beautiful than by the useful, by the showy than by the solid. That there are two countries, in each of which a certain number of the people read and write- proves what? That in these two countries this certain number do write and read. It proves this-it proves nothing more than this-unless you can show that in every other respect the people in the two countries are alike.

If

the French have an ardent passion for literature, a vast respect for men of letters, it is from a long series of facts, from a long train of events, as well as from a peculiar disposition with which these events and these facts naturally coincide. Here is a passion, here is a respect, which an increase of education, a spread of knowledge, will tend to increase and spread; because to that education and to that knowledge an impulse has been already given-because the feelings originally existed in a small circle, which are therefore naturally extended, as that small circle extends, into a large one.

When Louis the Fourteenth said to Racine, "What man do you think the greatest glory to my reign?" and Racine answered, "Molière”— there was no free press, no national education, none of those vast and noisy engines at work, by which we produce from the minds of the masses what is called public opinion.

Now, I said somewhere in the beginning of this book, that in a vain nation sentiments and habits descend from the higher classes to the lower, as in a voluptuous nation they ascend from the lower to the higher. It was the policy of Richelieu and Louis XIV. -it was the taste of the Regent, and the em

broidered philosophy of the Court of Louis XV., that gave to certain classes that love for the arts, and that esteem for their professors, which the destruction of privileges, the division of property-all the circumstances which melted the court and the monarchy into the nation, blended with the great mass of the nation also.

It is to kings and to courts that the French people originally owe the predilection which many of you, my countrymen, imagine to be naturally and necessarily the feeling of the multitude-it is from the education of the garden, of the gallery, and the theatre, that those tastes have in a great measure been derived, which many of you would attribute wholly to the school. It is, moreover, as the camp succeeded to the court- from war and from conquest from the variety and the history which connect the chefs-d'œuvre of Raphael and Michael Angelo with the victories of Italy and Napoléon,* that a sentiment is felt for the

* During the campaigns of Bonaparte, in addition to that knowledge, which the view of other countries and the necessary study of other customs must have produced with the soldiers abroad- war contributed to the education of the peasant left at home, and the conscript who wrote to his family an account of his exploits stimulated the most ignorant of his village to acquire a knowledge necessary to give the key to so

picture-gallery and the statue-room, which many of you attribute to the improvements and the refinements of peace. And it is again owing to the quick and vivid perceptions, to the enthusiastic and admiring character of the French themselves, that so strong an impulse has been given to the natural effect of the causes I have described. Some of you still think in your hearts, perhaps, that it is only to the press, to the Chamber, to the long number of republican laws and free constitutions which have succeeded with so much rapidity in France, that a mere man of letters became all of a sudden so proud a title. It is just the reverse-it was not because there was liberty, but because there was despotism; it was not because there was a free press, but because there was no free press; it was not because there was a popular assembly, but because there was no popular assembly - that literary men, as the only organs of enlightened opinion, became, towards the later days of the old régime,' a second estate in the realm,

interesting a correspondence. And, in the same manner, from the successes of military despotism, the daily press acquired an interest, an influence, and a power, which at a later period it used against that despotism itself.

and, possessing extraordinary power, obtained an hereditary respect.

Such nonsense is it to embrace all advantages in one system, and to exclude them from another; so necessary is it, in looking at the present, to refer to the past; so sure are we to be wrong, if we think one effect is always produced by one cause; or believe that the same events which confirm and extend a power have, as a matter of course, planted or produced it.

The authority of letters, now extending and maintaining liberty in France, originated in despotism-and the class carried by the revolution of July into office was encouraged under the ministry of Napoléon, and created by the policy of Richelieu. If you wish, as I wish, my readers, to encourage the arts, to raise in public

* I need hardly say that, in stating what have been the causes of a feeling in France which I would wish to see introduced into England, I by no means think the same causes necessary to introduce it into one country that did originally introduce it into the other. On the contrary-we must look at the feeling by itself -ask whether it be good or bad, advantageous or disadvantageous to a State-and, if we decide in favour of its advantage, turn our thoughts to the consideration, not of what grafted it on the French character, but of what might graft it on ours.