perpetrated by its generals abroad, loyalty, submission, obedience, discipline, attachment, and fidelity were still to be found within its own body. Those strong and healthy sentiments which unite together human wills in a bond of mutual sympathy, confidence, and esteem, namely, frank comradeship and familiar gaiety such as the French love, were generally diffused in it. These soldiers were but skin-deep republicans, and deemed it natural and proper that the whole nation should be subjected to that sort of discipline with which they were familiar, and which they thought good for themselves. Naturally enough they gave a hearty aid to their recognised chief in his efforts to establish a rule, which he declared was founded on an alliance between philosophy and the sword. By 'philosophy' men then understood the application of abstract principles to politics and the constitution of a state on a uniform pattern according to certain simple general notions. The pattern might be anarchical, as that of the Jacobins, or else despotic; and naturally the second was chosen by Napoleon. a practical man, he began to build a structure, every detail of which implied and promoted the omnipotence of the State. The Government became omnipresent. Local and voluntary initiative was everywhere suppressed, the action of all that smacked of hereditary authority was impeded, and those sentiments by which the individual seeks to live in the past and the future were in every possible way discouraged. Never was a more excellent barrack constructed, more symmetrical, more attractive to the vulgar, more satisfying to the superficial mind, more convenient to narrow egotism, more calculated to discipline the vicious and to corrupt the really noble, than that philosophic barrack in which, M. Taine says, the French nation has now dwelt for eighty years. But the tendency to a recrudescence of Jacobinism is As clear in France, and a tendency to favour excessive State action and interference is clear amongst English Radicals. Nevertheless Jacobinism is essentially retrograde, and is, in fact, a reversion towards a type of slavery from which Christian civilisation set us free. In ancient Rome and Sparta, which Jacobins take for their models, there were two supreme anxieties—the due propitiation of the Immortal Gods, and adequate protection during what was an incessant state of war. In such a condition of things arbitrary power was a necessity, and no conduct of any citizen was exempt from claims requisite for the protection of the city by Divine and human arms. Individual morality, apart from devotion to the State, had no existence. But with the advent of Christianity, not only the external circumstances, but the mental groundwork of them, became changed, and two ideas are now generally diffused which were before unknownthose of conscience and honour. Alone and in the presence of God, the Christian finds all the bonds by which the citizen of the ancient state was bound dissolve like wax before the fire. He is bound indeed by duty to his friends, his fellow-citizens, and his temporal rulers; but such duty reposes ultimately and supremely on his individual duty, as a reasonable soul, to his God. Before that awful Divine tribunal he must stand alone to answer individually for his acts, and no community of citizenship can save him from their consequences. Patriotism has gained an infinitely higher sanction by abdicating its absolute and supreme control. The sentiment of honour also, as often yet more practically effective, is not less socially precious. Its history is inseparable from that of bygone Christian ages. In his castle, at the head of his retainers, the early feudal chief had only himself to look to for support, for the arm of the law was powerless. In such a world of armed anarchy, he who tolerated the least encroachment on his rights, or who allowed to go unpunished a semblance of insult, showed weakness or cowardice, and quickly became the prey of his stronger and bolder neighbours. He was bound to be proud, under pain of death. Pride also was natural to a man who ruled over a domain in which he had no equal. His own person and all that belonged to him was sacred in his eyes, and with this sentiment of self-respect arose that of 'honour' -a generous self-respect which forbade base actions to the noble. Of course there were many individual exceptions; of course vanity and folly often led to the placing of the point of honour elsewhere than where it should have been placed. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, the sentiment thus generated was of prodigious efficacy, and as age succeeded age, it preserved the dignity of the nobility even under the most absolute sovereigns. The tradition has descended, modified, ameliorated, and softened, from the old feudal baron to the modern gentleman, ever broadening and extending its beneficent influence till, in our own day, the citizen, the artisan, and the peasant (as may be seen especially in Spain) has his point of honour-his nobility. Each man now has at the least his own moral castle, wherein his beliefs, his opinions, his sentiments, and his affections are sacred and inviolable. He is lord of a very sacred if very small domain, which honour bids him defend against every possible aggressor. These two ideas, conscience and honour, reign supreme in the moral world of Europe. The first teaches each individual his duties, from which no State command can absolve him; the other reveals to him his rights, of which no one may justly deprive him. These are, as M. Taine truly says, the two roots of modern civilisation, and through them it flourishes. The modern European is what he is, because of a long past of Christian education, which has made his conscience a sanctuary, and through a long past of knightly chivalry, which has constituted his home his castle, a castle which Radicalism and Jacobinism would summon him to surrender, nominally to an abstract ideal, but really to a few unscrupulous demagogues. It is a fact, that in no political system is it so necessary to restrict the powers of the Government as in a democratic State. To its representatives should be accorded the minimum of confidence and power; and conscience and honour should be specially kept on guard against their encroachments, for with every extension of the suffrage we necessarily have fewer and fewer guarantees for the competence and discretion of our rulers. The great French Revolution, as vividly depicted by M. Taine, has many an important warning for us in England. On these, however, space does not allow us to enlarge now. It must suffice to point out, as tendencies likely to be especially disastrous to us-a sentimental tenderness, as distinguished from a rational benevolence, for the less worthy members of the community; weakness in suppressing the beginnings of mob rule; too light an estimation of what is traditional and hereditary; and forgetfulness that the action of a political natural selection is more to be trusted as evidence of what is useful than the abstract speculations of individual minds. SOREL'S EUROPE AND THE FRENCH L'Europe et la Révolution Française. I. Les Mours Politiques et les Traditions. II. La Chute de la Royauté. SOREL'S work is as original as it is interesting and M. instructive. Instead of making one more of the many descriptions which we already possess of the French Revolution itself, it is devoted to a consideration of the environment of that Revolution and of the actions and reactions between France and the other nations of Europe which accompanied it. M. Sorel endeavours, with much success, to set before us how it was that a movement, more or less generally diffused over Europe, culminated in France, and why the waves of that widespread current of opinion, which rose to their highest level in Paris, subsequently produced such different results in different countries. Whereas before 1789 the ruling spirit of surrounding nations was more or less in harmony with that of France, the very success of the French movement evoked on all sides an antagonism which varied in its character according to the previous history and national traditions of the several European States. Thus it came about that a revolution, which was essentially cosmopolitan, ended by changing the relatively cosmopolitan spirit of the Europe of the eighteenth century into the intense nationalism of the nineteenth. But however cosmopolitan were the ideas and principles professed by the leaders of thought at the dawn of the |