costly uniforms. The royal stables contained 1,857 horses and 217 carriages attended to by 1,458 men, whose livery cost 540,000 livres per annum. In addition to this little army there were twenty governors, besides sub-governors, chaplains, professors, cooks, and valets, to look after, train, and serve the pages; also thirty physicians, besides apothecaries, nurses, stewards, and treasurers; in all more than 1,500 men. The amount annually expended on the purchase of horses was 250,000 livres, while 287 horses were exercised daily in the two stables. The total cost of this service in the year 1787 was 6,200,000 livres. The royal kitchen was on the same scale, employing 486 people and costing annually 2,177,771 livres. Besides this, the kitchens of Madame Elizabeth and the other princesses cost 3,660,491 livres per annum. The wine merchant's bill came to 300,000 livres per annum, and the butcher's and other purveyors to a million. The household of the Duc d'Orléans consisted of 274 members; that of the princesses of 278; the Comtesse d'Artois employed 239; the Comtesse de Provence 256; and the Queen 496. When it was a question of forming a household' for Madame Royale, aged one month, it took eighty people to look after the young lady. The civil establishment of Monsieur' comprised 420-and his military 179 persons. The civil household of the Comte d'Artois numbered 456 and his military 237 persons. These are only a fraction of the total personnel at Versailles alone; time and space forbid a more extended numeration. And besides this head centre of rampant extravagance, there were the country seats of Marly, la Muette, Meudon, Choisy, Saint Hubert, Saint Germain, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, Saint Cloud, Rambouillet, without reckoning the Louvre, the Tuileries, and Chambord, each and all of which were conducted on the same scale of appalling extravagance.

While all this profusion reigned in the Court, a system of the most ridiculous and childish etiquette prevailed, which must have made the life of the monarch a burden to him, and degraded his satellites below the dignity of humanity. Two examples of this, translated from Taine, must suffice:

'In the morning the first valet de chambre awoke his Majesty five series of persons then entered the room, in rotation, and although the ante-chambers were vast, there were days when they.

could hardly contain the crowd of courtiers that thronged them. First took place the "family entry," consisting of the princes and princesses of the blood, together with the first physician and surgeon and other useful people. Then came the "grand entry," which comprised the high officers of state, some of the most favoured nobility, and the Queen's and princesses' ladies of honour, without reckoning the barbers, tailors, and valets of various kinds. Meanwhile, upon the King's ands was poured spirit of wine out of a silver-gilt dish, and he was then presented with the holy water vessel, upon which he said a prayer and crossed himself. Then, before the whole assembly he got out of bed, and put on his slippers. The Grand Chamberlain and the first lord presented him with his dressing-gown; he donned it, and took his seat on the arm-chair where he was to be dressed. At this moment the door reopens and a third wave rolls in-it is the "entry of the warrant officials," seigneurs who have the much-prized privilege of assisting at the "petit coucher," and with them arrives a cohort of servantsordinary doctors and surgeons, readers, and others. At the moment when the officers of the wardrobe approach the King to dress him, the first lord, informed by an usher, repeats to him the names of the great people who await at the door; this is the " fourth entry," called that of the bed-chamber, and it is more numerous than the others, consisting of a crowd of functionaries, of all descriptions, far too numerous to specify. Ushers marshal the throng and enjoin silence. Meanwhile, the King washes his hands and begins to undress himself. Two pages remove his slippers; the grand master of the wardrobe takes off his night-shirt by the right arm, while a valet brings the shirt in a covering of white silk. This is a solemn moment, the culminating point of the ceremony; the fifth entry" has begun, and in a few minutes, when the King has taken the shirt, all the remaining mob of notables and household officers who wait in the gallery will furnish this last wave. There is a rigid rubric for this shirt. The honour of presenting it is reserved to the son and grandson of France; failing them to the princes of the blood, "if legitimate"; failing them to the Grand Chamberlain or the first lord. Observe, that this last alternative rarely occurs, the princes being compelled to attend the rising of the King, as the princesses are obliged to attend that of the Queen. At last the shirt is presented; a valet of the wardrobe takes away the old one; the first valet of the wardrobe and the first valet de chambre hold the new one, one by the left arm, the other by the right, and during the operation two other valets de chambre hold before him his unfolded dressing-gown in fashion of a screen. The shirt is put on, and the toilet begins. A valet de chambre holds a looking-glass before the King, and two others, one on each side, light him if necessary with flambeaux. Valets of the wardrobe bring the rest of the clothes; the Grand Master of the Wardrobe passes to the King his vest and coat, to which he attaches the blue ribbon of St. Louis, and girds on his sword. Then the valet in charge of the handkerchiefs brings three in a saucer, and the

Grand Master of the Wardrobe offers the saucer to the King, who selects one of the handkerchiefs. Finally, the Master of the Wardrobe presents to the King his hat, his gloves, and his walking stick. His Majesty then goes to his bedside, kneels upon a priedieu, and says his prayers, while a chaplain pronounces in an undertone the prayer quæsumus deus omnipotens. That done, the King prescribes the order of the day, and passes with the leaders of his Court into his Cabinet, or sometimes grants audiences. Meanwhile all the rest wait in the gallery so as to accompany him to mass when he comes out. Such is his uprising-a play in five acts. Without question nothing could be better devised for occupying an aristocracy in emptiness. A hundred or so of great nobles have employed two hours in coming, in waiting, in entering, in defiling, in marshalling themselves, in remaining on their feet, in maintaining on their faces an easy and respectful air which befits actors on a great stage, and immediately afterwards the highest of them will go through the same mummery in the Queen's apartments.'

As to the last-named unfortunate lady, she had to submit to the same absurd rigmarole with regard to her chemise, and her lady-in-waiting. Madame Campan, describes in her memoirs how one day in the depth of winter she presented the garment to Her Majesty who had just got out of bed and stood shivering, half-naked, on the floor. The lady of honour enters, removes her gloves and takes up the chemise. A knock is heard at the door; it is the Duchess of Orleans, who removes her gloves and takes up the chemise. Another knock, and in comes the Comtesse d'Artois, who is privileged to take the chemise. Meanwhile the wretched Queen is waiting with chattering teeth, her arms crossed on her breast, and cannot refrain from murmuring: 'This is 'odious, what importunity!'

It will be seen from the foregoing that the seed of the French Revolution was sown some four centuries before the actual outbreak. It began to show above the ground when Richelieu completed the autocratic structure whose foundations had been laid by Louis XI.; it became a sturdy plant when Louis XIV. was able to make the arrogant boast, 'L'état c'est moi.' From that date there remained in France no other source of government than the royal will exercised through an all-pervading bureaucracy. In a monarchical State, in which representative institutions are either nonexistent or elementary and feeble, there is nothing so effectual

in restraining a despotic king as a powerful and high-spirited nobility. But the French nobles were reduced to the position of the King's spaniels, and had become so debauched and invertebrate that when the Revolution arrived they were unable to lift a hand to save their master. De Tocqueville points out that the only part of France which rose in arms for the monarchy was La Vendée, and that was the one province in which the nobility had continued to reside on their estates, and refused to join the courtiers at Versailles. For this they were impeached as disloyal by the Intendant of the Province, but they died sword in hand for their ungrateful sovereign at the head of their devoted and heroic tenantry.

Had the history of France taken the same course as that of England; had the Kings of France developed rational liberty instead of suppressing all liberty; had they fostered local life by maintaining municipal institutions instead of destroying them; had they encouraged the great nobles to reside on their estates and act as the leaders of provincial society; and had they recognized the truth that a contented and prosperous peasantry is the surest guarantee for the stability of a State, the French Revolution would never have occurred.

The entire absence of all experience in the responsibilities of power for a period of a century and three-quarters made the French people receptive of every wild scheme propounded by visionary theorists, and ready to believe that fantastic paper constitutions could inaugurate a Golden Age. Their only experience of government had imbued them with hatred of the past, and from the past they had a wild and frantic desire to cut themselves entirely adrift. Because the old regime had reeked with abuses, they were convinced that its reformation was impossible, and that an entirely new political structure must be erected on its ruins. The control of the country fell into the hands of those who had the full courage of their opinions, and were prepared to go to all extremes in carrying their theories into effect. The great body of the French nation had been deliberately rendered incapable of organizing its own self-government; and the extraordinary spectacle was presented to the world of a population of twentysix million people, subjected to the bloody tyranny of a ferocious, determined, and well-organized minority of less than half a million. Taine estimates the number of Jacobins VOL. 228. NO. 465.

N

in France as a whole at from three to four hundred thousand, of whom some six thousand were in the capital.

Burke, in his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' tells us that we do not draw the moral lessons we might 'from history,' which he describes as 'a great volume unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future 'wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.' Of this great volume the part which deals with the French Revolution abounds with lessons for future ages.

in it, for instance, the fatal consequences to a nation of the entire suppression of free institutions for nearly two centuries. A people, on the other hand, which keeps in close touch with the realities and responsibilities of government, will acquire a dignity, a sobriety, and a caution which will secure it from the pursuit of plausible chimeras and restrain it from the 'falsehood of extremes.' It will act upon the principle laid down by Burke as that which has distinguished our own country, and so largely contributed to the stability of its institutions; In what we improve we are never wholly new, and in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.' The French Revolution specially warns us of the danger of excessive centralization and bureaucracy. No doubt nations may fall into the opposite extreme, as in the case of the United States of America, where the doctrine of local sovereignty, or 'States Rights' pushed to its limit, precipitated the War of Secession. In England the present danger lies in the opposite direction. It is true that the great cities and towns of England and her sister kingdoms are, in many respects, object-lessons in the art of local government. The counties, too, in the main, exhibit the same success in their organization. But there is a constant tendency on the part of Parliament and the central bureaucracy to interfere with the independence of the local authorities. During the war this tendency had been enormously intensified. A gigantic new bureaucracy has been called into existence, and one of the most urgent of post-war problems will be the difficulty of disbanding this great army of male and female officials.

The worst fault a government can commit is that of governing too much. The utmost that a statesman can hope successfully to accomplish is by wise laws to ensure equal