For he is to become the man who shall say: "I am the State;" and who shall carry out to its extreme that monarchical principle, which makes the nation's life a pulsation from the sovereign's heart; its political action, an expression of his will. This man is to sit in the place of God; making law even for the conscience.

This course of lectures is mainly literary; yet as their author has justly shown, the political affairs of a country greatly modify its intellectual development. The inquiry is then natural, when we see how prominent a feature of the age absolute monarchy was; how shall we account for the fact that the theory of absolutism, in its modern form, then came to its maturity, and that it was so thoroughly reduced to practice; and how, likewise, came society to receive it so unresistingly? The answer to those inquiries involves an interesting view of the growth of political principles, and of the advance of society in France.

Beginning with the reign of Charles the Bald, A. D. 843, we find the Barons retaining their feudal independence of the throne; being bound to the king merely as their military chief, whose summons they must obey only in case of invasion by foreign enemies. Royalty was then a very limited power. When Hugh Capet (987) assumed the crown, he found it necessary to reconquer its prerogatives from the nobility. The policy of the Capetian line was, to divide and conquer, by attaching part of the nobility to the king, against the others, and enlisting the church against the lay vassals generally. A series of causes then intervened to lessen the power of the nobility, and increase that of the crown. Among the most prominent, perhaps, was the gradual growth of the communes and cities; leading finally, in the eleventh century, to those simultaneous insurrections by which their charters were secured.

And as the communes gain a position and political power, we see society resolving itself more distinctly into those two elements: the sovereign and the people. That sentiment which we are so accustomed to witness, and which we call nationality, public spirit, patriotism, was scarcely known in France until the fourteenth century. And it is singular to observe how the two great elements of modern society, nationality and royalty, then grew together; those two elements whose collision has given to modern revolutions their terrible character. This nationality of France finds one of its first, as well as its most romantic expressions, in the character and history of the Maid of Orleans; while the modern conception of a sovereign begins to be realized in Louis XI. For in him we find no longer a ruler governing, as his barbarian predecessors did, by the right derived from popular election; not as a monarch of the old imperial type; nor even as a theocratic king; but simply as a hereditary chief magistrate, governing by intellectual power instead of physical force. It is true, his intellectual power was rather cunning than wisdom; yet it was a new exercise of royalty, and, on the whole, a change for the better. Chateaubriand says of him, with great beauty of expression, but with less profound analysis than Guizot employs, "Louis XI. appeared on earth to plant the throne of absolute monarchy on the yet palpitating corpse of feudalism. This prince, standing alone between the dying middle ages and the modern times just emerging into existence, with one hand consigned to the scaffold the old freedom of the nobles, while with the other he submerged the young civic freedom; shrewdly conciliating the people, whose rising liberties he was crushing, by sacrificing the aristocracy, and thus flattering the democratic passion for equality."

Absolute monarchy was then a gradual growth. And in the

person of Louis XIV. it found the qualities needed, both for its full development, and to make it welcome to his subjects. So that although the theory of absolutism by no means originated. with him; Louis XI. having acted upon it; it having flourished in Spain under Charles V. and Philip II.; yet to Louis XIV. must be attributed its more definite establishment, and its popularity in the other States of Europe. And while we must deprecate this absorption by one man, of all the powers needed to govern society, we, at the same time, must acknowledge that it was just the remedy France then needed; as it has recently again proved itself to be the only effective remedy for her social disorders. He found the nation humbled to the lowest degree by the maladministration of the Cardinals, and he raised it to the highest position among the States of Europe. Though it must be remembered that another view of the case presents itself as we approach the end of his long and brilliant reign. Yet he accomplished, by means of an absolute power, the political regeneration of France. And no man was ever better suited to be a representative of despotism. His natural endowments were of a high order; though his education was deeply defective. What palliation this makes for his terrible faults and crimes, is known fully only to One. His person was noble and full of physical vigor; his figure being tall, and his features elegant. A peculiar dignity of language and manner was combined with grace of attitude and of movement. The Spanish gravity of his mother, rendered graceful by the polished suavity of his French father, made him just the king that people would have chosen. When Mazarin died, Louis was but twenty-two years old, and entirely devoted to the pleasures of the court and of hunting. On the decease of this crafty Italian minister, the Secretary of State came to the young king and inquired: "To whom, Sire, shall we now apply for directions?" "To

B

me," was his prompt reply, uttered with a dignity of manner and a majesty of tone, which gave the inquirer to understand that France had now found a king; one worthy to call Henry IV. his grandfather. The sceptre once in his hand, he really ruled as well as reigned. Although he had grown up in entire ignorance of manly affairs, and especially of kingcraft, his thoughts and time having been devoted to gallantry and pleasure, yet he entered at once upon the business of his office with a tact and skill which were surprising. Yet we must not exaggerate; he was a popular sovereign, but not a truly great man. His actions never justified, at the bar of history, his French title: "Louis le Grand." To that age and people, indeed, he was the great monarch; but not to the discriminating eye of history. He possessed, says Grouvelle, "justness, solidity, constancy, and application. He united thereto habitual discretion, and the seriousness which conceals deficiencies. He could inspire an awe that amounted to worship." So great in fact was that power, as almost to justify the reply of Cardinal de Retz. When this restless ecclesiastic, long banished from the Court, was at length restored to favor, the king, on meeting him, remarked: "Cardinal, you have grown gray.” "Sire," replied the courtier, "one grows gray quickly, who is under the displeasure of your majesty." But what most exalted him with the French was, that he was thoroughly a Frenchman; concentrating in himself the good and the bad national qualities to a high degree. He was chivalrous in his love of arms and woman; though, in reality, neither a warrior nor a husband; for, the value and the nature of domestic life he did not comprehend. Polish of manner, etiquette, theatrical display of qualities, he was master of, to an extraordinary degree. He was not a hero; but he played the hero. He was not learned; but he acted the character of Augustus, the patron

of learning. He loved the glory of France, which he regarded as identical with the glory of Louis XIV. This fell in with the national taste; and the people and the king were thus united in the chief object of their mutual desires. He was, also, eminently pious, in the Catholic way; being at once superstitious and immoral; devout, but living in the violation of the laws of God. That is, to this day, characteristic, by no means of every Frenchman, but to a great extent, of the so-called higher classes of France; nay, of every Roman Catholic people, where the priests are patronized by the government.

Yet we must admit that even a monarch in some measure shares the glory of his court, his army, and his country. The power to call great minds into action, and the ability to select them, and set them in their appropriate spheres, has certainly always distinguished great rulers. And such we find under Louis, in every department. We may cite as a prominent instance, Colbert, whose financial genius saved the nation from threatening bankruptcy; whose organizing spirit developed the material resources and industrial power of France; who gave her a share in the vast profits of that traffic from which England, Holland, Flanders, Germany, Venice, Genoa, and the Levant, had hitherto reaped so rich a harvest.

It must, then, be conceded that Louis had qualities which secured the respect of judicious and able men; that he raised his country from a very low condition, to which she had been brought by the Cardinals; and placed her in the first rank of nations. Spain had been permitted either to ravage the land, or to keep a menacing army on the frontier. Civil war had dried up the resources, and paralyzed the power of the people and government. France was sinking among the rising nations of Europe. But Louis at once commenced a course of war and diplomacy, which preserved her territorial integrity, and gave