' LIBRARY OF THE ' UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAICN BOOICSTACKS B H. BLACKWELL Ltd Booksellers OXFORD r / V sr-13 \%d5jp% 1 IS nof T^y 7? >>tr HviOShjW tfLfkrS-J yVn> ^ v [Afr^ THE HISTOEY OF MODERN CIVILIZATION Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/historyofmoderncOOvers THE HISTORY OF MODERN CIVILIZATION A HANDBOOK BASED UPON M. GUSTAVE DUCOUDRAY’S “ HISTOIRE SOMMAIRE DE LA CIVILISATION” WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: CHAPMAN AND LIMITED 1891 HALL LONDON: PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD. mi PREFACE. The aim of the Handbook of “ The History of Modern Civili¬ zation ”—a continuation and completion of “ The History of Ancient Civilization,” published in the same form more than a year ago—is to give to young students and general readers a comprehensive view of the progress of the nations, as far as it is known, out of the decadence of ancient civilization, through mediaeval barbarism, until the}^ emerge in modern and advance to contemporary civilization. It is hoped that it may stimulate younger readers to pursue historical studies further, and may occasionally be useful to older students as a grouping together of knowledge already acquired. Though based on M. Ducoudray’s “ Histoire Sommaire de la Civilisation,” this handbook is rather an adaptation than a trans¬ lation ; for M. Ducoudray’s standpoint is so exclusively French, that it has been necessary not only to omit much and to correct freely, hut also to fill numerous and extensive gaps in his know¬ ledge of England and other countries. J. V. January , 1891. CONTENTS. BOOK I.—THE NEW RELIGION. CHAPTER I. CHRISTIANITY-REORGANIZATION AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. PAGE Summary.—T he Preparation for the Advent of Christianity ; the Con¬ dition of Religion and Philosophy in the Roman World—Unity of the Roman World; the Right of Universal Citizenship—The Christian Religion—The Persecutions—The Primitive Organiza¬ tion of the Church: the Catacombs—The Apologists: Tertulliaa —Influence of Christianity—The Decadence of the Roman Empire ; its Causes; the Absence of a Constitution—The Power and Rivalry of the Praetorians and the Armies; Civil Wars—Invasion of the Barbarians—Attempts at Restoration in the Fourth Century; Diocletian; the Tetrarchy—The Work of Constantine; the Im¬ perial Power; the Great Officers—Separation of the Military and Civil Powers—Division of the Provinces into Prefectures, Dioceses, &c.—The New Nobility—The Classes—The Curiales—The Inferior Classes; the Plebs; Husbandmen—Slaves—The Taxes—Constan¬ tine and Christianity; the Edict of Milan (313)—Organization of the Church; Bishops, Archbishops, &c.—The Council of Nicaea — Constantinople — The Pagan Reaction under Julian — The Heresies; the Fathers of the Greek Church—The Fathers of the Latin Church—Hermits and Monks—Final Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire, and of the Success of the Invasions—What Rome has given to the World—The Legacy of Antiquity.- -{Notes : The Roman Calendar—Basilicas transformed into Churches) . . 1 CONTENTS. vm BOOK II.—THE MIDDLE AGES. CHAPTER II. THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.-GERMANIC SOCIETY. PAGE Summary. —The Middle Ages—The New Races—The Germans : Agri¬ cultural and Military Life—The Germanic Family—The Ger¬ manic Tribes—Germanic Royalty — The Assemblies—Justice— Individuality—Slavery amongst the Germans — Religion — Bar¬ barian Kingdoms, Visigoths, Vandals, &c. — Destruction of the Western Empire (476)—The Ostrogoths : Theodoric—The Bar¬ barian Laws — Decadence of the Barbarian Kingdoms — Mili¬ tary Supremacy of the Franks—Frank and Roman Society: the Monarchy — The Classes — Finance; Justice—The Church and Barbarian Society: the Bishops—The Right of Asylum; the Ton- sure ; the Clerks—The Councils : Excommunication—Wealth of the Church—The Monasteries—The Papacy—Alliance between the Frank Kings and the Church: Accession of the Carolingians—- The Temporal Power of the Popes—Europe in the Eighth Century. {Notes : T he Salic Law—The Monasteries) . . . . .41 CHAPTER III. THE EASTERN EMPIRE.-RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE WEST. Summary.— The Eastern Empire : Justinian — Justinian’s Legislative Work : the Monuments of Roman Law—Luxury of the Emperors of the Enst: Games in the Circus—Byzantine Art — Painting: Mosaics—The Sect of Iconoclasts—The Greek Schism (857—1054) — Weakness and Longevity of the Byzantine Empire — The West: Charlemagne and his Wars—Restoration of the Western Empire : Coronation of Charlemagne (800)—The Administration of Charlemagne : Roman Traditions — Ecclesiastical Organization— The Intellectual Renaissance—Germanic Traditions—Character of Charlemagne’s Work: its Results. — {Note: Sovereigns of the Eastern Empire) .......... 65 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER IY. THE ARABS.-THE CALIPHATES OF BAGDAD AND CORDOVA.- MUSSULMAN CIVILIZATION. PAGE Summary.— The Invasion from the South ; its Character : the Arabs —Mahomet and his Religion — The Koran—The Ulema : the Imaums — Social and Political Influence of Mahomedanism— Preaching by the Sword—The Arab Empire: the two Caliphates —Prosperity of the Caliphate of Bagdad: Commerce—The Cali¬ phate of Cordova: Prosperity of Spain—Arab Literature—Science — Art — Character and Influence of Arab Civilization. — (Note: Some Verses of the Koran) . . . . . • • .80 CHAPTER V. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. Summary.— Dismemberment of Charlemagne’s Empire—Feudalism— Origin of Feudalism—Subordination of the Land ; the Edict of Mersen (847)—Public Offices become hereditary; Edict of Kiersy- sur-Oise (877)—Social Organization; the Nobility—The Clergy— The Inferior Classes—Political Disorganization ; Feudal Monarchy — Feudal Administration, War, Justice, and Finance—Feudal Activity and Independence—Defects of the Feudal System . . 96 CHAPTER VI. FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. Summary. —Efforts of the Church to counteract Disorder ; the Truce of God —Distant Expeditions—The Enfranchisement of the Church ; the Investitures; Pope Gregory VII. (1073 —1085)—Religious Unity; Theocracy—The Crusades; their Causes—Duration and Character of the Crusades (1095 —1270) — Political and Economic Results of the Crusades—Chivalry—The Monarchies ; the Cape- tians in France; the Feudal Monarchy ; Commencement of the Administration—Alliance of the Capetians with the Church and People—England ; Contrast between English and French Feu¬ dalism—Spain ; the Crusade against the Moors; Character of the X CONTENTS . PAGE Spanish Nobility—Italian Feudalism—Germany ; Progress of Ger¬ man Feudalism—The German Empire in the Middle Ages—The Papacy ; Rivalry between the Sacerdotal Power and the Empire (1073—1250)—Results; the Ruin of the two Ambitions; Progress of a National Spirit amongst the Populations—Progress of the Urban Populations ; Imperial German Cities—The Italian Re¬ publics ; the Democracy in Florence; the Aristocracy in Venice— The French Communes—New Cities; the Middle Classes—The Third Estate — Advantages and Results of Communal Liberty— Dangers and Decline of the Communal Movement—The Country; Progress of Enfranchisement; the Parishes; the Statutes of Louis S. (1315)—Origin of Public Liberties; the States-General in France (1302) — The Great Charter in England (1215); the English Parliament (1258—1295)—The Spanish Cones . . . 109 CHAPTER VII. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Summary.— Society in the Middle Ages — The Nobility ; Manners— Armorial Bearings—Tournaments—Meals—The Commoners—The Feudal Family—The Rights of Primogeniture—The Government of the Church ; the Councils—The Bishops—The Monasteries; New Religious Orders; the Carthusians — The Franciscans and Dominicans—Ritual; Religious Festivals—Superstitions—Heresies —Industry—The Corporations — Commerce; the Parisian Ex¬ change; Restriction and Taxes—The Jews; Bills of Exchange— Maritime Commerce; Venice; Genoa; the Hanseatic League— Travels; Marco-Polo — Education; the Paris Schools and Uni¬ versity—Instruction ; Scholasticism—Nominalism and Realism— Philosophy and Theology; the Great Doctors — Formation of Languages; the French Language—Epic Poetry; The Chansons de geste —Allegoric Poetry—Southern Poetry ; the Troubadours— Birth of the Theatre—Prose; History — Law; Revival of the Roman Law; the Sumptuary Laws—The Sciences ; Alchemy— Italian Language and Poetry; Dante, Petrarch—Art in Italy— French Art; Military Architecture—Religious Architecture; the Romance Style ; the Gothic Style — Sculpture — Music in the Middle Ages—Civilization in the Thirteenth Century—The Four¬ teenth Century; Decline of the Feudal System; Transformation of Society. — ( Notes : Scholastics and Doctors of the Church— Troubadours—Chroniclers—Savants, Physicians, Astronomers) . 132 CONTENTS. XI BOOK III.—MODERN TIMES. CHAPTER VIII. MODERN STATES IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. GREAT MARITIME DISCOVERIES. PAGE Summary. —Great Inventions and Great Discoveries—Modern Times— Evolution in Political Order ; Progress of Monarchy in France— Decline of the Feudal System in England ; Wars of the Roses ; the Tudors—The Spanish Monarchy—Division of Germany ; Partition of Italy—Formation and Greatness of Austria—Power of Kings ; European Wars—The Great Maritime Discoveries ; the Portuguese —Discoveries hy the Spaniards; Christopher Columbus ; the New World (1492)—Discovery of the Pacific Ocean; the First Voyage Round the World (1521); Mexico and Peru—Colonial Policy of Spain and Portugal—Commercial Monopoly—Consequence of the Maritime Discoveries ; Development of Commerce — Diffusion of Gold and Silver Money—Change of the Commercial Routes—Move- able Wealth ..181 CHAPTER IX. THE RENAISSANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. Summary. —The Renaissance; the Circumstances that aided it—The Renaissance in Italy; the Humanists—Italian Literature—The Poets; Ariosto, Tasso—History; Politics—Machiavelli—Guicciardini— The Humanists in France—The College of France—Erasmus— French Literature in the Fifteenth Century—Poetry in the Sixteenth Century—Marot, Ronsard, Jodelle—Law—History—Philosophy— Ramus, Montaigne, Rabelais—Literature in the Sixteenth Century — Spanish Literature — Cervantes — Lope de Vega — Portugal ; Camoens—Birth and Brilliancy of English Literature—Shakespeare (1564—1616)—The Birth of Science—Copernicus (1493—1543)— Tycho Brahe — The Reform of the Calendar — Mathematics — Medicine : Paracelsus, Vesalius, Ambroise Pare—Astrology and Sorcery—The Renaissance of Art in Italy—Architecture: Brunel¬ leschi and Bramante—Michael Angelo—French Architecture — Philibert Delorme — Pierre Lescot—Italian Sculpture—French Sculpture—Painting : the Earliest Italian Masters of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries — Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio — The XU CONTENTS. PAGE Earliest Flemish Artists ; the Invention of Painting in Oil (1410) ; the Brothers Yan Eyck—Character of Italian Painting, Pagan and Christian Subjects—The Italian Schools ; the Florentine School : Pt-rugino, Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519)—The Homan School: Michael Angelo (1474—1564)—Kaphael (1483—1520)—School of Lombardy : Correggio (1494—1534)—Venetian School : Giorgio Barbarelli (1477—1511), T.tian (1477—1576)—Tintoretto, Paul Veronese—Bolognese School: the Carracci—Painting in Spain— Painting in France—Flemish Painting—German Painting: Holbein, Albert Diirer—Ceramics : Bernard Palissy—Music. ( Note : The Principal Scientific Men of the Sixteenth Century) . . . .194 CHAPTER X. THE REFORMATION. Summary. —The Religious Reformation, its Causes—Luther (1483—1546); Character of his Reformation—The Reformation in the Northern Countries —The Reformation in England—The Reformation in Switzerland ; Zwingle ; Calvin (1509—1564)—The Principles and Consequences of Calvinism—Restoration of Catholicism ; Religious Wars—Division of Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism— Influence of the Protestant Reformation upon Politics, and upon the Economic and Intellectual Movement.238 CHAPTER XI. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-RELIGION-POLITICS-TRADE AND FINANCE. Summary.— Protestantism and Catholicism in the Seventeenth Century— The Thirty Years’ War in Germany—The Presbyterians and Puri¬ tans in England; the Revolutions of 1640 and 1688—Religious Wars in France under Louis XIII.; the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes under Louis XIV.—Influence of the Religious Revolution on Society—Character of Christianity in the Seventeenth Century— Religious Orders for Women ; Sisters of Charity; Saint Vincent de Paul—Political Europe in the Seventeenth Century; the Great Wars ; Progress of Military Art—The European Equilibrium ; the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ; Diplomacy—Preponderance of France ; the Wars of Louis XIV.—Internal Policy of the Kingdoms; Triumph of Absolute Monarchy in France — The Monarchy o Louis XIV.—The Central Power ; Provincial Administration — CONTENTS. Xlll PAGE Police, the Army, Justice, Finance—The Church—The Monarch and Economic Interests—Results and Vices of Absolute Monarchy in France—Absolute Monarchy in Spain—Monarchy in the various States of Europe—The Stuarts in England—The Revolutions of 1640 and of 1688—The Declaration of Rights ; the Constitutional Monarchy—The Economic Movement—Maritime and Colonial Em¬ pire of Holland—England, her First Colonies; the Navigation Act —Economic Progress of France ; Sully, Richelieu—Colbert’s Ser¬ vices ; Development of French Industry—Colbert’s Theories, the Protective System ; the System of Balance—Internal Commerce— The Navy and the Mercantile Fleets — Commercial Companies, Colonies.247 CHAPTER XII. LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ARTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Summary.—T he Intellectual Movement; French Society in the Seven¬ teenth Century ; Conversation ; Wit—French Literature ; Taste ; Malherbe; the Authors of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, or the Age of Richelieu—Classical Tragedy ; Corneille (1606—1684) —Renaissance of Philosophy ; Prose ; Descartes ; Pascal—Authors of the Reign of Louis XIV. ; the King’s Personal Influence — Poetry: Racine, Moliere, Boileau — Eloquence in the Pulpit: Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Fenelon—Madame de Sevigne ; La Bruy ere— La Fontaine—The Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns— The Opera; Quinault—Memoirs; History—Philosophy; Malebranche —Education ; the Learned Societies—Origin of the Periodical Press —Literature in England : Ben Jonson, Bacon—Milton (1608—1674) — Bunyan— Locke (1632—1704)—Holland; the Jew Spinoza— Germany ; Leibnitz — Spain ; Calderon ; Literary Decadence — Science, Mathematics—Astronomy : Kepler (1571—1630) ; Galileo (1564—1642) ; Newton (1642—1727)—Physical Science ; Bacon’s Experimental Method—Galileo, Toricelli, Pascal, Mariotte—Steam; Denis Papin—Natural Science; the Botanical Gardens ; Tournefort —Medicine—The Arts ; French Architecture—Sculpture ; Puget— Painting ; the Italian School ; Guercino, Albano, Domenichino, Salvator Rosa—Painting in Spain ; Ribera, "Velasquez, Murillo— French Painting; Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorraine — Flemish Artists in France ; Philip de Champaigne ; Van der Meulen— Greatness of the Flemish School : Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens— Animal Painters ; Snyders—The Painters of Genre ; David Teniers —The Dutch School ; Rembrandt—Gerard Dow, Terburg, Metzu —Ruysdael, Hobbema—The Results of the Seventeenth Century . 271 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. THE ARTS, SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL MOVEMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PAGK Summary. —New Character of Art in the Eighteenth Century—Architec¬ ture—Sculpture—Artistic Furniture of Modem Times—The Styles of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Lords XVI.—French Painting— Painting in Germany and England—The Scientific Movement; Mathematicians; Euler, d’Alembert, Clairaut, Lagrange—Astro¬ nomy ; Bradley, Herschell, Maupertuis, Mechain, Delambre — Laplace—The Physical Sciences ; Thermometers ; Air Balloons— Steam Engines; Newcomen, James Watt—Electricity—Fnnklin; Lightning Conductors—Dynamic Electricity ; Galvani and Volta— Chemistry ; Priestley, Scheele, Lavoisier—The Natural Sciences; Buffon, Linnaeus—Medicine; Jenner—The Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb and for the Blind ; the Abbe de l’Epee; Valentine Haiiy —French Literature in the Eighteenth Century; the Followers of the Traditions of the Preceding Century; Massillon, Saint-Simon —Decadence of Poetry—Voltaire the Dramatist—Voltaire the Author, his Historical Works—Voltaire the Philosopher—French Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century; Condillac, Helvetius, the “ Encyclo¬ pedia,” d’Alembert, Diderot—The Political Writers ; Montesquieu, the “Esprit des Lois”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau; the “ Contrat Social ; ” “ Emile ” — Birth of Political Economy ; Goumay, Quesnay, Adam Smith—The Novel; Lesage, Bernardin de Saint- Pierre— Prose Comedies ; Marivaux, Beaumarchais—Character and Influence of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century—English Literature; The Essayists; Addison—The Novel; Defoe, Fielding —Poetry in England—Philosophy; History ; Eloquence—German Literature ; Lessing—Poetry ; Klopstock—Goethe—Schiller—Wie- land—German Philosophy ; Kant — Italian Literature—Music ; its Progress in Modem Times; Rameau, Gluck, Pergolesi, Gretry —The German School—Bach, Handel, Haydn— Mozart. . . 302 CHAPTER XIV. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 . Summary. —The Economic Movement in the Eighteenth Century ; Insti¬ tution of Credit — Law’s System; the Bank Note—Geographical Discoveries—Maritime Commerce; the Colonies; Colonial Power CONTENTS. XV PAGE of England — The Colonial System of Modem States — Colonial Produce—Emancipation of the English Colonies in America; the United States—Industry in Europe ; French Industry—Industry and Commerce in the Central and Northern Countries of Europe— Political State of Europe; the Latin Slavs ; the Civilization of Eastern Europe; Poland—The Partition of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795)—Origin and Development of the Kingdom of Prussia — Frederic II. (1740—1786); the City of Berlin—The Greeks and Slavs; Formation and Progress of the Russian Empire—Peter the Great (1672—1725)—St. Petersburg (1703)—The Work of Peter the Great—Catherine II. (1762—1796)—Character of Russian Civi¬ lization— The Scandinavian States; Stockholm, Copenhagen — Austria; the Reforms of Joseph II.—The Principalities of Ger¬ many and the Holy Roman Empire — Portugal, Pombal — The Bourbon Dynasty in Spain; Reforms of El Conde d’Aranda — Italy—Results of the Work of Modem Times—State of France in 1789 — Monarchical Principles—The Feudal Constitution of the Government and Administration—Justice—Finance—The Army— The Church — Feudal Character of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce—Character of Society—Political, Economic, and Social Causes of the Revolution . . . » . . . .334 BOOK IV .— 1 THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD. CHAPTER XV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Summary.— General Character of the Revolution, its Philosophical and - Classical Spirit—The Social, Economic, and Political Aim of the Revolution—The Social Work of the Constituent Assembly; the Principles of Equality ; the Night of the 4th of August—Civil Equality—Equality in the Family—Political Action ; the Principles of 1789—Administrative Reforms, Political Unity ; the Departments —Financial Reforms—The Civil Constitution of the Clergy—Repre¬ sentative Government; the Constitution of 1791—Economic Reform; the Development of Small Landowners ; Relief of Agriculture— Liberty of Industry and Commerce—Effort to Return to Credit ; the Assignats ; the Assembly and Law’s System—Result of the Work of the Constituent Assembly—The Legislative Assembly ; XVI CONTENTS. PAGE Fall of the Monarchy (10th of August, 1792)—The Republic ; the Convention (1792—1795)—Divisions and Violence of the Convention —The Thermidorian Reaction—The Constitution of the Year III.— Labours and Creations of the Convention—The Directory (1795— 1799); the Coups d’Etat—Social Disorder—Financial Disorder— The Army ; the Law of Conscription—Preponderance of the Army; the Coup d’Etat of the 18 and 19 Brumaire (9th and 10th of Novem¬ ber, 1799). 367 CHAPTER XVI. THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE-NAPOLEONIC EUROPE- DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. Summary.— The Consulate ; Constitution of the Year VIII. — Plebiscites —The Electoral System ; the Lists of Notabilite—Administrative Reorganization—Justice ; the Courts of Appeal; the Civil Code— The New Financial System ; the Control and Collection of Taxes— Religious Peace; the Concordat (1801—1802)—The Legion of Honour (1802); Public Instruction, the Lycees—Economic Reforms; Credit, the Bank of France—The Work of the Consulate—The Empire ; the Senatus-Consultum of the Year XII. (1804)—The Great Dignitaries; tbe New Nobility—Napoleon’s Work ; Military Art—Finance—The Codes—Public Works—Industry—Exhibitions —Industrial Consequences of the Continental Blockade—The Univer¬ sity—(1806)—Imperial Absolutism—The French Empire and Europe in 1810—Diffusion of Ideas of French Revolution in Europe ; Belgium, Holland, the Rhenish Provinces, Switzerland—Effect of French Revolution on Italy—Simplification of the Germanic Chaos — Effect of French Revolution on Germany—Effect of French Revolution on Spain; the Constitution of 1812—Prussia ; Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst—Effect of French Revolution on Sweden and Russia—Principles of the Revolution turned against Napoleon 388 CHAPTER XVII. EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES SINCE 1815 . Summary. —Europe in 1815—The Holy Alliance—The Different Govern¬ ments in France since 1815 ; the Restoration (1815—1830) ; the Charter of 1814—Attempts at Political, Economic, and Social Re- CONTENTS. XYll PAC-K action—The Political Results of the Restoration ; Representative Government; the Responsibility of Ministers—The Monarchy of July ; Parliamentary Government — Property Suffrage — Political Consequences of the Economic Revolution ; Progress of the Indus¬ trial Classes; Socialism—The Republic of 1848 ; Universal SuHrage ; the Constitution of 1848—The Constitution of 1852—The Second Empire and its Transformations (1852—1870)—The National Assem¬ bly of 1871; the Third Republic ; the Constitution of 1875—Political Results of the Contemporary Epoch in France—European Powers since 1815 ; Conflict between Modern Ideas and the Ancien Regime —The Great Wars since 1848—Europe as it now is—Progress of Liberal Ideas ; Parliamentary Government—England : Progress of Liberal Ideas since 1815; Catholic Emancipation (1829); Parlia¬ mentary Reform Bill (1831—1832); Abolition of Slavery (1834) ; the Poor Laws—Sir Robert Peel’s great Economic Reforms; the Income Tax; Abolition of the Corn Laws (1846) ; Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849); Liberty Granted to the Colonies—Parlia¬ mentary Reforms in 1867 and 1884—England and Ireland—The English Constitution ; the Government ; Parliament—The Aristo¬ cracy, the Gentry ; Local Administration, Parishes, Counties, Justice—Character of the English Nation—Belgium and its Con¬ stitution (1831)—Constitutional Monarchy in Spain (1837) ; Portugal —Holland : Constitution of 1848—The Swiss Confederation ; the Federal Constitution—Denmark—Sweden : Constitution of 1866— Kingdom of Italy—The Holy See—Constitutional Austria (1861— 1867); Austrian and Hungarian Parliaments—Constitutional Rule in Prussia (1850—1867)—The German Imperial Parliament (1871); Military Power of the German Empire—Russia: the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861 ) —Territory of the Principal States; Population— Military Power — Maritime Power — Financial Power — Political Europe at the Present Time.- 408 CHAPTER XVIII. LITRRATURE AVD ART IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Summary. —Renovation of Literature : Revival of Religious and Poetic Feeling; Chateaubriand—Malame de Stael—The Literary Move¬ ment under the Restoration; Influence of Foreign Literatures— Lyrical Poetry; Lamartine (1790—1869)—Victor Hugo (1802— 1885)—Dispute between the Classicists and Romanticists—Victor Hugo and the Drama—Victor Hugo's last Works—Casimir Dela- vigne; Beranger—Poetry since 1830; Alfred de Musset (1810 — 1857)—Tne Theatre since 1830—Novels—The Historical Move- b XV111 CONTENTS. PAGE ment; Augustin Thierry ; Guizot—Thiers—Mignet, Michelet— Erudition, learned Societies—The Philosophical Movement; Royer- Collard ; Cousin ; the various Schools—The Religious Movement— Political Economy—Parliamentary Eloquence—The Press—Literary Criticism—English Literature ; Poetry ; the Lake School—Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne—Walter Scott—The Historical Novel—Charles Dickens—History and Philosophy— Macaulay—German Literature—Italian Literature—Art: David and his School—Gros; Gerard—The Classicists and the Romanticists; Ingres; Idealism—Gericault—Eugene Delacroix—Paul Delaroche ; Ary Scheffer—Artists since 1830; Horace Vernet—Meissonier— Hippolyte Flandrin ; Cabanel—Painting in Germany, England, Belgium, &c. — Sculpture — Architecture — Music, the Classical School—The Great Operas: Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Auber, &c.—Comic Operas : Boieldieu, Adam, Auber, Herold, &c. . . 457 CHAPTER XIX. THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATION TO INDUSTRY. Summary. —The Scientific Movement; Natural Sciences : Cuvier ; Geof- froy Saint-Hilaire—Alexander von Humboldt—Elie de Beaumont; Flourens — Evolution — Darwin : Wallace — Mathematical and Physical Sciences : Ampere ; Arago ; Biot—(Erstedt; Bunsen ; Faraday; Humphry Davy—Gay-Lussac—Dumas; Balard—Astro¬ nomy: Arago; LeVerrier—Meteorological Observations—Medicine — Physiology: Claude Bernard—Application of the Physical Sciences ; Navigation by Steam—Locomotives, Railways ; Stephen¬ son ; Seguin—Electro-magnetism and the Telegraph—Wheatstone and Morse’s System of Telegraphy—Electricity as an Industrial Agent, Ruhmkorff's System—Artificial Light : Lighthouses—Gas Light—The Electric Light—Air Balloons—Artesian Wells—Sus¬ pension Bridges—Photography—The Telephone—The Phonograph —Application of Chemistry — The Scientific Movements of the Nineteenth Century ......... 489 CHAPTER XX. ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS AND MORAL PROGRESS. Summary. —Agriculture—Agricultural Shows and Societies—Agriculture in Europe—Industry ; Mechanical Processes ; First Experiments in the Eighteenth Century ; Arkwright (1732—1792); Cotton Spinning; CONTENTS. XIX PAGE the Spinning-Jenny—Flax and Hemp Spinning; Philippe de Girard —Silk Spinning and Weaving; Jacquard—Manufacture of Paper by Machinery—Printing ; Lithography—Porcelain in Saxony and France in the Eighteenth Century—Glass—Various Industries— Manufacture of Beetroot Sugar—Importance of the Metal Industry —Industrial Activity of the Different Nations—Industrial Associa¬ tions : Co-operative Societies—Railways—Triumphs of Engineering Art ; the Mont Cenis and St. Gothard Tunnels—The Revolution produced by Railways—The Post; the Universal Postal Union — The Telegraph—Submarine Telegraphs — Transatlantic Navi¬ gation— Piercing of the Isthmus of Suez — Ferdinand de Lesseps — Universal Exhibitions (1851, 1855, 1862, 1867, 1873, 1876, 1878, 1889)—International Commissions ; Propagation of the Metric System - Unity of Coinage—Credit ; Institutions of Credit ; Insur¬ ances—Free Trade and Commercial Treaties—Commercial Activity of the Various Nations—Results of the Economic Revolution—Pro¬ longation of the Average of Life—Moral Progress ; Public Educa¬ tion in France—Public Education in Europe—Progress of Legisla¬ tion— Diminution of Crime — Provident Institutions — Charity; Benevolent Institutions.508 CHAPTER XXI. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. jmmary.—E fforts made by European Civilization to extend over the World—America ; Rapid Progress of the United States—Govern¬ ment ; Federal Constitution of the United States ; Freedom of Indi¬ vidual States—Army ; Navy ; Finance—The North and South ; Slavery ; The War of Secession (1861—1865)—Abolition of Slavery (1865)—Agricultural Wealth of the United States—Mineral Wealth: Coal, Iron, Petroleum, &c.—Californian Gold Mines—Industry and Commerce—Railways in the United States—Education—Literature —American Society—Biitish America ; the Dominion of Canada— The North-West Passage—South America; the Emancipation of the Spanish Colonies—Brazil—The Republics of South and Central America—Mexico—Africa: British Possessions—British South Africa —France in Africa; Senegal—Algeria—Tunis—The Exploration of Africa ; the Niger ; the Sources of the Nile—Livingstone; Southern and Central Africa—Cameron ; Stanley—The Congo Free State — Ogowe : French Culony of the Congo—Schweinfurth ; Nachtigal— XX CONTENTS. Portuguese Colonies—German Colonies—The Colonial Empire of Holland—The English in Australia—European Powers in Asia; the British Empire in India—The Material Condition of India : Popu¬ lation ; Railways—The Productions of India—Industry and Art— Moral Condition ; Castes ; Religions— The Russian Empire in Asia; Siberia—The Caucasian Provinces and Turkestan—China—Chinese Civilization ; Population ; Government—Religion ; Legislation— —Agriculture—Industry—Progress of China—Japan—Government and Progress of Japan—The World as it now is . . . . §39 THE HISTORY OP MODERN CIVILIZATION. BOOK I. ( THE NEW RELIGION. CHAPTER I. CHRISTIANITY-REORGANIZATION AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Summary : The Preparation for the Advent of Christianity; the Condition of Religion and Philosophy in the Roman World—Unity of the Roman World; the Right of Universal Citizenship—The Christian Religion—The Persecutions—The Primitive Organization of the Church: the Catacombs—The Apologists : Tertullian—Influence of Christianity —The Decadence of the Roman Empire ; its Causes ; the Absence of a Constitution—The Power and Rivalry of the Praetorians and the Armies; Civil Wars—Invasion of the Barbarians—Attempts at Restoration in the Fourth Century; Diocletian ; the Tetrarchy—The Work of Constantine ; the Imperial Power ; the Great Officers—Separation of the Military and Civil Powers—Division of the Provinces into Prefectures, Dioceses, &c. —The New Nobility—The Classes—The Curiales—The Inferior Classes; the Plebs ; Husbandmen—Slaves—The Taxes—Constantine and Chris¬ tianity ; the Edict of Milan (313)—Organization of the Church; Bishop¬ rics, Archbishoprics, &c.—The Council of Nicsea—Constantinople—The Pagan Reaction under Julian—The Heresies ; the Fathers of the Greek Church—The Fathers of the Latin Church—Hermits and Monks—Final Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire, and of the Success of the In¬ vasions—What Rome has given to the World—The Legacy of Antiquity. Notes: The Roman Calendar—Basilicas transformed into Churches. The Preparation for the Advent of Christianity; the Condition of Religion and Philosophy in the Roman World. —Greek and Roman philosophy had vainly sought to solve the problem which vexes the mind of man—the problem of whence and whither— B 2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the problem of his own destiny. After he had exhausted systems and hypotheses nothing remained to man but confused theories about the Supreme Being, Providence, and the soul, with a morality the doctrines of which were accessible to the learned only. The contradictions between the eclectic beliefs of Cicero and the negations of Lucretius, between the hedonism of the Epicureans and the proud self-mastery of the Stoics, increased the scepticism of the multitude. Philosophy had no power to guide or govern the mind and life of man. Pagan mythology, with its absurd and inconsistent fables, could not satisfy the need of the soul. Its meaningless rites, its sacri¬ fices with no moral virtue, had contributed not a little to the moral disorder which rendered easy the corruption of the first days of the Empire. Hedonistic materialism, if not formally enunciated, yet at least implied in the doctrine of Epicurus, sanctioned abandon¬ ment to the passions. Synchronously with mocking or intellectual mistrust of the deities of Rome and Greece, a host of Oriental rites invaded Rome. “ The ignorance into which men had fallen with respect to the gods,” wrote Plutarch, “ has formed into two streams, one of which, making its bed in hearts hard as rocks, led to the denial of the gods, while the other, spreading itself over gentle souls as on damp ground, gave rise to an exaggerated fear of the gods.” Rome had made herself an asylum for all the divinities of the nations. In Italy temples were erected in honour of Syrian and Egyptian deities, there were mysteries, pompous ceremonies, Chaldean and Phrygian divination, numbers of expiatory sacrifices, even rites of blood and obscenity. On the other hand, the discussions of the philosophers on the Essence of the Supreme Being, and on his divers manifestations, predisposed men to accept the theories of Christianity. Justin saw in pagan philosophy the dim unconscious reflection of the Divine Word. Plutarch, in his religious treatises, formulated in explicit terms his belief in the unity and eternity of God—in God as the creative and preservative energy of the world. He commented upon and approved of the delays of Divine justice. CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 3 The moral unrest of certain philosophers, the need of arriving at the knowledge of the Infinite and of “ the beyond,” the confusion of systems and of religions, showed that the world was prepared tor the advent of a religion which should finally determine these dogmas, should give rest to reason by subordinating it to faith, and should respond to all the feelings of the human heart. Unity of the Roman World; the Right of Universal Citizenship .— The unity of the Roman world, encircling all other civilized nations, was eminently favourable to the preaching of the Gospel. Through¬ out its vast extent two languages alone were needed—the Latin in the West, the Greek in the East—in which to address its citi¬ zens and the army of its officials. From the time of Caracalla (213 a.d.), the right of citizenship was extended to all the pro¬ vinces : a revolution that passed almost unperceived, so lavishly had the right been bestowed, so little remained to be done to render the assimilation complete, and to make of Rome the fatherland of the world. The world had done with the old municipal egoism, which made the city the fatherland and its walls the horizon of society. All cities were now gathered into union with Rome, a result effected partly by the perfect toleration of other religions practised by the Romans, except in cases where it conflicted with what they thought was civi¬ lized ; for instance, the human sacrifices of the Druids. The older re¬ ligions and their rivalries were at last reconciled in the Pantheon of Rome. A singular confraternity had succeeded to the savage exclu¬ sion of deities of neighbouring states, of cities opposing their peculiar gods to the gods of other towns ; all were now willing to adopt a like belief. “ Almost at the opposite extremities of the Roman Empire inscriptions have been found. One is Jupiter, Serapis, and Jao ; one Hermes and Anubis.” No doubt the Athenians, who had erected an altar even to the “ unknown God,” paid little attention to the preaching of St. Paul when he announced to them this unknown God. It would cost them but little to acknowledge one more deity, but of the true nature of the God of the Christians they had as a people an imperfect conception ; the might of this religion, at once practical and mystical, uniting God and man with the bonds 4 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. not of the intellect only, but of the heart, soon overshadowed all other religions, and one by one their idols fell before the cross of Jesus Christ. The Christian Religion .—The Gospel,* or good news of God, preached among the Jews in Galilee and Judaea as the full development of the Mosaic law, the crowning of their Mes¬ sianic hopes, had been rejected, and the true Messiah, Jesus, had suffered crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Procurator of Judaea, in the reign of Tiberius, but his religion had survived. Preached first to the Jews and in Palestine only, by means of the Hellenistic Jews and proselytes, who were spread through nearly all the great cities and commercial centres of the Roman empire, it came quickly into contact with the Gentile world. The twelve original leaders, men of simple habits with no pretence to science or philosophy, did not foresee this. It was the material wants of the Hellenists of Jerusalem which first led to the introduction of their representatives into the service of the infant Church. The bolder note struck by Stephen (a Greek in name) in his impassioned defence, roused the anger of his judges to fury, and they who plotted the Master’s death murdered his first Hellenistic apolo¬ gist. The unexpected result of this martyrdom was the detach¬ ment from their own party of their most brilliant champion. Saul, better known under his name as a Roman citizen, Paul (Paulus), passed from the. ranks of the persecutors to those of the perse¬ cuted, from the old to the new religion ; originally a fervent Jew he became an enthusiastic Christian, and the first who thoroughly accepted the new religion’s universality ; the first * Of the twenty-seven hooks which compose the New Testament, the earliest in the state in which we have them are probably the Epistles of St. Paul, written before his imprisonment, and the Epistle of St'. James ; the date of the two earliest Gospels cannot he fixed with certainty. Then come the Epistles written by St. Paul during his first imprisonment. About the same time may date the Gospel of St. Luke, and the History of the Acts. After his imprisonment must be placed the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, and that of the Hebrews, with St. John as probably the last writer of the Apos¬ tolic band, with his Gospel and Epistles, which came after his Apocalypse, and closed the Canon of the New Testanent. With the exception of the Apocalypse, all these books appear in a list of the books of the New Testa¬ ment appended to the canons of the Council of Laodicea, held in a.d. 363. CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 5 who saw that it was something more than Hebrew Hel¬ lenism ; the first who declared the impossibility of confining the religion of Christ by the limits of even the widest Judaism. From the date of the Council of Jerusalem, when the principles first enunciated with hesitation by St. Peter, after the conversion of the first Gentile convert, then boldly put in practice by St. Paul, had been adopted by the elder apostles and by the whole Christian society, Christianity set out on its full mission to conquer the world. From Syria and the Levant it quickly passed through Asia Minor to Macedonia and to Greece, in the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The Roman historians at first expressed loathing of it, a pestilent super¬ stition (exitiabilis superstitio) Tacitus calls it. But this despised seed germinated and sprang up in Rome, and in all the great cities of the East and West. When persecuted the Christians multi¬ plied the more : a struggle was begun between men armed with faith alone and all the power of the empire ; a struggle in which that power finally succumbed, and with it all its religions and their superstitions. The unity which Christianity accomplished survived the unity of the political empire, and continued when this was destroyed by the barbarians. Conscience, the family, society, government, all fell under the sway of these new principles. The God of the Christians is indeed a development of the God of the Jews and of Moses. The Bible is the Christians’ book; they called it the Old Testament, or Covenant, only because they added to it the New. There was no break in the tra¬ dition. Christ is but the Greek interpretation of the Hebrew Messiah; but the doctrine of Monotheism, which the Jews had kept to them¬ selves with jealous care, was taught to foreigners, to the Gentiles (the nations). It was the God of the family; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Moses and of the Tribes ; the God of the Jewish nation before, of the Jewish race after, the Captivity, who was now proclaimed the God, the sole, exclusive God of every race, of all mankind. The Jews, who even before the destruction of Jerusalem had spread themselves in great numbers through all the cities of the East, had begun, though without preaching them, to be less exclusive in the communication of their doctrines. Was 6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. not the adoration of the one only God their special privilege, and the mark of their nationality ? If they dreamt of a universal esta¬ blishment of monotheism it was through national rule, which would be secured by a conquering Messiah, making the whole world Jewish. They could not believe that this Messiah had come in the form of a man of the lower classes, no warrior, but a man of peace and mercy, busied in preaching inward perfec¬ tion and the purest morality. They had forced the Roman gover¬ nor to inflict on him the degrading capital punishment reserved for felons and for slaves, and this because he announced himself as their expected King. Christianity appeared to them as blasphemy against Jehovah, and in its fullest form an infraction of strict monotheism by its doctrine of the Trinity. To them it appeared a kind of idolatry, because it offered a God in three persons for their adoration, and they paid no attention to the protestations of the Christians who asserted the unity and indivisible equality of these three manifestations. By the coming of the Son of God, at the same time and equally both God and man, even in his life on earth, it became possible to know and to teach something authoritatively on the destiny of man and on the life beyond. The doctrines of immor¬ tality, of the resurrection, and of the final judgment could now be accepted and acted on not as mere matters of speculative belief or as opinions more or less probable, but as facts proved and verified by the human life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This certainty, this rude assertion of the fact, while it swept aside all the speculations of previous philosophers as thus become practically useless, except as mere preparatory schoolmasters to lead to the school of Christ, roused the opposition of the intellectual world against Christianity. The old gods had inspired only fear. Even Jehovah in the Old Testament was chiefly represented as a terrible God. The new law revealed a God of love and of infinite sympathy, who not only united Himself to man by the Incarnation, but, as fore¬ shadowed by the rites of many an older religion, continued to descend among men and to unite Himself with them as the Holy CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . / Spirit. Humanity, far from being condemned to despair, received the hope of another life and the assurance that, if the conditions were fulfilled, mankind should enjoy that eternal life. “The kingdom of God is within you” was the teaching of Jesus, and the Christian’s aim was to realise here and now, as well as to reach hereafter, that heavenly kingdom. The most admirable results ensued from this promise and from the salvation offered to all. First, there ensued universal equality. All men were children of God, bought from evil by the self-sacrifice of Christ, invited to share in the same rewards. Slavery, so laboriously justified by the philosophers, was condemned in principle, when both master and slaves became alike friends to the same Friend and Master.* Equality called itself fraternity, and fraternity adopted a new name : charity. This charity was not mere assistance due to the unfortunate, an assistance which, we must remember, had never been altogether neglected in ancient societies ; for it had been regulated by political interest in the cities, though it had never been declared a virtue. Christianity taught a complete self-surrender, and proclaimed the love of our neighbour as the first of all duties. It exalted humanity above all fatherlands, above the fatherland of Rome itself. The horizon which had before been bounded by the city or the State, became now co-extensive with the world. “ Blessed are the meek,” Christ had said in that Sermon on the Mount which summed up all his sublime in¬ structions. Gentleness, persuasion, example, these were the early Christian’s only weapons, arms new and strange to the ancient world where only force or implacable laws supported by force prevailed. The worship was as simple as the doctrine. Salvation was no longer dependent on the details of ritual, but upon a per¬ fect faith and a pure conscience. Religion, from an external act, became an inner motive, and although it soon degenerated into pomp and ceremony, aimed at first only at strengthening the soul and subduing the heart. Fervent prayer, confession of sin, communion * The Stoics, it most be remembered, had already, not wholly without success, preached the equality of all men as men. 8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of their spirits with the sublime Spirit of Christ, these were the means by which Christians endeavoured to draw near to the Deity and to unite themselves for ever with Jesus Christ. If later on religion became magnificent, that magnificence was not essential; it could none the less be practised everywhere, even in the prison or in the desert, for it consisted in the constant uplifting of the soul to God, and in the effort to copy His perfections set forth in the perfect man Jesus Christ. The Persecutions .—It must seem extraordinary that such noble doctrines should have encountered so many difficulties in a society which honoured philosophers. But, on the other hand, it seems still more extraordinary that this religion was able to triumph over the formidable powers that were bent upon its destruction. The emperors and the Roman officials tolerated every creed ; they pro¬ scribed Christianity. It was not, as might be supposed, through hatred of the Christian doctrines, for they were little acquainted with them, and would not even take the trouble to study them; they persecuted the Christians because they separated themselves from the State. Not that Christians were worse citizens or less valiant soldiers than were others ; on the contrary, the Romans were unable to avoid praising their public and private virtues. Christ had commanded them to “ render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the things which are God’s.” Christ had not defied the Roman procurator, by whose sentence the Jews had brought about His crucifixion. But by their doctrine the Christians ruined even the forms of the ancient State. The citizen was no doubt able to profess the most varied philosophical doctrines, but he was obliged to take part in the sacrifices and to follow the official worship. This was the law in every city, and the most sceptical or the most atheistical philosophers owed their liberty only to their obedience to the religious laws, which were also political laws. Idolatry penetrated into every act. All that ren¬ dered life in the ancient world tolerable, its art, its amusements, its love of beauty, were connected with things which the Chris¬ tian must abhor. Its art, if not sensuous, was idolatrous. The theatre, the circus, the gladiatorial games, the joyous processions CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 9 and feasts in honour of the gods, the libations at every meal, all these were abominations to the Christian, from all he must refrain. Sacrifice was probably the only occasion in the ancient world on which the multitude eat meat or drank pure wine. It was the larger-minded Christians only who would eat “ meat offered to idols” as an indifferent thing. The more narrow-minded, if not the more really earnest, shrank from the pollution. It was this attitude of Christianity to the world which made it seem to the heathen as an unnatural thing. All joy seemed to be gone from life; they loathed it as the Christian loathed their world ; scorn answered scorn; they feared while they hated it, and the world, having the power, took its revenge. The Christians refused to offer incense to the idols, to pour out libations, or to take part in the public or domestic sacrifices. They thus declared themselves the enemies of the domestic as well as of the city worship, and since above all these observances there was the worship of the Emperor, they appeared to be enemies both to the city and to the Emperor. The Christian meetings thus became conspiracies, their ceremonies, which they were obliged to hide, were regarded as inhuman sacrifices, their doctrines were represented as abomina¬ tions. They were therefore denounced by private persons, dragged before the magistrates, condemned to perish wfith criminals .and thrown into the amphitheatre as food for wild beasts, to the ferocious joy of the spectators, who imagined that they merited the favour of the gods by applauding the death of those who despised them. Commenced under Nero, continued even under emperors like Trajan, or philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, these persecutions terminated only at the end of two centuries with that of Diocletian, the most terrible of all. In 311 a.d., a General Edict of toleration was published in the names of Galerius, Licinius, and Constantine. This was confirmed and extended by the edict of Milan, 313 a.d. The Primitive Organization of the Church: the Catacombs .—The Christian society grew up in the midst of conflict. Like many another new community its earliest form was that of socialism or communism ; “ they had all things common,” the common evening meal, the Agapse, the Feast of Love, was also the highest act of IO THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. worship. The priesthood was universal; there was no distinction of spiritual and secular. Except the Apostles, emphatically the witnesses and reporters of what Christ had said or done, the first teachers were they who showed the best qualification for their office by age, experience, or by gifts. The first appointment of regular adminis¬ trative officers, the deacons, arose out of the need of providing an equitable distribution of the goods of the society among its varied classes. Later on we find priests, literally elders, and superin¬ tendents, bishops, who cannot be distinguished from them in the New Testament as a separate order. The original phrase may be equally well translated “ superintendent of the congregation ” as “ bishop of the Church ; ” but on the im¬ mediate disciples and trained companions of the Apostles seems to have devolved almost exclusively the authority to set apart or appoint the elders of the congrega¬ tion. Later on, gradually, and not con¬ temporaneously in all parts of the Church, the superintendent became the bishop. It is remarkable how scanty are the tra¬ ditions of Christianity with regard to its first promulgators. We know more or less of the lives of all the chief companions of Mahommed, and of the chief members of his family. The biography of the emperors and generals contemporaneous with the rise of Christianity, if not full, is fairly trustworthy. But, with the exception of St. Paul, of the lives of those who were then founding an empire which should outlast all empires then in the world, apart from later legend we know absolutely nothing. There is scarcely a trustworthy tradition of the life and labours of any one of the Apostles. James the Elder we know was put to death by Herod, James the Less was the leader of the Church at Jerusalem, St. John probably died long after the rest, holding a like position at Ephesus. The most valid argument for the death of St. Peter at Rome lies in the fact that no other Church claims him as its martyr. Head of young Chris¬ tian girl. CHRISTIANITY-FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 11 Of the rest all is silence or conjecture ; and so on many another point. The Christian seed was sown, and sprang up in silence men knew not how. The earliest Christian Apostle and mission¬ aries preached at first in the synagogues, or other accustomed places of Jewish worship; not till rejected and repulsed from them w r ere separate assemblies held. As it progressed the influence of the Roman unity, which in its one-man rule brought, under the good emperors of the second century, such blessings to the distracted world, was reflected on the Christian Church. From an almost communistic society it gradually became hierarchical, and almost monarchical. The bishops of the capitals of former nations and empires became the patriarchs and the metropolitans, as at Jerusalem, and Antioch, and Alexandria ; but necessarily the greatest of all, that city to which all roads in the world then led, Rome, became finally the most important of them all. The Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter and St. Paul, was at length believed to be the heir of Peter only, and the possessor of the power of him to whom had been granted the keys of the kingdom of heaven. It has been often said that the first temples of the Church were the underground passages and the catacombs. The re¬ searches of modern science have destroyed this illusion. The catacombs may have been occasionally used, as the old Egyptian tombs were by the Christians in the Nile valley, or as the hermitages of the desert were throughout the East, for occasional refuge or for voluntary retreat. In this respect the catacombs of the city of Rome would be analogous to the monk or hermit- peopled solitudes of the country churches both in the East and West. But their main purpose was undoubtedly that of burial places. From the example of the entombment of their Master, the Christian had adopted the Jewish mode of interment in the earth, instead of the cremation which prevailed among the classical and Aryan races of antiquity. It was for purposes of Christian burial that the catacombs were first excavated ; the ordinary acts of wor¬ ship held therein besides the funeral rites would probably only be on the anniversaries of a friend’s or of a martyr’s death. It is singular to remark how long the pagan emblems lingered in painting 12 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. and in rude sculpture in these tombs; a new significance was indeed given them, but only slowly and gradually were they re¬ placed by purely Christian symbolism. In later ages the crypt, so often used as a burial place, beneath a church, the soil under the porch, finally the churchyard round the church, replaced the cata¬ combs. The Apologists: Tertullian .—Gradually a literature arose pecu¬ liar to Christianity. Clement of Rome and the so-called Apostolic Fathers followed the example of St. Paul in writing epistles to other churches. More unexpected is the early use made of the garb of fiction to propagate some knowledge of Christianity. The Shepherd of Hermas, the Clementine Homilies, parts of the apos¬ tolic constitutions, and the earliest of the apocryphal Gospels, may be taken as types of a literature which has its finest examples in the poems of Csedmon, the epics of Dante and of Milton, the “Pil¬ grim’s Progress” of Bunyan, and the best of the religious fiction of our own day. In different and more serious style, full of historical interest, are the treatises written in defence of Christianity, the “Apologies” for its existence written and presented to the emperors by the early fathers. The first of these were offered to Hadrian by Aristides and Quadratus in 181 ; then follow those of Justin Martyr and of Melito to Antoninus, 160—170; then that of Athenagoras in 176—180. Then the boldest and most celebrated of them all, the “Apology” of Tertullian, written between 178—202. The style of Tertullian’s African Latinity (he was born at Carthage 150—160) recalls that of Tacitus in the compressed fire and preg¬ nant force of his sentences. It is to the ordinary writing of that day what Carlyle’s English prose is to the English of his day. He cannot remain only on the defensive, but rushes on to the attack. His very defence is more aggressive than the assaults of calmer writers. “ We are accused,” said he, “ of not honouring the emperors by our sacrifices; we do not offer victims, but we pray to the only true God for the safety of the Emperor; we respect the heads of the nation, but we do not call them gods, for we cannot lie. Yet our loyalty is beyond suspicion ; you have a con¬ vincing proof of it in the patience with which we sutler persecution; CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 13 we are often stoned, our houses are burnt; the drunken fury of the populace does not spare even our dead, they are torn from their sepulchres and rent to pieces. What revenge have we taken for all these wrongs ? If we wished to make war upon you, do we lack arms or troops ? We are but of yesterday, and already we fill your cities, your islands, your municipalities, your markets, your camps, your tribes, the hustings, the Senate, the law courts. We have left you your temples only!” Tertullian’s “Apology” is really a powerful accusation against paganism, he jeers at its my¬ thology, he denounces the corruption of a society plunged in mate¬ rialism. But Tertullian adopted the follies of Montanus, he exag¬ gerated the sternness of the doctrines of Christianity, he would have none of its mercy, and died at war with the Church, a.d. 245. Paganism also endeavoured to defend itself with nobler arms than those of the executioner. Before the preaching of Christianity Platonism and Greek philosophy had made alliance with Judaism at Alexandria, where the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, had been made some two centuries and a half before Christ. Of these doctrines Philo (b.c. 20— a.d. 54) was the chief exponent. But the philosophers generally would not admit of such assimilation ; they saw in Christianity their deadliest foe. The chiefs of this Neo-Platonic school, whose morality was set up as a rival to that of Christianity, were Porphyry (233—304), a man of universal knowledge, acquainted with the religious tradi¬ tions of the East, and even with those of the Hebrews, and Jambli- chus (died about 330), his disciple, who joined the practices of magic to those of philosophy, and claimed to establish direct communica¬ tion between God and man, and with the demons. Influence of Christianity .—At first Christianity appeared to de¬ stroy the families which it divided. The Christians, in their thirst for martyr om, were regardless of the ties of relationship and of lamiiy affection. They sacrificed all, and gloried in sacrificing everything to tlx ir fait 1 , detaching themselves completely from the earth in order to reach heaven better. But this was only in the first ardour of conviction and conflict. In proportion as Christianity spread it was seen, on the contrary, to be favourable to the family i4 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. life, which it purified, and from which it expunged the excessive paternal severity which prevailed in the constitution of the Roman family. The doctrine of the gospel, without destroying parental authority, softened it, and the children, who shared equally with their father in a worship far more noble than that of the old domestic altar, were no longer in his eyes his mere absolute pro¬ perty. Their relations became more cordial, more intimate, and in the home as in the religion love had more place than fear. Mar¬ riage became a holy thing; purity in the man, a thing to which all heathen religions had been indifferent, was taught to be of equal obligation with purity in the woman ; the Christians condemned all those irregular unions, easily dissolved, which had become more and more prevalent in Roman society. The clergy and other teachers regarded marriage as so holy an institution, making it indeed a sacrament, that they condemned second unions. Women were enwrapped in their widowhood as in a mourning veil, and the Church praised them for their chaste and dignified seclusion. Moreover, the whole condition of woman had been singularly raised by what was remembered of the teachings and example of Christ, which made woman the equal of man in the sight of God. Mary, the mother of the Saviour, began slowly to be regarded as a powerful intercessor between God and man; all women were attracted to her worship, happy to find in her their own selves, their sympathies, and their sentiments. Women addressed themselves with affectionate confidence to the spotless Virgin-mother who had suffered so much at the foot of the cross; they sought safety in her pleadings against the righteous sentence of the awful Judge who should come to judge the quick and the dead ; for the teach¬ ings of Jesus were gradually forgotten or distorted, and the terrible Jehovah had usurped the throne of the God of Love. Slaves found themselves regarded as free men in the meetings of the Christians. Thus Christianity from the first made numerous proselytes among the slaves, whose condition it could not wholly change, but it gave them at least resignation under suffering, and the hope of a better life. This was one of the most important revolutions effected by Christianity, and it was effected not by CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 15 demanding the abolition of slavery (cf. The Epistle to Philemon) but by the gradual leavening of society with the Spirit of Christ. The number of freed-men rapidly increased, not only among Christians but also among pagans, who were won over, in spite of themselves, by this contagion of goodness. The Roman laws grew milder, and diminished the exorbitant power possessed by the masters. Even in the time of the persecutions Christianity began to in¬ fluence the legislation as well as the habits of the Romans. The simple and self-denying life of the Christians, their charity, their de¬ votion to the poor and to the sick, the self-abnegation with which rich citizens shared their goods and spent their fortune in alleviating misery, inspired Roman society, hitherto so harsh, with more humane sentiments. Christianity could not yet exercise direct influence on the government, which was resolutely hostile to it. Nevertheless it paved the way for new principles in politics; forced to resist, it had conquered independence in its own proper domain in spiritual things ; if afterwards, when its own triumph was assured, it committed again the old mistake, this was by a contradiction of its own principles. Roman society thus underwent a transformation in spite of itself. It was won over to the new faith by the zeal evinced by slaves, by the poor, above all by the heroism of women : the private virtues of Christians and their courage under torture induced it to enter the Church. By the middle of the third century Christianity already foresaw the victory which it gained only in the fourth, and at the moment when the empire was almost lost. The Decadence of the Roman Empire : its Causes; the Absence of a Constitution. — Christianity might regenerate Roman society, it could not save the empire. This was threatened by the barbarians who were boldly pressing on all its frontiers, and by the internal disease of disorders that had become incurable, and which were increased by religious strife. The Roman empire existed only by a fiction; its rule and order were more apparent than real. There was an unrivalled body of laws, but no definite constitution. The chief defect was the uncer- i6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tainty that prevailed as to the imperial succession and the trails- mission of the imperial power. It had been at first perpetuated in the house of Augustus, not by right of birth (since the republic still existed nominally), but by the choice of the Senate. Soon the army claimed a share in the election. The Flavian emperors and the Antonines checked these military assumptions, and by the adoption of wise precautions hindered the competition of rivals. The violent death of Commodus, 192 a.d., re-opened the era of dis¬ orders which, so to say, never afterwards ceased. The Power and Rivalry of the Prcetorians and the Armies; Civil Wars. —The legions were scattered along the frontiers, but the Praetorian cohorts, who formed at Rome the Imperial Guard, imposed their choice on the empire, or rather sold the purple to him who promised them most money. In their turn the legions in the provinces would endeavour to force their leaders on the empire, and more than once the Praetorians were conquered and disbanded, but only to be replaced by others who inherited their greed and their ambition. In the third century these struggles ended in a military anarchy without example in the history of the world: at short intervals as many as nineteen chiefs were disputing the shreds of the purple, which, according to the forcible expression of Chateaubriand, covered “in the morning an emperor, in the evening a victim, and formed the ornaments of a throne or of a coffin.” Invasion of the Barbarians. —The Romans had subdued the south of Europe, the whole of Northern Africa, and occupied part of Asia ; but they had stopped at the Euphrates in Asia, at the Sahara in Africa, and at the Danube and the Rhine in Europe. Trajan had, indeed, taken the offensive on the Danube and on the Euphrates; he had extended the Empire on the one side to the Tigris, on the other to the foot of the Carpathians. But this offensive policy, wise as it was, alarmed Hadrian and his suc¬ cessors, who thought only of defending the empire, already far too large in their eyes. The military skill of the Romans, the colonies planted, the camps and fortresses posted along every frontier, these opposed a barrier CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 17 which might have been thought invincible. But the civil wars of the third century had laid it open. The barbarians penetrated into the Empire, and the spoils of the rich cities which they pillaged awakened their covetousness. The invasion began in an indirect manner ; the ranks of the army, and shortly afterwards its honours, were opened to the barbarians. In the anarchy of the third century a Thracian, of Gothic origin, Maximin, became emperor, thanks to his gigantic size and herculean strength (235). A crafty Arab, Philip, praetorian prefect under Gordian III., killed the emperor and took his place (244). Probus (276) enlisted a great number of barbarians, and even established colonies of barbarians within the empire. This infiltration of foreign races could but hasten the decomposition of the empire and destroy patriotism. How could these barbarian chiefs, who knew scarcely a word of Latin, be imbued with senti¬ ments of Roman patriotism ? The legions, raised only for pay and largely diluted with barbarians, could they fight eagerly against peoples with whom they were already united by ties of kindred ? Attempts at Restoration in the Fourth Century; Diocletian; the Tetrarchj .—The empire, nevertheless, maintained itself a century longer. Delivered by the energy of the Illyrian princes, especially by Aurelian and Probus, it was re-organized by Diocletian (285— 305), who thought to strengthen it by division. Obliged to face both north and south, east and west, the emperors had recourse to representatives of their power. These lieutenants Diocletian resolved to associate with the empire, to make them interested in the pacification of the country, to make the imperial authority felt everywhere, and without dividing the territory, without break¬ ing its unity, to multiply its rulers, by creating two Augusti and two Caesars, the heirs presumptive of the Augusti. Diocletian saw in this singular combination of a tetrarchy the advantage of regu¬ lating beforehand the transmission of power and the avoidance of civil war, but he did not foresee that in multiplying thrones he of necessity multiplied the number of competitors for them. Of course the Praetorians ceased to be formidable, for they were replaced by other bodies. No doubt Diocletian maintained 0 i8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. his pre-eminence ; but Rome was abandoned for Nicomedia, the residence of Diocletian in the east, and for Milan, the residence of Maximian in the west. The two Caesars had also their capital. The senate was isolated and neglected, and lost the little authority which remained to it. Unity was maintained solely by the authority of one man. The system of Diocletian necessarily, after his abdication, brought back greater troubles than before, and as many as six rivals disputed the titles of Empire. Unity, nevertheless, did not collapse, for Diocletian had set on foot another work to shore it up, which proved a real buttress. He had strengthened the civil power at the expense of the military power, he had sketched out an administrative hierarchy capable of maintaining obedience in the midst of discord. Diocletian cast off the old fictions of the Roman republic. He was emperor and supreme god on earth (Jove or Jupiter). Maximian was but an inferior god, Hercules. Loving the East, he revived its despotic traditions. Himself invisible, he made his activity felt everywhere; surrounded by a cloud of officers of all ranks, who hid his divinity from the vulgar gaze, his seclusion rendered him the more awful. The magnificence of Darius and of Nebuchadnezzar reappeared. As formerly vanquished Greece had subjugated its conqueror Rome, so now Orientalism stealthily took its revenge and tri¬ umphed. It forged for the West the chains of a despotism which had little resemblance to the despotism of the emperors of the two first centuries. The Work of Constantine; the Imperial Power; the Great Officers .—It was Constantine who in 828, having defeated the last of his rivals, re-established the endangered unity, finished the work of Diocletian, and fixed the new constitution of the empire. This has left such deep traces in after history that it is necessary to study it in order to understand the origin of modern administra¬ tion. Constantine completed the task of making the imperial power absolute. The old sobriety of Roman speech was strained to reach the exaggerated style of the imperial dignities. New terms had to be invented, or borrowed from the orientalism and barbarism CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. *9 which the true Roman had disdained. The emperor (once the imperator, the commander, the general), now a sacred personage, became “the living law,” and was addressed as “ Your Eternity.” He was surrounded by a so-called council, a sacred consistory (for everything connected with the emperor was divine). The members of this council were counts ( comites , companions) ; one was the count of the sacred chamber (the grand chamberlain) ; another was count of the domestics (i.e. commander of the body¬ guard) ; a third the count of the sacred largesses (i.e. treasurer and paymaster of the empire); a fourth master of the offices, charged with the superintendence of the police and of the adminis¬ tration and public works of the empire ; a fifth was the qucestor of the palace (secretary of state and minister of justice); a sixth the count of the private treasure, who managed the imperial property, and collected the enormous contributions and grants due to the emperor. Lastly, the army received orders from the master of the army, the master of the horse and master of the foot, who performed the functions of ministers of war. These dignitaries or great officers had a share in the imperial majesty, and were at once members of his privy council and instru¬ ments for the execution of his orders. They interposed between the master and his subjects, who feared him the more the less they saw of him. This isolation, which had been begun by Diocletian, doubtless shielded the emperors from military revolutions, but made them the prey of domestic revolutions in the palace. Their safety was not increased ; they had now to fear the plots and intrigues of ministers, eunuchs, and of women, and their assassination was more easy because it could be more easily kept secret. Absolute power must have its enjoyments, since it has turned so many heads, but history proves that it is not less fatal to those who exercise it than to those who submit to it. Separation of the Military and Civil Powers. —Nevertheless, the Roman empire at length embodied a principle which was unknown to older times—the principle of the separation of civil and mili¬ tary power ; a division which seems to us so logical and so simple, 20 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. but which had taken the ancient world long ages to comprehend and to formulate. Constantine very clearly distinguished between the army and the administration, between the military and civil authorities. The troops were under the command of the masters of the army (inagistri militum ), the master of the infantry and the master of the cavalry; these had under them dukes, commanding the sub¬ divisions of the district, and counts, commanding smaller subdivi¬ sions. Endeavouring to render revolt impossible, Constantine gave all civil power into the hands of the prefects of the praetorium. If a military chief attempted to raise a province, he was held in check by the civil administration, and a prefect of the praetorium could not revolt because he had no military force under his authority. The precautions of Constantine led him even to weaken the army which had been so long formidable ; he reduced the number of soldiers in the legion to fifteen hundred men, and divided them into home troops, the prince’s guard, and the guard of the frontiers. The army was reduced and its prestige lowered at the very time w'hen the empire had most need of its assistance. The peril of the situation consisted in this, that one danger could not be averted without failing into another; as in desperate cases of disease, no remedy can be prescribed which does not provoke an additional danger. Division of the Provinces into Prefectures, Dioceses, dc. —Re¬ assuming in a different form the tetrarchy of Diocletian, but with simple functionaries, Constantine facilitated the administration of the empire by dividing it into four great prefectures, governed by prefects of the praetorium (the East; Illyria; Italy, including Africa; Gaul, including Spain and Britain). These prefects were, as we said above, purely civil magistrates who centralized the adminis¬ tration of the countries placed under their authority. Each prefecture had also its master of the troops, who was completely independent. These immense prefectures were subdivided into twelve vast dioceses, some of which were afterwards again divided ; they were administered by vicars, or lieutenants of the prefect of the prae- CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 21 torium. The dioceses were subdivided into provinces, and these were governed by consulars, rectors, co-rectors, presidents, &c. The titles varied according to the habits of the countries. To secure impartiality as much as possible, no one was allowed to govern his native province. The cities preserved their municipal rule, but were also under the supervision of a count. Below these powerful functionaries came a host of inferior agents depending on one or other of the great officers, and charged with the details of the finances or of the police. A long hierarchy was thus formed in each prefecture, to receive and transmit or to report news, homage, or complaints, but especially to forward the produce of the taxes to the imperial trea¬ sury. The new Nobility. —Constan¬ tine wished that these function¬ aries, associated with the Im¬ perial power, should share its high-sounding titles, which he gave with oriental exaggera¬ tion. There were the Most Perfect and the Most Dis¬ tinguished (i.e.y eminentissi- mi), the Most Renowned and the Illustrious. The office not only ennobled, but conferred substantial privileges and exemption from taxation. To the old and to the provincial nobility was now added the Imperial nobility. And since vanity is one of the greatest weaknesses of mankind, these traditions, far from being lost, have passed into the new world, and still exist. The Classes .— Society was thus tending to hierarchy, almost to a system of castes, more strongly than before. Below the great officers and the high functionaries, the new nobility, and then the ancient, lastly, the free men themselves, were divided into different categories according to their fortunes. First of them were the A Family of the Fourth Century. 22 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. /anded proprietors, from whom the municipality, the curiae of the city, the curiales, decuriones, were chosen ; they owned not less than twenty-five acres of land. The decuriones were selected from among the wealthiest. The Curiales .—The town-councillors thus called to take part in the administration of the city business did not at all value this honour, for it was accompanied with burdens that became every day more crushing. The count who represented the emperor did not interfere with the details of the administration : he fixed the amount of taxes to be paid, without troubling himself as to the way in which they were distributed. But the nobility were exempt from the greater part of the taxes, and so were the clergy. The curiales, obliged to make out the lists and collect the money, were, in times of distress, compelled to make up the deficiency themselves. Unpaid agents of absolute power, these city magistrates exhausted their own fortunes when they had squeezed out the last drop from the fortunes of their fellow-citizens. Thus the curiales sought to avoid these honours, either by enlisting in the army or by enter¬ ing the Church; but formal laws bound them to their estates and to the municipality, and rendered obligatory both their service and their burthens. Still, the lot of the municipalities and of their officers cannot have been so sad in all parts of the empire. Funeral inscriptions still abundantly attest the pride with which the citizen discharged the honours and offices of his republic. This independent local administration of the cities laid the foundation of the free consular cities and mediaeval municipal republics of the south and south¬ west of Europe, and especially in Dalmatia. The payment of taxes in a lump sum to the State by the municipality, and the repartition to individuals by the local authorities, was continued up to the French revolution in many places of the south-west, and with results which were far from being disadvantageous ; and there are symptoms of a legislation returning to this older system of local distribution against the excessive centralization of more modern times. The Inferior Classes: the PleLs ; Husbandmen .—Below these CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 23 classes came the plebs, the indigent or pauperised populace fed at the expense of the city, and the artisans organized into corpora¬ tions. In the country lived the coloni, the husbandmen, the servile peasantry, a class of long standing in the empire, but much increased by the misery of the third century. They were either freedmen, farmers cultivating another man’s land, or free heredi¬ tary farmers cultivating the same land from father to son, or small proprietors who had sold their fields but still remained as heredi¬ tary tenants, or, lastly, barbarian prisoners distributed among the landowners and not indeed reduced to slavery, but treated as serfs bound to the soil. Slaves .—From the commencement of the empire the law T s relat¬ ing to slaves had undergone many modifications. The master had lost his power of life and death over the slave for criminal offences. Claudius and Antoninus had still more improved the legislation. Constantine punished the murder of a slave with the same penalty as that of a free man. In the sales it was forbidden to separate the husband from the wife, or the children from their parents. In spite of the influence of Christianity slavery did not disappear, but it was transformed after the invasion. The Taxes .—Owing to the exemption of the nobles the weight of taxation fell almost exclusively upon the lower classes. And the taxes were many: (i.), the land tax (the census or tributum), levied according to the extent of the property, with a fresh assess¬ ment every fifteen years ; this interval of fifteen years was called an indiction, and was used as an era for counting years—the first began on September 1, 312 ; the calculation by indictions was long preserved in the Church, as may be seen in the tables prefixed until lately to the Book of Common Prayer;* (ii.), the * The Roman Calendar .—Onr actual calendar is partly the Roman one, and it is worth while to see how it was formed. At first the Romans had ten months only, named Mattius (from Mars, the god of war) ; Aprilis (the month when the buds open) ; Maius (from the goddess Maia); Junius (from the god of the same name); then the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth months (Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, December). Tlie addition of Januarius (from the god Janus) and of Februaries (the month called from the festival of expiation, Februa), made up the twelve. The 24 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. poll, or income tax, levied especially on the farmers, peasantry, and labourers ; (iii.), the chrysargyrum (a tax on gold and silver), a kind of licence or excise, which hampered industry and com¬ merce, and various other requisitions, such as supplies for the army, forced labour for repairing the roads and bridges, and some vexatious benevolences, such as the “ aurum coronarium,” the “crown gold,” as it was called, a benevolence once voluntary on the accession of an emperor, afterwards obligatory and exacted on the slightest pretext. We might also quote many other taxes, for the list was perpetually varying, and continually increasing. This accumulation of taxes which swelled the treasury was the most durable legacy which the old administration left to later times. months were lunar like those of the Greeks. Julius Caesar, thanks to the labours of Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, made the civil year coincide with that of the sun. This was the Julian, or Solar year, which is still used with the subsequent rectification first introduced by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582. In honour of Julius Caesar the fifth month (quintilis) was called Julius (July), and in honour of Augustus the sixth (sextilis) was called Augustus (August). But amongst the Komans the month was not divided into weeks ; it had three great divisions : the calends, nones, and ides. In reckoning they counted : the day of the calends (the first day of the month), then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd, before the nones ; then the nones, the fifth of the month, afterwards the 8th, 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2 nd, before the ides. The ides were the thirteenth. After the ides the reckoning was the 18th, 17th, 16th, 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, before the calends of the following month. The division into weeks (hebdomades, or septimanas) was intro¬ duced only under the emperors. The days took the names of the sun and planets : dies solis, Sunday, which the Latin Christian changed into Dies Dominica, Dimanche, the Lord’s day; dies Lunae, the moon’s day, Lundi, Monday ; Martis, Mars’ day, Mardi, which we turn from Scandinavian mythology into Tiw’s day, Tuesday; Mercurii, Mercury’s day, Mercredi, or Wednesday, from Woden’s day ; Jovis, Jupiter’s day, Jeudi, or Thor’s day, Thursday; Veneris, Venus’ day, Vendredi, or Freya’s day, Friday; Saturni, Saturn’s day, Saturday. This heathen calendar vas adopted by the Christians on account of its use in the early ages of the Church, hut men did not observe that by commencing the month with January instead of March, the names of September, October, November, December, the last four months of the ten-month year, were erroneously applied to the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months of the solar year, and lost their significance. CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 25 Constantine and Christianity, the Edict of Milan (313).—The administrative organization of the Roman Empire coincided with a change far more important to the world, the triumph of Chris¬ tianity. The son of a Christian mother, Helena, accustomed from his youth to see Christians protected by his father, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, without being converted to the new religion, had adopted it as his chief support in his struggle against his rivals. Estimating the value of a religion by the help which he could draw from it, he had placed the monogram of Christ upon his standards, because he saw that the gods of the empire were power¬ less to help those who trusted in them. The victory at the Milvian bridge (312), which gave him half of the empire, determined him to lean towards Christianity. The Edict of Milan (313) guaranteed equal tolerance to the new and to the old religions. Christianity was now allowed a public worship ; the basilicas were transformed into churches,* and Constantine soon conceded to the Christian clergy all the privileges enjoyed by the heathen priests. * Basilicas transformed into Churches. —From the older forms of architecture the Christians selected the building whose form was best adapted to their cere¬ monies. This was the basilica, employed by the Romans as a guildhall for mer¬ chants and as a law court, an oblong building divided lengthways by rows of pillars into three naves (or rather a nave and two aisles), and with a cross division also near the upper end : it was easily adapted to Christian worship. The two side aisles were devoted respectively to men and women; the rave contained in distinct divisions the catechumens, the choir, and the clergy. The upper part, raised a few steps, was consecrated to divine service; the altar occupied the middle of the sanctuary (the modern chancel); behind it the praetor’s chair became the bishop’s throne ; lastly, the presbyters sat on a low bench running round the walls of the semicircular apse. Later, the choir, the first of the gieat enclosures of the nave in front of the altar, was lengthened, and from its sides arms were thrown out to figure a cross ; this development was called the transept. Afterwards chapels were pierced in the walls all round the building. By these successive transformations the basi¬ lica became the Gothic cathedral, which still recalls the ancient plan designed by Roman architects. The front of the basilica was decorated by a porticus, or porch, the roof of which leant against the facade of the building. In front of the porch was an atrium, or square court, and in the midst of the court rose a fountain for ablution. Three doors gave sepaiate entry to the men’s and women’s aisles and to the nave. From the ancient basilica arose the Christian Byzantine style, which gave birth to the Romanesque in 26 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Licinius, however, retained the East and protected paganism. Constantine, after ten j T ears of partnership, marched against his colleague, who had become his enemy. The battle of Adrianople (323) was one of those important actions which decide the fate of the world. Licinius harangued his troops, calling on them to fight for the gods of the empire. Constantine more than ever identified his cause with that of the Christians. The battle was thus a struggle between two religions and two opposed societies, the past and the future. Constantine was victorious, and with him the Cross. Christianity became the official religion, and Constantine, without understanding or indeed practising it, organized it and amalgamated it with the State. Organization of the Church; Bishoprics, Archbishoprics, Ac .—The persecuted Church had had from very early times its presbyters, or priests, its bishops, or overseers. There was at first no distinction of order between the presbyter and the bishop, and when the dis¬ tinction first arose the bishop was more like the rector of one of our large towns, with several vicarial churches under him, than like the bishop of a modern diocese. In some instances he alone con¬ secrated the elements of the eucharist, and sent them to the clergy of other churches in the city to be distributed by them in their own churches. Country and suburban churches were ruled by chorepiscopi, or suffragans. Towards the end of the second century bishops, with a rank and order more like those which they now possess, begin to appear in Western Asia. Con- Christian architecture, and, imitated by the Arabs, to Moorish architecture and the horse-shoe arch. The city of Rome presents us with several churches in which, in spite of subsequent changes, the original internal arrangements may still he traced. Such was, before its destruction by fire, St. Paul’s outside the walls, which dated from the time of Constantine ; there still remain St. Agnes and St. Lawrence; and, in restored shape, St. Marcel- linus and St. Peter, St. Sebastian, and St. Peter’s in the Vatican, &c. Still more perfect examples may be found in Noithern Italy and in Dalmatia. De Brosse, who saw St. Paul’s before the conflagration, was astonished at the sight of its five naves, separated by a forest of four rows of columns of white Parian marble, of alabaster, of cipoline, of breccia, of granite, and other costly materials. These had been taken by Constantine from the mausoleum of Hadrian. CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 2 7 stantine not only acknowledged this hierarchy already established, but adapted it to the order of civil functionaries and to the division of the provinces. The chief cities had bishops appointed to watch over the faith and the conduct of the priests of the district. The bishops in the capitals of the provinces had, like the governor of the province over his provincials, a pre-eminence over the other bishops ; these were the archbishops, or metropolitans, w r ho assumed the pallium.* Lastly, the metropolitans of the great capitals, as Alexandria, Antioch, &c., which were also apostolic sees, i.e. cities in which Apostles had resided, received a further title of honour, and were called patriarchs. The Bishop of Rome, the only metro¬ politan in the West, assumed for himself the title of pope,f and became, with less and less opposition, the head of the hierarchy of the Western Churches. This simple and powerful organization has lasted through all the centuries of barbarian invasions, wars, and revolutions, and has made the Catholic Church like an army always ready for service, and has saved it in times of danger both from external peril and from internal dissensions by the force of its discipline. The Council of Niccca. —Nevertheless, the Church in the fourth century was far from resembling a monarchy; it was rather a sort of republic within the empire ; it had its assemblies, and held the first of its councils, called oecumenical (universal), at Nicaea, in Bithynia, in 325. The bishops, who came from all parts of the Old World, met there to the number of 318, and some were pointed out still bearing the scars of tortures endured for the faith. After having condemned the heresy of Arius they drew up a fuller form of the creed which contained the Christian doctrines, and which served as a bond between all the Christian communities. The Church has clung to this creed with unshaken constancy, and has transmitted it to our times as a faith clearly defined, immovable, * The pallium is a bind of white woollen band worn round ihe neck with the ends hanging down before and behind. It is still sent to all archbishops by the Pope, and the reception of it is consHered as an acknowledgment of the supremacy of the see of Rome, and of its sole jurisdiction. t The ordinary priests in the Russian and Greek churches are still called Papas—Popes. 28 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. independent of all fluctuations, of nationalities, of the opinions of sects and parties. The Nicaaan Creed is repeated, to this day, in the four quarters of the world in all the Catholic Churches. In their gratitude to the Emperor Constantine, who placed the whole forces of the administration at their service, the bishops did not realise the danger of identifying the Church with the State, and allowed the emperor in person to preside over the sittings of the Council of Nicsea, as formerly the Cassars had presided over heathen ceremonies. The clergy found this union of religion and will of the empire to be the right thing as long as the union was to their advantage, but it proved to be an error, which later led to many a conflict. Under Constantine’s immediate successors the bishops had to complain of Arian emperors, and to undergo fresh persecutions. Even these tribulations did not open their eyes, and the spiritual power was still confused with the temporal power. Constantinople .—Although really the master, the power of the new religious society appeared so formidable to Constantine that he abandoned Rome as his capital, where, since the withdrawal of Diocletian, the authority of the bishop had almost balanced that of the emperor. Constantine left it in order to found, near the ancient Byzantium, on the banks of the Bosporus, where Europe and Asia approach each other the most closely, a new capital, which should be his own city and which he could fill with his greatness. Other considerations doubtless influenced Constantine in this important change. Although ravaged by the Persians, the East was less threatened than the West by the barbarians. The centre of administration was thus rendered more safe from surprise, and the site of Constantinople, protected by the sea and by the bulwark of the Balkans, was so well chosen that many an invasion passed it by. It proved the salvation of Europe and of the empire during the whole of the Middle Ages from a pre¬ mature establishment there of the Turkish power. This trans¬ ference of the capital to a city which by its situation must necessarily become a Grecian city, was yet another revenge taken by Greece. The Greek world had preserved its vitality ; as soon CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 29 as it had a capital it stood forth separately and alone. Even with¬ out the invasions the vast Roman Empire would have broken up according to the law which does not permit of the duration of too extensive conglomerations, and which ever opposes the principle of nationality to that of uniformity. Constantinople stood on the shore of a magnificent bay, the Golden Horn, in a fine climate, having the advantage over Rome of being a maritime city in easy communication with all the coasts of Asia Minor, Syria, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, situated indeed a little too far to the north and east to be able to hold for long the dominion of the West, but excellently placed to remain the mistress of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Constantine despoiled Rome and the Italian cities for the benefit of his new city, and accumulated there the treasures of antiquity, even while he gave it the impress of Christianity. From a political point of view Rome was declining. But in spite of the ravages of the barbarians, she continued to be the capital of the West. The religious potentate who dwelt there borrowed from Rome her old political influence, and adding to it his own episcopal ascendency, made her again the capital of a world—of that Church which is still known as the Church of Rome. The Pagan Pieaction under Julian .—The victory of Christianity had not been achieved without exciting fierce irritation in the heathen world. This opposition took advantage of the discord in the empire which followed the death of Constantine, and of the quarrels among the Christians themselves, to resume the offensive. The Christians had made the emperor the master of their religion ; they quickly suffered for this. Constantius restored Arianism and persecuted the Catholic bishops ; Julian, proclaimed emperor at Paris by his soldiers, shortly after¬ wards declared himself the protector of paganism (360). The old religion * reappeared with his powerful sanction, the sacrifices * It was far from having wholly disappeared. In the cities and large towns, and along the great roads and chief commercial routes, Christianity had established itself; but a few miles off, in the country and in the villages [pagi), the inhabitants, the villagers ( pagani ), long remained averse to 30 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of animals were renewed, the palace and the gardens of Con¬ stantinople were transformed into a Pantheon, where countless idols were each in turn the object of the emperor’s worship. Julian was a fanatical pagan, a thing which had been scarcely seen before ; he undertook a war against Christianity so much the more dangerous because it was skilfully carried on with the aid of philo¬ sophers and sophists rather than by the executioner. He went, however, so far on the road to persecution as to forbid Christians to teach secular literature. Perhaps he would have pushed still further this systematic persecution had not his reign been cut short by the mortal wound which he received in a battle against the Persians (863). The Heresies; the Fathers of the Greek Church .—Christianity had now to meet only the enemies in her own bosom and in the sphere of intellectual speculation. In her earliest days Judaism and the outward power of heathenism had been her only foes ; but as the doctrines of Christianity spread they necessarily met face to face not only the philosophies of Greece and Rome, but the older specu¬ lations and cosmogonies, the dualism, the emanations, the incar¬ nations of the divine, with which the East had long sought to solve and explain the problems of man’s destiny and of the creation and of the existence of the external world. It was inevitable that some of these should influence or try to gain an introduction into Chris¬ tianity. For some time past the liberty of opinions, which had been very great in the first centuries when the Church had not yet defined her dogmas, settled her forms of liturgy, or fixed her hierarchy, had produced, a multitude of doctrines which differed more or less from those of the Apostles. But none had appeared more dangerous than that of Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria (280—336), who, by maintaining that the Son of God was only of like and not of the same substance with the Father, destroyed the certainty of the revelation of God in Christ. It was to combat this Christianity. The old worship, with its habits, its festivals, and its super¬ stitions, was hut tardily supplanted, and many of these last, in a newer dress, took rank among the festivals and the practices of the Christian church, and continued even when the villagers had ceased to he pagani (pagans) in the newer sense of the word. CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF TILE ROMAN EMPIRE . 3i heresy that Constantine had assembled the Council of Nicaea, where the bishops inserted in their creed the word ( o/jloovctlov ) consub- stantial, of one substance, thus identifying the substance of the Father and the Son, and maintaining the unity of God in a trinity of three persons. Arius came from Alexandria. It was in that city where Greek philosophy had mingled with Hebrew doctrine, and had met the last utterances of the moribund religion of ancient Egypt, and the wilder and more daring, and perhaps more profound speculations of the East, that the greatest doctors and teachers, as well as the greatest heretics that ever disturbed the Church, arose. For awhile in the third century, under the guidance of Pantsenus (180), Dio¬ nysius (died 265), Clement (190—202), and Origen (185—214), it seemed as if Christianity would absorb and make its own the highest philosophy and science of the day ; only once since, in the Middle Ages, have science and religion been so closely united, and never on such terms of perfect freedom. But this freedom brought with it the germs of deadlier strife, even if of nobler and more glorious victory. It was there Arianism had its birth. The decrees of the Council of Nicaea had by no means extinguished it. It still made numerous disciples in the East. In vain the most illustrious doc¬ tors of the Church, as St. Athanasius (296 — 878), afterwards patri¬ arch of Alexandria, opposed it first by word and by writing, and when the Arians had found a champion in the Emperor Constan- tius, by their constancy under persecution and in exile. The Arians triumphed during a great part of the fourth century ; and besides Athanasius, the Fathers of the Greek Church, St. Gregory of Nazi- anzus (330—390), St. Gregory of Nyssa (335—895), and the eloquent St. Basil (329—379), with many others, did not cease to oppose it in their writings. Thus a new literature grew up, invigorated by a noble faith, but quite inferior in beauty of form and style to the purer models of Greek antiquity, which the Fathers of the Church studied in the schools of Athens and of Alexandria. St. Basil had been a fellow student with Julian at Athens, and is said to have foreseen in him the future dangerous enemy of Chris¬ tianity. To the Fathers of the Greek Church at the end of the 32 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. fourth and the beginning of the fifth century we must add him who for his eloquence was called the golden-moutlied, St. John Chry¬ sostom (347—407). His life was spent not so much in combating speculative heresy as in opposing the growing corruption of the Church, in denouncing the luxury and orientalism of the Court, and the baneful influence of unprincipled women and of favourites and eunuchs in the administration of the empire and of the Church. With Athanasius, Chrysostom is perhaps the noblest champion of liberty against Byzantine despotism which these ages produced. The Fathers of the Latin Church .—The West, although less troubled by heresies than the East, had also its eloquent doctors. After Tertullian and Cyprian in Western Africa, and Hosius in Spain, who presided for the West in the Council of Nicsea, St. Hilary of Poictiers (315—366) defended the Catholic faith against the Arians in Gaul, and was banished by the Emperor Constantius. He was one of the most venerated Apostles of Gaul, and he recog¬ nised the merits of and encouraged St. Martin (336—401), the founder of the first monasteries in Gaul, the preacher in the country districts, where he formed parishes, and destroyed the last lingering remnants of paganism. St. Ambrose (340—397), born at Treves, in the province of Gaul, and the son of a prefect of Southern Gaul, was first distinguished as a pleader, and rose to be prefect of that province in North Italy of which Milan was the capital. Although then a layman, he was, on the death of the bishop of the see, compelled by the acclamations of the people to be his successor, and his after conduct nobly justified this irregular selection. His virtue, his charity, his eloquence, and his wise administration secured him such authority that even emperors submitted to his influence. Theodosius quailed before his denun¬ ciations, when after the massacre of Thessalonica (390) he inter¬ dicted him from entering the cathedral of Milan; an instance rare indeed at that time of moral power triumphing over physical force and compelling the master of the world to do penance. In the middle of the fourth century there was born, on the con¬ fines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, one whose name was to become very celebrated in the Western Church, St. Jerome ("346—420). CHRISTIANITY-FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 33 He belonged to an obscure but wealthy family, and after severe study in bis native province went to Rome for higher education. Converted to Christianity, he visited the East and West, and settled for some time in Rome, whence he finally migrated to pass most of the remainder of his life in his celebrated monastery at Beth¬ lehem. An ardent, and often, it must be confessed, a singularly unfair, controversialist, he took a part in all the theological disputes of his day. Disliked by some, he was an object of enthusiastic admira¬ tion to many. Exaggerating the merits of a life of virginity in the woman, and the merits of the monastic life, introduced into Rome by Athanasius, 837 ; lavish of his praises to such as would follow his guidance, vituperating all who refused it, he attracted to him¬ self some of the highest-born as well as the most virtuous of the ladies of Rome, and became the director of their consciences ; they laid all their possessions at his feet, followed him to the East, and enabled him to found the Monastery of Bethlehem, and to carry out the great object of his life. Jerome was possessed by a real love for the Scriptures. To understand the Old Testament better he learned Hebrew, a rare accomplishment in his day; he collected and compared manuscripts, was ever busy with commentary and translation, visited the holy places, left no means of research un¬ employed, and thus was enabled to produce the translation which still holds sway in the Roman Church, the Latin Vulgate, which has almost superseded, in that Church, the study of the originals, and has there an equal if not a greater authority. With all its faults, this will ever remain one of the most successful translations ever achieved by a single man. His chief helpers in this, as in all his works, were the Roman ladies who had followed him to Judaea, Paula and her daughter Eustochia, who copied his manuscripts, read to him, collated for him, and acted as the most intelligent and faithful of literary amanuenses. This busy, useful, though ever controversial life of Jerome at Bethlehem was broken into in his last moments ; he lived to hear of the sack of Rome by Alaric, to receive fugitives from the Eternal City, to see Bethlehem itself plundered by the Arabs, and to die amid the inroads D 34 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of the barbarians, after having outlived all bis friends, in the year 420. Among the controversial correspondents of Jerome’s later years was a young Christian of the province of Africa, St. Augustine (354—430). As a mystic, a commentator, a philosopher, and a theologian, St. Augustine is the greatest divine in the annals of the Western Latin Church. After a youth probably not more vicious than that of most young men of his day, but of the sins of which he has left us penitential details in his “ Confessions,” St. Augustine was attracted by the dualism of the Manicheeans, a system which appears to solve so plausibly the existence of evil in the world under a Deity of perfect goodness ; but, turning from it, he became the most successful antagonist of the errors which he had embraced. He was next involved in controversy with Pelagius, the British thinker, on the deep questions of man’s freewill and the divine foreknowledge. In this too he was successful. But the bitterest struggle of his life was with the Donatists, the Puritans of the early Church, who held that the sacraments were of no avail if adminis¬ tered by the unworthy, that the Church is composed of the godly alone; while they set up bishop against bishop, and claimed to be the true Church in the midst of one corrupted by unworthiness. The theological work of St. Augustine has appeared at times to be for¬ gotten, but whenever great convulsions agitate the Church, when¬ ever the deep and almost insoluble problems with which he dealt engage men’s minds, his writings will find eager students. It was so at the Reformation, and his impress is felt more or less in all the schools to which the name of Calvin is in any way attached. But perhaps the greatest work of St. Augus¬ tine from a literary point of view is “ The City of God,” written when it was already evident that Christianity would not be able to retard or to avert the downfall of the Roman Empire. It is the first of the great Christian Epics, in prose or verse, like Dante’s “ Divina Commedia,” and Miiton’s “Paradise Lost,” and Bossuet’s “ Histoire Universeile,” written to do what man can never do completely : “ to justify the ways of God to man.” Augustine died just before the city of his see was taken, and before Christianity CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 35 was destroyed in the province for which he laboured so well and long, and the North African Church, the home of so many Fathers, the scene of many Councils, had ceased to exist. Hermits and Monks. —During this period began the life of retire¬ ment from the world, of the anchorites, hermits, monks, and coenobites.* In the solitudes of Egypt, and principally in the Thebaid, as early as the third century, some pious solitaries or anchorites like Paul (285—840) sought to attain the highest degree of Christian perfection by separation from the world, by bodily austerity and fasting, and by all kinds of asceticism. They attained a pitch of enthusiasm that issued in astonishing ex¬ travagance : St. Pachomius, in the fourth century, slept only standing against a wall; St. Symeon Stylites (the pillar monk) lived on the top of a column, &c. From some of these retreats issued commentaries, copies of the Scriptures, books eagerly sought for in religious society. Even women shared this passion for solitude and for study. High-born Roman ladies, like Fabiola, gave all their goods to the poor, founded hospitals, and devoted themselves to a monastic life. Women like Marcella, Paula, Asella, Furia, descendants of the noblest families, set the example of a life of renunciation, of charity, and of prayer. But these associations, apart from the world, pure and holy and full of pious energy as they were at their commence¬ ment, could not save the world, or stay the ever-growing corrup¬ tion ; they could only preserve the seed which might be sown and bring forth fruit in better times. Final Causes of the Fall of the Homan Empire , and of the Success of the Invasions. —The Roman empire could no longer maintain itself in its old integrity, it could no longer resist the pressure exercised on every frontier by the barbarians. The organization of Diocletian and Constantine had come too * Anchorites, men retired from the world; Hermits, eremites, dwellers in the desert; Monks, monastics, those who lived alone; Coenobites, those who lived in common in communities. These last terms have almost interchanged their true meaning in common parlance, since almost all the monastic orders now live in communities. 36 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. late. It had only aggravated the mischief in the provinces, espe¬ cially in the west, where the invasions were the most frequent. The multitude of privileged functionaries merely served to diminish the number of tax-payers and to increase the expenditure. The taxes weighed more and more heavily on the less wealthy classes. The municipal officers, even at the sacrifice of their fortunes/ were unable to make up the deficit, and sank themselves to swell the classes of the poor and the serfs. The middle class dis¬ appeared, as in the time of the Gracchi; the peasants revolted, and the bagauda, hordes of plunderers, added their ravages to those of the barbarians. Misery led to depopulation. Patriotism had vanished. Rome had vindicated her rule by assur¬ ing peace and prosperity to the world.. When prosperity and peace had vanished there was no longer any reason for fidelity to Rome. The title of Roman, which had become general since the time of Caracalla, had lost its prestige and no longer secured protection. Thus the provinces watched without resentment the advent of the new masters, who could not be more harsh towards them than was Rome herself. In many countries no defence against the bar¬ barians was even attempted. Besides, what defence could have been made ? The military spirit had been lost; the legions, recruited for pay, included a mul¬ titude of barbarian soldiers, and in the later days of the empire Franks and Goths were commanders of the army, and its real rulers. This barbarian immigration prepared the way for the great invasion. In contrast with all this wretchedness, unheard-of luxury reigned in the palaces, long trains of horses and magnificent carriages, end¬ less festivals, the games of the circus, and gladiatorial combats, of which even Christians were spectators in spite of the pro¬ hibition of the Church. Society displayed every contrast: the dis¬ putes of the Christian sects, the last assaults of heathen philosophy, the artificiality of the poets of the decadence, and eloquent and earnest bishops. Grammar and rhetoric shared with the Holy Scriptures the favour of the learned; thousands of officials adu¬ lated the prince, and bishops flattered or browbeat him; bitter CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 37 persecution of opponents and the highest virtues of evangelical cha¬ rity were seen side by side. The Empire was Roman only in name ; its capital was a Greek city, its court Oriental, the best works of literature were written in Greek. Nothing remained of the old re¬ ligion but a mythology neglected even by the philosophers. The titles of ancient Rome, once so sought after, were now worthless, its words had no signification, its traditions had been falsified, its memory was no longer powerful enough to impose respect upon the barbarians. The division of the empire between the two sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius (395), was but the formal admission of a fact that had been accomplished long before, but it marked the close of the empire. The Empire of the West, the real Roman Empire, perished in less than a century (395—476). The Empire of the East lasted until the end of the Middle Ages, but it really was, as it is commonly called, the Greek, or Byzantine Empire. What Borne has given to the World .—The history of the Roman Empire occupies a considerable place in the history of humanity. Rome took seven hundred years to conquer the world, and she governed it for nearly five hundred. She conquered the universe by submitting herself to a rule of liberty ; because she had learned how to combine discipline with liberty, to subordinate private interests to public, gradually to bring all classes into harmony, to impose both domestic and civic virtues upon her citizens. Republican Rome offered splendid examples of valour, of abnegation, of patriotism, and of love of liberty. Though Rome was a city, her chief virtues were not those of a city. Her power depended, not like that of the cities of Greece, solely on those who dwelt within her walls ; she was at first neither a commercial nor a maritime power. Her strength and her virtues were those of a hardy country peasantry ; thrift, self-respect, hardi¬ hood, obstinate resolution, jealousy of others, and a narrow if ardent patriotism. When she lost her virtues, she displayed to the world the most frightful examples; first, of civil wars, and then of the most insen- 33 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. sate tyranny under the worst of rulers. She substituted the most wretched traditions of despotism for the grand maxims of liberty, which had been her glory. Imperial Rome became servile and cor¬ rupt ; but she had, up to her own standard, pacified and civilized the ancient world. She left her impress on all administrative traditions; the municipal traditions founded, maintained, and extended by her, though apparently forgotten for a time, revived and flourished again after the invasion of the barbarians. Moreover, Rome created the science of law and made great ad¬ vance in military science. She has left numerous monuments which attest her care and great practical intelligence in material progress ; her roads and bridges, her camps and walls, stretched to the utmost limit of her frontiers. Her literature is remarkable for its dignity, though by no means so original as that of Greece ; and like her language it has left a deep imprint upon modern literature. Lastly, Rome bequeathed Christianity to the West; after having long resisted it, she adopted it and made it her own. In the eyes of the new races which subdued her Rome repre¬ sented an old-world civilization, summed up in her name ; she represented Christianity also, thus uniting and already harmonizing the two elements whence arose the civilization of later times. The Legacy of Antiquity .—It is difficult, without repeating what we have just said, to determine exactly the nature of the legacy left by the old world to the new. That which strikes us most, in studying the Ancients, is the overwhelming influence of the idea of the State. That which they call liberty must be understood of political liberty only. Equality, not to be confounded with liberty, was unknown to them. Everywhere, in Greece as well as in Rome, in the Republics as well as under the Empire, were aristocracies, privileged classes, great social and political inequality, and slavery. The heathen religion, apart from some philosophical tendencies and the nobler teaching of a few writers, was chiefly a religion of fear. In earlier Greece, however, the service of religion was much more free and joyous than it ever was in Rome. But on the whole ancient civilization had been too exclusive, too selfish, too harsh. Nevertheless it was very brilliant, it knew every mental refine- CHRISTIANITY—FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE . 39 ment and all delights of art. It opened to man the resources of poetry, of philosophy, of history, of eloquence. Taken as a whole it was an immense advance on all the anterior civilizations of the East, of Egypt, and of Phoenicia. It moulded man’s intellect into a higher form. Yet natural science was wanting. The ancients, refined artists, profound reasoners though they were, had not learnt the power of careful and scientific observation, and made few dis¬ coveries. In short Greece and Rome have done so much that in many things we cannot refuse to acknowledge them to be our masters, and Greece even more than Rome. Roman law has prevailed, more or less, in every European nation (in England, perhaps, least of all), from the time of Justinian to the promulgation of the Code Napo¬ leon ; and it was owing to the impulse of Greek literature and Greek art that civilization, violently interrupted for some centuries, had its renaissance, and resumed its accelerated march ; a renewal of progress which the moderns first acquired through the study of the masters of antiquity. Still, if the materials from which mediaeval and modern civiliza¬ tion were formed, were supplied by ancient civilization; the shaping spirit which has dealt with them so as to make Europe what it is, the spirit which rules all progress in the present, and promises to rule all progress in the future, is the spirit, as yet imperfectly received in any society, which flows from the words and the life of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. Merovingian Crypt (Church at Touarre.j BOOK IT. THE MIDDLE AGES. CHAPTER II. THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS. GERMANIC SOCIETY. Summaet : The Middle Ages—The New Races—The Germans : Agricultural and Military Life—The Germanic Family—The Germanic Tribes— Germanic Royalty—The Assemblies or Malls—Justice—Personal Indivi¬ duality—Slavery amongst the Germans—Religion—Barbarian King¬ doms, Visigoths, Vandals, &c.—Destruction of the Western Empire ( 476 ) —The Ostrogoths : Theoderic—The Barbarian Laws—Dec adence of the Barbarian Kingdoms—Military Supremacy of the Franks—Frank and Roman Society : the Monarchy—The Classes—Finance; Justice— The Church and Barbarian Society: the Bishops—The Right of Asylum; the Tonsure ; the Clerks—The Councils : Excommunication—Wealth of the Church—The Monasteries—The Papacy—Alliance between the Frank Kings and the Church: Accession of the Carolingians—The Temporal Power of the Popes—Europe in the Eighth Century. N o tes : The Salic Law—The Monasteries. The Middle Ages. —The term, Middle Ages, defines the inter¬ mediate period between ancient and modern civilization. Man¬ kind has not received the power of advancing in moral and material progress without occasional retrogression. In the fifth century of the Christian era profound darkness followed the brilliant light that had radiated from Athens and Rome. The number of native Roman citizens had been gradually declin¬ ing. They had long since failed to supply legionaries for the armies, which were now mainly composed of barbarian mercenaries. The old Roman farmer, from whose ranks so many of the great consuls and dictators of old had sprung, cultivating his small estate with the assistance of his family and household slaves, had become 42 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. extinct, and had been replaced by owners of huge territorial tracts, which they used as pasture, or cultivated by slave labour alone. And even thus, corn-growing in Italy could not compete with the cheaper production of the provinces, and the capital became de¬ pendent exclusively on them for food for the vast multitude of unproductive citizens, who clamoured only for bread and games ; who united the vices of pauperism and cowardly servility with those of a turbulent democracy. The few corps of Roman sol¬ diery, the prcetorian cohorts and home legions, were employed as instruments of political ambition and imperial intrigue rather than for the defence of the empire. All was hollow and corrupt; there was no real force anywhere. Even law and administration, admir¬ able in their organization on paper, through the privileges and exemptions allowed to their officials, who formed a bureaucratic caste, with all the inefficiency, narrowness, and corruption of such a caste, became mere agents of oppression, and made the imperial rule at once hated and despised. And round the empire, still materially rich, with all its monuments unharmed, its treasures of art untouched, its cities gorged with unproductive wealth, its riches exaggerated by report, hung the barbarian kinsmen of the mercenaries who filled the ranks of its legions ; longing keenly for the spoil, eager to exchange the poor lands and rude climate, the forests and morasses of the north, for the sun and open fields and rich pastures of the south, and the marvels and the wealth of the empire of Rome. Gradually they learned how weak it was, taught by the rival generals and emperors, who used them for their own intrigues, reckless of the harm done to the empire. True, the barbarians brought with them the germs of a nobler world. They had the moral force and energy, the rude hardihood and power of endurance which the Romans had wholly lost. But they knew nothing of real civilization. Their desire was but the avaricious curiosity, the fierce and eager craving of the savage for goods that he cannot use. The treasures of antiquity, the learning of ages, the accumulated wealth of centuries, were to them like costly toys to children, things to be coveted for a moment, then broken and destroyed. They came for plunder and to spoil; they THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 43 must destroy ere they could build up. It was impossible that they could do both at once, and they destroyed so much that at last even materials were lacking for reconstruction, the land became a desert. Even new languages bad to be formed. Hence the long night of darkness that succeeded to the overthrow of Rome. The invasions were first commenced in the year 240 a.d., by tribes of barbarians, but were continued in the fifth century by hordes of uncivilized races, whose incursions were prolonged into the sixth. When the invasion from the north seemed ended another from the south commenced, and was followed by very different results. The Greek empire was dismembered, and the world found itself divided between new races and even new religions. The work of reorganization then began and had laboriously continued during several centuries, until, in the fifteenth, it suddenly quickened into rapid progress. This difficult work of amalgamation between different races and traditions, this effort of a broken civilization to influence its conquerors, forms the history of the Middle Ages, or the laborious infancy of the new society. Innumerable invasions, endless wars, nameless misery, this is all that history can show during more than five centuries (from the fifth to the eleventh). It seemed as though human society, once dissolved, had not power to recon¬ struct itself, and that the world must revert to the time of the Pelasgians. But all these confused mixed elements gradually arranged themselves, nations separated, mental power re-awakened, science revived, and, after a long slumber, bat not till the last vestige of the old world had disappeared, humanity was born again, and modern civilization commenced to expand. It would be unjust to ignore the patient labour of the Middle Ages, a period that has been too long undervalued. But on the other hand, we must not, through prejudice or political passions, allow ourselves to exaggerate our admiration for the brilliant exterior of a society which, vigorously freeing itself from barbarism, was rendered seductive by all the graces of youth. In the Middle Ages, as in all intermediate periods, we find violence and injustice by the side of the noblest virtues, apparent 44 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. order veiling the most frightful confusion, results which flowed from no principle, a frightful collision between ideas and nations seething as though they were in a gigantic crucible where different metals are fusing, and where gold is mixed with copper. Nothing is more difficult to follow than the ebullitions of a society formed of so many differing elements. The New Races .—But what were the first races that thus came to renew the ancient populations ? Three of them have been identified. The Teutonic or German, and the Slav races, both issued from the same Aryan source as the populations of Greece and Rome ; then followed the Tartars, more or less of the Mongol race, and much more refractory to civilization. Their representa¬ tives in the invasions were the Avars, Huns, Ugrian, Magyar and Turkish tribes. Between these were the Semitic and Arab races, ■who for a short time, from the seventh to eleventh centuries, attained a far higher civilization than the populations which they sup¬ planted. But Europe was peopled and modified by the two other races. The Slavs (Sarmatae, Quades, Yenedi, Letes or Poles, Slovaks, Czechs or Bohemians, Servians, Moravians, Russians, Bosnians, and Croats), w r ere for a long time in the background. Tall, strong, remarkable for their regular features and quick temperament, their suppleness and intelligence, they afterwards raised themselves and formed the populations of Eastern and of Central Europe. The Teutons, nearest in position to the empire, and for some time settled between the Rhine and the Elbe, extending in the persons of the Goths as far as the Oural, were the most active agents in the destruction of the empire, and the creators of the nations of Western Europe. These are the most necessary to be studied, for besides the more purely Teutonic nations, the influence of Goth and German may be traced in varied proportions in the physical type, the languages, laws, and ideas of even the Romance or Latin nations. Yet but for the remains of the old civilization, and still more the influence of Christianity, there are not wanting signs to show that the barbarians would have lost even their savage virtues and been THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY, 45 only corrupted by the unaccustomed wealth and luxury with which they were surrounded, the higher and better uses of which they were wholly unable to appreciate. But for the influence of the remains of Roman law and of provincial administration, but for the Church and its bishops, that great central commonwealth of which all men were citizens, whose laws in their moral and spiritual force were equally binding on Roman and barbarian, on noble and on slave—but for these counteracting influences there is abundant evi¬ dence to show that civilized society might have utterly broken up; that barbarian chiefs, with concubines and slaves, each in his petty district, with only his own caprice for law, might have lived and ruled, and fought in petty strife, until all Europe had become for a time a congeries of clans without law and without civilization. The Teutons or Germans : Agricultural and Military Life .— Unreservedly praised or abused, extolled by Tacitus, who con¬ trasted their simple habits with Roman degradation, lauded by the Germans, who boast of their descent from these warlike races, disparaged by the partisans of the Latin races, the Teutons have not merited this great praise nor this excessive contempt. They belonged to the Aryan race and nearly resembled the Gauls, who preceded them on their road to the West. Tall, fair, strong, they had remained on the first steps of social life. Hunters and warriors wandering in tribes, they were nomads in the range of territory they occupied. They cultivated the soil, but changed districts after the harvest, and seem at first to have held no individual property in land. The Germanic Family .—But this does not imply that these races had no political or social organization. Far from it. They had both regard and respect for family life. “ The Germans,” said Tacitus, “ are almost alone amongst the barbarians in contenting themselves with one wife.” The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but the husband gave a dowry to his wife (morgengab). Tacitus also notices the respect with which the Germans treated their wives. “ They regarded the wife,” he says, “ as something holy and provident, and neglected neither her counsels nor her aspirations.” Her husband’s constant companion, she shared his 4 6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. labour and his perils. During a battle she stayed on the chariots, but if the warriors retreated the women rushed to their assistance, encouraging them to return to the fight and winning or dying with them. Marital and paternal authority were only a trusteeship. The French civil code has adopted the principle of the guardianship or provision (mundium) which originated in the Teutonic customs and was followed by the common law, which vests family relations upon the need of protection for the weak and upon the guarantee given by the affection and tenderness of the parent.* The child attained his majority at fifteen ; he "was then admitted to the rank of warrior ; he was free. Children inherited them father’s pos¬ sessions and divided them equally. There was no will. The daughter, like her brothers, was admitted to a share of all per¬ sonal property. She was excluded from the Salic lands, a badly defined expression, upon which no authorities can agree, but which appears to have designated a land held in fief acquired by conquest. The Germanic Tribes .—Although these races appear to have cherished a strong sentiment of equality, there is. documentary proof of the existence of an hereditary nobility,! but at the time of the invasion the noble families had greatly diminished. J Yet we find the Teutons, as we formerly found the Gauls, grouped round a chief of the tribe, whom they followed into battle, and whom no * “The Code of Gundsbad (a.d. 501 ) is the first written code of Europe which legally instituted the family according to the ties of blood ; it formulated as a positive law the emancipation of a man by proclaiming him sui juris when he attained majority ; it made the wife the husband’s partner, and reserved the widow’s rights in his property. This code went yet farther : it first proclaimed the widow’s legal guardianship over her children, thus initiating the woman into all the rights of civil life and to the plenitude of her rights as mother.”—Valentine Smith, former Counsel to the Court of Appeal at Paris (“ De la famille chez les Bourgondes ”). f Code of the Bavarians, Thuringians, Frisons, and Anglo-Saxons. Not peculiar either to Germans or Gauls, found among Iberians and Scotch, and many others. + In the sixth century there remained four amongst the Bavarians, two amongst the Goths, one amongst the Franks. Compare the race of Cerdio among the English before the Norman Conquest. Consult Fustel de Coulange’s “Hiatoire des Institutions Politiques de l'Ancienne France,” vol. i. THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.— GERMANIC SOCIETY. 47 warrior could leave with honour if he fell in the field. This devotion of man to man formed the basis of a proud warlike clan¬ ship amongst the Germans very different from the pacific servile clients of the Roman gens. The chiefs were only masters on the field of battle; the following day they were but equal to their sol¬ diers, and shared the booty with them, reserving only their fair portion. Germanic Royalty ; the Assemblies or Malls .—But this was not because the Teutons had no ruler. They obeyed kings whom they chose, according to Tacitus, from the noblest families. These kings never undertook anything without first consulting the general assembly of the nation, the mullum or mall, a tumultuous assem¬ blage, where the chiefs and warriors, drawn up in battle array, listened to the king’s proposals, signifying their approval by strik¬ ing their lances against their shields ; a noisy, stormy assertion of that liberty which by its powerful breath reanimated the old world, slumbering in Oriental slavery. Justice .—The assemblage or council of chiefs also judged serious crimes. For minor crimes and offences the chiefs of the cantons traversed the country, held assizes, and tried the accused before his equals and his peers. However, this justice was little in re¬ quisition, for it only punished crimes against society, the crime of cowardice being the sole offence that entailed the penalty of death. All assaults against persons, private offences or crimes, were revenged by the members of the outraged family, not only upon the offender but upon his kindred conjointly answerable for the crime. The consequences of this vengeance were evaded by a composition, by pecuniary reparation for the injury inflicted. A murder amongst barbarians was only an injury; it never occurred to them as a violation of the moral law. The price varied with the rank and wealth of the victim; it was the wergild (price of the man), or wehrgild (price of the war). Personal Individuality .—The sentiment of family individuality and independence and of personal individuality and indepen¬ dence were deeply imprinted upon the hearts of the Germans, who, wherever they passed, retained their own laws, and main- 4 8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tained their personal right to avenge their injuries. The in¬ dividual was everything, dared everything, devoted himself to a chieftain because the chief pleased him, but on the morrow could devote himself to another. He was a warrior, perfectly unused to the idea of citizenship. Slavery amongst the Germans .—Although so proud of his liberty the German could lose it (by captivity, debt, or gambling); but amongst these peoples slavery had not the same character as amongst the Romans. The Teuton habits were at first simple and rough, and they did not need an army of slaves around them ; they therefore relegated their slaves to the country. Upon them devolved all the work of cultivating the land, and of gathering in the harvest, whilst the free men hunted and fought. Consequently the slaves held almost the same position as the Roman husband¬ men, and became in a measure blended with these husbandmen, whom the conquerors forced to cultivate the soil. Tacitus remarks, “ that the Germans very rarely strike a slave or load him with irons ; they sometimes kill them, not through severity or as dis¬ cipline, but through violence or an angry impulse, as they would kill an enemy.” Religion .—Not unlike the religion of the Greeks and Romans, the Teutonic religion seems to have been a deification of the powers of nature. Religion exercised great influence among the Teutons ; it w r as the chief source of their valour. It is difficult to ascertain exactly the nature of the gods with whom they peopled heaven and earth. Odin, the All-Fadir, the sovereign god (Zeus Pater), the god of battles ; Donar, or Thor, the god of thunder ; Tyr, the god of the sword; Freyr, the god of peace and harvest; the goddess Friga, or Freya. There is conclusive evidence that they worshipped nature—the sun, the moon (sunna, mani), the earth, the goddess Ertha. The names of the gods are reproduced in the Teuton calendar and in our own ; Sunday, Sonntag (sun’s day); Monday, Montag (moon’s day); Donnerstag (Donar’s day), our Thursday, or Thor’s day ; Freitag, Friday (Freya’s day). In Swedish, Wed¬ nesday (Woden’s day), is called Odin’s-dag, and Tuesday (Tiu’s day), is Zio, or Tyr’s day, represented by a sword. The Teutons THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 49 believed in a future life, at all events for the warriors, who would dwell in heaven with the gods and goddesses, over whom Wotan, or Odin, presided in the beautiful palace of Walhalla, built in the midst of the clouds. According to their traditions their warriors were welcomed by the Walkyries, “ daughters of battles,” who led them to the Walhalla, where eternal banquets awarded their exploits. The peculiarity of this religion was that it looked on to the end of this mythology and the destruction of all their gods and a reconstruction of the heaven and the earth. The Barbarian Kingdoms , the Visigoths , Vandals , dec, ; Destruction of the Western Empire (476).—The Roman empire was, at first, disorganized rather than revived by the invasion of the Teutonic races. The family of the Goths of the West (the Visigoths), flying before the hordes of the Tartar race, made their first irruption into the empire of the East (376), but were thrown back upon the West through the policy of the Emperor of Constantinople and his ministers. After a long progress through Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Illyria, and Italy, after three sieges and the sack of Rome, they succeeded in founding a kingdom in Southern Gaul and Spain (419), of which Toulouse was the capital. The Burgundians, detaching themselves from the mass of the in¬ vaders, who in 406—407 had rolled across Gaul, founded a kingdom under Gundachar (418) in the Jura, the valleys of the Saone and the Rhone. The Suevians and the Vandals, who had formed the chief part of the four hundred thousand barbarians in the invasion of 406, remained in Spain, but, attacked by the Visi¬ goths, the Suevians were driven towards the north-west, the Vandals towards the south, where they settled in the valley of Bitis, which retains their name Andalusia. Thence they passed into Africa (430) and founded, under the formidable Genseric, a continental and maritime kingdom, which extended over the Roman province of Africa and the south of Spain, the capital being established at Carthage. To the north of Gaul the Franks, a small tribe often employed by the Romans as auxiliaries, advanced as far as the Somme (428). But closely following this first inroad of barbarians, the formid- E So THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION ,. able race of the Huns threatened to subjugate the whole of Europe. However, the nations already settled in the Roman empire would not allow themselves to be dispossessed. Seated at a plentiful feast, they would not submit to be displaced : Franks, Burgun¬ dians, and Visigoths united with the remnants of the Roman army in Gaul, and on the famous plains of Chalons broke the advance of this ferocious people, whose barbarism startled even the bar¬ barians themselves. The Tartar race, expelled from Gaul and driven from Italy, settled in cantonments on the plains of the Theiss, where it became gradually modified by contact with the Slavs and Teutons. The "Western empire was destroyed in the middle of the fifth century. Rome, ravaged by the Vandals under Genseric, whose ignorant brutality is branded for ever by the word Vandalism (455), could not rise again, and the empire only survived a few years, to fall under the attacks of Odoacer, an obscure chief of the Herulians (476). The Ostrogoths: TheocJoric .—But this was not all. The second family of Goths, from the East (the Ostrogoths), after being for a long time subject to the Huns, freed themselves, and in their turn descended towards the South. Theodoric outwitted and killed Odoacer, and in 493 established the Ostrogoths in Italy, in the neighbourhood of the Visigoths of Southern Gaul. Through a curious coincidence the two branches of the family of Goths again found themselves brought together exactly in the same order as they had been a century before, on the vast plains of the Volga, the Don, and the Dnieper. The family of Goths was the most numerous, the best organized, and the most civilized of the barbarian races. Converted to Chris¬ tianity, or at least Arianism, for many years they appeared en¬ titled to the highest rank amongst the various tribes of the great families. The Visigoth kings held a brilliant court at Toulouse. Theoderic settled his Ostrogoths amongst the Romans in Italy, and applied himself to repairing the ancient ruins, and to erecting new edifices. He had been strongly influenced by the old civili¬ zation, which he, more than any other barbarian chieftain, endea- THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 51 vcured to revive. His glory outshone that of the coarse and barbaric Clovis, King of the Franks. Theodoric occupied and re¬ animated Rome. The prestige of the ancient Queen of the World had dazzled all the barbarian chieftains, who only thought of reviving the empire for their own advantage. The Ostrogoths were assimilated to the Romans by Theoderic. Clovis himself assumed the insignia of Consul and “Patrician” sent to him by Anastasius, the Emperor of the East. We must not, like many modern historians, exag¬ gerate this tendency of the barbarians to amalgamate with the Roman populations. There are, nevertheless, many proofs that the earliest barbarian kings had no general ideas of organiza¬ tion, and never dreamed of substituting one nationality for another. Theoderic even sacrificed his own nationality to that of the Romans. Besides, the barbarians who settled in the country were not sufficiently numerous to repopulate it at once. The Visigoths are calculated to have numbered 200,000; the Ostrogoths rather more; the Burgundians only 60,000 or 80,000, and the first tribes under Clovis did not exceed more than 5,000 or 6,000 men. The great mass of Huns, who outnumbered them all, had been driven back. The Barbarian Laws .—But when forming an opinion upon the character of the barbarian kingdoms we must be chiefly guided by the character of their laws. The Visigoth, Burgundian, and Frank kings, as soon as the first disorder was over, all felt the necessity of publishing codes which more or less reflected the Teutonic or Roman ideas according to the degree in which the conquering race had been assimilated to the conquered. The Salic law, or Frank law, drawn up under Clovis, corrected under Dagobert, retained the Teutonic impression more than any of the others.* The * The Salic Law .— “The text, in which many Teutonic words appear, contained 80 titles, and 260 articles or paragraphs. The purely Latin text has only 70, 71, or 72 titles, according to the different manuscripts, and 406, 407, or 408 articles. At first sight it is impossible to avoid being Btruck with the confusion of this law. It deals with everything: with political rights, civil rights, and criminal law ; with civil and criminal THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 52 Ripuarian law, drawn up by order of Thierry I., King of Austrasia, and also corrected under Dagobert, was deeply impregnated with the Roman law. The Burgundian code, the Loi Gombette, whilst retaining its Teutonic character, displays a tendency towards the adoption of the Roman laws. Lastly, the Lex Rom ana Yisigotliorum was compiled in 506, and formed the basis of the code of the Spanish Visigoths (or Forum Judicum) ; a considerable work, the result of several centuries of labour, which, in its details, unites both the Roman and Christian influences. But the Roman law was also still in force, applicable to the Roman populations, and it was even col¬ lected in special codes, like the one erroneously designated by the name of Breviaire (an abridgment) of Alaric II. ; it was, on the contrary, a compilation of the laws of the last emperors, and of treaties of jurisprudence, including those of Gaius amongst others. The great features of the Roman conquests were now completely reversed, and the inevitable results of the invasion of a civilized country by inferior races soon ensued. Roman traditions were maintained in the midst of the German customs, which their influence gradually tended to modify. This was the great work which continued from the sixth to the ninth century, and its progress was so favourable to the diffusion procedure, with the rural police, with everything pell-mell, without either distinction or classification. If each of the articles of our various codes were written out separately, and if, after being mixed in an urn, they were successively drawn out, the order in which chance would arrange the subjects and provisions would differ very little from their arrangement in the Salic Law. When the details of the code are more closely examined, we perceive that it is essentially penal, that criminal justice not only occupies the most important position, but fills most of the space. Political rights are only indirectly alluded to, in connection with institutions and facts, which are treated as entirely settled, which the code was not intended either to found or to define. In civil law it includes some definite, stringent, and formal provisions. But the penal law predominates, the code being evidently in¬ tended to repress offences and to inflict punishment. It is a penal code. We find in it 363 penal articles and only 65 on other subjects. This is the charac¬ ter of all early legislation ; it is through the penal laws that all races made their first visible progress, the first written step, if I may use the expression, outside barbarism.”—Guizot, “ Histoire de la Civilisation en France,” vol. i. 9th lesson. THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 53 of Roman ideas that the kingdoms of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths appear to have been almost Roman kingdoms. This was even one cause of their rapid decadence. Decadence of the Barbarian Kingdoms .—The family of Goths transplanted into the empire, unable to nourish itself from German sources, found itself submerged in the ancient population. It lost its ferocity and became softened amongst the pleasures of Roman civilization, the southern climate completing the enervation of the hardy northern race. The Visigoths in France, with the exception of the Narbonnaise, retreated before the Franks under Clovis, and took refuge in Spain (507). The Ostrogoths were unable to resist the Greek armies commanded by Belisarius, who had already des¬ troyed the African kingdom of the Vandals (538). The south of Gaul, in spite of the Frank conquests, and Italy, in spite of the barbarian invasions, were still Roman; and there, hidden under a thick layer of dust, the root of Roman ideas was preserved, still living and perennial. Military Supremacy of the Franks .—The Franks were longer in becoming Romanised than the other races, and this was one of the principal causes of their success. Much less numerous than the Goths, they would have been still sooner submerged if they had not retained the organization of an army in the field. They settled in cantonments in the country, continuing their freedom of life, forcing the native population to cultivate the land for them, and for a long time living by pillage. Slowly advancing, step by step, from the Escaut (Scheldt) to the Somme, to the Seine and the Loire, they only crossed the latter in order to make profitable expeditions. Until the Carolingian epoch the south of Gaul remained almost inde¬ pendent. For a long time Burgundy formed a separate kingdom, although it was governed by Frank princes. Besides, the Franks were still reinforced from Germany, and new recruits were con¬ tinually adding to their strength. When the Franks in the West, or Neustria, appeared to have been too much influenced by Roman indolence, the eastern Franks from Austrasia domineered over them and resumed the march forward. Hence the apparently inex¬ plicable success which raised the Franks above all other barbarian 54 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. races and made them the true restorers of the Roman empire, although they seemed for a long time to be the most feeble and most implacable of its enemies. Frank and Roman Society: the Monarchy .—Although at first the Frank monarchy was so antagonistic to Roman ideas, its repre¬ sentatives soon realised the advantages they could derive from their adoption. The royal authority was precarious, but when the princes perceived that the subject populations respected it as a continuation of the power wielded by the emperors, they became more ambitious, and endeavoured to imitate the imperial dignity in some degree. Brunehild’s long struggle against the great Austrasian vassals, and the savage hatred they displayed towards her, were the result of attempts made by the queen to enforce Roman obedience. Dagobert already imitated not only the pomp, but also the tyranny of the emperors. The haughty vassals, who claimed to be judged only by their peers, were executed at once when the prince decreed their death. The monarch was seated on a throne, and around him were grouped Roman counsellors skilful in providing him with laws, and amongst others the ancient law of majestas ( i.e. high treason). The Neustrian kings became almost Roman, and this was one cause of the decadence of Neustria. The oppressed Neustrian vassals took refuge amongst the Austrasians, where the Germanic ideas were so prevalent that royalty itself had dis¬ appeared. Pepin d’Heristal was only a military chief. The Classes .—As we have already noticed, the Frank kings had caused the old customs to be written down ; and although the Salic law differed greatly from the spirit of Roman legislation, it was still a written code. The great vassals, who had protested so violently against the transformation of the royal authority, had not realised that they had allowed themselves to be entrapped into accepting Roman dignities : they assumed the titles of counts and dukes, and felt quite justified in claiming the privileges of the Roman nobility. The social organization remained as it had been under the Empire, and the scale of tariff for the wergeld shows us exactly the same ranks, with the addition of the Frank nobility; the inhabitants of the towns continued to work at their handicrafts. The Gallo- THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 55 Romans who were fortunate enough to escape dispossession at the first invasion were still ranked according to their fortunes ; they were even treated as equals by the Frank chieftains, sharing with them the honours and benefices, or lands, conceded by the king. The invasion had passed over the land, but the great inequalities of life were unaltered; slavery and the nobility were still existent. The class of small farmers was increased by the misery of the times, and the slave was transferred to country districts, and more per¬ manently attached to the land he cultivated than before. Finance; Justice .—The taxes were still less altered. The Frank kings found it convenient to retain this source of income, although it was greatly diminished by the misery produced by the invasion. Fredegonde and Chilperic kept registers of all the taxes. But the financial inexperience of the princes and minis¬ ters, the growing ignorance that resulted from endless wars, caused the same disorganization of this portion of the Roman administra¬ tion as had befallen every other department. We can hardly imagine the immense machinery of the Roman administration, so skilfully planned, so complicated in detail, set in motion by bar¬ barians, in the midst of the dreadful disorder that followed the long conflict between Neustria and Austrasia. No doubt it worked for some time, but it gradually broke, like an ingeniously constructed toy surrendered to the whims of a young child. During the Merovingian period Roman traditions still survived, but, by degrees, they were stifled by Germanic ideas. Justice by the ordeal of fire or of combat replaced the Roman procedure; instead of a formal trial,the oathsof the assembled compurgators tumultuously attested the innocence of the accused ; compensation by payment of money took the place of punishment. Corporal penalties were almost entirely reserved for the lower classes, who were still further op¬ pressed and humiliated by the pride of the Frank nobility. The warrior aristocracy, which had been formed and which continued to enrich itself by conquest, was very different from the imperial nobility, even although frequently recruited from its ranks. At first, Roman civilization had influenced the Franks, but as they became more numerous, their arrogance displayed itself and THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. c6 they imposed their own too frequently iniquitous customs, their own always rough and violent manners, upon the people. In fact, the invasion in Gaul was prolonged through all the Merovingian period, and during this time an ever-increasing darkness settled over the land. The Church and Barbarian Society; the Bishops .—The west, divided into barbarian kingdoms, which sank in turn, oue before the other, was a prey to utter confusion, the result of the recent conquest and of the conflict which ensued between the Germanic and Roman customs. But if the empire were giving way, the Church still existed. Religious society was maintained in the midst of the ruins that accumulated on all sides; united, notwith¬ standing the numerous sects which disturbed it; disciplined in spite of the quarrels that troubled it; a hierarchy without ex¬ clusiveness, always ready to open its doors to new races, who were even welcomed by it as recruits. In the disorder produced by the invasions, the Church remained the sole protection of the cities that had been abandoned by the representatives of the civil author¬ ity. From the reign of Valentinian (365), the cities had been provided with a special magistrate, a defender; and if the bishops had not (as some have said without sufficient proof) received this legal title, they yet found themselves constrained to exert their moral authority. They encouraged the terrified inhabitants, fed the poor, negotiated with the barbarian chieftains. Dying at their post, if necessary, they displayed a steadiness and greatness of soul that won for them the well-deserved gratitude of the population, and the admiration even of their enemies. The Church had received what might almost be called a new army of learned doctors, who, without attaining the eloquence of the Fathers and though displaying every fault of a decadent style and perverted taste in literature, are still entitled to an honour¬ able rank amongst authors. Salvian,* in his vehement treatise on the Government of God, demonstrated that the barbarians were sent to regenerate society ; Sidonius Apollinaris,f whose letters pre- * Salvian, born at Cologne or at Treves (390—484). f Sidonius Apollinaris, born at Lyons (430—489). THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 57 gent a vivid picture of tlie disorder caused by the invasions, offered at Clermont, where he directed the Church, such an ener¬ getic resistance to the Visigoths that he w r as afieiwards exiled. Gregory,* the pious bishop of Tours, remonstrated with Chilperic and Fredegonde in the boldest terms, and has left a history of his times that recalls the work of Herodotus by its charm, and that has remained the most serious and the most interesting document we possess respecting that mixed society, where law and morality had so much trouble to defend themselves against brute force. The Bishop Fortunatus has also depicted this singular state of society in his Latin poems, where the description of barbarian customs is found mingled with vivid pictures of the relics of Roman elegance. The Right of Asylum; the Tonsure; the Clerks .—The Church was the intermediary between the barbarians and the Romans, and she also prepared the way for the new civilization. At first the temples became asylums. All those who could take refuge in them were considered sacred, and those barbarians, wffio had at first ruined so many churches, learned to pause before their walls, filled with supernatural terror. The right of asylum, which later on produced so many abuses through its extension to criminals, was, in principle, a salutary right and an efficacious protection. The characteristics which distinguished the bishops and priests usually sheltered them from all violence. The tonsure, the mark of the priesthood, was therefore sought after, and the Church in order to multiply the number of her proteges, accorded the tonsure to all her officers. She conferred what are called minor orders (acolytes, porters, readers, exorcists), and thus increased the number of clerks, who belonged to the Church without being subject to the severe rules of the priesthood, but who yet enjoyed many privileges. A crowd of laymen, above all the feeble, the freedmen, the slaves, asked for the tonsure and became clerks. They thus formed an ecclesiastical society from which the priests and bishops were recruited, and who were always inclined to favour the lower orders from whom they sprang. * Gregory of Tours (544—595). He wrote “ L'Histoire Ecclesia tique des Francs,” one of the first chronicles of French history. 58 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The Church, although always subordinate to the civil power, which, in the hands of the barbarian chieftains, made itself at times roughly felt, tended then more and more to become a distinct society. She had her particular rules, her decrees or canons, her spiritual jurisdiction, and before long claimed to shelter the clergy from civil justice. This produced a source of conflict through all the Middle Ages. The Councils; Excommunication .—The Church held its assem¬ blies or councils,* which were very numerous in the first centuries, and which exercised considerable influence. It is through them that the Church not only maintained its doctrine and its discipline, but also ameliorated the legislation, and continually secured new privileges. Amongst the Visigoths in Spain, who became orthodox in the seventh century, the councils were almost confounded with the national assemblies, and the law of the Forum Judicumwas sanc¬ tioned by the councils of Toledo. Amongst the Franks they remained distinct, but the bishops also sat in the great assemblies, and the Constitution Perpetuelle of 615 under Clotaire II. was* the work of an assembly wherein the bishops’ influence predominated. Excommunication was the weapon used by the Church to overcome all resistance. The bishops wielded no material force, and were therefore obliged to influence the barbarians by moral penalties. The excommunicated person was cut off from the Church, and since the Church included the 'whole congregation of the faithful, he found himself cut off from the world. Pro¬ nounced with terribly impressive solemnities, excommunication seemed a living death, to be followed by eternal death if the culprit did not implore pardon. The Church recognising the power of this spiritual -weapon, employed it until it became an abuse, and too often was only used to promote her temporal interests. Wealth of the Church .—The kings and barbarian chiefs in their zealous ardour, and in the intervals between their violent deeds, * The private councils were numerous in. the fourth and fifth centuiies. In Gaul there were fifteen in the fourth century, and twenty-five in the fifth. See the list of these councils in Guizot’s “ Histoire de la Civilization Fran^aise,” vol. i. 3rd lesson. But they were of greater importance, and produced more lasting results, in Spain and Germany than in Fiance. TIIE BARBARIAN INVASIONS .— GERMANIC SOCIETY. 59 showered riches on the churches, finding it more convenient to redeem their crimes by their generosity than by repentance, to which they were little susceptible. The troubled times increased the public piety, and the bishops found donations in lands and men flowing in on them. A great many unfortunates offered them¬ selves as serfs to the Church, seeking a refuge from their present misery, and the assurance of salvation to come. The wealth of the Church was the consequence and the crown of her power. The Monasteries .—The Church soon found active auxiliaries in the monks, who, in spite of their isolation from the world, rendered it the greatest services. At first, vowing to pass their lives in prayer, they afterwards bound themselves to work, and adopted the famous rule that Saint Benedict of Nursia had estab¬ lished in the monastery of Mount Cassin (530 a.d.). The rule of Saint Benedict was published by his disciples, of whom Saint Maur was the most famous, and was sojn adopted by all the Western Monasteries.* These retreats then became veritable farms ; the * The Monasteries .—“The foundation of the majority of the great monas¬ teries in the southern provinces, belongs to the first half of the fifth century. The establishment of Saint Faustinas at Nimes is attributed to Saint Castor, Bishop of Apt, towards 422, with another in the same diocese. Towards the same date Cassian founded that of Saint A T ictor at Marseilles; and Saint Honoratus and Saint Caprasius, that of Lerins in one of the lies d’Hyeres, the most celebrated of the century ; a little later the monasteries of Cundat or Saint Claude in Franche-Comte, that of Gregory in the diocese of Vienne, and several others of less importance were founded. The primitive chaiacter of the Gallic monasteries was quite different from that of the Oriental monasteries. In the East, the great object was isolation and contemplation ; men who withdrew from the world in Thebaid, wished to escape from the pleasures, temptations, and corruptions of civil society; they wished to abandon themselves, far from all social intercourse, to the fervour of their imaginations, and to strict obedience to their consciences. In the West, notwithstanding the imitation of the East, monasteries had another origin : they commenced by a common life, through the wish, not for isolation, but for intercourse. Civil society was subject to every kind of disaster ; national, provincial, or municipal, it di-solved on all sides. There was neither centre nor refuge for men who wished to study, practice virtue, or live together. They found one in the monasteries ; the monastic life had therefore origi¬ nally neither a contemplative nor solitary character, on the contrary it was very sociable and active ; it formed a nucleus of intellectual development, and 6o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. monks buried themselves in the wilder districts of the country or in spots that had lapsed from cultivation after the invasions. They cleared, dug, and planted, thus restoring manual labour to an honourable position, teaching the art of husbandry, and transform¬ ing deserts into rich and fertile country. Entire districts like La Brie, near the Vosges, were thus cleared, and the abbeys at that time resembled scattered oases in the devastated regions of Gaul. The proudest monasteries of England, Westminster, Glastonbury, Godstow, Croyland, Ely, were all originally in the midst of swamps and marshy woods. It is the labour of the monks which made the soil such as we see it now ; not the monks who chose the best ground. The sanctity of the monasteries protected all the land belonging to them, and thus prevented their seclusion from being encroached upon. To agriculture, the monks added intellectual labour. They recopied manuscripts, opened schools, and in the midst of a society relapsing into ignorance, they preserved a feeble gleam of knowledge which afterwards sufficed to revive the whole science of the world. The Gallic monasteries, and particularly those in Ireland, Eng¬ land, and Scotland, also furnished numerous missionaries, the best known of whom are perhaps St. Columba, Columbanus, St. Gall, and Boniface, who penetrated into Germany and the Northern countries, preaching the Christian faith, exerting them¬ selves to arrest invasions, always eager to recommend and spread both faith and civilization amongst the barbarian races. The Papacy .—Freed by the invasions from the direct rule of the civil power, the bishops of Rome, although outwardly subject to the Emperor of Constantinople, had gradually become accustomed to consider themselves the masters of Borne and her territories. served as an instrument for the fermentation and propagation of ideas. The monasteries in the South of Gaul were the philosophic schools of Christianity; there men meditated, argued, taught, and from there issued new ideas, men¬ tal aspirations, and heresies. In the abbeys of Saint Victor and Lerins all the great questions of free-will, predestination, grace, and original sin were most animatedly discussed, and in them the Pelagian doctrines found their chief nourishment and support during fifty years.”—Guizot, ‘‘History of Civiliza¬ tion,” vol. i., 4th lesson. TIIE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.—GERMANIC SOCIETY. 61 Their supremacy, although contested by the other bishops, was already firmly established in the West. Besides, they had also sent out missionaries charged with the evangelisation of heathen countries. Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, sent the monk, Augustine, to convert the Anglo-Saxon Kings (597). The earlier British Church had given its martyrs to Christianity and its bishops had attended foreign councils even before the conversion of Constantine. But the national hatred was too great for it to convert the Saxon invaders. This was done partly in the north by Aid an and others of the Scots-Irish ; but the conference at Whitby (664) made the purely English a branch of Rome. The Anglo-Saxon Church was, there¬ fore, from its foundation, in some sense subject to the Bishop of Rome. Gregory also took advantage of the Lombard invasion of Italy and of the ruin of Greek power in the Peninsula, to loosen the tie that bound him to the Emperor of Constantinople, and the popularity that he had acquired in the city of Rome, defended by him, rendered him the real chief of the Roman territory, then called the Patrimony of Saint Peter, and it is to him that we must trace back the origin of the temporal power of the Popes, founded towards the same epoch, when their spiritual power developed itself, above all, in the West. The Popes acknowledged as the heads of the Church, having converted the Lombards by the influence of Theodelinda, and the Visigoths of Spain through Recared, now gained fresh strength by their alliance with the chiefs of the Austrasian Franks. Alliance between the Frank Kings and the Church ; Accession of the Carolingians ; the Temporal Power of the Popes .—No doubt the Church had greatly benefited by her alliance with the Merovingians ; she had acquired both authority and wealth. For, if at times the bishops exercised preponderant influence in Merovingian history, the Merovingians, rough and barbarous, debauched and violent, had not hesitated to ill-treat the bishops and missionaries, who boldly reproached them with their crimes. If the Merovingians, from time to time, offered reparation for these crimes, by gifts to the churches, this did not prevent them from robbing the same churches for the 62 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. benefit of their vassals. They took back the land they had conceded and gave it as a reward to their warriors, thus introducing men of blood and pillage into the ranks of the Church. In the seventh and eighth centuries the Church in Gaul was completely deformed and corrupted by an invasion of another kind : the bishops, previously elected by the clergy and the people, were now nominated by the king. Those of the bishops who had preserved their purity of faith and manners lamented these disorders, which they foresaw must eventually prove fatal to religion. They hailed with delight the substitution of the family of the Pepins for the degenerate de¬ scendants of Meroveus. Renowned as much for its piety as for its valour this Austrasian dynasty protected the missionaries in Germany. The Mussulman invasion had been arrested on the glorious day of Poitiers by the prowess of Charles Martel (732). The Papacy eagerly seized the opportunity of interfering in a question of so much importance as a change of dynasty. Consulted in 752 by Pepin the Short on what he had better do with the Merovingian king, Pope Zacharias replied, “ that the title ought to belong to the one who wielded the authority.” Pepin proclaimed himself king, caused himself to be crowned by Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, and a second time by Pope Stephen II. In return he defeated the Lombards and gave the Pope the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis (758), thus providing him with a State, rendering him a king similar to other kings, and securing his independence in a century when authority was not recognised without land, nor right without strength to enforce it. A really curious exchange was then made between the King of the Franks and the Pope. The latter, by holy unction, the revival of an old Hebraic rite, raised the Frank monarchy to the dignity of a sacerdocy ; Pepin converted a purely religious chief into a military chieftain. The Pope communicated his spiritual power, the King his temporal power. Thus in 752 and 756, two in some degree new authorities were established, a religious royalty and a royal papacy. The old Roman Empire of the West was again revived with the Pontifex Maximus distinct from the Emperor, but both under divine THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS .— GERMANIC SOCIETY. 63 sanction—a grave change which filled the history of the Middle Ages and of modern times with its consequences ! Europe in the Eighth Century .—This event marks the whole dis¬ tance traversed by the Church in four hundred years. In the fourth century she had scarcely triumphed over the early persecutions when the barbarian invasion threatened to engulf her in the ruin of the empire. In the eighth her chief was master of Rome and of an important province of Italy. In the fourth she was scarcely organized, and was defending herself against a number of heresies, which her most illustrious doctors refuted and which her councils condemned. She was subject to the Emperor Constantine, who presided over the religious assemblies, and even regulated the dogmas by his laws. Independent in the eighth she even domi¬ neered over kings. Her empire had grown in extent as well as in prestige ; it radiated beyond the limits of the ancient Roman empire as far as the savage mountains of Scotland, and even penetrated into the forests of Germany. The churches and monasteries resem¬ bled opulent cities. The barbarians adored where they had burnt, and enriched the temples they had robbed. Civil society, crushed, confused, apparently doomed to destruction, was saved by the Church, and was placed under her guardianship in some degree. All the barbarian kingdoms which opposed her had disappeared. The power of the Arian Visigoths was so far broken by Clovis that afterwards they were unable to defend Spain against the Arabs. The Arian Ostrogoths had been destroyed by the Greeks. The Arian Burgundians had been absorbed by the Franks. The Lom¬ bards, enemies although Catholics, also disappeared, crushed by the Franks. But nearly all S{ ain, Northern Africa, Egypt, and the East, had become Mahommedan. The Franks had conquered for the Church, and triumphed by the Church. They now benefited by religious unity, whilst establishing political unity to their own advantage ; and this w r as the goal to which the long confusion of the period of the invasions was tending. For a moment the confusion ceased ; society, almost destroyed, founded itself anew ; civilization, almost stifled, reawakened ; the harmony, so difficult to attain, between the principles of Germany 6 4 THE HISTORY OR CIVILIZATION. and the genius of Rome, was realised for an instant under the influence of Catholicism. For centuries the Church had laboured to soften the barbarians, to raise the Romans, and she fancied she had succeeded so well that she ventured to revive the title of Roman emperor for the benefit of a Frank chieftain, for Charle¬ magne, the most glorious descendant of Pepin’s family CHAPTER III. THE EASTERN EMPIRE. RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE OF THE WEST. Summary : The Eastern Empire : Justinian—Justinian’s Legislative Work : the Monuments of Roman Law—Luxury of the Emperors of the East: Games in the Circus—Byzantine Art—Painting: Mosaics—The Sect of Iconoclasts—The Greek Schism (857—1054)—Weakness and Longevity of the Byzantine Empire—The West: Charlemagne and his Wars (800) —Restoration of the Western Empire : Coronation of Charlemagne (800) —The Administration of Charlemagne : Roman Traditions—Ecclesiastical Organization—The Intellectual Renaissance—Germanic Traditions— Character of Charlemagne’s Work : its Results. Note. —Sovereigns of the Eastern Empire. The Eastern Empire : Justinian. —Whilst the West was painfully seeking to reclaim its scattered members, the Eastern empire had maintained its unity. In spite of the weakness of Arcadius and Theodosius II., the barbarians had respected it, although Mar- cian had ventured to treat Attila’s messengers with contempt. Anastasius, who flattered Clovis, the King of the Franks, by conferring Roman titles upon him, constructed a fortified wall forty-two miles long, between the Euxine and the Propontis. The Thracian Justin I. was a soldier. His nephew, Justinian (527— 5G5), a prince of great ability, profited by the exhaustion of the barbarian races, who had occupied the south of Europe, and succeeded in reuniting almost the whole of the two portions of the Roman empire.* His general, Belisarius, with one vigorous * Sovereigns of the Eastern Empire .—First Thracian line : Arcadius, Theo¬ dosius II., Marcian, Leo I., Zeno, Anastasius (395—518). Second Thracian line : Justin I. (518—527), Justinian (527—565), Justin II., Tiberius II., Maurice, Phocas (565—610), Heraclius (610—641). Line of Heraclius (641— 715), anarchy, Isaur^an line (717—813). Phrygian line (820—842). Macedonian line (867—1081); the line of Comnenus and of the Lucas (1081—1204), the Latin empire; the French line (1204—1261); the Greek empire, line of Paleologus (1261—1453). 66 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. stroke, overthrew the already weakened kingdom of the Vandals (533), and that of the Goths of Italy (540—553). The whole The Emperor Anastasius in Consular Costume. basin of the Mediterranean, excepting the shores of part of Spain and of Gaul, submitted to the laws issued from Constantinople. THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 67 But it is chiefly as a legislator that Justinian merits an important place in history. Justinian's Legislative Work : the Monuments of Homan Law .— The Roman law had been formed in the course of centuries, but never having been formally arranged, presented an inextricable mass of decisions. Some attempts had already been made to reduce this chaos to order (the Gregorian and Hermogenian codes and the code of Theodosius II.). Justinian formed a commission of nine savants, under the direction of the celebrated Tribonian, who revised all the documents belonging to judicial literature, and who published—First, the Code, a collection of all the decrees, of the re¬ scripts relative to the common law, to the organization of the State, and to the administration. Second, the Pandects (Greek, general collection), a kind of encyclopaedia of law, in which the provisions taken from more than two thousand treatises of jurisprudence, edicts, sentences, &c., are collected, an immense compilation called in Latin the Digesta (put in order). Third, an abridgment, the Institutes, in which the general principles of law were arranged in methodical order, and in clear, formal language, adopted from the works of Gaius and Ulpian. Fourth, the Novelise, or laws published after the completion of all these works. Every student who wishes to master the science of Roman law is obliged to study the Pandects. The Institutes is the classic still explained and commented upon by the pupils of the French law schools, for the Roman law has so far impregnated the French codes that the study of the former is the best initiation into the knowledge of the latter. These compilations and treatises, drawn up in the sixth century, after the complete triumph of Christianity, had been divested of the harshness and narrowness of the old law. The new Roman law, retained until the fifteenth century in the East, well known in the West, above all in Italy, has remained a treasure left by antiquity for the benefit of the new world. Unfortunately these laws, although so just in their application to details, enforced the absolute sovereignty of the prince, the only source of law, the “ living law,” to quote the jurisconsults, from whom the lawyers of the Middle Ages sought the dangerous maxims in 68 7 HE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. which, in order to improve the state of the disorderly society of the times, they attributed a!2 power to the king and ruined the liberal traditions imported by the Germans. Luxury of the Emperors of the East ; the Gaines in the Circus .—The brilliancy of the Eastern empire concealed its vices. The princes continued the luxury of Diocletian and Constantine, adding to it every splendour that Oriental fancy could suggest. Arcadius and his successors never appeared without a procession of guards magnificently dressed, with gilded shields and lances. They drove in chariots drawn by white mules, covered with golden plates and precious stones. They wore bracelets and ear-rings, diadems of diamonds, robes covered with jewels, richly-worked tunics, and embroidered sandals. The rooms, staircases, and courts of the palace were sanded with gold dust. Constanti¬ nople had become a splendid city, ornamented with all kinds of buildings. The Hippodrome (from two Greek words signifying horse-races) was an immense portico surrounding a vast space, in which horses and chariots raced, and where the pacific games that had replaced the gladiatorial fights, now forbidden by Christianity, were celebrated. Let us, in fancy, enclose the course whe**e our horse-races are held and we can then picture the splendour of the Hippodrome, in which the Eastern crowd of Constantinople assembled, more passionately eager for the games of the circus than modern Englishmen for the excitement of a race. Byzantine Art .—The Byzantine empire had its especial art, derived from its predilection for a profusion of ornament. The square, circular, or polygon form had been adopted for the con¬ struction of churches in the East. The temples were usually surmounted by an arch or cupola, which distinguished them from the Latin edifices, roofed in timber even when circular in form. This principle guided Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, who were commissioned by Justinian to build the church of Saint Sophia, at Constantinople.* From that time cupolas became * The great nave of Saint Sophia forms a Greek cross; four irregular halls occupy the angles of the plan; an immense central cupola seems all the wider for being elliptic; the fine curves of the aich are also much THE EASTERN EMPIRE . 69 distinctive of the Byzantine style, which blended the nobility of straight lines with the grace of curves, though it aimed at richness rather than grandeur. Justinian despoiled some of the antique temples of Asia to ornament his new construction with columns of porphyry and granite, tastelessly arranged in the interior of the edifice; which, however, delighted Justinian, who exclaimed, “ Solomon ! I have surpassed thee ! ” The Byzantine may be con¬ sidered as the parent, on the one side of Arabian, on the other of the Lombardo-Byzantine, Romanesque, and Norman Church architec¬ ture. Perhaps St. Mark’s at Venice is the purest example of Byzantine architecture in the Western Church. Painting; Mosaics .—The success of Christianity had been fatal to ancient painting and sculpture ; for in their zeal the Chris¬ tians had destroyed all profane works of art. Religious painting could not quickly replace Pagan subjects, and art was compara¬ tively lost. The bad taste of the times chiefly valued rich materials and mosaics, and thus dethroned painting. Instead of frescoes, or of encaustic painting, palaces and churches were decorated with mosaics in coloured stones. This was the sole art of the Greeks of the Lower Empire. The Sect of Iconoclasts .—The passion for religious discussions which perpetually disturbed the Eastern empire was equally fatal admired. This church, now transformed into a mosque, measures only 269 feet by 243, but on entering one is struck by the grand conception of design and by the successful mixture of the graceful curve and the straight line. Round the church vast galleries are supported by rich circular cornices. Unfortunately S.iint Sophia is no longer decorated; the Mussul¬ mans have destroyed all the ornaments ; only the valuable pavement remains, and it is always hidden under mats and carpets. The church was dedicated to the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia). Besides the cupolas, the Byzantine style is characterized by horizontal and vertical lines of bricks, round or slightly curved tiles. The summit is a vertical line; the roof is not seen. The posterior facade of the Byzantine churches is decorated with one or three arches, with round or cant-shaped towers or minarets, several stories high. The Greek altar was a cube and sometimes a cylinder of stone or marble ; it was not raised upon a step like the Latin altars: the lights were placed singly at the four comers. The Byzantine ciboiium, supported by four columns, placed at the four angles of the altar, is sometimes shaped like a cupola; it is surmounted by a sphere. ;o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. to art. The sect of Iconoclasts (image-breakers) rejected all religious paintings and sculptures, maintaining that respect for images was only a return to idolatry. Emperors, like Leo the Isaurian (726), Leo the Armenian, and Michael the Stammerer, encouraged this fanatical sect, and not only caused the destruction of a great number of works of art but vetoed the smallest religious painting. The Council of Frankfort (794) forbad image-worship, against the decrees of the second Council of Nice (787). It was re-established in the ninth century (869), and it then restored the arts of drawing and modelling to life, if not to liberty. The Greek Schism (857—1054).—This rage for theological con¬ troversies, which at times even gave rise to civil wars, led to a separation between the Greek and Latin churches. The Greeks were strongly opposed to the doctrine of the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed; they wished to efface from the Nicene Creed the words in which the Church affirms that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. As we have just said, they were alsG divided on the question of images; they persisted in the use of leavened bread at the communion, instead of unleavened bread ; they still allowed marriage for the priests, baptism by immersion, Saturday’s fast, and used only the Greek language in the cele¬ bration of the Mass. But the schism was really caused by the independent spirit of the Greek world, which had become more and more estranged from the Western world, which it considered barbarous. The Greek Church disliked being subordinate to the Latin Church, and Constantinople was humiliated by receiving the religious laws from Rome ; the ambition of the patriarchs did the rest. The installation of Photius to the patriarchal see of Con¬ stantinople in 858, in spite of the opposition of Pope Nicholas I., provoked the rupture. Photius contested the authority of the Bishop of Rome, and, supported by the Court of Constantinople, he remained Chief of the Greek Church. Several attempts were made at different times to reconcile the two Churches, but they all failed, and in 1054 the Court of Rome solemnly anathematised “ the seven deadly heresies of the Greeks, and was as solemnly anathematised by them the schism was complete. THE E AS TEEN EMPIRE . 71 This separation, in reality political rather than religious, was des¬ tined to produce grave results. Rome lost her supremacy over a large portion of the Christian world, the Slav races that surrounded Con¬ stantinople were converted by the Greeks, and at the present time the whole of Oriental Europe is quite independent of the Roman authority. The Popes were so much irritated by this rupture with the Eastern Empire, that they refused to listen to the complaints of the Emperors, who found the Turks pressing upon them. It was not until Europe was seriously endangered that they instigated the Crusades. Weakness and Longevity of the Byzantine Empire .—The Empire of Byzantium lasted more than a thousand years, but during that thousand years it always seemed in a dying condition. This is, perhaps, one of those historical problems which have scarcely received sufficient attention; but there is little attraction in the history of the court of Byzantium, it is filled with horrible tragedies, massacres of entire families, poisonings, tortures, scenes of debau¬ chery and cruelty, mingled with religious fanaticism. There was no definite law of succession. The throne was either given by the election of an army in revolt, or by a palace revolu¬ tion, or else usurped through a crime. Men of all nationalities filled it, through fortune or intrigue—Thracians, Africans, Phry¬ gians, Macedonians, etc., and also of all positions, shepherds or husbandmen become soldiers and then ministers ; and the Byzan¬ tines might have boasted of this democratic rule, had not the caprice of the Emperor or Empress been the only real law. The East spread its fatal contagion over the venal servile crowd. The most worthless rulers never lacked courtiers. The celebrated Irene, contemporary with Charlemagne, put out her son’s eyes in order to reign in his place; she was deposed by a palace intrigue and sent to Lesbos, where she was forced to spin wool. Leo V., the Armenian, was assassinated in his chapel at the foot of the cross, which he vainly embraced. Michael III., the drunkard (842 —867), endeavoured to copy Nero, whom he took for his model. A crowned buffoon, he lavished the treasures of the empire upon the vilest creatures, dictated his sanguinary orders in the midst 72 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . of his orgies, outraged religion, and with the companions of his debauches, whom he called his bishops, he broke up the religious processions that he encountered in the streets of Constantinople. He had nominated Augustus, a common sailor, as his successor, when he was murdered with his candidate, while in a state of intoxica¬ tion. In the eleventh century, disorders increased until it is almost impossible to follow the palace revolutions, which transferred the power into the most unworthy hands. Two women, Zoe and Theodora, filled the most disgraceful roles in these tragedies. Yet the Byzantine empire resisted this slow decomposition and only succumbed to the blows of external enemies. Numerous and powerful, these enemies had during ten centuries scarcely left her any time for repose—in the North, first the Avars and Bulgarians, then the Russians ; in the South, the Persians, then the Arabs, lastly the Turks. The strong position of Constantinople, aided by the skill of her generals, for a long time warded off these dangers from the rest of Europe, and conse¬ quently, however shameful the history of the Greek empire may be, it acted as a protec¬ tion. During several centuries it repulsed the advances of the Turks, whose rule has since been so disastrous to the countries they have occupied. It kept the populations of the A Greek Empress. Balkans and the Slavs from the valley of the Danube, spreading civilization amongst them as well as amongst the inhabitants of the long valley of the Dnieper. Russian civilization is derived from Greek civilization. The Byzantine empire also preserved the Greek letters; it was filled with pedants and professors, who afterwards carried their knowledge and the treasures of antiquity into the West. But it is evident that amongst this enervated people, losing themselves THE WESTERN EMPIRE . 73 in puerile quibbles, which took theology as a pretext, but which were really produced by love of subtleties ; in this worm-eaten empire, which only maintained its position by its bulk; amongst these Greeks, torpid under an irrational despotism, the ancient authors could no longer inspire men’s ideas. Their virile language was not understood. The works of orators, historians, philoso¬ phers, and poets, ornamented the libraries without stimulating the intellect ; but the treasure was there for other races to profit by. The West; Charlemagne and his Wars .—If the East were lan¬ guishing, the West was struggling in the midst of inextricable confusion through the eighth and ninth centuries. But there were signs that the confusion was drawing to a close, and under Charlemagne a great work of enlightenment took place (768—814), for he resumed and gloriously continued the work of Pepin Heristal and of Charles Martel. The military supremacy of the Franks was imposed upon all the new peoples who were disputing over the old Roman empire. Charlemagne overstepped the limits of Gaul, fought in Spain, Italy, and Germany; drove back the Arabs, destroyed the Lombards, subdued the Bavarians, crushed the Saxons, and restrained the Avars. He was a warrior who during forty years rushed from the Pyrenees to the Elbe, from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, Alps, and Danube; always in motion, indefatigable, implacable and pitiless towards his enemies; a barbarian scarcely rough-hewn, who fought against other barbarians. At Verden he caused 4,500 Saxon prisoners to be beheaded in one day. He was typical of the race of Clovis, of the family of Charles Martel. But he is chiefly distinguished for the fact that love of war was not his only incentive. Charles had yielded to the attraction of Roman ideas; like Alaric and Theodoric, he was ambitious to re¬ establish Roman unity, and he alone succeeded in doing so. In the soul of this intractable conqueror there was a grand notion of order, of the pacific mission which dictated his expeditions, and explains without justifying his terrible anger. Charles was deter¬ mined to settle the populations in the countries they already occupied with or without their consent; to check the invasions that 74 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. were always on the point of recommencing, and to turn them against themselves, stopping the Germans by the Franks, the descendants of the Germans. We find him rushing everywhere, clothed in his sheepskin, the coarse Frank costume, but accom¬ panied by learned clerks. Everywhere, too, he occupied himself in bringing order amongst the people, and in civilizing them after his own fashion. This rough soldier was largely instrumental in the diffusion of Roman traditions. But he was chiefly occupied with defending or imposing the Christian faith. He drove back Islamism almost to the Ebro. The war against the Saxons was prolonged because Charles, like Olaf of Norway afier him, wished to force them to abandon their heathen superstitions and to receive baptism. In this curious apostleship he displayed a violence that was in strong contrast to the religion that he advocated. He was also the Pope’s defender, he delivered him from the Lombards, and by confirming Pepin’s gifts he also strengthened the temporal power of the Holy See. The Church was fortunate in discovering a new Constantine. Restoration of the Western Empire; Coronation of Charlemagne (800).—The idea of re-establishing the Imperial dignity in favour of this Frank warrior, who restored Roman order and propagated the Christian faith, then presented itself to Pope Leo III. On the 25th December, 800, the anniversary of the birth of Christ, already adopted for the commencement of the year, Charlemagne was in Rome. He was present at the solemn services in the Basilica of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Whilst he knelt in prayer before the xipostles’ tomb the Pope, Leo III., placed a golden crown upon his head, exclaiming, “ To Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor, life and victory!” The clergy and the Romans repeated this exclamation three times, the rough voices of the Frank warriors joining in. Charles put on magnificent robes : a tunic ornamented with embroidery, a mantle with golden flowers, and shoes sparkling with precious stones. The city of Rome was enraptured and almost rejuvenated by this festival, which recalled its vanished splendours. The Imperial title was revived ; Roman ideas had triumphed in favour of a barbarian chieftain ; a triumph RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. 75 of the Germans conferred by the Pope ; the triumph of the Chris¬ tian religion. The new emperor devoted himself to conciliate all traditions, and his legislation, which is far more creditable to him than his conquests, is replete with Roman wisdom, Christian zeal, and the naivete of a Frank warrior. The Administration of Charlemagne: Toman Traditions .—The administration of Charlemagne was copied from the old Imperial administration. He bore the title of Emperor and exercised the authority, protected by the law of majesty borrowed from Rome. Around him were grouped the great officers with Roman titles, the counts of the palace, the chancellor, and the chamberlain. The empire was divided into provinces, overlooked by dukes, counts, vicars, centurions, and dizainiers. These functionaries were themselves under the superintendence of Imperial delegates, the missi dominici. These missi had charge of very extensive districts, for Germany was divided into four legations—Rhetia and Bavaria, Cologne and Mayence. Charlemagne published a great number of written laws or capitulaiies (divided into short chapters). He left sixty of them, including six hundred and twenty-one articles of civil legislation, without counting a num¬ ber of diplomas, documents, and letters, which prove that his wonderful intellectual activity equalled his physical energy. Ecclesiastical Organization .—Charlemagne occupied himself as much about the ecclesiastical as the political organization of his empire. Nothing was changed in the provinces, which had been Christianised for a long time, but he carefully refused all incapable candidates for churches or abbeys. In Germany he was obliged to create everything. He divided the country into dioceses, and established eight bishoprics. He founded numerous abbeys, which became religious centres, and used all his power for the advance¬ ment of the faith. He regulated the tithes to be paid to the clergy. His capitularies contained more than four hundred articles relative to points of ecclesiastical discipline, to fasting, abstinence, even to moral precepts. Sometimes they relate to codes and sermons. Charles descends to the most trifling details; he enforced the use of Gregorian chants in the churches, amusing 76 THE HIS TOR Y OF CIV [LIZA TION . himself by directing them with voice and gesture in his own chapel. The Intellectual Renaissance .—His interest in the improvement of the Church was the cause of his solicitude for science and educa¬ tion, for his great object was to prepare clerks worthy of their mission, and through him schools were opened in the monasteries and bishoprics. Most of the learned men who surrounded him were bishops or abbots—Alcuin, the monk ; Leidrade, the Bishop of Orleans ; Theodulf, the Abbot of Saint Michel ; Senaragde, Abbot of Fulda; Rabanus Maurus, Saint Benedict of Anianus, the second reformer of the Western monasteiies. But Charles did not neglect Latin literature. In the schools or Academy of the Palace, he caused himself to be styled David, whilst other learned men assumed the names of heathen authors. Angilbert was called Homer; Alcuin, Flaccus; Theodulf, Pindar. Charlemagne spoke Latin, and even studied Greek, Peter of Pisa having taught him the grammar. Another Italian, Paul the Deacon, wrote the “ History of the Lombards.” But although the Emperor attached so much importance to Latin science, he had no idea of deny¬ ing his Germanic origin. Eginhard, Charlemagne’s secretary, historian, and perhaps son-in-law, came from the Odenwald. Rabanus Maurus came from Mayence ; Alcuin was Anglo-Saxon ; Clement was surnamed the Hibernian, because he came from Ireland. Charlemagne traced the plan for a grammar of the German language; he invented new German words for the twelve months of the year; he did not enforce Latin amongst the Saxons as the language of prayer, but allowed them to pray in their own tongue, commanding that God’s law should be preached in the Teutonic language in Germany, as in Gaul it was given in the Roman. Germanic Traditions .—His administration was Teutonic, in spite of Roman traditions. By the side of the counts of the palace and the Chancellor, he retained officials of barbaric origin, the constable (count of the stables), the seneschal (or master of the house), the butler (chancellor, or the cup-bearer), &c. These were his com¬ panions, his trusted followers, upon whom he conferred the titles RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE . 77 of duke or count; his bravest warriors, whom he rewarded by con¬ fiding the administration of a province to them. Charlemagne, however, had not the clear ideas of government possessed by the Emperors of the fourth century. He never returned to the dis¬ tinction of power, but merged it in the counts, at once military and civil chieftains. Neither was the spiritual power separate, the missi were chosen in pairs, one layman and one bishop. He retained barbarian justice, and though he created a class of judges, the scabini (from a Germanic word, sehaffen), he only regulated the choice of the assessors who aided the count to render justice and represented the peers of the accused. Although he endeavoured to stop private wars and the wergeld, he retained the old barbarian ordeals, which survived him for a long time. Charles had no system of finance; the system of Roman taxation had long been lost. The Frank emperor derived his income from the tributes of war ’a sed from the conquered races, the free men’s offerings, and the revenue of his private domains. Grants of land or benefices, commenced by the Merovingians, had deprived the sovereign of the revenue of these lands, and Charles, reduced to the resources of his estates, paid special attention to their careful ma¬ nagement. We are therefore less astonished than was Montesquieu, to find this powerful emperor as much occupied “with his poultry yards and garden produce,” as with the moral interests of a vast empire. But it must be admitted that Charles did not require a great income, he neither paid his counts, for they lived on their provinces, nor his soldiers, for they equipped themselves. The army, numerous as it was, retained the simplicity of the Germanic tribe. Military art was lost, and the Roman legion was forgotten. Charles believed he was doing a skilful work of reorganization, when, by his. laws, he provided for the recruiting of the army. Every owner of four manses (or farms) was obliged, on the pro¬ clamation of the ban of war, to present himself before the count with a lance, shield, bow, two strings, and twelve arrows. The owner of twelve manses was forced to come with one horse and complete armour, a helmet and hauberk, or coat of mail. Thus Charles raised his cavalry and infantry at little expense. vVar 78 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. nourished war, and after the expedition the troops dispersed. It was a return to primitive usage. Although so proud of his imperial authority, Charlemagne con¬ sidered himself obliged to hold regular assemblies of the Franks in the Champs de Mars, afterwards the Champs de Mai. But these assemblies had lost their original characteristics, for the army was too numerous to deliberate. The counts and dukes were detached from it, to discuss with the bishops, who were always taking a growing share in politics, the proposals for laws that had been already prepared by Charles and his intimate counsellors. During these discussions Charles held a review of the different peoples, received their homage, and what pleased him most, their tributes. The capitularies were then announced and confirmed by the con¬ sent of all present. The principle of German liberty was then outwardly respected ; it never perished in spite of the most serious disorder, and became the most active agent of modern civilization. Character of Charlemagne s Work; its Results. —Charlemagne’s empire bore then only a fictitious resemblance to the empire he claimed to have restored. No doubt unity was maintained by the formidable conqueror’s iron hand, but it was badly secured by an incoherent administration, that was but a confused imita¬ tion of the ingenious mechanism of the Romans. The different nationalities of which the empire was composed had submitted to the ascendancy of the Franks, but the latter were too few in num¬ bers to assimilate the conquered nations, even had they thought of doing so. By placing Frank counts in Italy, on the Marches (frontiers) of Spain, the Elbe, the Danube, in the valley of the Main, where a whole district retained the name of the Francs (Franconia), Charlemagne only aimed at insuring obedience. To maintain authority over these turbulent, bellicose populations re¬ quired a succession of Charlemagnes. Pepin’s family seemed exhausted, and the empire of Charlemagne lasted only during his life. Many other causes, which we shall point out later on, con¬ tributed to the dissolution of this empire, that outwardly seemed so strong. But if it fell, does that mean that nothing of it remained ? RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE. 79 Charlemagne would not occupy the place in history that posterity has accorded to him, if he had only been a successful conqueror. He arrested the invasions, and settled the Saxons, Bavarians, and Avars in their own lands. He created Germany, and be¬ queathed to its ruler the title of Roman Emperor. Charlemagne disciplined the new populations who settled in the empire, forced them to adopt a settled agricultural life, throughout central Europe he planted bishoprics and abbeys that became centres of civilization. In a word, with his powerful hands he kneaded together the materials of modern Europe. His empire was dismembered, but the pieces formed nations, the development of which astonishes us even now. On a smaller field, but harder to clear when the plough required more labour to force it into the earth, he fulfilled a mission that bore some resemblance to Alexander’s. He was a wild founder of many colonies, who yet succeeded in spreading Latin traditions and Latin knowledge over his empire. Western Europe dates from the ninth century. Night closed in again after Charlemagne, but society, strengthened by him, guided by the feeble light that he had kindled, gradually advanced towards civilization, by preserving the living memory of the Roman empire, Teutonic and Christian, and in his person, his wars, his legislation, he, as it were, symbolized the union of the Old and New Worlds. CHAPTER IV. THE AEABS.-THE CALIPHATES OF BAGDAD AND CORDOVA.- MUSSULMAN CIVILIZATION. Summary: The Invasion from the South; its Character: the Arabs—Ma¬ homet and his Religion—The Koran—The Ulema : the Imaums— Social and Political Influence of Mahomedanism—Preaching by the Sword—The Arab Empire: the two Caliphates—Prosperity of the Caliphate of Bagdad : Commerce—The Caliphate of Cordova : Prosperity of Spain—Arab Literature—Science—Art—Character and Influence of Arab Civilization. Ncie : Some Verses of the Koran. The Invasion from the South; its Character: the Arabs. —For a long time only invasions from the North were feared, but in the seventh century, an invasion of a new kind started from the South, from a country to which but slight attention had been paid through the ages of antiquity, Arabia, commonly supposed to be a desert. Suddenly from that land issued a nation and a religion, which spread over Asia, Africa, and even into Europe, with extraordinary rapidity. “ There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet ! ” This simple formula rallied the Arab tribes and became the victorious cry, which through them echoed from East to Vest, subduing the startled nations to the law of the scimitar and the Koran, indissolubly linked together. The invasion from the South had then quite a different character from that of the Northern races. It was the armed propaganda of a new faith, the religion and political rule of a race belonging to the Semitic family. It is really curious that all the most important religious movements which have influenced the modern world Ijave sprung from this family only. The Jewish and Christian religions were formed in a corner of Asia, THE ARABS. 81 in Palestine, and Mahomedanism appeared in a country near to, and in fact almost bordering on, Judea. Mahomet and his Religion .—It is not astonishing, that owing to this close proximity, Mahomedanism has many points of resemblance to the two religions that preceded it. Mahomet was well acquainted with the Old Testament and the Gospel, and borrowed largely from both. He claimed to revive the religion of Abraham and the patriarchs, and to end the series of prophets. His doctrine, for a long time little known in the West, has been attentively studied in our century, which has already produced innumerable works on religious history. The continuance of its success and the prodigious number of its disciples are a sufficient proof of its vitality. Mahomet lived in the midst of heathen Arabs. He turned them from the worship of idols, and destroyed the images that surrounded the old temple that from long ages had been honoured at Mecca, the Caaba. He respected this veneration for the Caaba, which he made a religious centre; and here the stone, formerly white, but now black, that the angel Gabriel was said to have brought to earth, was preserved. He thus linked his religion with the old Arab traditions, which, in spite of heathen supersti¬ tions, had preserved the memory of Abraham, the father of Ishmael, the founder of the race. Admirably conversant with the imagination of his people, who, although very poetical are little susceptible to metaphysical discussions, Mahomet preached the Unity of God, a dogma easily understood, His omnipotence, glory, and eternity, the immortality of the soul, the future life. The descriptions of his material, sensual Paradise, were well calculated to attract Orientals, incapable of raising themselves to the abstract idea of moral felicity or of picturing the other life, except as a cloudless repetition of the sweetest pleasures of man’s earthly existence. Mahomet suited his religion to the half-pastoral, half-warlike customs of the Arabs, by simplifying his ritual, which he confined to a few rules, all salutary in hot climates, such as ablutions, and preaching sword in hand, which roused the courage of the Arabs to the highest pitch. Mahomet also taught a doctrine, which a 82 THE HIS 7 OR Y OF CIVILIZATION. proved very seductive to Oriental indolence, the doctrine of resig¬ nation to God's will. Islam is submission to the will of God. The Mussulman is a man resigned to this will. The Orientals are but too much disposed to exaggerate this resignation, from which they derive the fatalism that crushes all efforts at develop¬ ment in the individual or the nation. The God of Mahomet is the God of the Old Testament—terrible, inflexible, revengeful. Mahomedanism is, therefore, a religion of fear. But whilst despising Christianity, Mahomet introduced Jesus into the list of prophets, and even acknowledged that Christ had received the gift of miracles, which he had not been allowed to share. The Koran formally announces the sanctity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. More than one of the gospel parables and maxims are found almost copied into Mahomet’s book. But according to him both Jews and Christians have altered the primitive religion, and he was therefore sent to promulgate the words that the archangel had written in his heart. In fact Mahomet pretended that, whilst living in retirement, in a cavern of Mount Hira, he had received a vision, and that the archangel then inspired him with the precepts that he afterwards gave to his disciples in the form of the Koran. The Koran .—The word Koran signifies the reading. Revelations, sermons, maxims, and laws dictated by Mahomet were collected from him by Zeid, and revised by order of the Caliph Othman. The Koran was compiled in the year of the Hegira 38 (the Mussul¬ man era which dates from Mahomet’s flight to Medina), and no doubt as to its authenticity has ever been raised. In fact, it is scarcely a book, but rather an orderly arrangement of suras or chapters of unequal length and different styles, some poetical and enthusiastic, others narrative or didactic. It is a code, a hymn, a history of prayer.* * Some Verses from the Koran .—Some extracts from the Koran, although insufficient to give us an idea of the book, will at least help us to understand its form. “ When God created the world, it shook to and fro, until He made the mountains to keep it steady. When the angels asked him, ‘ Oh God, is there anything stronger than the mountains in thy creation F ’—And God answered, ‘ Iron; for iron is stronger than the mountain, since it breaks THE ARABS. 83 It is the Mussulman’s book, and he requires no other: he finds there his dogma, the divine unity, the rules for his worship, as simple as his dogma—five prayers a day with ablutions, the last of the month of Ramadan (or Ramayan), abstinence from wine or fermented liquors (a purely sanitary prescription in Eastern climates), the sanctification of Friday by prayer, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Mussulman finds his whole religious philosophy in the Koran: The elect and the condemned are destined, one to happiness, the other to eternal misery, even before they are born.. . “Man cannot die but by the will of God, according to the book that settles the duration of his life.” This predestination counteracts the desire for personal improvement in man, which is at once the honour and the strength of Christianity, and still more interferes with the scruples of a delicate conscience, ever seeking to approach nearer to ideal virtue. Faith, prayer, alms, the strict observance of certain rules, these suffice for a Mussulman, who makes no effort at self-improvement, and who cannot imagine a higher morality than the exact law. The Ulema; the Imaums. —The text of the Koran has been interpreted by the Imaums, of whom four towards the end of the through it.’—* And in thy creation is anything stronger than iron ? ’—‘ Yes, fire is stronger than iron, for it melts it ?’—‘ And is anything stronger than fire ? ’—‘ Yes, water, for it extinguishes it.’—‘ And is anything stronger than water ?’—‘ Yes, the wind, for it raises it.’—‘ Oh ! our Supreme Support, is anything in thy creation stronger than the wind P ’—‘ Y es, the righteous man, who gives alms. If he gives with his right hand without letting his left hand know what he is doing, he can overcome all things.’ “ Every good action is charity. When thou emilest in thy brother’s face, when thou showest a traveller his road, when thou givest water to the thirsty, when thou exhortest thy neighbour to do right, thou doest works of charity. In the other life the true riches of man will consist in the good he has done to his fellow-men. When he dies people ask, ‘ What fortune has he left behind him?’ But the angels enquire, ‘ What good deeds has he sent before him ? ’ Pray, give alms, and the good that you do you will find again near to God, because he sees your actions. To be righteous it does not suffice merely to turn the head to the east or the west: man must also believe in God, succour his neighbours, the orphans, the poor, and strangers; redeem the captives ; observe the seasons of prayer; fulfil a promise; bear patiently all adversity and the evils of war. These are the duties of true believers.” THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 84 second century of the Hegira merited the surname of great.* The sacred literature increased so much that it became necessary to arrange it in the reigns of the Sultans of Constantinople Mahomet II. and Soliman I. But there is no priesthood amongst Mussulmans, and the expounders of the sacred books are not con¬ sidered infallible. Still the caliphs encouraged a class of savants or learned men, called the Ulemas, to whom they confided the religious and judicial functions. The Imaums performed the ser¬ vices in the mosques. The muezzins called the faithful to prayer from the top of the towers or minarets. Without being a caste, or even a privileged body, the Imaums and Ulemas acquired real authority by their profound knowledge of the Koran and the canonical books. Social and Political Influence of Afahomedanism .—Mahomet regenerated Arabia. The tribes that wandered over the peninsula with their tents and herds were plunged in degradation. The Arabs buried the little girls alive when they did not wish to keep them. Mahomet suppressed all these barbarous customs, although he allowed polygamy, of which he set the example; he recommended unity in marriage, prohibited temporary marriages, and carefully regulated family life. The material interests of the wife were pro¬ tected ; she acquired rights of succession ; widowed, her livelihood was secure for a whole year, defrayed by her husband’s heir, and she also received a dowry. Yet Mahomet did not raise woman from the inferiority to which she had been reduced and which bordered on slavery. Far from combating Oriental customs, Mahomet hallowed that subjection of woman which renders Oriental society so different from Western habits. Frequently bought like merchandise, entirely confined to the house, closely veiled on the rare occasions when they went outside, women languished without instruction, always kept apart, absorbed in frivolous occupations. In this respect Mahomedanism, although it improved the rough Arabian tribes, could not be considered as progress, and was fatal to social life in Asia and Africa, Mahomet was the prophet, and under him the temporal and • Abou-Hanijah, Eeh. Chajei, Malek, and Hambal. THE ARABS. 85 spiritual powers were even more amalgamated than they had been in antiquity. The caliphs, his successors, like himself religious and political chieftains, regulated everything by the Koran. From this ensued a despotism from which there was no appeal, since men had not even the refuge of conscience. For the caliphs struck their victims in the name of God, and thus forced them to revere the murdering hand. The Mussulman religion then was not any real progress for the East, where despotism was no doubt traditional, but where Mahomet rendered it incurable. The fatalism to which the enslaved populations easily resigned themselves weakened every impulse towards resistance. The Mussulman bows to every suffering saying, “It is written.” He is thus excused from any effort to escape the evil. Oriental idleness has thus called heaven to its assistance, and fate, by explaining every misfortune, will not allow man to resist any of them. Preaching by the Sword. —Mahomet, driven from Mecca by the Koreishites, retired to Medina, but he had not confidence in his triumph by the word ; he had recourse to the sword. By the sword he conquered Arabia. The Koran decrees, “ Kill infidels whenever you meet them ; ” and elsewhere, “ I have a mission to fight against the infidels until they say there is no God but Allah. When they have pronounced these words they have saved their life and their goods. As for their creed, that is an account they must settle with God.” According to Mahomet there were only two great divisions in the world : the Muslim (Mussulmans) and the Kafirs (Infidels). He divided the earth into two parts, Dar-ul-Islam, the house of Islam, and Dar-ul-Harb, the house of war. He said to his disciples, “ Complete my work, extend the house of Islam all over the earth ; God gives us the house of war.” He also exhorted them to “ Fight to the death, some of you will succumb in the struggle ; for those who perish, paradise, for those who survive, victory.” But to these precepts a few maxims of toleration towards Jews and Christians were added. “ Say to the blind and to those who have received the Scriptures, embrace Islamism and you will receive light. If they rebel you are only enjoined to teach, God can distinguish his own servants.” But the warlike zeal of the Arabs preferred the Sc THE HISTORY OF CIVIL 1ZA TIOX. former precepts, and this almost unknown people made in less than a eentmy conquests even more astonishing man those of the Banians. T'-.i A>\:: Er.y '-v; t\e Tico C 'yhites. —Mahomet’s three first successors. Abou-Bekr, Omar, and Othman .632-6-56'. led their peorle to the centres: o: the East and West. Issuing from Arabia by Palestine and thelsmmns ofPelnsium. the Arabs rapidly covered Syria. Persia, and Egypt. After the reign of Ali. the prophet’s son-in law 656-661 . a bitter enemy to the earlier eaiiphs. a schism broke the religions unity of the Mussulmans, who from that time divided into Shiites denying the legitimacy of the three first ealirhs , and Sunnites who acknowledge them . But this schism did not stop the conquering advance, which was resumed by the Ommiades 661-750 . who formed the Arab Empire from the shores of the Indus and the Oxns to the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees. Masters of all the southern coast of the Mediterranean, the Arabs soon had a fleet, and several times they seriously menaced Constantinople. This empire measured eighteen hundred leagues from east to west, and threatened to engulf both the emrire of the East and the Frank emrire. It was divided into two parts upon the accession o: the Abbassides. and the fidelity of the West to the scion c: tie family of Ommiades or Omeyyades . Abd-er-Rahman "55 . But in the two caliphates of east and west, the exact repro¬ duction of the division of the Christian Empire, Arab civilisation attained, both in the court of the Abbassides of Bagdad and in that of the Ommiades of Cordova, an equal degree of refinement and much mire brilliancy than Christian civilisation, at that time cor¬ rupt in the East, and scarcely reawakened in the West. Prosperity of the Caliphate of Bagda . Comment .— The Ar liked and practised commerce long before Mahomet, who was originally a camel-driver. The armies prepared the way for the caravans in Asia and Africa. From Bagdad and Mosul, on the Tigris, merchants travelled in every direction : to the west by the Svrim desert towards Antioch. Aleppo, and Damascus, receiving the products of the Wes: trim the ions of Tripoli and Ptolemals; THE ARABS. 8 : to the north towards Diarbekir, Erzeronm, the Black Sea and its chief port, Trebizond; to the north-west towards Asia Minor, Satalia, Smyrna, Nicea, Broussa; to the east towards the Indies and Khorassan, by Hamadan and Herat. The Arabs became sailors, and already acquainted with the use of a compass, imper¬ fectly borrowed from the Chinese, they voyaged over the Pied Sea and the Sea of Oman, penetrating as far as Hindustan and Indo- China. African commerce served as a link between the East and West. The ports of Tripoli, Tunis, and Tangiers, had inherited the fortune of the Vandal Carthage; Damietta and Alexandria had lost none of their old activity ; and Egypt, wisely governed, had perserved her wonderful fertility. The Arabs even attempted to reopen the canal that had been dug between the Nile and the Pied Sea by the Pharaohs and Ptolemies. Descend¬ ing the eastern coasts of Africa the Arabs carried their religion and their commerce as far as Zanzibar and Mozambique. The Abbas- sides, Abou-Giafar or Al-Manzor (the Victorious!, Haroun-al- Piaschid (the Just), and Al-Mamoun displayed, at the end of the eighth and commencement of the ninth centuries, the most wonder¬ ful luxury at Bagdad. Palaces ornamented with marble columns, and with the rich carpets still manufactured in the East, superb gardens refreshed by fountains falling into marble basins, splendid escorts of thousands of slaves, a profusion of silken materials from India, and of precious stones, every refinement of luxury and all the magnificence of the old Oriental monarchies—this scarcely describes the pomp of the caliphs, who lavished thus the tributes levied from a hundred different races. The Caliph Moktader had 38,000 pieces of tapestry in his palace, of which 12,500 were of silk and gold. When he made the pilgrimage to Mecca he immolated 40,000 calves and 50,000 sheep. The mother of the Caliph Motassem had a train of 12,000 camels, and the Arab poets do not appear to have exaggerated the wealth of these sovereigns of Bagdad, who succeeded to the riches of Egypt and Asia. The Caliphate of Cordova: Prosperity of Spain .—The caliphs of Cordova were not less opulent through the wise administration of 88 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Abd-er-Rahman I., of Hischam I., of Abd-er-Rahman II., of Al-Hakkem I., of Abd-er-Rahman III., and Al-Hakkem II. Arab agriculture converted several parts of Spain—the huerta of Va¬ lencia and the vegas of Granada in Andalusia—into vast gardens, where all the most beautiful plants of southern countries grew and flourished. The ingenuity of the Arabs counteracted the dryness of the climate by skilful irrigation, and aqueducts con¬ veyed the water preserved in artificial ponds. The Arabs intro¬ duced rice, cotton, the sugar-cane, saffron, and the date-palm into Spain. Al-Hakkem II., say the chroniclers, changed the lances and swords into mattocks and rakes. The most illustrious chiefs were proud of cultivating their own gardens, and the cadis and alfaquis boasted of the beauty of their vineyards. Lastly, an entire population, following the former habits of the desert, resumed in the midst of civilization the Bedouin’s wandering life, solely occupied in raising cattle. They passed, as others had done before them, according to the season, from one province to the other, with the herds, nomads like themselves, in search of pastur¬ age, which in summer is dried up on the plains and plentiful on the mountains. The towns were filled with manufactures of tissues of silk, cotton, and cloth. The Arabs introduced the use of indigo and cochineal, of rich porcelain, coloured earthenware, and linen paper into Spain. They excelled in the art of dyeing leather and stuffs. The leathers of Cordova, the well-tempered weapons of Toledo, were universally famous. The last-named town had 200,000 inhabitants, Seville 360,000, and 60,000 looms for weaving silk alone. Spain maintained important commercial relations, not only with Africa, but with Asia and the empire of the East. She imported the numerous slaves required by the caliphs and Arab sheiks from the countries on either side of the Danube. The Slaves or Slavons also furnished a large contingent, and the word slave is derived from them. The caliphs of Cordova, following the example of the caliphs of Bagdad, kept up a large fleet, and their merchant ships have been computed at more than a thousand. Whilst tolerant towards Christians, who on paying certain taxes were allowed to exercise their religion, the caliphs were especially THE ARABS. 89 indulgent to the Jews, a Semitic people whose creed nearly resembled their own. The Jews monopolized nearly all the com¬ merce of Spain, above all the trade in precious metals. Arab Literature .—The first caliphs would have liked to confine learning to reading the Koran ; but they were not so barbarous as they were reported to be, and the conflagration of the Alexandrian library was not ordered by Omar. The Abbassides, particularly Haroun-al-Raschid, owe much of their glory to the protection they extended to science. Haroun never travelled without a procession of savants, who even accompanied him to war. He wished to found a free school by the side of each mosque. Al- Mamoun commanded a search to be made for valuable manuscripts, and he paid for their translation by weight of gold. Ten thousand pupils studied in the college of Bagdad alone. The Arabs had a really luxuriant poetry even before the time of Mahomet, rich in images, lively, alert, and easy. Later, they also had many historians, whose narratives are naive, familiar, and diffusive, but instructive, for they enter into many details of habits and customs. The best quoted are Amri (ninth century), and Mecaudi or Macoudi (tenth century), who, in his book entitled the “ Golden Fields,” recounts the wars of Abd- er-Rahman III. against the Christians, Ahmed-el-Razi, Ebu-Hazan, Pascual of Cordova, &c. But the Arabs were chiefly successful in stories and romances, such as the original work called the “ Thousand and one Nights,” a real picture of Arab society. In philosophy, the Arabs confined themselves to Aristotle, whose subtlety pleased them, although they were far from understand¬ ing it. Amongst the most remarkable commentators on Aristotle we must particularly quote Avicenna (eleventh century), Aver- roes of Cordova (twelfth century), and Gazali (fourteenth cen¬ tury). The immense extent of the Arabian empire assisted the progress of geography. A detailed statistical account of Spain was made by order of Al-Hakkem II., and in the twelfth century Edrisi made a celestial globe in silver for Roger II. of Sicily, and also wrote an immense geography, of which we have only an abridgment. Abou’l- THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. go Feda (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) also wrote curious trea¬ tises on geography. But the Arabs exercised little influence over general civilisation by their own works; the great service they rendered was in pre¬ serving, and by their translations circulating, the works of the ancients. They were the link of union between antiquity and the Middle Ages, for it was through them that the populations of Europe became acquainted with Aristotle and the Greek writers. They also transmitted the old Asiatic traditions, and in this way brought the East closer to the West. Science .—The Arabs were more successful in science than in literature. Although they borrowed Aristotle’s “Natural History,” they added to it considerably through the labour of their explorers. Excellent physicians for the period, they made great progress in the science of medicine, which had been so backward amongst the Greeks. In Bagdad alone there were 860 doctors, and Christian princes went to consult the doctors of Cordova. The Arabs were acquainted with mauy of the salutary properties of plants, and their pharmacy was more reasonable than their remedies. The Arabs joined to a vivid imagination a great aptitude for abstract studies ; this was shown by their appreciation of Aristotle. Arithmetic owes great progress to the Arabs; they transmitted, if they did not invent, the numerals which we use for enumeration, and which have replaced the inconvenient Roman signs. The Arabian origin of algebra is indicated by its name (al-chebra). The Arabs translated the works of Archimedes and the Greek geome¬ tricians. The solidity and size of their buildings prove their knowledge of geometry and mechanics. They also studied tri¬ gonometry. Inheritors of Asiatic superstitions, they devoted themselves to astrology, which, however, led them to astronomy. They translated the works of the Greek Ptolemy. The obliquity of the ecliptic, the annual movement of the equinoxes, and the duration of the tropical year were determined. Under the auspices of Al-Mamoun a degree of the meridian was twice measured in the plains of Sinjar, then in those of Kouja, and the circumference of the earth was settled at 26,000 miles. The beautiful tower THE ARABS . 9i Giralda, at Seville, was one of the observatories built by the Arabs, who even erected one at Samarcand in Turkestan. Chemistry owes its name to the Arabs (al-quimiya). This eminently modern science could not make rapid progress because the Arabs only sought to transmute metals for the philosopher’s stone, or for elixirs capable of rendering man immortal. This occult science spread over Europe from the Middle Ages, and was called alchemy by nations who, not knowing the Arab language, confused the article al with the word quimiya. This confusion is retained to designate the fantastic essays of alchemy, whilst the real science is distinguished by separating the Arab article and using the noun alone, chemistry. Art .—The arts of painting and sculpture would probably have benefited greatly by Arab intelligence and imagination had not Mahomet strictly prohibited any representation of men or animals; thus they were forced to confine themselves to architecture, in which they excelled. Then, again, the Arabs imitated the Greeks of Byzantium and not the ancient Greeks. They adopted their arches from the Byzantium basilicas, but lowered them, so that the interior of the edifice was cooler, more sheltered from the rays of the sun. The cupolas of their mosques are not so bold as those of Byzantium, but often lighter and more graceful. Inside they placed a profusion of columns and ornaments, of mosaics and coloured stucco. The palaces are even heavier than the mosques. Outside they have the appearance and outworks of a fortress, the splendour is all inside. The Arabs modified the Roman arcade ; their arch was divided into several arches and then toothed, it thus gained incomparable light¬ ness. The trefoil blended the outline of its elegant leaves with the regular curve of the arch. The horse-shoe form seems to have been given by carrying the curve from the extremities of the huge capitals of the later Empire. Variety and grace predominate in this capricious architecture. The stone scallops were ornamented with a thousand designs that have retained their name of arab¬ esques, and to which were added leaves and flowers; the walls were covered with enamel and with blue and white tiles (azulejos). 92 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The sinuous writing, graven in gold on a black ground, was also used for decoration, and the inscriptions completed this varied ornamentation. The mosque of Omar, at Jerusalem (seventh century), was one of the first buildings erected by the Arabs, who covered its walls with blue enamel tiles, and enriched it with columns taken from the churches of Bethlehem and the Holy Sepulchre. In Egypt the city of Cairo was ornamented with the magnificent mosques of Ebn-Touloun (ninth century), El- Ahzar (tenth century), with the four hundred antique columns, of Hakem (eleventh century), and of Hassan (fourteenth cen¬ tury). The necropolis of the royal dynasties of Cairo was a mass of palaces and mosques, amongst which the mosque of Kait-Bey (fifteenth century) is the most correct and the most elegant. The Ommiades of Spain have also left us imposing witnesses of their glory. The mosque of Cordova, begun in 784, completed in 798, was to the Western Arabs what Saint Sophia was to the Greeks of Byzantium. The towers on the walls of Seville were embellished with cords of brick, chains of white stones, and Arabic inscriptions. The Alcazar of Seville (Al-kasr), or palace, is a succession of gardens and halls, with walls covered with tiles and ornamented with arabesques ; it is also ornamented with a quantity of marble columns, of arches with scalloped projections, and with pretty cupolas, shaped like a half orange. The Alcazar, like the Alhambra, the most celebrated of the Arab buildings, belongs to the last period of the Moorish rule. The Alhambra still partially exists. Outwardly it is a fortress, and the outer walls are one league in circumference ; but inside it is a marvellous palace, containing the most varied arrangement of courts, rooms, and halls, so beautiful that they baffle description. The Court of the Lions is particularly admired. It is rectangular, measuring 100 feet by 60 feet, sur¬ rounded by a peristyle of graceful columns. On all sides it is ornamented with beautiful stone fretwork and arabesques ; all is richness, grace, harmony, and splendour ; varnished tiles of all colours, mosaics which resemble tapestries, trefoils which admit the softened light to fall upon the paintings, flowers, knots, TI 1 E ARABS. 93 zigzags, inscriptions, fountains, basins where flowing water pre¬ served the freshness of the graceful halls. But marble is compara¬ tively rare in the Alhambra; brick, stucco, and plaster have sufficed for the construction of this unique palace, where the Arab sovereigns concealed in later years their indolence and capricious tyranny. Character and, Influence of Arab Civilization .—The condemnation of the Arab civilization is that it recalls, in its tyrannical form of government, as well as in other respects, the ancient civilizations of the East. The Arabs professed a religion which no doubt was a great advance on that of heathen races and African hordes. But this religion was opposed to any free development of the faculties of man, and it was only by distorting the words of the Koran that the caliphs were able to encourage science and improve society. When once the strong hand of princes like Haroun and Al-Hakkem was removed, science rapidly declined. This civilization was also very superficial ; it was founded on that of China, India, and the Byzantine empire, and it borrowed much from them all. Like all imitations it was precocious, and like all premature growths it faded rapidly. The number of Arab poets and scholars was at first immense, and the race soon found itself almost exhausted. Moreover, the Arabs allowed themselves to be drawn into subtleties and pomposity almost immediately ; they did not regulate their ardour by judg¬ ment. We must also remark that Arabian genius fell victim to its own conquests. The Arabs had founded a vast empire, but numerically they were not strong enough to maintain their dominion. The delicate flower of Arab civilization was stifled by the barbarism of its African converts, and afterwards crushed by the Turks, those other barbarians from Central Asia. During several centuries, however, the Arabs filled an important position in the history of civilization. For an instant they raised the countries of the East and rendered Spain prosperous. They carried light to the most distant parts of Asia, and transmitted to Europe valuable knowledge, which was used to advantage by 94 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the Western races. Soldiers and merchants, poets and scholars, they AraL Architecture: Mosque ot Kait-Bey at Cairo. exercised their fertile activity over an immense district. Their THE ARABS. 95 empire has fallen, their literary glory is eclipsed; but the Arabs are still proud of their former greatness, which would perhaps have lasted longer had they not been overwhelmed by other races less amenable to civilization. The most striking circumstance is the influence exerted by their religion, in spite of its imperfections. This religion has taken entire possession of the races who have accepted it. Mussulmans, as a rule, cannot be converted. Their obstinate attachment to their faith has discouraged the most indefatigable missionaries. No other religion is more generally and more sincerely observed. It is true that the ritual is simple, and that it does not exact any effort of the soul to overcome the body though it admits of mysti¬ cism. Mahomet’s religion is still practised by nearly two hundred millions of mankind, and it encroaches on the civilized Western world, though no rival of Christianity, while in Africa it is the great successful missionary religion to-day, though the enterprise and earnestness of Christian missionaries is at last—for instance, at Uganda—beginning to let in light on the Dark Continent. CHAPTER V. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. Summary : Dismemberment of Charlemagne’s Empire—Feudalism—Origin of Feudalism—Subordination of the Land ; the Edict of Mersen (847)— Public Offices become hereditary; Edict of Kiersy-sur-Oise (877)—Social Organization; the Nobility—The Clergy—The Inferior Classes—Political Disorganization; Feudal Monarchy—Feudal “Administration, War, Justice, and Finance—Feudal Activity and Independence—Defects of the Feudal System. Dismemberment oj Charlemagne's Empire. —The world in the ninth century was divided into three empires—the Arab, the Byzantine, and the Frank empire of Charlemagne. In reality there were only two distinct societies, the Mussulman and the Christian. The former, in spite of its brilliancy, rapidly declined, and its religion, like the character of the races that composed it, condemned it to stand still. At the present time the Mussulman world is very inferior to the Christian ; indeed, it is the latter that forms the civilized world. It is therefore the transformation and progress of Christian society that we must now follow. But in the ninth and tenth centuries this society did not seem likely to fill its present position. The order that Charlemagne had established quickly disappeared, and his empire succumbed after his death. Already divided by Louis the Debonnaire, then subdivided into three parts by his sons, the empire of Charlemagne was at that time subjected to another invader, the Northman. The land routes had been closed to the barbarians, but the Northmen came from Denmark and Norway by the sea. Taking advantage of the disputes between the sons of Louis the Debonnaire, they ravaged the coasts, ascended the rivers and tributaries of the rivers, and penetrated into the interior to all parts of the country. Their incursions THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 97 added to the disorder of civil war, and these disorders were favourable to the usurpations of the vassals, who at last refused to acknowledge the royal authority. Thus the dismemberment of Charlemagne’s empire became more marked. In 843, at the Treaty of Verdun, three great divisions were acknowledged, and in 887 there were already seven, which soon became nine. In each of the States formed by this dismemberment the subdivision continued so effectually that the empire was broken into a thousand pieces, and society became infinitely divided. This was called the feudal society. Feudalism .—The word feudalism is derived from a Germanic word, feod (fief).* Whether it signifies salary, recompense, or fidelity, the word in the Middle Ages designated a series of laws and customs derived from the system of fiefs. Feudalism was the political and social system which, established in Europe in the ninth and eleventh centuries, was developed in the twelfth, shone with some brilliancy in the thirteenth, and declined in the four¬ teenth. And it was from this confused society that modern society developed itself. The name of feudal was not applied without some reason to this curious system, which is quite unparalleled in ancient history, although some authorities have endeavoured to find it in Sparta. Its origin may partly be found in the honores, benejicia, ini- munitates, of the last days of the Roman Empire. Its principle was the fief (the old benejicia), the condition of sovereignty; the fief, the reason for obedience ; the fief, source of both power and dependence ; the fief, the bond that linked the land- owners together, and that bound them to the king; the fief, cause of all obligations, basis of all contracts, principle of all duties, so powerful that men at that time could not imagine any¬ thing outside the laws and the rules of the fiefs. All relations * Two derivations have been suggested for the word feod. According to Cujas it is an alteration of Jides (fidelity) ; according to the German authors it comes from fe, fee , salary, reward; connected more probably with Jihu vich , cattle, property; and od, estate, possession; so that feodum signifies an estate, given as a reward. The word first appears in a charter of Charles the Fat, 854 . II 98 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. were changed into feudal relations, all rights became fiefs, the result of engagements by which man bound himself to man promising fidelity without losing either his liberty or his dignity, and even priding himself upon a dependence which only proved the value attached to his good faith and his services. It was the complete triumph of German ideas. They stifled Roman ideas and instead of personal, formed social bonds from the attachment that linked a warrior to his chief. Rome and antiquity had chiefly fostered the idea of the State ; this idea was now lost. The power of the individual, the landed relations between the individual and his chief, became the foundation of feudal society. On the contrary, the new society of the Middle Ages only recognised laws in relation to property, the interest of the individual, the will of the individual, only sub¬ ject to a chief of his own selection whom he combated as often as obeyed. A society was then formed, composed of a number of small private societies slightly connected with each other by a chain that broke at each instant; kingdoms which included hundreds of others ; a despotism, no longer of one man, nor of a patrician class, but that of a thousand masters weighing directly upon a limited portion of the territory, their rule being less easy to evade because it was nearer to those over whom it was exercised. This eccentric society, sprung from a series of usurpations and violence, possessed, however, its theorists, its jurisconsults, and even its poets. It had its literature and architecture, and for centuries it so entirely prevailed over Western Europe that it must be thoroughly understood if one wishes to follow the develop¬ ment of modern States. The Origin of Feudalism .—Says Montesquieu: “The feudal laws are a beautiful spectacle. From afar we notice an old oak standing erect, we catch sight of its foliage, we approach, and there is the stem, but the roots are hidden, and we must dig deeply into the earth before we find them.” And in fact we must go back several centuries before the establishment of feudalism to find its elements and roots, some of which must be sought in Roman THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 99 society, combined with elements of later growth. Certainly, in the latter years of the Roman empire, the nobility had been aug¬ mented by the great officials, and the titles created by Constantine were perpetuated. The importance of large estates was then increasing, and we find them engulfing the smaller ones, whilst the landowners were acquiring absolute authority, the right of administration over their farmers and slaves. But whatever the importance of possessions, then called precaires, and held under fixed conditions, this was not yet feudalism, though it formed one element in it. Feudalism is derived from fief, and the fief was simply the old Merovingian and Roman beneftcia. This was a portion of land ceded on condition that the man who received it promised fidelity to the man who conferred it. The reward of services already rendered, the pledge of services to come, the land thus became a powerful bond between the soldiers of the Germanic tribe. The sole capital, the sole wealth, at an epoch when Roman industries had disappeared, the land possessed an invincible attraction for men who exacted vast domains from the kings in order to live freely with their companions, and who would not afterwards restore what they had only conditionally received. Feudalism, then, was the result of these usurpations of land, of the greedy covetousness of the Frank chieftains, who were perpetually struggling to convert their benefices into definite property, to leave to their families the lands that had only been conceded for a time. Subordination of the Land; the Edict of Mersen .—The allodial or free lands were continually diminishing through the usurpations allowed by the universal disorder that ensued after Charlemagne’s death, and facilitated by the Norman incursions and the erection of the castles. But it was the system of recommendation which completed the destruction of free holdings. Misery forced many of the owners of small allodial estates to transfer their land to a richer and stronger neighbour, who returned it to them as a fief; such an owner became vassal to the rich beneficiary. Charles the Bald not only encouraged but even ordered this recommendation THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. (00 by the Edict of Mersen (847), which enjoined free men to choose a lord. The real landowner was subject to the man who formerly had only received the usufruct of the estate. The owner of a benefice who formerly held this benefice through a precarious title became the real owner, and the man whose land formerly belonged to him now only enjoyed the usufruct, since he had ceded the freehold to his lord. Moreover, the lands, like persons, were dependent on each other. The old social ladder, as the wergeld tariff had settled it, became embodied as it were, and was graduated by the value of the lands. It became visible, and the inequalities of the estates reproduced, whilst they cemented, the inequalities of per¬ sonal rank. A still more curious phenomenon : through this system, which identified the soil with the man who owned it or the man who cultivated it, the land itself took the rank of the owners. According to whether it belonged directly to a lord or whether it were the holding of a villein, it was considered noble or roturih'e. Servitude like nobility becameinherent in the fields. Corn, vines, and meadows bore, we may say, the stamp of the dignity or humble rank of their owners, although they all flourished under the same sun and with the same beauty and fertility. Public Offices become hereditary: Edict of Kiersy-sur-Oise (877). —Whatever inequalities might exist between the possessors of the land, they could not affect the political order whilst the central power lasted and exacted the same obedience from all. This was shown under the Merovingian and the more powerful princes of the Caro- lingian family. The gradual change had commenced some time, but a prince like Charlemagne was not less respected or less obeyed. But one important effect was produced: the weakening of the central power, the monarchy, ruined by its liberality, and obliged to cede not only its dominions but its rights. In the civil wars that mark the reigns of Louis the Debonnaire and his sons the obedience of the vassals had so far relaxed that Charles the Bald jestingly called his Jideles his infidbles. In 877, by the capitulary of Kiersy-sur-Oise (the importance of which THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 101 it is in vain to deny), he decided, in order to induce the nobles to follow him into Italy, that the faithful duke or count should be succeeded by his son. In short the offices became hereditary. The offices to which, under Charlemagne, the idea of power emanating from the king was attached were now a kind of property. The provinces became fiefs, for the dukes and counts in freeing themselves acknowledged that authority over their dis¬ tricts came in the last resort from the king. They asserted their power over the lords of their province, and completed the local hierarchy by ruling over it, thus retaining the royal prerogative confided to them in their mission. They remained chiefs, but on their own account. The administrative commission was ended, but the power remained. The dukes and counts no longer governed for the king, but for themselves; they were the kings. Thus above the owners of allodial lands ranked the owners ot benefices; above them both, the dukes and great vassals of the king. At the bottom of the ladder below these categories there were analogous degrees. After the free men the tenants or copy- holders, free both in person and goods, but with their lands encum¬ bered with quit-rents and dues ; then the mortmains, formerly peasant farmers, now fallen deeper into slavery; and lastly, the serfs attached to the glebe. We therefore distinguish three great classes of men issuing from this feudal chaos, the nobility, clergy, and people ; and these three classes have been maintained until the present epoch. The mould through which European society was to flow during eight centuries was discovered. Social Organization: the Nohiliti /.—The nobles, proud of their domains, their strength, and courage, formed a much haughtier class than the ancient aristocracies. Masters of lands and men, armed with judicial, military, and financial power, without alluding to a number of onerous or curious rights, they seemed to belong to another race so completely that scholars of the last century wished to prove that the constitution of the nobility was the result of the conquest by and perpetuity of the Franks, still maintained above the subjugated Romans. 102 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Holding the royal prerogative of declaring war, the lords regarded warfare as their noblest occupation, and only rested to enjoy the pleasures of the chase. Work, industry, commerce, were considered derogatory pursuits in which none could join without degradation and the loss of rank and reputation. Through this warlike dis¬ position and the tendency to think only of the interests of their seignorial dominions the feudal nobles lost much of their love of the country. For them the country was limited by their own domains, or by the interests of their caste. As sovereigns they could enter into alliances even with strangers. The king oidy represented an importunate master, against whom they could fight whenever they were strong enough. The Clergy .—Many of the lords were ecclesiastics. The clergy had become feudal. It had followed society instead of directing it, and had been corrupted by the attraction of wealth and power. Bishops had vast estates and numerous vassals ; several of them bore the title of duke and even of prince. The possession of landed property seemed to be a necessity to secure a maintenance or even a mere existence. This community of privileges, in strong contrast with the character of the religious mission, led to a long rivalry between the nobility and the clergy. Neither bishops nor abbots thought more of public liberties than the nobles themselves; their sole aim was to maintain their feudal rights and to use their religious influence for the development of their terri¬ torial wealth. Excommunication became a weapon to be used as freely as lance or sword. The feudal nobility had confused sovereignty with property. The clergy confused temporal power with spiritual power. They so completely lost the sense of any distinction that they encouraged the double investiture of the sword and the cross, so that the ecclesiastical dignity was conferred by the suzerain of the Church. The principle of the fief had become so strong that it was even applied to moral acts, and the eccle¬ siastical offices became really fiefs. But the clergy had one advantage over the nobility. It was not hereditary, its property was not lost by marriage alliances, nor by death. The feudal division had not effaced the division of the dio- THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 103 ceses. The Church remained one body, united by rules more or less faithfully observed, but still existent, by its councils, and by its rela¬ tions with the Pope. The clergy, being without the pride of family, which dominated every other feeling amongst the nobility, continu¬ ally admitted new recruits, who often came from the inferior classes, and thus remained much more united than the nobility. The Inferior Classes. —The nobles and the clergy are the only classes that count, because they alone possessed the land, sharing the power and wealth. The people in the towns and country districts bore all the burden of the privileged classes. Reduced to the condition of subjects, the inhabitants of the towns were at the discretion of the lords ; they had, however, less to suffer than the inhabitants of the country, who, through their isolation, were more at the mercy of their masters. Forced to cultivate land that did not belong to them, the peasants laboured to feed the lord and to pay for his luxuries. The mortmains could not leave the field that they cultivated to their children; and the serfs were so completely in their master’s power that he could sell or imprison them, and he had besides a jurisdiction of life and death over them Besides the money that they were at a later period forced to pay, the men of the lower classes, the villeins or roturiers, were subject to a number of onerous dues: of chase, of statute labour,feudal service, tolls, contributions, &c. They could not own a mill, bakehouse, or wine-press. “ The lords,” says an old writer, “enclosed the inhabi¬ tants of heaven and earth under doors and hinges; the bird in the air, the fish in the water.” The feudal lord was master over the whole creation. The air belonged to the lord, for he claimed dues on the birth of a child, “ as a tribute that he owes as soon as he breathes the air.” Fire did not escape the same domination, for a tax was exacted from every person who possessed a hearth. The account of all the claims that weighed upon the people gives a terrible impression of the feudal regime. No despot ever imagined so many, because feudal despotism varied with the individual character of the lords, and their oppressions continued even after feudalism had lost its political character. Political Disorganization : Feudal Monarchy .—All the forces of 104 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. government that the Merovingians had maintained, and that Charlemagne had essayed to develop, were destroyed. The monarchy had lost the character that the Merovingians and the Carolingians had essayed to give it. It was no longer a general authority, but a feudal authority. The king was only the highest of his great lords, he was their suzerain. He had his own vassals, who only obeyed him by feudal duty and in the limits of feudal rights. They paid him duty of armed service, and sub¬ sidies ; but this duty accomplished, they went back to reign in their dominions, for they also wore crowns. The king made no more general laws, nor held any more general assemblies. He had only a simple feudal court. His money only circulated in his own dominions. Although later on the prince struggled obstinately against his barons, he was only regarded by them as one of themselves. Content to be recognised as chiefs of the hierarchy, they maintained the hierarchy, and the king was only a crowned noble. Feudal Administration, War, Justice, and Finance .—Whilst the king was still chief of all the owners of fiefs, he was no longer their direct chief. There was no central power, no general ad¬ ministration. The dukes and counts, who formerly represented the king, now only represented themselves, and the administration became only manorial, or feudal. The cities had lost their muni¬ cipal institutions and were drawn into feudal servitude. The army no longer existed, or rather there were as many armies as lords. The principle of military service was the feudal obliga¬ tion, and that service was bruited to forty or sixty days. The king convoked his vassals and they brought their men, but com¬ manded them theihselves. The army then became a collection of private armies each with its chief; there was no discipline, no military art; it was almost a return to the clan or tribal system, and the kings really only disposed of a feudal mob. Every lord, having the right of making war, exercised it against the other lords or against the king. The country was perpetually disturbed by feudal wars. Public justice no longer existed, for the lords were the judges in 7HE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 105 their own dominions. Justice, that basis of society, was no longer a public institution, it became manorial or feudal. So many castles meant so many feudal courts, where the principle of judg¬ ment by the lord was triumphant. Justice varied according to the character of the lord and the rank of the person. The Church had its tribunals like the princes, and ecclesiastical justice was always Warriors of the Tenth Century. coming into conflict with lay justice. Justice in this violent society frequently assumed the form of combat where the con¬ demned challenged their judge for default of law; besides, the law had become inextricable, through the numerous difficulties which arose from the system of fiefs and the absence of definite laws. Traditional custom replaced the written law, and nothing is more io6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. varied, confused, and puzzling than the feudal law which had stifled the Roman law. The king having lost his direct authority, no longer assessed the taxes, which were levied by the lords. There were no finances, and the monarch was forced to live, like other lords, on his domains, and a few fixed subsidies or aids, paid by the vassals. The lords then were the only persons who profited by the taxes raised from the villeins and the serfs, by the tolls, excise, &c. Finance bad become feudal dues. Besides, the king had no longer any need for general taxes, since he no longer paid for public justice, a national army, or provincial administration. He no longer had charge of the public works, of the roads or rivers, which had become private property, in charge of the lords, who made their serfs repair them. Public works were changed to feudal statute labour. Thus we see the public works had degenerated into statute labour, finance into local dues, justice was partitioned into an infinity of local courts, the army divided into a number of local armies, the administration had dissolved into local tyrannies, the monarchy was reduced to a local authority; this was the character of feudal institutions. That is to say, that there were no longer any institutions, there were only isolated forces grouped around certain men, but incapable of forming w T hat we call a State. Feudalism was the universal dissolution of society, the result of the long conflict between Roman ideas and German ignorance, between the science of order and the brutal ignorance of immoderate liberty. Feudal Activity and Independence .—Imperfect as a social state may be, it may still last if only it be animated with some energetic principles of life. All these small States had a vigorous life, and individual faculties appeared to develop with an energy which seemed to increase as the circle in which they were exercised became more confined. The lord could rely only upon himself for defence against the attacks that were so often renewed, upon the vigour of his arm, the acuteness of his intelligence, and the force of his patience. Sur- THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 107 rounded by jealous neighbours, be was forced to endure sieges, to strike forcibly, to expose himself to continual danger. Thus the feudal ages filled for modern society the same place as the heroic age had filled for the ancients. Pride of race increased with every exploit, and demanded fresh prowess. The nobjes formed a class of men of extraordinary physical strength, of prodigious audacity, of courage beyond all need of proof, careless of danger and even seeking it unreasonably, fighting for the pleasure of the strife, and animated by a sentiment little known in ancient times, the feeling of honour. The free habits of the German warrior reappeared in the feudal lords’ persistent opposition to their rulers. The vassals never hesi¬ tated to levy war against their suzerains, and the hierarchy, which seemed so well established, was continually troubled by their inde¬ pendence. Even when they obeyed, the vassals were as haughty as their suzerains, and a familiarity was established amongst all these owners of fiefs which removed all trace of servitude from their obedience. Knowing their own strength, always ready to take lance in hand, they exacted respect for their rights and for their independence from their suzerain. Individuality triumphed and nourished a tone of liberty which had a different character from the ancient liberty restrained and regulated by the State. These traditions of individual liberty survived the feudal chaos and became the principle of modern liberty. Defects of the Feudal System .—But at the same time these local interests and continual wars produced anarchy. The local spirit stifled the public spirit. Millions of men remained in an inferior and subject position, oppressed by masters whom it was more dillicult to evade because the circle was narrowed and the tyranny nearer. Slavery weighed on the lower classes, but ignorance ruled over all. The light that Charlemagne had attempted to kindle was extinguished. Ignorance nourished a narrow, coarse superstition that resembled the heathen superstitions. It seemed as though the human spirit was doomed to sink in obscurity and society in violence. The world in the ninth and tenth centuries had apparently returned to barbarism, and misery ensued, the result of the material THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . 108 and moral disorder. Continual wars interfered with agriculture; ravaged fields and burning cottages disfigured the land on all sides. The poor serf had scarcely replaced his roof or sown his field when fresh ravages ruined him a second time. The uncleared land increased, and terrible famines almost periodically decimated the population. The chronicles of the times, in spite of their dryness, enable us to realise the sufferings of the population, reduced after some of these famines to feed themselves upon unclean animals or grass. From this point modern society started. The upper classes descended, the lower classes improved. From the eleventh cen¬ tury this confused society tended to extricate itself from chaos; feudalism assumed at least outward regularity, and in the thirteenth century shone with a brilliancy that almost concealed its vices and its incurable injustice. Note. —This sketch of feudahsm is true in its full extent only of parts of France and of Germany. In the South of France the consular cities and towns preserved traditions of Roman administration, and property remained largely allodial; the communal land subsisted throughout the feudal peiiod. In Spain, with the exception of Catalonia, feudalism did not prevail in at all the same degree. In Italy still less. In England, except in Stephen’s reig i and during short periods of disorder, the royal power and the royal justice were, on the whole, supreme. CHAPTER VL FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE FROM THE ELEVENTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. Summary : Efforts of the Church fo counteract Disorder ; the Truce of God—• Distant Expeditions—The Enfranchisement of the Church ; the Investi¬ tures ; Pope Gregory VII. (1073—1085)—Religious Unity; Theocracy— The Crusades; their Causes—Duration and Character of the Crusades (1095 —1270) — Political and Economic Results of the Crusades— Chivalry—The Monarchies; the Capetians in France; the Feudal Monarchy ; Commencement of the Administration—Alliance of the Capetians with the Church and People — England; Contrast between English and French Feudalism — Spain; the Crusade against the Moors; Character of the Spanish Nobility—Italian Feudalism — Germany ; Progress of German Feudalism—The German Empire in the Middle Ages — The Papacy; Rivalry between the Sacerdotal Power and the Empire (1073—1250)—Results ; the Ruin of the two Ambitions; Progress of a National Spirit amongst the Populations— Progress of the Urban Populations ; Imperial German Cities—The Italian Republics; the Democracy in Florence; the Aristocracy in "Venice—The French Communes—New Cities; the Middle Classes — The Third Estate—Advantages and Results of Communal Liberty —Dangers and Decline of the Communal Movement—The Country ; Progress of Enfranchisement; the Parishes; the Statutes of Louis X. (1315)—Origin of Public Liberties; the States-General in France (13U2)—The Great Charter in England (1215); the English Parliament (1258—1295)—The Spanish Cortes. Efforts of the Church to counteract Disorder; the Truce of God .— In the ninth and tenth centuries German roughness and anarchy caused the disappearance of those remnants of Roman elegance and administration that had resisted until then. In spite of the universal triumph of the Church, Christian precepts were ignored and spurned by the violent nobles, who enriched the temples yet dishonoured the religion. But the very force of the evil soon IIO THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. reawakened ideas of order, justice, and liberty. The Church, although partly corrupted, was the agent in this reaction against anarchy. As the protector of the ravaged country, the devastated abbeys, she published the “ Truce of God” in the middle of the eleventh century (1041). Placing Church, clergy, and monks under the Divine protection, she excommunicated those who attacked them, or who burnt the peasants’ cottages. Peace was imposed upon all, from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, during Advent, Lent, and the great yearly festivals. Expeditions could not then last more than three days, and they were forcibly interrupted every week. The Church limited the horrors of war, and instituted a kind of international law. Distant Expeditions. —The restrictions that religion enforced respecting private wars caused many of the turbulent nobles to seek a more distant field for their activity. Franks and Normans, the latter particularly, went into other countries in search of battles and pillage. Many joined the ranks of those who, in Southern Italy and Sicily, had since 1061 founded a state that afterwards became the kingdom of Sicily. Numerous warriors followed Henry of Burgundy, who was aiding the Spaniards to fight against the Moors, and who gained a country that later on developed into the kingdom of Portugal (1095—1140). Lastly, more than sixty thousand men, responding to the call of William of Normandy, crossed the Channel and won the kingdom of England for him (1066): a memorable date, for it marks the point which made England for some centuries a continental as well as an insular power. The Enfranchisement of the Church; the Investitures; Pope Gregory VII. (1073—1085).—The efforts made by religion to repress feudal disorder, and to find a distant field for the activity of the nobles, was shown by the increasing number of pilgrim¬ ages, and finally led to the Crusades. But before the Church could acquire power to plunge all Europe in the immense move¬ ment of a Holy War, she had first to free and purify herself. The bishoprics and abbeys had become fiefs, distributed like other fiefs. The investiture was accompanied with the same ceremonies as the FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. ] ir acceptance of other benefices, with the distinction that the lord with the sword also gave the bishop a crozier and a pastoral ring; —a singular confusion, which placed the churches at the mercy of the suzerain nobles and the kings. Simony was the chief means of acquiring the ecclesiastical dignities attached to feudal lands, and warriors, who often became Churchmen, would ride mitre on head, celebrating mass in a coat of mail, fighting whilst praying, and blessing whilst striking. We must pause here to notice the great struggle that took place between the Emperor of Germany, Henry IV., and Pope Gregory VII. on the subject of the question of investitures, which however futile in appearance was in reality of the greatest importance, Gregory VII. enfranchised the Papacy, that in Rome had become almost a fief of the German Empire. Then he enfranchised the Church by prohibiting any sovereign to confer investiture by the cross and ring—the emblems of a spiritual power, which could only be conferred by the Pontifical legate. He prosecuted simoniacal priests, watched over the purity of ecclesi¬ astical elections, in a word, with exceptional energy he recalled the Church to a sense of her true mission. This celebrated Pope, from St. Peter’s chair, which he had freed from the impure men v^o had dishonoured it, sent forth powerful appeals to the world in favour of morality and piety, and excommunicated the most powerful sovereign of Europe, a sentence which a revolt in Germany aided him to carry out. During a severe winter, in the year 1077, a penitent presented himself at the doors of the Castle of Canossa in Italy, where Pope Gregory VII. then lived. This penitent, only admitted to the second enclosure of the castle, forced to remain there three days, fasting and praying, was the Emperor Henry IV., who thus humiliated the imperial dignity before the sacerdocy to an almost incredible degree, lie avenged himself by besieging Gregory VII. in Rome itself (1031), which he took, and where he was crowned in 1084, and the Pope died in exile amongst his allies the Normans of the Duchy of Naples (1085). But Henry IV. was never happy. He was dethroned by his son, and the excommunication pursued him even after his miserable death (110G), for his body was abandoned in an uncon- 112 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. secrated chapel in the cathedral of Spires for five years, before burial in the vault of his ancestors. In these dramatic events there were many points that rudely shook the material views held by men at that time. The Church, which had been corrupted and soiled, now raised herself, and at the same time regained her virtue and her empire. Religious Unity; the Theocracy .—But in her turn the Church endeavoured to enchain the temporal power, and to make all kings subject to the Pope. Faith reawakened. The bishops recalled to obedience to the Holy See, princes startled by interdicts and excommunications, the people docile to the Pope who freed them from the oath of fidelity they had taken to their king, all tended to exalt the pride and ambition of the popes, who had become the real chiefs of Europe. The Church which had converted and dis¬ ciplined the barbarians with so much trouble, and which had suffered so much, first from their violence, and then from their generosity, even more formidable than their violence, had now acquired the energy to free herself from feudal restraints (without renouncing the benefits of feudalism) ; had profited by the weakness of other powers, the result of anarchy, to raise her authority above all others, and had placed the throne of St. Peter above all other thrones, no doubt an extravagant pretension, which speedily led to fresh conflicts with the Empire, but which at least offered a resource to oppressed populations and to outraged morality. In this extreme disorder the Pontificate, regenerated by Gregory VII., appeared as a protector; its services justified its authority, and outweighed the alarm caused by its ambition. The Crusades; their Causes .—The result of this religious union and of the manifestation of the Pontifical power was shown in the movement of the Crusades. At the Council of Clermont (1095), Pope Urban II. preached the Holy War against the Mussulman, and an immense crowd, already prepared by the exhortations of Peter the Hermit, took the cross, amidst cries of “ God wills it ! God wills it! ” that re-echoed from the mountains of Auvergne, the suitable framework of this grand scene. This council, a religious assembly, was also one of those ancient German assemblies which FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. US had fallen into disuse. Bishops and barons, nobles and villeins had come in crowds, drawn by a sentiment which for a day levelled all classes and, as it were, obliterated feudal divisions. This great movement had really, in the councils of the Pope and the political chiefs, been undertaken to arrest the progress of the Turks, who, already masters of Asia Minor, threatened to destroy the Greek empire. Until then the Christian world had lived on fairly good terms with the Arabs, whose brilliant civilization disarmed hostility. But from the steppes of Turkestan issued new populations, a mixture of the white and the Tartar races, rough and warlike, only accepting the Koran as a book of war. Europe might be invaded, and, for her own defence, she must invade Asia. This was the political motive for the Crusades, with¬ out alluding to the Pope’s long-cherished desire to find an opening for the feverish activity of the nobles. To these men, thirsting for battle, were now offered a holy war, distant adventures, new land to conquer, fiefs and kingdoms to win. But, however important these political causes may be, we must not exaggerate them, for the Crusades were chiefly the explosion of a religious sentiment. The most varied populations all hastened to join them, from the damp plains of Holland, from the Scotch and Scandinavian mountains. It was a wonderful mixture of nations and languages, their only rallying sign the cross, which united all these combatants in the one great desire to go and free from the Infidel the tomb of Christ. The crowds were filled with extraordinary enthusiasm. Starting blindly on their way, they ravaged Europe for food, and reached Asia, decimated by the hardships of the voyage, only to be annihilated by the climate and the Turks. Duration and Character of the Crusades (1095—1270).—These emigrations continued during all the twelfth and the greater part of the thirteenth centuries. The Christians at first succeeded in establishing colonies in Syria; they transplanted feudalism to ancient Phoenicia and the valley of the Jordan. The Assizes of Jerusalem (1099), are the purest code of feudal laws which we pos¬ sess. But these colonies, too far off, divided, a prey to all the 1 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 114 disorder resulting from the system of fiefs, were, one after the other destroyed by the Mussulmans, who had resumed the offen¬ sive. The expeditions perpetually starting for their deliverance were conducted with the improvidence and ignorance that charac¬ terized feudal expeditions. The religious spirit which first animated them gradually gave way to baser interests. In the last two the command of Saint Louis was required, before the nobles, who admired without imitating the king’s devotion, could be induced to depart. The sacred fire was kindled only in the prince, who in his own person united the valour and enthusiasm of a Christian saint and a feudal warrior. France had always taken the largest share in the movement of the Crusades. They received their first impulse from a Frenchman, Peter the Hermit, from a French Pope, Urban II., and from a French Assembly. The French played the most important part in the first Crusade. They joined the Germans, whom they surpassed, in the second; they joined the English in the third, when Richard certainly eclipsed Philippe Auguste. The French took Constantinople, and struggled hard to trans¬ form the empire of the East into a Latin empire. Finally, the seventh and eighth Crusades were exclusively French. An historian of the Crusades gave the title of Gesta Dei per Francos (Acts of God by the hand of the Franks) to his book. The Orientals even included all the Latin nations under the name of Franks. Political and Economic Results of the Crusades .—The Crusades only freed Palestine for a moment. All the victories were sterile and the Mussulman empire was delayed but not arrested in its development. But still these great expeditions had some good results, like all other great mixtures of nations. 1st. The Crusades, by sending a number of lords to a distant country from which they never returned, prepared the decadence of feudalism, which in a sense uprooted itself. The different coun¬ tries were freed from an immense weight. 2nd. These expeditions, by suspending internal quarrels, raised men’s ideas to a general interest, a common sentiment, and forced FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. ”5 them to come out of the narrow circle of local egotism. They drew the various classes nearer to each other, all united by religious enthusiasm in defence of the same cause. 3rd. Although the Crusaders were all united against the common enemy, they naturally grouped themselves by country and by nations. Each people had its own character, language, and cus¬ toms ; each felt itself distinct in the Christian family, even as a man is conscious of his individuality in the human family. And thus, during the Crusades, each nation asserted itself; the men of each country, on a foreign soil, rallied to each other. Far from their native land, their common nationality formed the strongest bond of union. 4th. The departure of a great many of the nobles and the impoverishment of the others was very favourable to the enfran¬ chisement of the towns and the development of the communities. At the same time the monarchy took advantage of their absence, and from that date recovered its ascendency. 5th. These emigrations, through their frequent recurrence during a century and a half, entailed great expenses upon the nobles, who were forced to sell both estates and privileges. They led to a dis¬ placement of fortunes, by which the middle classes—the class of burghers or bourgeois—profited. 6th. The Crusades revived industry in two ways : by stimulating it through the necessity of furnishing the equipments for vast bodies of men, and by importing new methods and new materials from other lands. 7th. The East, in fact, was opened. Europeans admired its pro¬ ductions and its industry, and introduced new plants for cultivation in their own country. These expeditions also necessitated a great maritime movement. The merchant republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice divided and contended for the profits of the Eastern trade. The abundance of merchandise reacted upon the internal com¬ merce. 8th. Lastly, the mind itself became enlightened through the instruction gained by travelling. The learning of the Arabs, which had scarcely penetrated into Europe, was now, like the Eastern THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 116 fruits, about to become acclimatised. Arab civilization, imperfect, yet not without high merits, reanimated Western civilization in the midst of war, and its progress dates from that epoch. Chivalry. —Amongst the moral results of the Crusades we must also recollect that chivalry, although born before these expeditions —for it was attached to the ceremonies which amongst the Ger¬ mans greeted the admission of a young man into the ranks of warriors—was immensely developed by the influence of the reli¬ gious sentiment in the Crusades. These ceremonies, at first purely military, became religious. The Church blessed and sanctified the knight, who was forced to promise to observe the duties of a Christian at the same time that he swore not to fail in those of a warrior. Chivalry was a kind of military confraternity formed by the nobles. It raised mankind; an immense step towards the amelioration of institutions. It directed the boundless courage of the Germans, until then impatient of every yoke, into a higher channel, excited in them the purest sentiments by making them ashamed of the abuse of their strength against the weak, consti¬ tuted them the defenders of women and children, and with the aid of their gentle influence awoke all the delicacy of sentiment under the proud exterior. The Christian knight surpassed the heroes of antiquity by that generosity at once humble and proud which can only be called chivalric generosity. Corrected by religion, feudal society found its most brilliant expression in chivalry. The Monarchies; the Capetians in France; the Feudal Monarchy; Commencement of the Administration. —Feudalism thus tended to regulate itself politically, and all the kingdoms not only accepted but were proud of its principles. In France the Capetian dynasty, raised to the throne since the end of the tenth century (987), was a feudal family, which only exercised a limited authority even in its own dominions. The Capetian king was only a suzerain. His authority increased in the reigns of Louis VI., Philippe Auguste, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, but not because the kings opposed feudalism. They only repressed its turbulence, but respected its rights. It would be an error to represent these princes as bitter enemies of feudalism. Brought up FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 117 and nourished in feudal maxims, they could not imagine any different form of society than that already in existence. But they wished to regulate and perfect it, without suspecting that in regu¬ lating a society founded upon usurpation and violence they must destroy it. They did not intend to suppress the great and small vassals, but they desired that all should acknowledge their sove¬ reignty and perform their oaths of fidelity. It was a return to unity of power in another way. They exerted themselves to arrest the private wars that were so ruinous to the country, and in this way they deprived the nobles of one of their sovereign prerogatives. In gradually rendering feudal justice subordinate to royal justice, they reconstituted the royal authority, and at the same time by accumulating land accord¬ ing to feudal rules, they by degrees reconstituted the royal dominions. The increase of their material resources enabled them to force the barons to respect the laws of obedience and justice contained in feudal maxims. The administration roughly sketched by Philippe Auguste, developed by Saint Louis and Philippe le Bel, only vaguely recalls the Roman administration, and the king’s officers, provosts, bailiffs, and seneschals, were feudal officers. The parliament, regular from the time of Saint Louis, was the king’s feudal court, where the powerful nobles assembled and where the legists could not at once succeed in making the spirit of the Ro¬ man laws preponderate. Even the States-General, convoked for the first time in 1302 by Philippe le Bel, were only feudal assemblies, divided into classes, confused, incapable of really controlling the monarch, who got rid of them as soon as he had made use of them. Alliance of the Capetians with the Church and the People .—The French monarchy, which derived its strength from an intelli¬ gent application of the laws of feudalism itself, also borrowed authority from the Church. Consecration with holy oil made Christian monarchy almost a priesthood, and gave it a moral prestige which increased the prestige belonging to the feudal suzerainty. The kings protected and enriched the churches. The bishops inculcated obedience to the king as a divine law. Hand in hand the kings and bishops joined against the nobles, separating THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. r 18 doubtless ■whenever the alliance appeared too onerous to either of the two parties, but reuniting after short conflicts to reassert the royal and religious authority. The kings of France also won the support of the lower classes by protecting them against the rapacity of the nobles. By forcing all these petty kings to observe the moral law and not to exact anything beyond the feudal rights, by defending the serf’s cabin and the tenant’s hut, by guaranteeing the privileges of the com¬ munes, in a word by restraining feudal injustice and exactions, the king relieved the people and earned their gratitude, and more than once afterwards, the sovereign had recourse to the municipal militias in his conflicts w T ith the feudal armies. England; Contrast between English and French Feudalism .—In England feudalism was formally and methodically established by William the Conqueror. Distributing the domains amongst the soldiers and chiefs of his army according to their grades and ser¬ vices, then bestowing the Church lands upon the Norman clergy, he w 7 as yet careful to retain above them all a position as monarch, rich and strong enough to exercise its sovereignty over all. An evolution was produced in England of a very different nature from that which was slowly being accomplished in France. The monarchy, at first the greatest power, declined; feudalism, at first weak, gained strength. The barons and the people, who had been enemies, now joined against the monarch, whilst in France the people and the monarch united against the nobles. By this alliance they succeeded in limiting the royal authority, and the feudal assemblies, instead of being intermittent and powerless as in France, became periodical and preponderant under the name of Parliament. The maxims of liberty handed down by the Germans speedily asserted themselves in a country so much less per¬ meated by Roman ideas. England w r as the first to find the form of modern liberty, although in the Great or Magna Charta(1215) this form was still disfigured by feudal subtleties. Spain; the Crusade against the Moors; Character of the Spanish Nobility. —To the south of the Pyrenees the Spanish nation pain¬ fully shaped itself into four Christian kingdoms (the Asturias and FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 1 19 Leon, Castille, Navarre, Aragon), which advanced gradually against the Mussulmans, and foot by foot reconquered the lost territory. Engaged in a perpetual crusade, fighting daily for their country and their faith, with an enemy more highly civilized than they were, and as chivalrous and valiant as themselves, the Spanish nobles carried to the highest pitch religious valour and chivalrous devotion. Haughty towards the king, whom they equalled, and who continually needed their aid, they were less overbearing towards the lower classes, with whom they shared the perils and fatigues of the Crusades, who were drawn nearer to them by the title of Christian, the real title of nobility in a country divided between hostile religions. The kings themselves, after certain battles, ennobled entire armies, and the rank of noble was perpetuated in numerous families, which were not any richer for it, even though they were proud of the distinction. Classes then were more united in Spain, and acted as a restraint upon the monarch, forcing him to reckon with the assemblies of the Cortes, and j . alous of public liberties. Italian Feudalism .—Although the recollection of the Roman administration and unity were more vivid in Italy, the multiplicity of peoples who had occupied it since the invasions had prevented a nationality from forming itself. Feudalism had led to infinite division. Feudalism itself, both ecclesiastical and lay, had become all-powerful, and its divisions had aided the ambition of Ger¬ many, which held the peninsula in a firm grasp. One emperor, Conrad II., had even riveted the bonds that attached it to Ger¬ many by modifying, in the edict of 1039, the character of Italian feudalism. He declared that all the Italian nobles were directly dependent upon him. He suppressed all intermediate authorities, destroyed the power of the suzerains over their vassals, whom they had no longer the right to constrain to follow them against the Emperor. Italian feudalism was thus constituted very differently from the feudalism of other countries. It no longer included any¬ thing but a number of petty lords, for it had no hierarchy, the small, like the great, all depending upon the Emperor of Germany. Germany; Proyress of German Feudalism,. was, however, 120 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. necessary that the Emperor, the master of Italian feudalism, should also rule German feudalism. This was slowly but surely develop¬ ing. Whilst France was already partitioned in the tenth century, Germany, only divided into a few duchies, was still cemented in a union that at first insured its preponderance. If German dynasties had possessed that permanency which afterwards secured the ascend¬ ency of the Capetian family, it is probable that feudalism would not have triumphed in the country. But the various dynasties of the German kings only lasted one century each.* Feudalism pro¬ fited by the dissensions of he claimants, and'in the middle of the thirteenth century became all-powerful, just when it was about to decline in other countries. The German Empire in the Middle Ages. —At first, indeed, Germany had seemed more faithful to the memory of Charle¬ magne and to the traditions of unity than any other country. It was the Saxons, vanquished by the Franks, who afterwards revived the Carolingian title of emperor, which Conrad I. and Henry the Fowler had disdained. Otto I., in 962, had renewed the ceremony of Charlemagne’s coronation, and had re-estab¬ lished the Roman empire for the benefit of the German Caesars. He surrounded himself with officers and dignitaries. He also appeared anxious to revive traditions of order and wise admin¬ istration. But these traditions had never existed in Germany, scarcely rescued from barbarism and too full of independent ideas to be easily brought into submission. In spite of all their efforts the German Caesars could only be feudal sovereigns. Their imperial pride only succeeded in drawing the kings of Germany into wars with Italy, where they exhausted their strength, to the advantage of a rapidly increasing feudalism. The Papacy; Rivalry between the Sacerdotal Power and the Empire (1073—1250).—The kings of Germany were so far blinded by this arrogant assumption that, although scarcely mas¬ ters in their own dominions, they aspired to be supreme over Europe, and in the first place over Italy. But they encountered * House of Saxony, 919—1024; House of Franconia, 1024—1125; House of Hohenstaufen, 1138—1254. FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 12 I there a power differing from their own, but equally ambitious— the power of the Pope. Freed by Gregory VII. the Papacy contended with the Empire for pre-eminence. The rivalry between the Sacerdotal Power and the Empire was commenced in the elev¬ enth century (1073) by the dispute for the right of investiture, was prolonged into the twelfth century by Frederick Barbarossa (1152—1190) and Alexander III.; into the thirteenth by Otto of Brunswick (1198—1218) and Innocent III. ; and ended in the dramatic duel between the impetuous Frederick II. (1218—1250) and the inflexible Innocent IV. Intoxicated by the spectacle of Christian warriors rising at their command and pouring into Asia, the Popes imagined they were to rule Europe. They formulated principles of theocracy, and dreamed of maintaining the unity of Europe by religion, although the feudal divisions rendered that unity impossible from a political point of view. Armed with the False Decretals, the work of subtle legists, and with the power of excommunication and interdiction, which they had found victorious on more than one occasion, they did not shrink from proclaiming the supremacy of the tiara over every secular crown, nor from treating kings as the humble lieutenants of the Holy See. For nearly two centuries the various phases of the rivalry between the Sacerdotal Power and the Empire held Europe in suspense. Results; the Ruin of the Rival Ambitions; Progress of the National Spirit amongst the Peoples. —The Papacy was virtually triumphant in this great struggle. It defeated the Imperial ambi¬ tion, humiliated Frederick Barbarossa almost as much as it had previously humbled Henry IV., first raised up and then overthrew Otto of Brunswick, and afterwards Frederick II. But its most glorious success was attained in the freedom of Italy, dearly purchased, however, by the great loss of strength in the terrible conflict. A few years after its ephemeral triumph it fell captive to the severe rule of Philippe le Bel, king of France. The struggle therefore ended unsatisfactorily for both of the contending powers, who Qnly succeeded in weakening each other. A long decline of the Imperial power in Germany and of the 122 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Pontifical authority in Italy and Europe was the sole result of these deplorable collisions, by which the two Powers that seemed destined to regulate society, had they but worked in harmony, had so seriously disturbed it. Faith itself had been shaken, particularly in Germany, which had suffered most from the disorder, and which from that time cherished a bitter animosity against the Holy See, that later on was the cause of complete separation. Europe had rejected the principle of unity which had so strongly impressed itself upon the ancients. She desired neither the domi¬ nion of the Empire nor that of the Pope. This exuberant, feverish society would not consent to its own enslavement, and in the thir¬ teenth century the Germanic spirit of independence, the sentiment of individuality, which amongst nations is called patriotism, suc¬ cessfully superseded the passive obedience of the old Roman Empire. Modern Europe was formed in the midst of the feudal chaos, with its various kingdoms of England, France, Germany, the Italian states, and also the Scandinavian states, which gradually emerged from the prevailing darkness. This variety of nations is one of the most striking features of the new civilization, which, far from being uniform, has been perpetually supplied with different qualities, and unceasingly renewed by the emulation of races, who were working for themselves and at the same time for all. Each nation has imprinted the mark of its particular genius and strengthened the general civilization by its own vigour. Progress of the Rural Populations; the Imperial Cities of Ger¬ many .—Variations in the progress made were already manifested by the difference of power wielded by the monarch in each country, and, above all, by the degree of freedom enjoyed by the lower classes. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an awak¬ ening of the urban populations that was yet very unequal in the different countries. As we have said, the Crusades assisted this awakening. Forced to make terms with the artisans of the towns, whose skilled labour they found indispensable, the feudal lords either granted or sold privileges to them. In Germany the emperors, requiring the sup- FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. I2 3 port of the cities against the nobles, accorded to them the right of governing themselves, and these privileged cities became imperial cities. The interregnum in the German empire in 1250 rendered them still more independent, for they had lost their only master. But, as they had also lost a protector, they drew nearer to each other during the troubles of the interregnum, and combined in order to provide for the security of navigation and of the roads. The Italian Republics; Democracy in Florence; Aristocracy in Venice .—In Italy as well as in Germany the emperors had distri¬ buted privileges amongst the cities that had acted as their allies. Municipal traditions had always been tenaciously adhered to on the Italian soil, and many cities had successfully guarded their inde¬ pendence. Italy had her republics ; Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Venice, &c., were the most important, and the Crusades had mar¬ vellously developed their commerce and wealth. But Florence and Venice attract our attention through their power and the difference between their governments, which up to a certain point recalls the traditions of antiquity in the midst of the Middle Ages. Florence had become a democratic repub¬ lic, which appeared wishful to revive the Athenian turbulence. Venice, without copying Sparta, clung to an aristocratic govern¬ ment, though the wisdom of her senate recalled that of the Koman senators. In Florence, from 1282, the power passed to the priors of the arts, and not only of the leading arts (what we should call the liberal arts), but of the minor arts (manual handi¬ crafts). The public jealousy felt for the nobles increased so greatly that it became necessary for a man to disennoble himself and to inscribe his name on the list of one of the guilds of handicrafts if he wished to fill any public office. At Venice, on the contrary, the name had to be inscribed in the golden book before he could aspire to discharge any public functions. Authority was there concen¬ trated in the hands of the nobles, who were so jealous of the public freedom and of their personal influence, that they supported the secret tyranny of the Council of Ten, which was even formidable to the Doges themselves. Borne was the most unfortunate of the Italian cities, for she did 124 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. not know what sovereign to acknowledge. The imperial prefect, the Pope, and the municipality contended for authority. The noMes possessed castles or old strongholds in the interior of the town and quarrelled perpetually. The Colonnas and the Orsini crim¬ soned the streets of Rome with the blood that flowed in their rivalries. The French Communes .—First combined in corporations for the protection of their industries, the artisans of the French cities, particularly in the north and centre, had only to unite these corpo¬ rations to resist the feudal oppression, and thus was formed the com¬ munity of the inhabitants of the commune. Buying or wresting a charter by force from their lord, the inhabitants of these cities or communes elected their own magistrates, their wardens, sheriffs, or mayors. The members of the commune (1) enjoyed the complete ownership of their goods; (2) could only be brought to justice be¬ fore their own magistrates ; (8) took part in the election of their magistrates ; (4) only paid the tax assessed by these magistrates; (5) had no longer any connection with their lord except through the magistrate as intermediary. The communal cities had their militia, their courts of justice, their standard, and their seal. They had their guild house or town hall. This important revolution took place especially in the north and the centre, for the southern cities were less oppressed and had partly retained the municipal traditions, a legacy of the Romans. The protecting girdle of ramparts and towers, the chains that barred the streets, the turrets that flanked the houses, the belfry, the pride of the town hall and of the whole city, the strongly- organized corporations, all give a clear idea of the great power of these communal cities. Bound by oath and by mutual devotion, they guarded and taxed themselves, were governed and judged by magistrates of their own choice. Whenever the great bell rang from the belfry, summoning them to the assistance of a citizen or of the city, they left their housework and personal cares, for all were interested in each member, and each member sacrificed him¬ self for the welfare of all. Few Cities; the Middle Classes or Burghers .—Outside the communes FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 125 —which were really republics in the midst of the feudal states, but which perished victims of their own dissensions, and where liberty, like the flames in too fierce a fire, soon exhausted itself—other groups of urban populations began to form. Kings and suze¬ rains opened asylums for fugitive serfs, and constructed new cities, free cities, whose origin is attested by the names* that have sur¬ vived in many districts. The founder accorded to the new resi¬ dents a charter, which conferred upon them the right of burgher or citizenship. If the founder were a king, they became the king’s burghers. And, in fact, in other cities, and even in the communes, the king’s burghers were found in the midst of the other burghers. They were inhabitants who had disowned their own lord and had adopted the king in his place, thus putting themselves under the direct protection of the prince. Between the serfs and the nobles the burghers thus developed themselves into a new nation, who had gained wealth by their industries, and who often purchased their freedom by their wealth, and this after desperate struggles. The Third Estate. —Thrifty and proud, the burghers therefore formed a third estate, the tiers etat. The kings encouraged its pro¬ gress, because they found in it a source of strength against the law¬ less nobility. Princes often borrowed loans from the burghers, and began to invite them to their councils in order to gain the help of their treasure and skill in business. Even before the meeting of the States-General, we find some of the most important townsmen consulted by the kings. The people then were raising themselves, and a position was soon marked out for them in all the general meetings of the nation. This was an important advance, the cause and principal impulse of all other progress. Advantages and Results of Communal Liberty. —The communal movement not only prepared for the advent of the tiers etat , but it inspired the higher sentiments of citizenship in the inhabitants of the tree towns. It appeared as though the ancient cities were about to revive. The city became the country; men fought and died for her. No doubt this was local patriotism, but it prepared men’s hearts for the sacrifices exacted by a larger patriotism. Local * The Villefrancke8, Villeneuves, La Bastide, &c. 126 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. patriotism will survive even when all the cities form but one single country, and it has wrought wonders. The words dignity, honour, devotion, which appeared reserved for the nobility, became familiar to the citizens of the commune. If these men do not rank with the knights, they aspire to equal them in courage. Dangers and Decline of the Communal Movement. —But the attach¬ ment of the members of a commune to their city may become dangerous. France might have found herself divided into small republics, all mutually jealous like the Italian republics. Political unity might have been compromised. But the history of the communes still remains one of the most interesting pages of the history of France, and the traditions of these valiant cities must not be forgotten. The burghers of the communes were the ancestors of the tiers etat and the first soldiers of liberty. The Country; Progress of Enfranchisement; the Parishes; the Statutes of Louis X. (1315).—The comparative softening of manners, due to a more intelligent administration of Christian laws, was very beneficial to the peasantry. The terrors of the year 1000, the enthusiasm for the Crusades, the share taken in the holy wars by the serfs and villeins, led to a great number of enfranchise¬ ments amongst the serfs. The feudal lords also began to under¬ stand that they could derive more profit from free than from slave labour. They made contracts, the serfs became ahonnees, franc-ahcmnees , hired or free rent payers. They were transformed into tenants or farmers. At this date all wealth centred in the land ; there was scarcely any supply of the precious metals. All services were therefore paid in kind. Contracts were made between the nobles and the peasants; the noble conceded a field in return for rent or dues. The tenants bound themselves either to pay a part of the crops or a perpetual sum of money, or to serve their lord gratuitously according to their profession, as waggoner, shepherd, swineherd, ox-driver, baker, wheelwright, blacksmith, &c. In place of the old servitudes, which continually decreased, arose others, voluntary, limited, defined by a lease, and the castle archives became cumbered with a number of parchments which for FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 127 centuries fettered the peasants’ liberty, and later on excited the greatest discontent. The Church had already created parishes in the country; the peasants’ huts grouped round a modest church that they owed to the liberality of the lord, formed a sort of community. It was an ecclesiastical township; the priest governed it, and kept there the registers, &c., that now belong to the civil state. The lord also had an overseer, or steward, who was himself often a serf, or villein. This steward held council with some of his companions, and courts of villeins were formed in the country—rural justices, who tried the peasants under very much the same forms as the feudal justices. Finally, at the beginning of the fourteenth century Louis X., the Hutin, son of Philippe le Bel, by the statute of 1315 freed all the serfs on the royal domain. This statute proclaimed that, according to the rights of nature, every one should be born free—a grand principle, totally opposed to the ideas unceasingly promulgated by the Greek philosophers and the Roman jurisconsults ; a principle which, though no one was forced to carry it into application, would by its own force, by the rays of its own light, break up slavery. Origin of Public Liberties; the States-General in France (1302). —The alleviation of misery amongst the rural classes, the develop¬ ment of liberty in the cities, the wealth of the middle classes, all tended to excite the desire for general liberty, which in the thirteenth century became universally aroused, and which was not opposed to feudal maxims. If the ancient general assemblies had disap¬ peared, assemblies of the vassals were held in every manor. The lords often met round their suzerains, assisting and at the same time restraining them. At the end of the thirteenth and the be¬ ginning of the fourteenth century the King of France, whilst extending his domain until he had almost reconstructed the king¬ dom of Charles the Bald, had multiplied the number of his vassals, and their assemblies easily became general assemblies. The im¬ portance of the communes, the king’s need of subsidies from the cities to supplement the deficiencies of the feudal contributions, de¬ termined the princes to convoke the middle classes as well as the 123 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. nobles. Even in some of the fiefs we find special assemblies of the three orders. It needed therefore, in order that these local assemblies should be transformed into general assemblies, only time enough to propagate the communal movement in all the great fiefs, and that these fiefs should be centralized in the hands of one suzerain. This movement coincided with the reign of Philippe le Bel, and therefore the first States-General (1302) date from this prince, who was less of an innovator than is generally supposed. In the fourteenth century the carelessness and prodigality of the Valois, and the disasters of the Hundred Years War, led to a crisis when the States-General of 1356 all but secured the power and established the principles of modern government. But they failed, as under the old monarchy they were always certain to fail, because the three orders were too much divided, and could never thoroughly combine in order to force the monarch to submit to their laws. The selfishness of the privileged orders, more preoccupied in preserving their ascendency than in defending the public in¬ terests, prevented all three estates from uniting in complaints or threats. The kings maintained their power over them through these divisions, which they skilfully fostered. The States-General only shine by lightning flashes in the history of ancient France. The Great Charter in England (1215); the English Parliament 1258—1295).—In England political liberty was at once em¬ bodied in the Parliament. Although the name existed in France, there was no resemblance between the two institutions, and the English political Parliament differs completely from the judicial Parliamen of the French ; it rather recalls the States-General, con¬ solidated, regulated, armed with extensive and definite powers. The kings in England had been at first the strongest power. They commenced by absolute authority, which the kings of France only obtained after prolonged conflict. The English barons were naturally led to combine together for mutual defence against op¬ pression. They exacted charters from King Henry I., which were renewed in the following reigns, and developed into the Great Charter, or Magna Charta, of 1215, wrested by the lords and clergy from King John. Almost lost in a number of articles FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. 129 relating to the feudal rights, we notice two important provisions, which laid the foundation of public liberty in England. One de¬ creed that the king could not raise any great subsidy without the consent of the common council of the kingdom. This was political liberty. The other guaranteed individual liberty by providing that no free man could be arrested and imprisoned without a trial before his peers. The English nobles not only made stipulations for themselves, but they arranged that the Charter should benefit all free men; they no longer recognised any difference of classes in the presence of injustice and oppression. Besides, the English barons could never have obtained these important reforms without the support of the lower classes. Although in England the memory of the Con¬ quest and the wholesale spoliation of the old Saxon landowners seemed to have produced a wider gulf between the Norman aristocracy and the English people than existed elsewhere, it was here, more quickly than in any other country, that the com¬ mons and the nobles drew nearer to each other. In a century and a half all hatred between the races was nearly extinct. In¬ terest and politics had led to a fusion which was most favourable to the general freedom and development. In the long conflict between the barons and the sovereign that took place under Henry III., ultimately forced to accept the Pro¬ visions of Oxford (1258), the lords courted more and more the support of the cities and knights, even of the small freeholders in the counties. In the Parliament convoked by the Earl of Leicester, victor at the battle of Lewes (1264), he ordered the sheriffs to make returns of two knights in each county, and invited the principal cities in England to send representative deputies. The system of election, of the representation of a large number by a small number of delegates, was thus applied in England at a comparatively early date.* Even after the defeat of Leicester, * De Montfort, who had been Governor of Guienne, was only apply¬ ing on a larger scale, and on a wider field, the principles and practices already in action in the towns and communities of Southern Prance and N orthern Spain. 13 ° THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. who was vanquished and killed at Evesham (1265), King Henry III. maintained the Parliament and the House of Commons. In the reign of Edward I. (1272—1307) the meetings of Parlia¬ ment became more frequent and regular. The king issued writs to the sheriffs to return “ in every county, city, borough, or town where a market was held ” two knights and two deputies, who had power to act “ for the whole community.” In 1295, when Edward was waging desperate war against Philippe le Bel, he called the most complete Parliament that had yet met, and we may consider that the English Parliament was definitely founded at that date. It was convoked at least eleven times during the last twelve years of Edward’s reign. The different elements which composed this assembly could not remain undivided. They included the barons and the bishops, representing the aristocracy, and taking their seats in virtue of a feudal or hereditary right; the delegates of the knights of the counties and cities, elected and sitting, not as vassals, but as the deputies of a numerous population. The two groups naturally formed and soon constituted two chambers, probably in the reign of Edward III. Thus the English government in the four¬ teenth century was established in the form which in modern times has become prevalent in all countries. It is true that the victory of public liberty was not yet complete, and England passed through many vicissitudes before it was secured. But it is none the less true that England pointed out and opened the right way. Less imbued with Roman ideas, retaining more natural pride and independence, the Englishman with his calm tempera¬ ment and practical mind first recovered his freedom, not as it was known in antiquity, but such as the Germanic sentiment of person¬ ality could reconcile with the general interest and the power of the State. The Simnish Cortes .—Less attention has been paid to the events passing in Spain, because this peninsula was apparently isolated from the European movement and absorbed in her crusade against the Moors. Yet Spain had preceded the other countries in their advance towards constitutional liberty. Always dependent on FEUDAL AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE. '3' their nobility (the ricos hombres ), always in need of the Cabal¬ leros or hidalgos , who, obliged to serve in the cavalry, were exempt from taxation, the kings of Leon and Castille, of Navarre or of Aragon, could not avoid consulting their subjects, from whom they exacted great sacrifices. The Cortes arose from the attend¬ ance of the magnates and people at the provincial councils of the Church. We therefore find in Spain, from the eleventh century, the assemblies of the nobles and bishops at the same time that the kings, in order to repeople the deserts made by war, attracted to the pueblos the men of all countries, by charters or fueros. The cities, reformed and developed, soon participated in the political life of the nation. Deputies from the towns sat in the Cortes of Castille from 1188. The Cortes of Aragon were divided into four orders ( brazos , arms): the bishops and commanders of the religious military orders; the barons, or ricos hombres ; the simple knights, or infanzones ; and lastly the deputies of the cities. But the natural divisions between the Christian kingdoms and the spirit of independence in the provinces rendered the Spaniards particularly attached to local liberty. Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia had their own Cortes. Unity was far from being reached, and when attempted, it was only through the work of the princes, who did all in their power to destroy the authority of the Cortes. Alphonso X. of Castille, the Wise (1252—1284), endeavoured to prepare a general legislation by his code of the Siete partidas (divided into seven parts), a code which excited many complaints because it attacked the diversity of customs or fueros. Liberty in Spain was local above every- thing ; and haughty as the Spaniards showed themselves towards the king, they never, in modern times, have attained the serious methods of free government, which belong to England alone. CHAPTER VII. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Summary: Soc'ety in the Middle Ages — The Nobility ; Manners — Armorial Bearings — Tournaments — Meals — The Commoners — The Feudal Family—The Rights of Primogeniture—The Government of the Church; the Councils—The Bishops—The Monasteries; New Religious Orders ; the Carthusians — The Franciscans and Dominicans — Ritual; Religious Festivals—Superstitions—Heresies—Industry—The Corporations— Commerce; the Parisian Exchange; Restriction and Taxes—The Jews; Bills of Exchange—Maritime Commerce; Venice; Genoa ; the Hanseatic League—Travels ; Marco-Polo — Education ; the Paris Schools and University—Instruction ; Scholasticism—Nomi¬ nalism and Realism—Philosophy and Theology; the Great Doctors— Formation of Languages; the French Language—Epic Poetry; The Chansons de qeste —Allegoric Poetry—Southern Poetry ; the Trouba¬ dours—Birth of the Theatre—Prose; History—Law; Revival of the Roman Law; the Sumptuary Laws—The Sciences; Alchemy—Italian Language and Poetry; Dante, Petrarch—Art in Ttaly—French Art; Military Architecture—Religious Architecture ; the Romanesque Style ; the Gothic Style—Sculpture—Music in the Middle Ages—Civilization in the Thirteenth Century—The Fourteenth Century ; Decliue of the Feudal System ; Transformation of Society, Notes : Scholastics and Doctors of the Church—Troubadours—Chronicleis —Savants, Physicians, Astronomers. Society in the Middle Ages .—From a political point of view Europe was feudal and Christian, that is to say, divided into king¬ doms, themselves subdivided, yet so far united by the influence of faith that they almost fell under the Papal rule. Society in the Middle Ages also displays this double character: rich and formidable nobles ; a vast number of clergy and monks, who were as powerful as the lay society; religion blended with every custom of daily life; a society disorderly yet exclusive, associating Chris¬ tian faith with brute force independence with servitude, brilliant yet SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES . *33 poor, and, above all, unequal, for, whilst one class fought, hunted, and feasted, the other classes worked and suffered. The Nobility ; Manners .—Feudal society was still the Ger¬ manic tribe, but encamped in enormous castles, which bristled on the hills, commanded the rivers, and guarded the passes. Pri- Castle of Montlhery. vate wars diminished, primitive barbarism disappeared, the nobles willingly laid aside their armour to don coats and mantles of valuable materials. In the intervals between their noisy hunting parties the nobles lived in their halls, which they ornamented with uuiicately-sculptured seats, often ingeniously carved, and with more 134 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. or less elegant coffers that from the fourteenth century were transformed into sideboards. The walls, both bare and damp, were garnished with green branches or mats of rushes, in which the colours were harmoniously blended. Tapestry, however, soon came into use, and royal hands did not disdain to work at it, fullowing the example of Matilda of England, wife of William the Conqueror, who undertook to reproduce the history of Harold and William the Conqueror on one long piece of tapestry, now preserved in the Museum at Bayeux.* There was little furniture in these vast halls, but they were well-proportioned; the beds were placed on a raised platform, and were sometimes twelve feet square. Living as if at war, the nobles willingly shared their beds with the vassals whom they invited to their castles, and this was considered a dis¬ tinction. The brotherhood of arms prevented any idea of menial service being associated with the domestic functions which the lords filled towards the princes, and the knights towards the lords. From his youth the young nobleman was sent to the suzerain’s castle, where he served as page, varlet, damoiseau, and squire. He handed the wine at feasts, and took care of the armour and horses. He led the train horses or the great war chargers, and carried his master’s lance or shield. Later on he attained the dignity of seneschal, commanded the officials of the house, and carved the meat for his lord. Armorial Bearings .—In the time of the Crusades it became necessary, amongst the crowd of knights all covered with iron, to adopt in addition to family surnames some signs by which they might recognise each other. These signs were painted on the shields, and probably already dated back to a remote epoch, but they did not increase much until the twelfth or thirteenth century, and it is therefore from that time that we date the use of armorial bearings. They consisted of crosses, towers, bridges, and figures of animals. These emblems were afterwards complicated through family alliances, which entailed a kind of marriage of the coats of * Probably worked for Bishop Odo, of Bayeux, the brother of the Conqueror. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 135 arms. The science of heraldry was then created, and courts of heraldry with judges and kings-of-arms were appointed to prevent usurpations and to maintain the rights of those who possessed armorial bearings—a visible, ever-present sign of noble birth. Tournaments .—Incited by their restless energy, the nobles, as they gradually ceased to fight against one another, passion¬ ately devoted themselves to games and tournaments, the nearest possible imitation of war. These games were very ancient (we find them as early as the ninth century), and were regulated in the eleventh century. “ In the year 1066,” says the “ Chro¬ nicle of Tours,” “died Godfrey de Preuilly, to whom the in¬ vention of tournaments is due.” But these games were essen¬ tially French, although after¬ wards adopted by other na¬ tions, and Richard Cceur de Lion introduced them into England. The arms used were blunted, but in spite of every precaution these mimic combats often led to real dan¬ ger. The Popes forbade the tournaments, but in spite of their prohibitions they were continued until the sixteenth century. Besides tournaments, pas d'armes were held, where a single knight defended a pas , or narrow passage, against several others; combats a la barriere, where two troops on foot attacked each other with the sword, axe, or mace, and fought until one of the two sides was repulsed beyond a barrier; round tables, where the tilting is believed to Armour of the Thirteenth Century. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 136 have differed from the tournaments through the knights fighting man to man instead ot in a troop. Meals .—This life, lull of excitement and fatigue, disposed the warriors to do justice to the abundant meals which the lord offered to his vassals, and which were announced by sounding a horn (this was called corner Veau in France), because it was customary to wash the hands before sitting down to table. Guests were first arranged in couples during the Middle Ages, man and woman, and each couple had only one plate for each viand ; this was called “ eating from the same bowl,” and only one hanap , or cup, was given to drink from. It was considered a special mark of the prince’s favour when he invited any one to drink from his own cup. The ancient pagan libations in honour of the gods had been pro¬ scribed by the Councils, but they were transformed into toasts to the health of one of the guests. The wine and meat were always tasted before they were served to princes, for in this outwardly friendly society every one took precautions against poison. The cupbearer tried the wine, the master of the pantry tested the bread, whilst the squire who carved tasted the meat. Even the dinner service displayed vast luxury, and yet coarseness. Princes and rich nobles loaded their tables with gold and silver dishes, but they were only used for the viands ; there were no plates, the latter being replaced by round-shaped pieces of bread, called “ bread trenchers,” which were distributed to the poor after each meal. Spoons were already known, but not forks, which at first had only two prongs ; they are first mentioned in the inventory of silver belonging to Charles Y. Table napkins were equally rare, and were only found in the wealthiest castles. The Commoners .—In the material life of the upper classes, the city merchants were also tending towards a rapid increase of com¬ fort. The wealthiest embellished their houses with sculptured gables or turrets. The older European cities still preserve some houses dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in them the first story projects over the street as though to narrow it still more; whilst the beams, crossing each other and often pointed, were fur¬ ther ornamented with carved figures representing biblical genealo- SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 37 gies. The interiors of the houses were also decorated, and when¬ ever space permitted the staircase balustrades were carved. The progress of trade enabled the merchants to dress better, although the sumptuary laws forbade their wearing any but the rough materials called serge. But as a rule wealth was so limited that manners remained simple, and in those troubled times the fear of being pillaged prevented many of the merchants from allowing their riches to be seen. In the country several centuries had still to roll by before the peasants’ lot was ameliorated. They thought themselves happy when servitude gradually passed away. The Feudal Family .—Feudal life had great influence upon the family, for which strict religious laws, that were even exaggerated, had already been passed, some of them forbidding marriage be¬ tween relations except in a very distant degree of consanguinity. Natural family ties became the most powerful, whilst amongst the ancients the civil family ties ranked first. The wife was sovereign of the castle during the lord’s absence. She wore a coronet as Queen, Duchess, or Countess, and inherited fiefs, so that princely marriages were usually concluded with a view to uniting separate domains. The woman was married for the sake of her lands. The kings of France gained a number of provinces in this way, even whilst they exempted their own crown from the female succession. But the Salic law applied only to France, for women reigned in other countries. Woman, educated and honoured, endeavoured by her charms and smiles to retain her lord in the domestic circle. It is true that a life of warfare often led him away to distant countries, but in winter he lived in the castle, and the knights chiefly aspired to merit the esteem of the ladies to whom they related their exploits. On their side the ladies were very courage¬ ous. They presided over the tournaments and distributed the prizes. Very soon it became an object of emulation amongst the warriors to attract all eyes to themselves and to win the approbation of their graceful judges. The warriors became softened, and gloried in the chains that, in the language of the times, bound them to the service of the lady of their choice. The poets expressed the THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. feelings of the knights, and the knights themselves under this magic influence soon became poets, like Thibaut de Cham¬ pagne. In the south, particularly before the war of the Albigenses, Courts of Love were held—charming tribunals, where the ladies after awarding the prize of valour in the tournaments, judged and crowned wit and knightly gallantry. This is evidently one of the most striking features which dis¬ tinguish the new from the older society. Woman’s influence gave to chivalry that delicacy of sentiment and that politeness of manners which gradually reacted upon the rest of society. The Greeks and Romans appear to have lived only a political life j the knight of the Middle Ages enjoyed the pleasures of the mind, and the new world appreciated the happiness of domestic life, where a devoted wife returned the man’s affection for her in the midst of children accustomed to see their father’s armour without fear. Ancient society was forced to resort to a domestic religion and harsh laws in order to bind together the ties of family life; feudal and Christian society linked them closely by mutual confidence, mutual love, a familiarity which yet entailed respect, in a word, by the instincts of nature and the laws of the heart. The Rights of Primogeniture. —Still, the nobles in the interests of their caste, arming themselves with the authority of a few passages in the Bible, and with the tradition of certain privileges accruing to the eldest amongst the Hebrews, commenced to leave nearly the whole of their property to the eldest son.* It was the only means of preserving the fiefs intact, and the Germanic principle of an equal division, which formerly was applied to the kingdom itself, ceased to be the rule even when the estates were very small. The eldest son inherited the title, the fief, and the family honour, and he was bound to transmit them all to his eldest son, and if possible to extend them by marriage or conquest. In this way large * Primogeniture, not only of the eldest son, but sometimes of the first¬ born, whether male or female, is a feature not only of feudal but of many other codes and tenures of property in the Middle Ages, especially in peasant communities. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 139 fiefs and illustrious families were perpetuated, strengthened also by the alliances contracted by the younger members of the family. In' fact the eldest son was obliged to seek some in¬ demnity for his brothers and sisters, either by their entrance into other families or in the Church, the almost inexhaustible source of profit which could pass in turn to all families, since it could not be claimed exclusively by any. We must add that this birthright of the eldest was not universal. In many countries (even in France, in Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, Angoumois, and Blois), the division of the fief was allowed. But the great power of the authority of the father, his absolute testamentary freedom, created this birthright of the eldest even where it did not previously exist. Substitution or entail aided the nobles to perpetuate their large estates by allowing them to transmit their property, or a part of their property, to an heir, who was only second or third of kin. The feudal spirit had thus marred the ideas of natural justice, which the Germans had brought from their forests. The Government of the Church; the Councils .—As we have said the Catholic religion, universally adopted if not always well under¬ stood or well observed, was the bond of society in the Middle Ages, divided as men were from a political point of view. To a certain extent religion had imprinted its mark upon royalty, laws, cus¬ toms, and, as we shall see later on, upon literature and art. The Church owed this sovereign power over bodies and souls to her unity, her hierarchy, and her discipline. Still the Papacy alone was far from exercising such formid¬ able authority. The Church had not yet succeeded in becoming an absolute monarchy. She was governed by Councils which met frequently. They were universal or oecumenical for the West, like the four Lateran Councils at Rome (1128,1189, 1179, 1215), and the two Councils of Lyons (1245, 1274), or general, like some that were held in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the cities of Paris, Troyes, Rheims, Sens, Beauvais, Chalons-sur-Marne, Rouen, Vienne, Toulouse, Clermont, Bourges, Laon, Chartres, Tours, Arles, Valence, &c., to name only those of France and to omit other na- 140 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tions. These numerous Councils were not simple provincial meet¬ ings, occupied with reforming a few local abuses, but the members of them consulted upon general questions, such as the Crusades, the right of investiture, the excommunication of princes, innovations, doctrines, heresies, the reform of the monasteries, the sump¬ tuary laws, and questions relating to the ritual or to civil life. In order to form any idea of the Church’s activity we must look through the enormous collection of documents in which the decisions of the Councils are embodied. Never, perhaps, was what we call a deliberative or constitutional government practised as it was in the Church, and the Councils served as models for the feudal assemblies. The Bishops .—The bishops had been better chosen since the reaction which had freed the Church from the princely yoke. Their election was no longer in the hands of the clergy and people, but was managed by chapters, that is to say, by canons, or priests, who formed a kind of council to the bishop. The canons, being pro¬ vided with rich prebends, were independent. Doubtless they were frequently obliged to yield to the royal influence, and often found themselves forced to elect the candidate imposed upon them. But in the reign of monarcbs like Saint Louis the elections were free and unbiassed. The candidate’s certificate and character were closely examined. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Church was adorned by a number of bishops who were remarkable for their learning and piety. In spite of the grave reforms introduced into the Church by the popes from Gregory VII., the bishops were still feudal lords, dukes, earls, or princes, with vast domains to superintend, vassals to com¬ mand, cities to govern ; with their own tribunals for the crimes and offences committed in their dominions, and ecclesiastical courts for crimes and offences of the clergy. Even in fiefs, where they had only a small territory, they became formidable by the encroach¬ ments of the ecclesiastical judges, who were skilful in drawing under their jurisdiction numerous suits which they claimed as Church causes, the usurpations being even encouraged by those amenable to the courts, who preferred the milder justice of tribunals SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 141 where the judges were forbidden to pronounce capital punishment by the canon law. But so many abuses arose from these pro¬ ceedings that the kings exerted themselves to stop them, and energetically resisted the ecclesiastical judges, who were equally tenacious in the defence of their own position. The Monasteries, Netv Tielvjious Orders , ike Carthusians. — The anarchy and barbarism of the ninth and tenth centuries had been as fatal to the monasteries as to the Church. Invaded by warriors whose only ambition was to profit by their wealth, they had become widely different in character from the original institution. The abbeys were reformed at the same time as the churches. The movement started from the celebrated abbey of Cluny, which, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, devoted itself to reviving the pure rule given by Saint Benedict. Towards the end of the eleventh century (10S4), Saint Bruno, with some companions, buried himself in the mountainous districts to the north of Grenoble, led there by Saint Hugo, the bishop of that city. Climbing by paths that were scarcely traced out, after a long ascent they reached a very wild spot in these, then, frightful solitudes; it was a wilderness, surrounded on all sides by dark pine forests hanging over the edge of an abyss, at a height of more than 3,000 feet, dominated by the Grand Som (a peak more than 6,000 feet high\ quite isolated from the world. There on a lofty site, its loneliness veiled in summer by the abundant foliage around it, and which now every traveller longs to visit, Saint Bruno built a few poor huts, where he and his companions led the roughest and most austere life, condemning themselves to fast¬ ing and silence, conquering nature, and willingly bearing their self-imposed privations, the severity of which has not, how¬ ever, discouraged his disciples, who still devotedly follow his example in the monastery of the Grand Chartreuse. Monas¬ teries of these Carthusian monks, who were entirely dead to the world, and who rose during the night to sing long services, multiplied in France, Germany, and Italy. A more striking contrast of retirement and mortification could hardly have been opposed to worldly dissipation. 142 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Women themselves sought for favourable retreats, where they might pray alone ; and Robert d’Arbrissel (1099)] founded the abbey of Fontevrault. An extraordinary enthusiasm reigned every¬ where. Norbert de Cleves established some monks at Premontre, in the diocese of Laon, who followed a very strict rule drawn from Saint Augustine’s writings (1120). Saint Robert had found a fright¬ ful solitude in the forests of Citeaux, five leagues from Dijon, where he built a Benedictine convent, which was so well filled that it sent colonies of Cistercians to a great distance (1110). One of his fol¬ lowers, Saint Bernard, the most learned and eloquent man of his century, buried himself in a desert called the Vallee d’Absinthe, where he built the monastery of Clairvaux. The Franciscans and Dominicans .—But many of the abbeys, as they rapidly increased in wealth, relaxed in discipline. The en¬ voys of Cluny and Citeaux travelled with a long train of horses and equipages. Their preaching was ineffectual at a time when serious heresies were threatening the peace of the Church. A new force appeared to confront this danger. Two religious orders were founded, which, instead of being contemplative and isolated from the world, lived in the midst of it. The Franciscans, founded by Saint Francis d’Assisi, and the Dominicans by Saint Dominic. Coarsely garbed, walking barefooted, vowing never to own any pro¬ perty in their order, the Franciscans lived upon alms, and opposed their poverty to the riches of the other orders. The Dominicans, equally poor, undertook the work of preaching, authorised by Pope Innocent III. (1216). The Franciscan rule was sanctioned by Honorius III. (1223). Spreading on every side, these two mendicant orders became the most active defenders of the faith, and the tribunal of the Inquisition, organized at Toulouse in 1229 to seek out the Albigenses refugees who had escaped from the terrible persecution directed against them, was confided to the Dominicans. Lastly, Saint Louis, on his return from the Crusades (1254), brought back to Paris the monks from Mount Carmel, called the Carmelites; and a fourth order, Saint Augustine’s Hermits (sanctioned by Alexander IV., 1256), completed what are called the four mendicant orders. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 143 The Ritual; Religious Festivals .—The monks by their ardent piety greatly contributed to the increase of services in Catholic ritual, to the forms of prayer, and to the festivals. Although dating back to an earlier period, the worship of the Virgin Mary now took a much more prominent place in religion. Most of the new churches were dedicated to her, and more than one cathedral rose to the honour of Our Lady. The rosary was estab¬ lished by Saint Dominic about 1213; and the prayer of the Ave Maria was enlarged by Pope Urban IV. (1261). The services and festivals to the Virgin satisfied the mysterious cravings and affectionate instincts of women’s hearts. Privileged sanc¬ tuaries were dedicated to Mary, which became the objects of many pilgrimages. The worship of saints, of the patrons of churches, and of the martyrs also became more general. The Merovingians and Caro- lingians had honoured Saint Martin of Tours as patron of Gaul, and Saint Martin’s cope became, it is said, the first standard. The Capetians addressed themselves chiefly to Saint Denis as their pro¬ tector ; they were his vassals, and the oriflamme which floated in front of the army always hung over his altar in time of peace. The Church had framed her liturgy like an image of life, and her feasts corresponded in turn with all man’s feelings : the Nativity, Christmas Day, the Saviour’s birth, recalled domestic plea¬ sures ; the humble cradle consoled the poor; then the adora¬ tion of the Magi, or the Epiphany, rendered popular by the traditional cake of the kings ; then after the long season of penance, or Lent, the mournful celebration of Christ’s Passion excited pity and repentance, preparing men’s hearts for the solemnity of Easter, or the Resurrection, which revived the hope of a better world; the Rogation days preceded the feast of the Ascension and implored the heavenly blessing upon the sown corn. In the thirteenth century the summer was chosen for the special celebration, by a profusion of flowers, of the lete Dieu, or Feast of the Holy Sacrament. In the autumn, when the leaves fall and all nature seems dying, All Saints’ was celebrated and the commemoration of the dead. The whole 144 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. year was thus divided into festivals, which enlivened religious zeal, and which at last increased until they entailed a far too frequent stoppage of work. Life was, as it were, enveloped by religion, and the services commenced with prime (the first hour, or six o’clock in the morn¬ ing), then at tierce, before mass (nine o’clock), they were continued, after mass, by sext (sixth hour, noon), by nones (three o’clock), then by vespers (evening), a service which was afterwards put back to the afternoon. For a long time the clergy performed services in the night, which the people attended, but which are now only observed in monasteries. The pompous ceremonials, the solemn chants, the music of the organs—first invented in the ninth cen¬ tury—the brilliancy of the processions, all acted profoundly upon the imagination of men. The strictness of Lent was preceded by a week of more or less eccentric amusements, the Carnival, which recalled the Lupercalia and the Saturnalia of the heathen nations. But in those times of simplicity amusements were blended with religious festivals, and on certain days the church became the theatre of noisy grotesque scenes, which are still renowned under the name of the Feast of Fools. For several centuries the clergy tolerated these diversions, which at that time of earnest faith did not appear dangerous, but which the more enlightened bishops and councils ended by forbidding. Superstitions .—But if the Church then numbered many men, animated by sincere piety and intelligence, the dense ignorance that still prevailed amongst the lower classes and even amongst the clergy frequently degraded religion to the level of superstition. The fear of the Devil was stronger than the love of God. The vir¬ tues attributed to relics, to certain formalities, and to pilgrimages took the place of real virtue. Man materialised the Catholic reli¬ gion as he had materialised the heathen doctrines, and would have completely distorted it but for the incessant labour of famous doctors of theology and of monks who devoted themselves to maintain the spiritual character of the Christian faith and to raise the hearts of men to a more elevated conception of their duties. The power of old superstitions, which had remained from SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 145 former ages, still existed under anew name; each saint was credited with a particular gift of healing, and prayers were offered to him entreating his intervention on behalf of the supplicants. Heresies .—In spite of its absolute rule, the Church was forced to contend with many heresies. In the eleventh century Berengar of Tours attacked the earlier doctrine of the real presence in the eucharist; then Pierre de Brueys, in the twelfth century, was still bolder in his doctrines, which were taken up by Henry the Beacon, from whom the name of Henricians was given to his disciples. In the south of France the Church found herself seriously menaced by the progress of a heresy that had been revived from the Manichean doctrines. The patarins, who were also cathares (the pure), revived the doctrine of the two divided prin¬ ciples of good and evil. Their peculiar dogmatic views are still obscure, but there is no doubt that they enforced a strict morality, which contrasted with the disorders of a society that in the south had, among the upper classes, attained both elegance and dissolute¬ ness. But their theories verged on fatalism, and in any case were ruinous to the priestly power, for the churches were abandoned and despoiled. Pope Innocent III., after an unsuccessful attempt to win the patarins, known more generally by the name of the Albigenses, through the preaching first of the monks of Citeaux and afterwards of the Dominicans, placed these fertile provinces, where flourished the gaie science and the Courts of Love, at the mercy of the horrible barbarity of the northern lords. Languedoc was ravaged, her nobles dispossessed, and the southern provinces of France remem¬ ber ed the horrors of the crusade against the Albigenses for a long time (1208—1229); it was certainly not required to unite the northern and southern portions of France, but on the contrary deepened the antipathy between them. Absolute mistress of Europe, the Church repeated the mistake of the Roman emperors. She em¬ ployed the strength of princes to influence conscience, although she had established her own power by the victory of conscience over the force of kings. Carried away by a persecuting zeal which is quite op¬ posed to the Christian spirit, she continued the Albigensian crusade with the aid of the tribunal of the Inquisition, which has merited L THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. universal reprobation by its secret proceedings and savage sentences. The Church, recruited from the populations that were still only emerging from barbarism, had adopted their violence. She was fashioned after the image of her times, and however great a pro¬ gress was made in the thirteenth century, the world was still in the Middle Ages. Industry .—Material progress was now very visible. The Cru¬ sades, the long time spent by Europeans in Asia, had tended greatly to the improvement of industry and commerce. From the East came damask cloths, glass from Tyre, linen, and silk. Cotton was obtained through the agency of the Arabs, although several centuries were still required before it could be really utilised. The Venetians had learnt the preparation of alum at Bocca, in Syria, and the working of ivory at Constantinople, Aleppo, and Alexandria. From the East came also the manufactures of mercury, soap, wax, and corrosive sublimate. In Asia the art of gilding skins and leather was already known, and Greece, particu¬ larly Euboea and Thessaly, had furnished artisans who were skilful in blending silk with silver and gold. The Italian republics particularly displayed an industrial activity which was only rivalled by Flanders. The Corporations .—Man desired work, but in that singular society, where oppression had forged so many fetters, work was not free. At first, the corporation, which dated from the later days of the Pioman empire, was a protection, a guarantee, a furtherance. It protected the artisans not only against the lord, but against the foreign workman. It limited the number of workmen, thus securing a monopoly and enabling those employed to acquire wealth more rapidly. In the childhood of industry, and in that disorderly society, this protection was a valuable aid to trade. Besides, the corporation was founded on an excellent principle which we are now endeavouring to revive—association. But these associations became narrow, selfish, tyrannical, hostile to all progress, fanatically at¬ tached to their privileges, absurdly so to their rules, and, finally, by adherence to routine, caused their own ruin. The corporation could not expand; the number of apprentices taken by each master SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 147 was fixed ; the apprenticeship, for which a premium was paid, lasted eight or ten years in some trades. The apprentice became a work¬ man, and usually remained in that capacity until he could be ad¬ mitted as a master, and become an employer. For this he was obliged to wait until a vacancy arose, and then the privilege had to be bought; the lords’ due had to be paid—for not even the trades were really free, either the king or the lord gave permission for them to be plied—the corporation fees, and fees to each master of the corporation. Later on, before the workmen were admitted as mastermen, they were forced, as a test of ability, to make some diffi¬ cult and expensive article—a good rule, which, in its abuse through vanity, ruined the workman, or at least entangled him in debt. Each trade had chiefs named by the masters or by the lords; these were the heads, or wardens, who had charge of the tariff of the trade, and who were responsible for the execution of its rules. Later on these functions became offices, bought at a high price, which were sources of great profit to the holders; the wardens attested the work. With the laudable intention of preventing fraud and of guarding the honour of the corporation, the rules were multiplied until they became not only a restraint but even an obstacle to all perfection or improvement. Centuries were required before any innovtioan was possible. The weight, length, and width of the object to be made were all regulated for the workman, both the quality of the material used and the method of using it. Every stuff woven, every article made, that infringed the usual rules was destroyed. The artisans seeing only privileged classes above them, had no idea except of opposing “ privileges to privileges.” Even the right to work was sold to them. The king had conceded the revenues of certain trades to each of his great officers: to the Grand Master of the Pantry, the bakers’ trade; to the Grand Butler, that of the vintners ; to the Marshal, the blacksmiths’; to the Grand Chamber- lain, the drapers’, mercers’, &c. The artisans were forced to earn money for them as well as for themselves. They excluded all competition, never asking themselves if they were not killing their industry at the same time. 148 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . Commerce; the Parisia?i Exchange; Restrictions and Taxes. —Com¬ merce as well as industiy found an enemy in the feudal system. The merchants, following the example of the artisans, had in their turn formed corporations that were alternately oppressed and oppressive. At Paris the navigation of the Seine, above and below the city, belonged exclusively to a very ancient company, called the Marchandise de Veau. No boat could discharge its cargo at Paris unless it were accompanied by a member of the corporation of the Parisian Exchange, which thus levied a tax upon all the provisions taken into Paris, and energetically defended its privi¬ leges. Every boat that infringed the rules was seized and confis¬ cated. At Rouen an analogous corporation existed. These pri¬ vileges had one fatal effect, they multiplied and authorised each other. Each city endeavoured to retaliate upon its neighbours for the harm done to itself; each noble imitated the cities, and derived a profit from every vessel that passed in sight of his castle. If so many vexations awaited the merchants on the rivers, these gifts of nature, what were the dues exacted upon the land routes, upon the roads, which are not made by themselves, and which, even at that time of general negligence, required some labour? Several estates were often to be traversed in the course of a short journey, a walled town would be passed, and a river crossed. It was necessary to buy the right of passing every inch of the road, which at the same time was very badly kept. The toll¬ houses were more justifiable, for at that date there were no public works, and the bridges were private property.*' If transport were burdensome, the sale of goods was not less fettered by taxes, which increased the price of all merchandise. Countless, were these market dues, dues paid to the lord for the right of erecting a stall on the market, weighing dues, and corn duty, in fees as various as the wares themselves, numerous as the jurisdictions to which both merchants and markets were amenable. These dues * It was not until the year 1848 that the last tolls were suppressed in Paris, and it is only a few years since the bridge tolls on the Saone to Lyon were bought in. In the environs of Paris, at Villeneuve—Saint Georges, at Suresnes, at Argenteuil, and elsewhere, some tolls still exist. The same was the case in London until lately; compare also the Corporation coal dues. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 149 were not peculiar to France, but under different names prevailed everywhere : some still exist, for instance the duties levied by the Duke of Bedford in the Covent Garden market. The fairs, or great meetings of merchants from divers countries, were the festivals of commerce. There were three held in Paris : the Saint Germain fair, the Saint Ladre, and the Lendit. The Lendit, the most celebrated and the gayest, was held in the plains of Saint Denis. These fairs lasted a fortnight; originated in the pilgrimages to the great abbeys, they became most useful encou¬ ragements to commerce, and aided in drawing the various popula¬ tions together. They were the “ universal exhibitions” of the day. As we have already said, commerce, like industry, lived by mono¬ polies. Thus, at Paris, the butchers’ trade was concentrated in the hands of certain families. Their stalls were as hereditary as the fiefs. The corporation of the criers had a monopoly of advertising or spreading news. At that time of universal ignorance placards could not be used, and, in fact, printing was not yet invented. Criers then advertised the merchants’ goods. They paraded the streets, not only extolling the wines of the tavern which employed them, but even offering samples of them to passers-by out of a bowl or wooden cup. During the king’s ban, that is to say during the time fixed for the sale of the king’s wine, the innkeepers were not allowed to sell at all, and every noble and bishop, or abbot, had his own ban or monopoly. The Jews; Bills of Exchange .—This history of commerce in the Middle Ages, incomplete as it is, cannot pass over in silence the most active, although the most persecuted, the richest, although the most oppressed, class of merchants, the Jews. The Jews were under sentence of perpetual excommunication. They could be robbed, tormented, driven out with impunity. Sometimes the dura¬ tion of and rate of interest for their loans was regulated; some¬ times they were forbidden to lend on usury or to borrow them¬ selves ; sometimes a portion of the debts due to them was can¬ celled, and they were compelled to restore the same amount to those debtors who had paid them in full. Saint Louis, in order to distinguish them from the general population, forced them to THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 150 wear at all times two large bands of yellow stuff, one on the chest, the other on the back. Philip the Bold did more: he gave them a special costume and a ridiculous head-dress. Continually exiled and continually recalled, always odious, yet always necessary, the Jews, who, through being forbidden to engage in other trades, held nearly all the capital in their hands, and occu¬ pied themselves with exchange, or trade in moneys, endeavoured to evade the exactions they were perpetually subjected to. They often succeeded in saving their wealth from royal avidity. It is said that the exiled Jews deposited their precious metals in safe hands, and continued their trade by giving travellers secret letters to those entrusted with the care of their wealth. This was the origin of bills of exchange. Montesquieu says: “They invented bills of exchange, and by these means commerce was enabled to elude vio¬ lence and to maintain itself, the richest merchants having only invisible wealth, which could be sent everywhere, and left no traces of its passage.” These letters were also used by the Ghibelines in Italy after their exile by the Guelphs. This use of letters, which replaced the transport of money, soon spread, and gave commerce a new impetus. Commercial relations were thus based upon mutual confidence, and this meant credit. Maritime Commerce; Venice; Genoa; the Hanseatic League .—On all sides commerce had profited by the Crusades. It learnt to take the road which Venice, Pisa, and Genoa already followed. Montpellier attained great prosperity. She had commercial treaties with the Mediterranean states and with the kingdoms of the Levant. In the Eastern cities, the merchants of Montpellier had a special quarter; their money was accepted everywhere, and even the infidels at Alexandria and Tunis respected their flag. But the towns in the south of France developed particularly quickly. In Flanders and Picardy a great association of twenty- four cities united for the purpose of trade with England, under the title of the “London Hanse.” Venice, mistress of Dalmatia and the Illyrian Islands, queen of the Adriatic, also possessed the ports of Greece, of the Ionian Islands, the Cyclades, and Sporades. The Venetians could style SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES . KI themselves lords of three-eighths of the Greek empire. For a long time they were the sole traders with the inhabitants of the shores of the Black Sea. The Genoese contested this trade with them, and these disputes resulted in long wars, of which that of Caffa was the most important. Venice indemnified herself on the coasts of Syria, Egypt, and Afiica. She also communicated with Ger¬ many by land. The Germans had a counting-house on the Bialto. Finally Venice succeeded in forcing her way by sea as far as the north of Europe, and in 1812 a Venetian galley first entered the port of Antwerp. She ended by crushing her rival, Genoa, and without further contest ruled the Mediterranean and all the neigh¬ bouring seas. Barcelona in Spain, as well as Montpellier in France, endeavoured to divert part of this immense commerce to their own advantage. In the north, also, the commercial movement was becoming more marked. The German cities had formed leagues that were more com¬ mercial than political. The most important, the Hanseatic League, was divided into four districts : the Vandal district, including the cities built on the shores of the Baltic, with Lubeck as its head ; the Rhine district, with Cologne as the chief town : the -district of the German border, directed by Brunswick ; and the district of the cities of Livonia, headed by Dantzic. The league had four great branches at Bergen in Norway, Novgorod in Russia, Bruges, and London. It included, besides the cities which composed it, forty-four confederate and twenty allied cities in France, England. Flanders, Spain, and Italy, without counting the subject towns. The flag of the Hanse was everywhere respected, and the cities which infringed the laws of Hanse would have been deserted by the merchants. It was the most powerful commercial association that has ever been known. Travels: Marco Polo .—Commerce was already searching for new roads and new countries. In the twelfth century an adventurous tra¬ veller, Benjamin of Tudela, a Jew, went as far as Samarcand and Hindustan. In the thirteenth J. P. de Carpine was sent (1246 • by Innocent IV. among the Tartars. Saint Louis also sent 1253 the grey friar, Rubruquis (Ruysbroeek), amongst this little-known 152 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. people. About the middle of the fourteenth century Sir John Mandeville made a long voyage, and wrote an account of it in English, French, and Latin. A family of Venetian merchants penetrated as far as Mongolia. Marco Polo passed more than seventeen years in China, where he learnt the customs and lan¬ guage. He returned to Venice by the Indian Ocean, Persia, Trebi- zond, and Constantinople, and fell into the hands of the Genoese. During his captivity in 1298 he compiled his famous “ Account of the Wonders of the World.” This book described the extreme East, gave more correct ideas about Asia and the size of the earth, and became the chief work studied by the voyagers w r ho in the fifteenth century made such admirable discoveries. Education ; the Schools and University of Paris .—The thirst for knowledge, the wish to learn, had caused a revival of the schools that had been originally founded under the shadow of the cloisters or the churches: in Paris, from the eleventh century, those of Parvis Notre-Dame, of Saint Genevieve, of Saint Victor, attracted a number of pupils. The studious tribe at first crowded at the foot of the Hill of Saint Genevieve, in the Rues Galande and Du Fouarre, soon covered all the hill, where it pressed, amongst green hedges and shady trees, around the celebrated masters, who taught in the open air like the old philosophers. These schools confused in a very vague system of instruction all the branches of human know¬ ledge ; and from this circumstance the name of University was given to this assemblage of schools, and was confirmed by the charter of Philippe Auguste (1200), the bulls of Innocent III. (1209 and 1210), and the statutes of the legate, Robert de Cour- con (1215).* * The University of Paris was divided into four nations—the French, the English (for which the German nation was afterwards substituted), the Picards, and the Normans. These nations each had their departments, and in these departments all other foreigners were included, differently grouped : the Southern students (Spain, Italy, Constantinople, and the East) were ranked in the province of Bourges ; the Northern nations (Germany, Scan¬ dinavia, Poland, Hungary) in the English province; men from the Low Countries with the Picards. The students were free, living miserably in the narrow streets that surrounded the Rue Galande, or in colleges founded and SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 153 The University was attached to the Church, and the masters and the majority of students were in orders. The Pope was its sole chief and its judge. But the feudal spirit was shown by the want of discipline amongst the crowd of students of all ages and ranks, who, strong in their privileges, roamed all over the city, filled it with their noisy shouts, and disturbed it by their violence. The patience of the kings, their protectors, was gradually exhausted, and although the royal provost took an oath, when he entered in charge, that he would respect the rights of the University, he still became formidable to the too-boisterous students. The conflicts between the University and the civil jurisdiction several times en¬ tailed the suspension of the courses of study and the dispersion of the students. But, on the other hand, several large cities profited by these dispersions, for the masters retired to them and formed there other equally famous Universities.* Science gradually in¬ creased its realm. In spite of the life of poverty which was then led in the colleges, and of the disorder which interfered with the studies, the celebrity of the University masters attracted so many pupils that on pro¬ cession days their march past seemed endless. Every illustrious doctor of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had followed its lectures or had taught there, and no reputation was complete un¬ less it had been in some way consecrated at the University of Paris. In the thirteenth century we find there the Irishman Duns-Scotus, the Catalan Raymond Lully, the Englishman Roger Bacon. The German, Albertus Magnus, taught in a square, which supported by pious donations : the College of Saint Thomas of Canterbury (or of the Louvre), the College of the Eighteen, the English, Danish, and Con¬ stantinople colleges, the Colleges des Bons-Enfants, of Harcourt, Chollett, and Calvi; colleges instituted by the religious orders, and called the Mathu- rins, the Bernardins, the Carmelite, the Saint Denis, the Premontre, and the Cluny. Above all these colleges, one for the study of theology, founded by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Saint Louis, and from him called the Sor- bonne, ultimately became the most important. * List of other principal Universities :—Paris, 1200; Oxford, 1248 ; Valen¬ cia, 1209 ; Salamanca, 1239; Naples, 1224; Vienna, 1365; Cambridge, 1231 ; Upsala, 1476; Montpellier, 1283; Lisbon, 1290, transferred to Coimbra in 1308 ; Orleans, 1305. These dates are in many cases only approximate. 154 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. took and has retained bis name, Maitre Albert (Maubert). Brunetto Latini and Dante also went to Paris. Instruction ; Scholasticism .—Yet instruction at that time was very dry and very tborny. It was almost tbe envelope of science ratber than science itself. Students were kept always at grammar, dia¬ lectics, rhetoric (tbe “trivium”), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (tbe “ quadrivium”). Dialectics, i.e. logic or tbe art of reasoning, exaggerated tbe prin¬ ciples of Aristotle, multiplied tbe rules of tbe syllogism, replaced thoughts by a clashing of words and by unintelligible subtleties. Through much reasoning reason itself was lost. Science became a mere medley of deductions, a labyrinth of formulas labelled with eccentric names. Just in tbe same way, rhetoric only consisted in the use of figures taken from tbe works of tbe old rhetoricians, which gave a bombastic character to all oratory. There, also, exclu¬ sive preoccupation about tbe form thwarted all natural talent, and rhetoric destroyed eloquence. Tbe spirit of subtlety was so much tbe spirit of tbe times that it corrupted both philosophy and theo¬ logy, and has been called scholasticism ( schola , school). It was produced by tbe endless disputes in tbe school, where tbe students endeavoured to give proof of shrewd intellect and learning. Tbe word “ scholasticism ” is used to designate the teaching and phi¬ losophy of an epoch when a passion for Aristotle’s logic, although badly translated (for the study of Greek was greatly neglected) and badly understood, had perverted men’s judgments. Nominalism and Realism. — The question which then divided philosophers and doctors was the grave dispute between Nomi¬ nalism and Realism. Roscelin de Compiegne was the first to assert that collective terms, general ideas, genus, species, were only words, sounds of the voice. The individual things, facts, alone had real existence. From this he was led to deny that abstract ideas responded to moral truths or to the affirmations of revealed religion. The Realists rebelled and defended the existence of ideas, the universals as they were then called. On their side they even claimed that abstract ideas had a material existence; that the abstraction or collective term humanity existed independent of all SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 155 particular men ; that absolute time existed independently of the particular duration of any given action ; that colour was distinct from the separate colours and from the objects coloured. Saint Anselm and Guillaume de Champeaux supported realism. The quarrel became embittered through theology, for at that date all science or philosophy necessarily touched on dogmas. The Nominalists were accused of falling into heresy, the Realists defended orthodoxy ; but both parties exhausted themselves in discussions which were beyond the comprehension of the people, and even beyond the reasoning powers of many of the students. The echoes of these disputes are still heard at the present day, and science in spite of the immense progress made is still ham¬ pered by the remnants of scholasticism. Philosophy and Theology ; the Great Doctors .—But yet concealed beneath these too frequently idle discussions, we recognise the natural curiosity of the human mind preoccupied with its destiny. Scholasticism was simply a defective method applied to the higher sciences, such as philosophy and theology, both fettered by the Church’s harsh surveillance, and both absorbing the whole energies of the greatest doctors of the age. Deductive logic, d priori reasoning, was taught as the sole method of discovering truth. The Italian Lanfranc, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and Saint Anselm, who defended religion against the subtleties of Roscelin, placing reason in subjection to faith ; so did Guillaume de Champeaux, who at first counted the famous Abelard amongst his disciples, although afterwards his pupil became his greatest antagonist. Abelard allowed himself to be drawn beyond the limits that religion traced for philosophy : he wished to examine and discuss everything, even the dogmas of the faith. His bold theories, which really tended to subject every religious doctrine to criticism and examination, greatly disturbed the Church, and Saint Bernard—then famed for his austerity and eloquence, the arbitrator of differences between kings and popes, the preacher of the se¬ cond Crusade—was employed against him. Saint Bernard, in whom the learning, piety, and zeal of the Fathers of the Church were revived, the vigorous and indefatigable athlete, freed himself THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 156 from scholastic quibbles, and captivated his audience by his thril¬ ling words. Peter the Lombard, Bishop of Paris (1159), in his turn endeavoured to strengthen theology by a “ Collection of Sen¬ tences from the Fathers of the Church.” Restrained within the limits of orthodoxy, philosophy was the chief subject of study amongst the great ecclesiastical doctors of the thirteenth century, who were all fascinated by the logic of Aristotle—Guillaume d’Au- vergne, Bishop of Paris, under Saint Louis; Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus) ; Saint Thomas Aquinas ; Saint Bonaventura.*' Albert the Great commenced the discussions on matter and form, essence and being. His disciple, Saint Thomas Aquinas, sur¬ passed him, and merited the title of “Universal and Angelic Doctor.” His “ Summa Theologiae,” a prodigious work, is a complete methodi¬ cal abstract, a profoundly learned commentary on every theological question. If the Dominicans were proud of Saint Thomas, the Franciscans were equally proud of Saint Bonaventura, surnamed the Seraphic Doctor, because of his mysticism. He traced all science back to the light sent from above, or to illumination. John Duns-Scotus, alternately claimed by England, Scotland, and with more reason by Ireland, earned the title of the Subtle Doctor. He supported the Realists against the Nominalists, and opposed some of the opinions taught by Saint Thomas, whose partisans, or Thomists, energetically defended his doctrines. This quarrel, still continued under other forms, caused much disturbance in Christian Europe, divided between the Thomists and the Scotists. At last * Scholastics and Doctors of the Church. —Eleventh century : Lanfranc died in 1089 ; Saint Anselm in 1109. Twelfth century : Roscelin de Compieene died about 1121; Yves de Charires in 1115 ; Anselm de Laon in 1117 ; Guil¬ laume de Champeaux in 1121; Abelard in 1142; Saint Bernard in 1153; Peter the Lombard in 1160; Pierre de Blois in 1200 ; Amaury de Chartres in 1209. Thirteenth century: Saint Francis d’Assisi, died in 1226; Saint Anthony of Padua (a Portuguese who took the vows in Italy) in 1231 ; Guillaume d’Auvergne, Bishop of Paris, in 1248; Albert the Great (of Suabia) in 1280; Saint Thomas Aquinas (Dominican, born at Rocca-Secca, near Aquino) in 1274 ; Saint Bonaventura, a Franciscan, in 1274 ; Guillaume de Saint Amour in 1272 ; Vincent de Beauvais in 1264 ; Roger Bacon (Fran¬ ciscan), in 1292; Duns-Scotus (Irishman), Franciscan, in 1308; Raymond Lullio (Spaniard), Franciscan, in 1315. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. *57 Vincent de Beauvais, avoiding these subtleties, collected all the knowledge of the age in avast encyclopaedia, entitled the “Uni¬ versal Mirror,” adding to it an accurate classification of its con¬ tents. By that time the interest aroused by these theological dis¬ putes had declined, and a contemporary of Saint Thomas, the English monk, Roger Bacon, had already turned from the intel¬ lectual questions of the day to the study of nature.* Formation of Languages: The French Language. —Philosophers and theologians discussed, argued, and disputed in Latin, the language of the Church. By its side, the laity spoke in another tongue; in France this was called Romance, a mixture of Germanic idioms and Latin. Following the variations of this mixture, we find in the north the langue Toil, and in the south the langue cCoc , so called from the different words used for yes (illud, oui, hoc, oc). The langue Toil at last spread as an official language all over the country, for the southern provinces were vanquished by the north in the crusade of the Albigenses, and were after¬ wards under the dominion of the victors, but the peasantry and provincials still speak the old patois, the langue Toe. The French language was derived from the langue Toil, but it re¬ quired the elaboration of centuries before it attained its present form. Epic Poetrg; the Chansons de Geste .—As early as the eleventh century the langue Toil, although still in its infancy, was already moulded into poetical forms. The feudal and religious society of the Middle Ages, enthusiastic in spite of its vices, did not fail to reflect itself in poems that have at least an epic ring, if they have not the perfect form of the ancient poems. The great deeds of the Franks, the wonderful glory of Charlemagne, had made a deep impression upon the populace, and a complete cycle of poems was inspired by Charlemagne and his companions. This was the French or Carolingian cycle; not that the trouveres confined themselves to lauding the powerful emperor, they went beyond * The study of St. Thomas has been revived in our day, and under the in¬ fluence of Leo XIII. has been resumed in most of the Roman Catholic theo¬ logical schools i 5 8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION ,. that, even if at the expense of history. Charlemagne himself is changed into a feudal emperor, and an unlimited imagination has credited him with the exploits of all the feudal warriors. The “ Song of Roland” is the most celebrated of these early poems, and is justly considered the first great French poem. Thanks to it, Roland became in the Middle Ages the accomplished type of a knight, of a paladin, superior to other men, like Homer's Achilles. These war songs, or chansons de geste, as they were called ( gesta , deeds, actions), are strongly impregnated with the Christian cha¬ racter and the spirit of the Crusades. The exploits of these valiant knights are vaunted, chiefly because they were directed against the Saracens, the Mussulmans; and in them we find an echo of the great struggle that then occupied Christian Europe. The feudal system ennobled and purified itself through chivalry. The latter in its turn had its own poetry, but some of its subjects, curiously enough, were taken from the old Celtic legends—the Cycle armoricain, called the “ Cycle of Arthur,”* a mythical per¬ sonage common to the Bretons and the Welsh, who, like Charle¬ magne, became the hero of a number of adventures. Conventional chivalry, a Christian mythology, a certain mysticism, and a great deal of gallantry, are the chief characteristics of this poetry, which is more polished than that of the preceding age,t and of which the authors, Robert Wace and Chretien de Troyes, are better known. Epic poems were afterwards written upon the ancient traditions.]; The Middle Ages retained a vague recollection of antiquity, and travestied it in a cycle called “ Rome la Grande.” Hector, * The most important Chansons de Geste belonging to the French or Caro- lingian cycle are : the “Song of the Loherains,” “ Ralph de Cambrai ; ” the romance of “ Berthe aux grands pieds,” the “ Song of Roland,” “ Gerard of Vienna,” the “Saxons,” the “ Quatre fils Aymon,” “Ogier the Dane,” “ Aimery de Narbonne.” t The chief romances of this cycle are : the romance called the “ Brut,” written by Robert Wace, a clerk from Caen ; this is the earliest (1155) of the songs of the “ Round Table,” the table around which Arthur assembled his companions; the “ Chevalier au Lion,” by Chretien de Troyes; “Lancelot du Lac,” and the “ Saint-Graal.” The last two are in prose. | The principal romances in this style are those of Alexander, of Troy’, SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES . 159 Alexander, and Ulysses became subjects upon which the trouveres wrote thousands of verses without exhausting their themes. Alexander had twelve peers, barons, paladihs. History, thus mis¬ represented by poetry, became popular, and the artists of the Middle Ages, inspired by the poets, often depicted the heroes of antiquity wearing the same armour as the knights of their own century. Allegorical Poetry. —But in the midst of feudalism this enthu¬ siasm suddenly ceased. The increasing preponderance of the love of argument led to dryness, and the taste for subtleties caused poetry to descend to allegory. The “ Roman de la Rose,” in twenty-two thousand lines, was a poem no doubt, but a poem with abstract personages—Danger, Slander, Felony, Shame, Hate, Avarice, &c. Many passages in this work are very graceful and charming; it was written by Guillaume de Lorris (died about 1260), and continued by Jean de Meung (died about 1305), but it is already pervaded by a different spirit from that of the old trouveres. Disguised under fanciful names, the authors sketched more than one living personage. They jested, criticised, censured. They exposed the hidden sores of feudal and religious society, without any one being able to accuse them of attacking either religion or the princes. Their wit and arch malice effectually screened them from punishment. The “ Roman du Renard ” was even more satirical than that of the “ Rose.” Rustebceuf (died about 1280) has peopled his pages with animals. His romance is only an apologue, a fabliau , in a style that had been often seen before, a complete satire of the society of the times ; and the interest taken by his contemporaries in Reynard’s intrigues and cheats prove that naivete was fading away, and that material preoccupations were supplanting mystical reveries. This animal-epic became still more popular in Germany, where it has had many recensions, from the twelfth century to the poem of Goethe. Thebes, &c. Principal trouveres : Robert Wace, died in 1180 ; Chretien de Troyes, Auboin de Sezanne, twelfth century; Alexander, 1202; Huon de Villeneuve, Gilbert de Montreuil, Marie de France, thirteenth century ; Pierre Mauclerc, 1237 ; Thibault IV. de Champagne, 1253 ; Guillaume de Lorris, 1260. i6o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Southern Poetry; the Troubadours. —Poetry in the south did not attempt any lengthened poems. It was lyrical, not epic. Thanks to its lovely climate, its softer customs, its more har¬ monious and sonorous language, which more nearly resembled Latin, the south succeeded especially in the expression of tender delicate sentiment. The troubadours were the poets of the courts of love. Sometimes, however, they blended war songs with their graceful lines, like the famous Bertrand de Born, who so well expresses the natural feelings, the emotions of the heart, mingled with a warrior’s love of battle, and who filled the parts of poet and soldier in the wars between Henry II. and his sons. War songs were called sirventes, and poetic competitions held before ladies gave rise to the tensons* But the northern trouveres also did their best to imitate the lyrical poetry of the troubadours. Quesnes de Bethune and Thibaut IV., Comte de Champagne, both endeavoured to express senti¬ mental feelings in the lanyue Toil , and their graceful verses seem like a gleam of light in the confused, monotonous mass of long allegorical and epic poems. In the following century Charles d’Orleans had already attained beauty of form, and the princely poet prepared the way for the popular poet of the fifteenth century, Villon. The Birth of the Theatre. —The Middle Ages also witnessed the birth of the theatre in France. It is a curious fact that modern theatricals first appeared in the churches, just as the ancient theatres arose at the side of the temples. The mysteries were first represented before the faithful, who assembled in the vast churches ; it was religion visible in action and living picture. From the thirteenth century these representations of religious scenes fasci¬ nated the crowd, and Adam de la Halle was able to transport some of them, particularly the more facetious ones, outside the church. But the rage for mysteries dates chiefly from the four- * Trou 1 odours: Guillaume de Poitiers, 1127; Arnaud Daniel, 1148; llambaud d’Orange, 1173; Alphonse II. of Aragon, 1196 ; Richard Cceur de Lion, 1199 ; Bernard de Yentadour, Pierre Vidal, towards 1200 ; the Dauphiu d'Auvergne, 1234 ; Blacas, 1235 ; Sordel de Mantoue, towards 1300 ; &c SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. i6t teenth century, when the confraternities organized themselves as actors in order to reproduce the Passion of Christ, with great pro¬ fusion of machinery and costumes. Prose; History. —Prose, although stammering in a language still unformed, had already produced works of merit. We must admire the narration and description of the conquest of Constan¬ tinople, written by Geoffrey de Villehardouin. History, freeing itself from the dryness of written chronicles, commences with him. The monks could only compile events, accumulating them without order or comment. The Marechal de Champagne, falling back upon his recollections, and relating them with a total absence of pretension, gives us the first animated picture of a great expe¬ dition. And whilst Joinville, influenced by his enthusiastic friend¬ ship for St. Louis, retraced the king’s pure and simple life, he also unconsciously created history—that history that depicts cha¬ racter and fights a battle over again; his naivete lends additional charm to scenes which one never wearies of reading, and in which we admire both hero and historian, chiefly because the latter never dreams of meriting our admiration.* But it was not in France alone that this literary movement took place, nor was she the first of European nations to cultivate litera¬ ture in a new tongue. The old-English, or Anglo-Saxon, epics of Beowulf and of Caedmon are earlier than any French chanson de yeste. The former, like the Niebelungen Lied of Germany, tells of tribal wars before the nations crossed to Britain ; the latter is a paraphrase of Scripture history, written in the seventh century, in imitation of, but with far more poetical feeling than, the Latin poems of Claudius Victor and others on the same subject. In the extreme north the * Principal Chroniclers and Historians of the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centu¬ ries .— France: Raoul Glaber, died in 1048; Suger in 1152; Guillaume de Tyr in 1194; Geoffroy de Villehardouin in 1213; Matthieu Paris in 1259; Guillaume de Nangis in 1306 ; Joinville in 1318. Germany : Dithmar, died in 1028; Herman in 1254; Adam of Bremen in 1090 ; Otto of Frisingen in 1158. England: Henry of Huntingdon, died in 1154; Roger of Hoveden in 1199. Italy : Marco Polo, geographer, died in 1298. Russia : Nestor de Kief, died in 1115; Jean de Novgorod, in 1250. Arabs: Edrisi, died in 1186 ; El-Macin in 1238. Jews : Benjamin de Tudela, died in 1173. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 162 earliest Icelandic and Scandinavian sagas were perhaps taking shape, and the grand Finnic epic, the Kalevala , was being already recited. A little later appears in Spain the Poem a del Cid and others ; but the Arab poetry and the verses of the Spanish Jews were long before the delight of the courts of Cordova, Granada, and Seville. Spain, too, took up and continued the prose epics of chivalry long after they had been abandoned in France. In prose, before any French history was written, we have the noble Saxon Chronicle, with many an old war song and poetical legend embedded in its pages, and rising at times to an eloquence and dignity of style which French did not attain until the days of Joinville and Commines. Later on our English Chaucer is supreme as the greatest follower of Petrarch and of Boccaccio, unsurpassed as a story-teller in verse, grafting a deeper humour, tenderness, and humanity on the brightness and careless half-pagan abandonment of the Italian singers. The Law; Revival of the Roman Law; the Common Law .—- Mental activity is also denoted by the progress made in the science of law. Skilfully taught in the Italian schools, Boman law has been acclimatised in France. It was studied at Montpellier, Orleans, Angers, and Toulouse; and it was also practised in the southern provinces, the district of written law (so called in distinction from the districts of common law, neither fixed nor written). This revival of the Roman law greatly influenced the amelioration of customs. Jurisconsults like Pierre de Fontaine, who united learning with frankness, translated the most difficult treatises of the Roman jurisconsults into the picturesque language of the Middle Ages. The Roman law is also found in the “ Etablisse- ments de Saint Louis,” and in the “ Livre de justice et de plet.” Then appeared a real jurisconsult, Philippe de Beaumanoir, bailiff of Clermont (in Beauvaisis), who wrote the fine work, “ Cou- tumes du Beauvaisis.” It was the light of the times, and, says Montesquieu, “ une grand lumiere.”* * Amongst the law codes of the Middle Ages we must notice the “ Assises de Jerusalem,” the “ Coutumier de Normandie,” the “ Etablissements de Saint Louis,” the “Livre de Justice et de plet,” the “ Coutume de Beau- SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 163 Science; Alchemy. —Science was less advanced, yet made some progress. Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus occupied themselves? with medicine and mathematics. Arithmetic made great progress after the introduction of the Arabic numerals (so called because they were brought by the Arabs, though they had been borrowed from the Indians).* Roger Bacon understood and practised geo¬ metry and algebra; but astronomy was still hampered by astro¬ logical superstitions. Chemistry was also retarded by the obstinacy of the savants, who persisted in losing themselves in the useless mazes of alchemy. The search for the “ philosopher’s stone,” which was to enable men to manufacture gold—the metal that in all ages has turned men’s heads—was at that time almost a mania amongst the learned. They could not understand that the true philosopher’s stone is labour, which, by the aid of science, has in modern times produced infinite wealth. We must, however, own that these researches, these experi¬ ments, had at least one happy result. They taught scientific men to observe and to experiment, and thus later on they opened up the right way. Roger Bacon had already, if we may credit tra¬ dition, discovered the composition of gunpowder. He advocated the reform of the calendar. He speaks of magnifying glasses, and predicts that carriages will travel without horses, and that man will learn to steer himself through the air. His vivid imagi¬ nation seems to have already foreseen the marvels which at that date appeared follies. + Italian Language and Poetry; Dante; Petrarch. —If these mar- vaisis” by Beaumanoir. In Spain: the “ Fuero Juzgo; ” the “Siete Partidas,” by Alphonse X. In Germany: the “ Sachsenspiegel ” (Saxon law), towards 1280, the “ Schwabenspiegel (Suabian law), towards 1300. * These numerals, which we use, were introduced into Europe in the twelfth century, and were employed in 1202 by Leonard Fibonacci of Pisa in a treatise entitled “ Liber abaci.” t Savants, Doctors of Medicine, Physicians, Astronomers : Gerbert, Pope Syl¬ vester II. (French), died in 1002 ; Avicenna (Arab), in 1037 ; Aben Esra (Jew of Toledo), in 1168 ; Averroes (Arab), in 1198 : Albert the Great (German), in 1280; Alphonse X. (Spain), in 1284; Roger Bacon (English), in 1294 ; Arnauld de Yilleneuve, in 1314 ; Raymondo Lullio (Spaniard), in 1315. >64 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. vels were only to be accomplished in a yet distant future, others were being produced at that epoch in Italy, where the literary movement, not less active than in France, succeeded at the first attempt in creating masterpieces of art. The Italian language, sprung from a corruption of Latin, had already found a form; it was the language of si. Although Brunetto Latini, one of the chief authors of the times, wrote his book, the “ Tresor du Monde,” in French because the “ parleure de France etoit le plus delittable,” the Italians already possessed numerous poems, imitations of the provincial troubadours, in their own language. Dante Alighieri (1265—1321) settled this language in his beautiful poem of the “ Divina Commedia,” where we find the purity and elegance of the style of the ancients joined to the depth of Christian thought. Dante was a follower of antiquity. His work is the firstfruits of that assiduous study of the Latin poets which afterwards pro¬ duced more abundant but not better harvests. Dante pictures him¬ self as led into hell under Virgil’s guidance. But what he sees there, or rather what he places there, is the society of his own day, which he judges as a pitiless moralist, in verses of penetrating eloquence. This admirable poem is the first model of Christian literature. It marks the whole distance traversed in thought since Horace and Virgil. Dante is the Great Christian poet of the Middle Ages, as Virgil is of the time of Augustus. Petrarch shone in the following century (1304—1374). His poems are distin¬ guished by their grace, and he is the greatest writer of the canzoni , or odes, and of sonnets. Petrarch was a fanatical admirer of the ancient authors ; he sought and discovered their forgotten works. Inspired by them, he merited a place in the same rank, and had the honour of being crowned in the capitol. Petrarch was the fore¬ runner of the true Renaissance. But Italy in the fourteenth cen¬ tury had also a witty but too licentious storyteller, Boccaccio (1313 —1375), and she had some great historians, Villani among others. Art in Italy .—In Italy the Renaissance had already commenced in regard to art. Although it had been sorely devastated by the barbarians, the country soon rose out of barbarism. Communica¬ tions with the Byzantine empire had never been entirely interrupted, SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. !65 and the Italians, particularly the Venetians, had opportunities of admiring the monuments of Constantinople. Roman ruins and Greek churches in Ravenna and Dalmatia were the models of Italian architects ; they adopted the cupola, but to it they added the Roman columns and arches. In the eleventh century Pisa commenced her famous buildings : the Duomo or cathedral, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and the cloisters of the Campo Santo. The church of Saint Mark at Venice (commenced in the Saint Mark’s at Venice. tenth century) is built entirely in the Byzantine style. It is a copy of Saint Sophia at Constantinople. The church of Saint Anthony of Padua, though Eastern in appearance, really unites every style, and we also find there specimens of Gothic architec¬ ture, which passed into Italy in the thirteenth century, and re¬ appeared at Assisi and Siena, where the facade of the church is a marvel of art. But the Gothic style was never acclimatised in Italy, and the magnificent church of Saint Mary of the Flowers, at Florence, already foretells the style of the Renaissance, an THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 166 imitation of the ancients, but embellished by the richest imagi¬ nation. The Gothic, however, is still found in some parts of the campanile—a square tower which adjoins the church of Saint Maria -—and it forms the chief beauty of the celebrated cathedral of Milan (fourteenth century). We must also quote amongst the monuments of the first Renaissance the palaces of Siena and Florence, the churches of Perugia and Orvieto, the Carthusian convent at Pavia, the ducal palace at Venice, and a number of others, which render Italy a museum of architecture. French Art; Military Architecture .—But the Middle Ages had a special art, which expresses both the feudal and military character, and which was chiefly displayed in France and the Northern coun¬ tries. The division of the kingdoms, the warlike life of all these petty kings, led to the construction of a number of fortresses or castles, which have no parallel in ancient times. Originally a simple tower erected upon an eminence or a hillock, the castle gradually extended its defences and enclosures, like the castle of Montlhery. The towers, like advanced citadels, protected the walls at regular distances. Surmounted by dentelated ramparts, which protected the archers, and pierced with loopholes, these towers rose, threatening and haughty, joined together by courtines. Below the battlements a crown of machicoulis stone balconies served for the men-at-arms whence to throw blazing pitch or boiling water upon the assailants. Drawbridges, portcullis, obstacles of every kind, made these castles almost inaccessible fortresses. All the archi¬ tecture was massive: enormous blocks of stone were used for it; and the effect was very imposing. In the tenth century military archi¬ tecture was simple in style and plan, but in the eleventh it deve¬ loped rapidly. In the twelfth, battlements were introduced, and the towns were surrounded with fortifications that resembled the defences of the castles, whilst the dwellings reserved for the lord became more spacious. In the thirteenth century the Ogival (afterwards called Gothic) style modified military, as it had already transformed religious, architecture, and we find battle¬ ments, arches, windows, and doors built in Ogive or pointed forms. At last, in the fourteenth century, the plan of the castles became SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 167 more regular, the seignoral apartments were enlarged; and in the fifteenth century the art of defence forced the defenders to protect themselves against the effects of artillery, and produced magnificent buildings like the castle of Pierrefonds. Religious Architecture ; the Romanesque Style .—The Merovingian and Carolingian churches had differed little from the ancient basilicas, they were an imitation of Roman architecture. But the influence of Oriental architecture considerably modified the Latin style in the eleventh century, and produced the Roman Byzantine, so called because it united some of the principles of the Byzantine school with those of the Latin school. But, without making this distinction, the style which succeeded the Gallo- Roman, the Romane , from the eleventh century is usually designated the Ro¬ manesque. At this time France—to use Raoul Glaber’s expression, “ se ccuvrait d’une robe blanche d’eglises,” and art began to revive. The first associations of builders were then formed, and were afterwards known as the guild of the Freemasons. The semicircular arch or Romanesque arch characterizes the churches built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. All the windows and ceilings are rounded in form, a little heavy, but regular. The arches of the doorways are decorated with numerous statues. The gables which terminate the Romanesque facades are not roofed in at a very acute angle, and have not any prominent ornaments, the general decoration taking the form of lozenges and circles. The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Poitiers is an example of this style. At first the belfries were scarcely dis¬ tinct, but they afterwards rose triumphantly, as at Saint Etienne de Caen, or increased in numbers, some being placed over the doorwa} 7 and the transept. These belfries were usually square towers pierced with semicircular arches, at one, two, or three stories, and surmounted by a pyramid-shaped roof. Romanesque Windows. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. :58 Front of Xotre-Dame-la-Grande de Poitiers (twelfth century) SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 169 The Ogival Style .—But soon, particularly in the Ile-de-France, the Romanesque buildings were lightened, the semicircular arch was broken up; the arch, divided into two parts forming an angle, gave rise to the Ogive. At first the two styles weie in a measure grafted into each other, as in the cathedrals of Noyou and Senlis, the church of Saint Remi at Rheims, of Saint Leu d’Esserent, of Saint Denis, Saint Etienne of Beauvais, Saint Martin of Laon, Saint Peter of Soissons, and the ruined church of the abbey of Ourscamps (Oise). Used almost exclusively in the centre and north of France, the Ogival style was essen¬ tially French.* The pointed arch was then substituted for the perfect arch, which was still retained for the smaller apertures. The roof was raised, and this bold innovation was counterbalanced by a multitude of buttresses, which supported the exterior of the edifice. The church was thus composed of an immense building, * All the celebrated architects of the Gothic school, Robert de Luzarches, Pierre de Montereau, Eudes de Montreuil, Raoul de Courcy, Thomas de Cormont, Jean de Chelles, Pierre de Corbie, Villard ITonnocourt, came from the lle-de-France, Picardy, or the surrounding districts. i ;o TIIE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. externally supported by a bind of scaffolding in stone, but with a large airy space inside. Here Christian feeling had found its true expression : columns and vaulted ceilings sprang upwards, stone rose towards heaven like prayer itself. It seemed as though the architects of the time had taken their models from the German forests : the straight columns rose like the loftiest trees, and the arched ceilings resembled the interlaced branches. Massive in appearance, dominating the city crowded under its shadow, that gloried in its beauty, the cathedral held the entire population spell-bound by the mysterious shadows thrown by the coloured windows, by the infinite variety of the sculptures that broke the monotony and recalled the old sacred histories. It rose immense and awe-inspiring; imposing, as though to recall the nothingness of man, its creator. Outside, its majestic towers or its graceful steeples, its buttresses resembling the shell of some monstrous animal, its thousands of statues decorating the doorway and crowning the projections, its gargoyles with their eccentric heads, all formed a glorious spectacle which im¬ pressed men’s imaginations and dominated the surrounding country. Besides, the cathedral was the home of all, far more than the ancient temple. The crowd that thronged it felt it their special property. A refuge in calamity, the scene on feast days of pious, sometimes of fi olish, ceremonies, the temple where social inequali¬ ties disappeared, and all were equal in penitence and prayer, the people who dwelt round its feet regarded it as their harbour of rest, where they could forget the'misery of the rough life of the Middle Ages. Notre-Dame at Paris ; the magnificent cathedral at Amiens, the nave of which is a masterpiece ; the cathedral of Chartres ; the cathedral of Beauvais, which has only the chancel completed ; that of Rheims, distinguished by a magnificent doorway, which, joined to the chancel of Beauvais, the nave of Amiens, and the spires of Chartres, would form an ideal work of art; the cathedral of Sens, one of the purest models of thirteenth-century art; the cathedrals of Bourges, Tours, &c.; the Saint Chapelle at Paris, a magnificent shrine in stone, erected by Saint Louis for the altar which con¬ tained the crown of thorns, without alluding to a number of churches SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES . 1 71 S&jg Nave of the Cathedral at Amiens 172 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. which are still the pride of our cities, and often of our villages, all prove the degree of perfection to which Christian art bad attained in the Middle Ages. Even if we cannot form an idea of the number of temples in Greece and Rome, it is doubtful whether they equalled the numerous art treasures in stone that rise on all sides in France, England, and Germany. It was a wondrous outburst of Christian art which covered the land with cathedrals and churches, and though many of them have been destroyed, still enough fine specimens remain to give us an idea of the lofty religious faith which erected so many splendid buildings, and of the genius of the architects, of the masons, whose names are often unknown, so completely was their identity merged in their work, fashioned not for their own , but for the glory of God. But this purity of style did not last long. The cities soon rivalled each other in their eagerness to claim, not the most beautiful, but the most highly ornamented churches. The arch was again subdivided ; the tracery became a flower ; grace and affectation gradu¬ ally replaced majestic lines. Over the door¬ ways rosettes with delicate foliage opened like the petals of roses. The capitals of the Window^m the Florid columns were ornamented with varied leaves ; stone was carved like lace ; and the artists endeavoured to dazzle posterity by a florid style, which marks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the decadence of the Ogival or Gothic style. As usual when trying to excel, man spoilt and corrupted the taste which had presided over the construction of the magnificent churches of the thirteenth century, simple in their grandeur, over¬ whelming in their majestic severity, poetic by their dimensions and by their height. The above description gives too great importance to French, and especially to French church architecture ; the town or guild-halls of the Norman and Flemish towns should have been mentioned. In England the cathedrals of Canterbury, Wells, Winchester, York SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. *73 Minster, the Abbeys of Glastonbury, Westminster, Tintern, &c., vie with any on the Continent; in Germany are Strasburg, Cologne, Frieburg, and others ; even in Spain Burgos, Leon, Toledo, are grand specimens of Gothic church architecture, though somewhat overladen with Oriental ornament. But even this cannot be said of the civil architecture ; and all this while, through the whole of the Mi Idle Ages, from Spain to the banks of the Ganges, Arab architects were erecting works of rarest beauty. Sculpture .—The Gothic churches are poems in stone. Figures and bas-reliefs, representing historical or biblical scenes, were mul¬ tiplied for the instruction of the people. Each bas-relief, each coloured window, was a lesson and a sermon. The cathedral of Chartres is the most important model of this art of speaking and instructing by sculpture. Three or four thousand figures over the doorways reproduce the analytical and chronological order of historical events as they are classed in the “ Universal Mirror” of Vincent de Beauvais : the creation of the world, the law of work, of labour in the country and in the city, the liberal arts, the virtues which man should cultivate, in fine the history of the whole world. “ The statuary is, indeed, in the full sense of the word, the image and the mirror of the universe.”* We must add that by the side of these serious subjects the artists have sometimes placed the most ridiculous figures. Near the serene, calm figures of the saints we find the grimacing forms of animals and monkeys. This is one of the frequent contrasts which delighted the Middle Ages. Music in the Middle Ages. —Music, like architecture and sculp¬ ture, was chiefly religious. Notation was formed of signs placed above the words, and called neumes. + The scale of intonation was represented by raising or lowering the sign. This system, though imperfect, was preferable to letters, but the errors of the copyists were very numerous. Guido d’Arezzo, a monk of Pomposa, whose works appeared towards the middle of the eleventh century, invented the method * Another such example of historic sculpture is the west front of Wells Cathedral. t Probably from the Greek pneima , breath. *74 TILE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION ,. of placing the neum.es on a system of lines, now called the staff’, using the spaces left between the lines so as to fix the place which each neume was to occupy. Guido also traced two lines in different colours, one red and one j^ellow or green, alternating with the others. The first of these coloured lines usually indicated that the note placed upon it was the note la , whilst the yellow or green line was reserved for ut; before this time a letter at the commence¬ ment of each line designated the name of each note.* The use of the old system was, however, continued for some time, and it was not until the thirteenth century that treatises on music, and the ecclesiastical liturgies were written with square notes upon four or five lines. Centuries passed before music took an important place among the arts; for a long time it held only a secondary rank. Civilization in the Thirteenth Century .—Although the information we possess respecting the civilization of the thirteenth century is much too cursory for a complete picture, it yet enables us to form some idea of the civilization of that period. Feudalism, then, con¬ cealed its misery, shame, and the causes of its approaching decline under a brilliant exterior. Monarchy, the principle of an authority which raises itself above privileges without contesting them, is now rising. The warlike inclinations of the nobility were restrained. In the bosom of the Church, which always bene¬ fited largely by feudalism, the mendicant orders appeared, and their poverty counteracted the effect of her great wealth. Better protected, and stimulated by the Crusades, commerce and industry developed with the prosperity of the communes, which enjoyed so much liberty that they compromised it by their own abuse of their privileges. Cultivation improved the state of the country, which was less ravaged by petty wars, and numerous enfranchisements gradually displaced slavery. Every one seemed to breathe more freely in spite of the narrow horizon : the serf was less miserable * Guido d’Arezzo borrowed the names of the notes from the first syllables in each fine of a Latin hymn. Tit queant laxis Jfrsonare fibris Mira gestorum .Famuli tuorum Solve polluti; Zabii return, &c. SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 175 in his hut, when the hope of possible freedom brightened the gloom of life ; the burgher in his painted, decorated house; the more fortunate artisan in his guild, which ruled him but secured him work, and in his confraternity, which enlivened him with religious and secular festivals ; the merchant was safer from robbery, even though his purse were lightened at every toll-house ; the lord less brutal in his embellished castle, where feminine grace encouraged softer words and manners ; the monk, more studious in his cloister, now ornamented with graceful columns and delicate tracery; the bishop, less turbulent and more venerated, proud of his cathedral, derived his greatest pleasure from adding to its height or magnificence. The thirteenth century reasoned, discussed, and sang all at once. Its learning was confused but prodigious; history was trying her first flight; poetry was pouring forth epic and allegorical songs, pointed with satirical fables. Nearly all licentious in tone,* poems and songs contain a faithful picture of a society material in spite of noble aspirations, coarse even though it produced some delicate minds, naive in spite of its genius, lawless under the rule of a harsh law and religion. In spite of the anarchy which existed, in ideas as well as in political matters, we find the thirteenth century seeking peace, security, work, displaying its intellectual power and its moral sentiments. Whilst observing this society, pursuing unity in the midst of division, recognising general obligations above private interest, dreaming of the ideal in the midst of de¬ pressing realities, attaining beauty of thought in spite of license of expression, striving for virtue in spite of vicious instincts; whilst studying the trouveres and the doctors, contemplating majestic edifices, watching the serfs acquiring ireedom and the nobles humanity ; in presence of a Saint Louis, an example to all, we cannot help acknowledging that human society was advancing towards a higher life, as it was advancing in order, knowledge, and morality. The Fourteenth Century; Decline of Feudalism ; Transformation * This is true of France ; English mediaeval poetry is outspoken, but not licentious ; the same is true of Spanish. 176 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of Society .—But although humanity had regained the lost ground on certain points, it was yet far from rivalling the brilliancy of the ancient world. The work commenced in the twelfth and thir¬ teenth, was continued into the fourteenth century, when the feudal system, so brilliant externally, so defective in reality, was gradually modified ; it was a period of transition. In the fourteenth century, when the qualities engendered by chivalry had disappeared, only valour remained ; enthusiasm declined, without reason taking its place ; intrigue ruled equally among the nobles and the sovereigns. It was a thankless age, whose turbulence we can forgive on account of its honesty and its ignorance of wrong-doing, its intelligence had developed without attaining sufficient strength to regulate conduct; like a child on the point of becoming an adult, society had lost the simple instinct for good or evil, without having yet acquired the perfect know¬ ledge of its duties or being conscious of the end at which it aimed. The residence of the Popes at Avignon (1305—1376), the great Western schism (1378—1417), the scandalous conflict be¬ tween the rival Popes, and the corruption of the clergy un¬ dermined the faith, and led to the destruction of the religious unity that had been maintained in England up to that date, in spite of various heresies. The Hussite persecution in Germany (1419—1434), already portended the later religious wars. The great conflicts between nations had already commenced with the terrible Hundred Years’ War between France and England (1321 -—1453). The important action of the States-General in 1356, under the direction of Etienne Marcel, the revolt of the Jacquerie in France, the troubles of Charles YI.’s reign, Wat Tyler’s insur¬ rection in England (1381), the continual disturbances in the Flemish cities, all denoted that the lower classes were already determined to acquire their complete enfranchisement. Attacked from above as well as from below, ruined by the princes, threatened by the people, feudalism was tottering to its fall. Local and isolating ideas were dying out; social forces in each country were tending towards a national unity, for European unity was becoming impossible. Nationalities became more distinct, and SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 177 France chose to endure horrible misery rather than accept a foreign king. In spite of endless wars and pitiless massacres, society aban¬ doned itself to pleasure with more devotion than even in the thir¬ teenth century ; luxury became foolishly extravagant; small courts, like those of the Duke of Burgundy, of the Black Prince at Bor¬ deaux, of the Counts of Foix at Orthes, of the Moors at Granada, and of the Italian states, endeavoured to eclipse the great. The la¬ bourer was beginning to pass from the condition of a serf to that of a free hired workman. It almost appeared as though society were about to break up, because it rejected feudal formalities and forgot chivalric virtues. On the other hand, from the restless mental progress, from the ever-deepening researches of learned men, from the free tone of the satirists, one sees that society was not in real danger. In Italy, during this century, Petrarch wrote his melodious canzoni, and Boccaccio* depicted in witty but too faithful sketches the corrupt society of his times. In France, the ballads of Eustache Deschamps f approach the highest moral and political themes ; Gerson’s J eloquence reflected honour upon the University of Paris; the Basochiens, the “ Enfants sans Souci,” boldy began to paint vices and virtues in their moralities, farces, and soties. Froissart, § in his animated and picturesque “ Chronicles,” ringing with the clash of broken armour, vibrating, after so many centuries, with the tumult of battle and the cries of the dying, is a feudal historian; but, already by his side, Christine de Pisan || takes a more humane delight in relating the wise reforms of King Charles V., the intelligent sovereign who directed Du Guesclin’s arm, and by his prudence reconquered the kingdom his father’s rashness had * Boccaccio, author of the “Decameron” (1313—1375). t Eustache Deschamps (1320—1415). X Jean Chartier, called Gerson, from the name of the village where he was horn (1363—1429). Author of some theological treatises and sermons. The fine work of Thomas a Kempis, “The Imitation of Jesus Christ,” has been attributed to him. § Froissart (1333—1410). || Christine de Pisan (1363—1120). N THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 178 lost. Cannon thundered at Crecy, but they caused more alarm than loss. Each phase, however, of the Hundred Years’ War revealed some progress in the manufacture of firearms. Jean de Bethencourt,* a native of Dieppe, first showed the way to the African seas, where he was followed by the Portuguese, who from the commencement of the fifteenth century displayed the greatest energy in maritime discovery. The immense trade of the Flemish cities rendered them at once so powerful and so haughty that they took the field against the French and Burgundian cavalry. At Roosbecke they expiated their victory at Courtrai, but they were vanquished not daunted. Commerce developed in spite of the troubles of society. Through the darkness that followed the brilliancy of the thirteenth century we see the first gleams of the light of modern times. * Jean de Bethencourt, a Norman gentleman, occupied the Canaries about 1402 to 1404. Printing : Gutenberg’s First Press. BOOK III. MODERN TIMES. CHAPTER VIII. MODERN STATES IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. GREAT MARITIME DISCOVERIES. Summary : Great Inventions and Great Discoveries — Modern Times — —Evolution in Political Order; Progress of Monarchy in France— Decline of the Feudal System in England; Wars of the Roses; the Tudors—The Spanish Monarchy—Division of Germany; Partition of Italy—Formation and Greatness of Austria—Power of Kings ; European Wars—The Great Maritime Discoveries ; the Portuguese—Discoveries by the Spaniards; Christopher Columbus; the New World (1492)— Discovery of the Pacific Ocean ; the First Voyage Round the World (1521); Mexico and Peru—Colonial Policy of Spain and Portugal— Commercial Monopoly — Consequence of the Maritime Discoveries ; Development of Commerce—Diffusion of Gold and Silver Money— Change of Commercial Routes—Moveable Wealth. Great Inventions and Great Discoveries. —The imagination is bewildered when one remembers from what small beginnings the most important revolutions have been developed. A mixture of sulphur, charcoal, and saltpetre produced gunpowder ; a few rags converted into paper, some letters shaped in metal, a needle turning on a pivot, have changed the whole world. Without sufficient reason the invention of gunpowder has been ascribed to the English monk, Roger Bacon,* or to a German monk, Schwartz.f But in fact Orientals had been acquainted with com¬ pressed and explosive powder for a long time. Their process * Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk (1214—1292). f Died about 1384. i 82 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . was perfected in the West; in the fourteenth century cannon bat¬ tered the walls of cities and castles when a breach had to be made. The art of war became modified, and with it politics. In the East magnetic needles pointing to the north were already used, primitive compasses, where the needle, supported by cork, floated in a vase of water. In the thirteenth century Gioja d’Amalfi, an Italian, first thought of suspending the needle on a pivot, enabling it to turn in every direction. The indications given thus becoming more exact, emboldened seamen, and as though a curtain had been suddenly drawn away, one-half of the globe revealed itself to man. The ancients wrote upon bricks or stone or upon the leaves of the papyrus, or on tablets coated with wax. Later on, skins or parchments were prepared at Pergamos, in Asia Minor. Finally, at the time of the Crusades, paper made of cotton was known. This was a great improvement, and it enabled manuscripts to be considerably multiplied. But manuscripts were always very costly. An attempt had been made to print with blocks of carved wood, in the same fashion as the Chinese. In 1486 Gutenberg * succeeded in making letters of metals ; with the aid of his partners, Peter Schoefler and John Fust, he perfected the font of type, the ink, and the press, and published the Bible as his first work in 1455. When he took the model of his printing press to a wood-turner in Strasburg, the latter, not knowing his object, exclaimed, “ But you are asking me to make a wine-press, friend John ! ” “Yes,” replied Gutenberg, “but a wine-press from which shall soon spring the most abundant and marvellous liquor that has ever flowed to quench the thirst of man.” And, in truth, the invention of printing has placed scientific knowledge within the reach of all mankind. These inventions and discoveries, although several of them date from the preceding centuries, scarcely produced any results until the fifteenth century, at the moment when the Turks established * John Gutenberg, born at Mentz about 1400, died in 1468. MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 183 themselves in Europe. And for this reason the era called Modern Times is reckoned from this epoch. Modern Times .—This era dates from 1453, the year when Con¬ stantinople was taken. The Turks established themselves on the soil of Europe, and Europe did not rise in arms; the time for enthusiastic expeditions was past; the Middle Ages were quite dead. The formation of kingdoms, the extension of commerce, and the first Portuguese maritime explorations, the discovery of printing, all demonstrated that humanity was seeking to place itself in a new position. Men desired genuine order, and sheltered them¬ selves under the power of royalty ; they desired more comfort and sought for wealth ; the human mind was eager for the riches of science ; human reason claimed independence. The historian can unite all these changes under a single heading—evolution: in political order, in men’s interests, ideas, and beliefs. This is the work of modern times, which are filled with its results ; by pro¬ gressive development it has created our civilization, it is the prin¬ ciple and the explanation of our society. Evolution in Political Order; Progress of Monarchy in France .— Under a cloud since the tenth century, royalty was the chief agent in the political transformation commenced in the fifteenth and continued during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the creation of a permanent army and of regular taxation, the kings of France secured a force that was always available against the nobles, whilst the organization of artillery facilitated the siege of the great feudal castles. Already humiliated under Charles VII., against whom the nobility vainly combined, feudalism was yet further abased under Louis XI., who commenced the reign of diplomacy, too much inspired by the principles of Macchiavelli, but still a new power. Strange coincidence: this prince was baffled in nearly all his enterprises, and yet no king ever won more provinces. Half vanquished at Montlhery in 1465, a prisoner at Peronne in 1468, forced to make heavy concessions, perpetu¬ ally betrayed, he nevertheless united Burgundy, Picardy, Artois, the duchy of Alen^on, Perche, Maine, Anjou, and Provence to the crown. He was skilled in the art of waiting, negotiating, 184 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. parleying, and of leaving time and his adversaries’ mistakes to do their own work. The eye and hand of Louis XI.* were everywhere at once ; he created the post in order to transmit his wishes in every direc¬ tion ; and to secure their execution he maintained a good army. “ His subjects,” said Commines, “ trembled before him. His commands were unhesitatingly obeyed, without difficulties or ex¬ cuses.” Anne of Beaujeu, the noble daughter of Louis XI., who inherited his abilities without his vices, did much during her regency to further strengthen the power of the French monarchy, which, after the reigns of Charles VIII. and of Louis XII., was already absolute in the person of Francis I. Decline of the Feudal System in England; Wars of the Roses; the Tudors. —In England the aristocracy itself played into the hands of the king. Divided into two camps, between the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, the great nobles destroyed each other during thirty years on the battle-fields of Saint Albans, Northampton, Wakefield, Towton, Hexham, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth. After each battle proscription again laid low many noble heads, and the English aristocracy expended their blood and treasure in order to decide which family should occupy the throne. In the reign of Edward IV. t one-fifth of the land fell to the crown through confiscation. The rule of Henry VII., J the first of the Tudors, was confirmed on the field of Bosworth in 1485, and the king found that he need not anticipate any resistance to his ambition from that haughty nobility which had wrested Magna Charta from King John ; it had almost ceased to exist. Henry VII. equalled Louis XI. in craftiness and cruelty; and to these defects he added avarice. The Star Chamber was the instrument of his despotism, and it was continued by his successors. But though the monarch’s * Louis XI., 1461—1483; Charles VIII., 1483—1498; Louis XII., 1498— 1515 ; Francis I., 1515—1547. t Edward IV. of York (1461—1483). Richard III. (1483 — 1485). X The Tudor Dynasty : Henry VII., 1485—1509 ; Henry VIII., 1509— 1547 ; Edward VI., 1547—1553; Mary, 1553—1558 ; Elizabeth, 1558—1603. MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 185 power had become absolute in both France and England, the con¬ stitution of the two countries remained very different. The two monarchies were not founded upon the same principles nor developed by the same law. For more than two hundred years the English parliament, formed of two chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, had been invested with the right of voting taxes, of determining their nature, of fixing their amount, and of watching over their expenditure. In France there was no analogous arrangement. Royalty had allied itself to the common¬ wealth in order to lower the aristocracy ; but this object once attained, the master’s hand weighed equally heavily upon friends and foes. The Spanish Monarchy .—In the middle of the fifteenth century, Spain was still divided into the Christian kingdoms of Castille, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada. A marriage between Isabella, the heiress of Castille, and Ferdinand the Catholic, the heir of Aragon, united the two crowns in 1479. Ferdinand drove out the Moors from Granada, the last kingdom remaining to them (1492), and seized Navarre from Jean d’Albret (1512). Spanish unity was thus founded. The king then found himself in a position to restrain the Spanish nobility, the proudest, if not the most powerful, on the continent. By the re-organization of the Santa Herrnandad, he formed a police for the country. By assuming the Grand Mastership of the three orders of Calatrava, Alcantara, and Saint James (1494), he secured the command of a formidable militia and of considerable revenues. The division of the money produced by the sale of indulgences during Lent (bull of the Cruzada) increased his resources, while the right of nomination to all the benefices which he obtained from the Pope gave him great ascendency over the clergy, and by the Inquisition, at first established for the attainment of religious unity, but afterwards used as a means of government, he domi¬ nated over the consciences of his subjects. But still by law the monarch was far from absolute in Spain. The provinces and towns retained their franchise? ^nd faeros , of which they were very jealous. In Aragon a sacred, inviolable £ 86 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. magistrate, the justicia , watched the prince and protected the people. Every two years the Cortes of Aragon held a session of forty days, which the king was powerless to prevent. The Cortes of Navarre and the fueros of the Basque Provinces lasted to the present century. Division of Germany; Partition of Italy .—The political union and monarchical system which prevailed in the Iberian Peninsula, in England and France, was quite unsuccessful in Germany and Italy. The Pragmatic Sanction of Frankfort, which in 1388, in the reign of Louis of Bavaria, had declared that the Imperial crown was independent of the Holy See ; the famous Golden Bull of Charles IV. of Luxemburg (1356), which had regulated the elections to the Empire, had settled the public rights in Germany without strengthening the Emperor’s power. Maximilian of Austria (1493—1519) paid more attention to the security of the country than any of his predecessors. He divided it into ten circles, established posts, published at the Diet of Worms the famous constitution of 1495, which punished all wars between the States of the empire, and finally, for the safeguard of this constitu¬ tion, instituted a permanent tribunal called the Imperial Chamber. But the seven electorates had become kingdoms, and in 1502 the electors engaged to meet every year, to take counsel upon the best means of preserving their independence. In Italy, also, the central authority was lacking, and the princely houses acquired increasing power. Small monarchies replaced the old republics, and in the old kingdoms the sovereign gained strength. We find first the Visconti, then the Sforza (1450), enthroned in Milan; in Florence, the Medicis. Genoa was subject to the Duke of Milan, Pisa to the Duke of Tuscany. The Papacy sought only to increase its temporal dominions and to subjugate the small tyrants in the neighbourhood of Rome, without troubling itself much about the means used to attain its object. Ferdinand of Naples invited all his barons to a feast of reconciliation, where they were murdered by his orders. Venice alone preserved her aristocratic government; but a government concentrated in the formidable hands of three state-inquisitors might pass for a monarchy. This MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 187 want of unity rendered Italy a prey over which the more strongly constituted nations fought continually. Formation and Greatness of Austria .—In the heart of Germany, in the valley of the Danube, a mighty monarchy arose, which spread its shadow over both the German sovereigns and the Italian prin¬ cipalities ; this was the house of Austria. The German nobles never tired of mocking the successors of Rudolph of Hapsburg, Frederick III., against whom the Elector Palatine built a tower, and insolently called it the Trutz-Kaiser, and Maximilian the Hunter, always moneyless, and always roaming aimlessly through his dominions. But if the Austrian princes were very little troubled about an elective sovereignty that only brought them annoyance, they secured a solid fortune for their descendants by continually adding to their hereditary dominions. By Maximilian’s marriage with the heiress of Charles the Bold, the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries were united to Austria. The same prince, in pursuance of this nuptial policy, married his son Philip the Handsome to Joanna, the daughter of the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, thus preparing the union of the two houses of Spain and Austria. He also arranged the marriage between his grandson, Ferdinand, and the sister of Louis II. of Hungary, which secured to his family the succession to the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. If the aggrandizement of the House of Austria was a danger for Europe, it was also a source of protection against the Mussulman invasion. Mahomet II.,* Bajazet II., Selim the Ferocious, and Soliman the Magnificent, were then advancing towards the conquest of Greece, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Moldavia. Hungary, in spite of the heroic courage displayed by John Hunyades and Matthias Corvinus,! must have succumbed had Soliman effected an entrance into Vienna. The Austrian capital under Charles V. (1519) merited the glorious title of “ The bulwark of Christianity.” * Mahomet II., 1451—1481 ; Bajazet II., 1481—1512 ; Selim, 1512— 1520; Soliman, 1520—1566. t John Hunyades, Voivode of Transylvania (1400—1456). His son, Matthias Corvinus, was elected king of Hungary in 1458, and reigned until 1490. t 88 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Power of the Kings; European Wars .—In the second half of the fifteenth century the Royal Houses of France, England, Spain, and Austria were already established. The kings, almost absolute masters of their States, ruled the nobility against whom they had so long contended. Obeyed and feared at home, they yielded to the love of conquest, and in other countries found openings for their own and their people’s activity. Charles VIII. set the example by throwing himself upon Italy (1494—95). His ambition alarmed his neighbours, who combined against him. This war in Italy became the first European war ; coalitions were formed, large armies organized, the art of siege and battle appeared, whilst diplomacy essayed to prevent these con¬ flicts, which became more and more attended by loss of life. This is the great political and military characteristic of modern times, and the further this epoch advances, the more general war and leagues become ; while armies become more numerous and mo¬ bilized, fire-arms more accurate and terrible, battles more scienti¬ fically planned, diplomacy more far-reaching and formal. The great Maritime Discoveries; the Portuguese. —With the fifteenth century the horizon of history and of the universe is enlarged. The earth is found to be more extensive, more beautiful, richer than had been dreamed. From the ocean waves, a country emerged four times larger than our continent, illuminated by a more brilliant sun, watered by larger rivers, surpassing, by the fertility of its soil, the magnificence of its forests, and the abundance of its mines, the narrow resources of Europe. Asia itself, of which only the portion already known had been visited by the Crusaders, was now opened to the admiration and avidity of Europeans; a marvellous change, which whilst extending the boundaries of the world modified its ideas and interests. If the greater share of these maritime discoveries belongs to the Spaniards, the glory of taking the first step is due to the Portuguese. Dwelling on the western side of the Iberian Peninsula, confined within a long narrow strip of the Atlantic coast, the Portuguese, like the Phoenicians of old, seemed invited by nature to confide themselves to the ocean. Their first expe¬ ditions were only a continuation of the crusade against the Mus- MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 189 sulman, and religions enthusiasm led them to the coast of Africa. Later on their settlements at Ceuta aroused their curiosity about the countries beyond. The young son of King John I. (of the house of Avis) the Infant Don Henry, developed a great love of geography and settled at Sagres, the extremity of Portugal, near to Cape St. Vincent, in order to contemplate the waves, beyond which he longed to penetrate to the unknown. He insti¬ tuted a Naval College, and thence he directed the expeditions of the bold mariners who were equipped and sent out under his orders. The Portuguese discovered the Madeira Islands (1418), Cape Bojador (1482), navigated the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, and crossed the equator (then called the line) in 1471. In 1486, under Bartholomeo Diaz, they reached the extremity of Africa, where they paused, alarmed by the tempest which prevailed at the Cape, which King John II. named the Cape of Good Hope. The discoveries of Christopher Columbus stimulated the Portu¬ guese to fresh efforts, and in 1498, under Vasco de Gama, they landed in Hindustan, on the coast of Malabar, at the city of Calicut. Alvarez Cabral, on his way to the Indies, had been thrown on the coast of Brazil (1500). D’Almeida and the great Albuquerque, viceroys of India from 1508 to 1515, navigators, warriors, and administrators, organized the Portuguese settlements, and founded an immense colonial empire, which extended over the coasts of Africa and Asia, from the Cape of Good Hope to Hindustan, from Hindustan to Malacca, from Indo-China to Japan and the Moluccas. Discoveries by the Spaniards ; Christopher Columbus ; the New World (1492).—Whilst the Portuguese sought for India and found it in the East, a Genoese, Christopher Columbus,* convinced of the spherical shape of the earth and of the possibility of going round it, and also not without knowledge of the previous discoveries of the Norsemen of Iceland, sought for the Indies in the West and landed in America. * Christopher Columbus, born about 1436, died in Spain in 1506. ICO THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. It required much trouble, much solicitation, many discussions before the learned men of Spain, ere Christopher Columbus in 1492. obtained from Queen Isabella the three small vessels that conveyed Europeans to the new continent. Juan Perez, the prior of a mo¬ nastery, protected Columbus, and at last by evoking the Queen's religious enthusiasm and arousing the hope of discovering new populations to be convened to Catholicism, he induced her to aid Columbus in carrying out his projects. Columbus himself com¬ bined with a love of science a religious faith that gave him courage to venture across the ocean, at that time comm, nly supposed to terminate in an abyss. Yet this man. one of the greatest the world has ever seen, died neglected by Spain, to which he had given a world, and by humanity, whose realm he had doubled—in fact, to use Voltaire's expression, the discovery of America equalled a new creation. But this creation does not even bear the name of Co¬ lumbus. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci* touched at several places on the newly discovered continent and wrote an account of his travels, that gave publicity to his name; people said Amerigo's country, and we still say America. Discovery of the Pacific Ocean ; the First Voyage Round the World (1521); Me mi Peru .—In 1518, Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama. Finding another sea he j lunged sword in hand into the waves, and took possession of them in the name of Spain. In 1518, Grijalva discovered Mexico, and Ferdinand Cortes, with seven hundred soldiers, eighteen horses, and ten cannon, con¬ quered an immense empire ; an unparalleled success, only explained by the terror with which men of another colour, carrying thunder in them hands, filled the aborigines 1519—1521). Magellan, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, made the first journey round the world at the same time (1519—1521); he did not live to return, but his companions completed it without him. Soon afterwards a foundling and a schoolmaster, in concert with a soldier of fortune undertook the conquest of Peru, where gold was so common that it was used for the most ordinary utensils (1529 —1585). * In 14?S or 1499. MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 191 England and France were far behind in this general emigration. But the Venetian John Cabot, in the service of Henry VII., dis¬ covered Newfoundland in 1497. Sebastian Cabot, his son, reached Hudson’s Bay, and the Frenchman Jacques Cartier discovered Canada in 1535. Colonial Policy of Spain and Portugal. —The fortune of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies differed as greatly as their nature. The Portuguese only possessed settlements, which easily changed hands; whilst the Spaniards owned vast countries, which could not be attacked, much less occupied. Scatieredover four thousand leagues of coasts, the Portuguese dominions offered a tempting prize, and broke like the links of a fragile chain. The Spanish empire was concentrated, solidly built, and resisted like a block. The Portuguese did not emigrate to India, but confined them¬ selves to commerce. It might be said that they were always on the road to and from their colonies, rather than in the colonies themselves. In any case, the authority confided to the viceroys alarmed the kings, who changed them every three years. This perpetual change of officials resembled the punishment of the Danaides to the colonists. Doubtless the coffers held fast the gold,* but empty ones were always arriving. The countries subjugated by the Spaniards received different governors, and obeyed the laws of a Council of the Indies which had its seat in Spain. The Government of Mexico, of Peru, and later on of Santa Fe de Bogota, and of Buenos Ayres, formed administrative divisions, and avoided the peril of having a lieutenant of the sovereign, as powerful as the sovereign himself. Tribunals independent of the viceroys, called Audiences, did not prevent tvrannv, but thev checked it. The Spaniards prevented natives and creoles and even Spaniards born in America, from entering the public service, thus maintaining a continual stream of Spanish population passing between the colonies and the metropolis. Commercial Monopoly .—In Spain and Portugal the same preju¬ dices undermined the relations between the mother country and the colonies. Monopoly was the universal rule. Portugal alone 192 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. furnished the merchandise which her colonies required, and she was the sole purchaser, at her own price, of the produce of the East Indies. The Spaniards forbade the Americans to cultivate any European plants, particularly the vine. Mexico was obliged to buy from Spain what she could have produced at a cheaper rate, and was allowed to sell only to her. Spain considered the colonies solely as fresh ground for extortion, from which she drew as much gold as possible by overwhelming the unfortunate Indians with work. It must be admitted, to the shame of Columbus’ companions and successors, that civilization must have appeared a frightful mockery to the Indians. The Euro¬ pean occupation of America was consequently followed by a terrible depopulation. Charles V., touched by the eloquent complaints of the bishop Las Casas, cured one evil by another, perhaps even worse, the slavery of the African negroes (1508). Consequences of the Maritime Discoveries; Development of Com¬ merce .—These maritime discoveries gave extraordinary impetus to trade. Lisbon had now become the great market of the world ; into its markets flowed metals from Japan, spices from the Moluccas, silk, the productions of Chinese industry and agriculture, rice and wood from Indo-China, spices, India stuffs, the produce of Central Asia, pearls collected from the coasts of the Persian gulf, ivory, gold dust and African gums. Spain at first only sought for gold and silver in America, and this changed the nature of wealth. Diffusion of Gold and Silver Money .—In the Middle Ages the greatest wealth, like the greatest strength, consisted in land. Now the Spaniards annually threw into circulation a large quantity of the precious metals at the same time that valuable merchandise was flowing from Asia. If the merchandise only had come in abundance it would have diminished in price and the limited amount of bullion in Europe would have doubled its value. If, on the other hand, gold only had been plentiful, the bullion would have been depreciated whilst it increased in quantity. The equilibrium must have been disturbed on one side or the other. But these MODERN STATES AND MARITIME DISCOVERIES. 193 two discoveries were simultaneous. There was more gold, but also more merchandise. Money was more widely distributed, and the merchandise found purchasers; and whilst the costly wares still flowed in, gold found its use. The effect of it in Spain was to ruin its own industries, and the unemployed gold soon found its way to other countries. Change of the Commercial Routes .—The commercial routes were now changed, The Mediterranean ceased to be the sole thorough¬ fare for the merchandise of Asia. Venice, Genoa, Alexandria were eclipsed ; and gradually declined. The produce of the East Indies went round the south of Africa and accumulated at Lisbon, whence the Dutch fetched it for distribu¬ tion in Europe, quietly awaiting the day when they should them¬ selves go to India in search of it. Still the circuit round Africa caused a loss of time and money. The first road was the best; and it would have been still used had not commerce required too many intermediaries. Moveable Wealth .—This economic evolution completed the poli¬ tical evolution. Moveable fortunes were accumulated by the side of immoveable wealth. Servile labour was almost everywhere re¬ placed by free hired labour. Work and skilful management of business formed an opulent class, the middle class, or bourgeoisie, despised by the nobles, but honoured by the sovereign, to whom it opened its coffers and who found in it a strong support against the aristocracy. Princes became more and more occupied with economic questions. Friendly relations were established between the nations ; mutual knowledge advanced. The intellect awoke, a new horizon opened before it. Intellectual progress responded to material, and the mind of the old world gained by the discovery of the new. o CHAPTER IX. THE RENAISSANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. Summary : The Renaissance ; the Circumstances that aided it—The Renais¬ sance in Italy; the Humanists—Italian Literature—The Poets ; Ariosto, Tasso—History ; Politics—Machiavelli—Guicciardini—Humanism in France—The College of France—Erasmus—French Literature in the Fifteenth Century—Pot try in the Sixteenth Century—Marot, Ronsard, Jodelle — Law — History — Philosophy—Ramus, Montaigne, Rabelais — Literature in the Sixteenth Century — Spanish Literature — Cer¬ vantes— Lope de Yega—Portugal; Camoens — Birth and Brilliancy of English Literature — Shakespeare (1564—1616) — The Birth of Science—Copernicus (1493—1543)—Tycho Brahe—The Reform of the Calendar—Mathematics—Medicine: Paracelsus, Vesalius, AmbroisePare —Astrology and Sorcery—The Renaissance of Art in Italy—Architec¬ ture : Brunelleschi and Bramante—Michael Angelo—French Architec¬ ture—Philibert Delorme — Pierre Lescot—Italian Sculpture—French Sculpture—Painting : the Earliest Italian Masters of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries—Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio—The Earliest Flem¬ ish Artists ; the Invention of Painting in Oil (1410) ; the Brothers Van Eyck—Character of Italian Painting, Pagan and Christian Subjects— The Italian Schools ; the Florentine School: Perugino, Leonardo da Yinci (1452—1519)—The Roman School: Michael Angelo (1474—1564)— Baphael (1483—1520)—School of Lombardy: Correggio (1494—1534) —Venetian School: Giorgio Barbarelli (1477—1511), Titian (1477— 1576)—Tintoretto, Paul Veronese—Bolognese School: the Carracci— Painting in Spain—Painting in France—Flemish Painting—German Painting: Holbein, Albert Diirer—Ceramics: Bernard Palissy—Music. Note : The Principal Scientific Men of the Sixteenth Century. The Renaissance: The Circumstances that aided it. —Although during the Middle Ages humanity had not lost its intellectual life, still the name of the Renaissance has been adopted to designate the revival of art and letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The world, in fact, seemed to be born again. Princes and popes, FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENAISSANCE. [95 nobles and monks, knights and burghers seemed all seized with ardent thirst for knowledge and admiration for art. Scholars argued, poets sang, and even in Germany Ulrich * exclaimed, in allusion to this outburst of the higher curiosity, “ How good it is to live! ” The sudden awakening was caused by a tempest that outwardly seemed little likely to benefit intellectual progress. Constanti¬ nople, which still guarded the precious treasures of antiquity, had fallen in 1453 into the power of rude and ignorant conquerors. The Greeks fled from their enslaved country, and dispersed, carrying with them the books they no longer studied themselves, but which were joyfully welcomed in France and Italy. It was a world refound. The rich imagination, the brilliant language of the Greek writers, masters of every style, suddenly appeared, dazzling the learned, who until then had exhausted themselves in vain efforts to find perfection, t Ancient Greece once more recon¬ quered the West. At precisely the same date, Gutenberg succeeded in completing his invention of printing.! In a few years it had become universal, and printing multiplied the works of the ancient as well as of the modern authors. Aldo Manuzio, of Venice,§ and Stephens, of * Ulrich von Hutten, poet, scholar (1488—1523), precursor of the Refor¬ mation. 1' The chief of the Greek scholars to whom we owe the renaissance of Greek studies are Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424—1511), who taught in Florence to¬ wards 1479, and afterwards at Milan ; John Argyropulu 3 , welcomed to Florence by Cosmo de Medici; Andronicus Callistus (died in 1478); Constantine Las- caris, who taught at Milan and Naples; Andrew John Lascaris, who taught first at Florence under Lorenzo de Medici, then at Paris and Rome, return¬ ing to Paris under Francis I. X Printing, almost directly after its discovery, was established in Italy by two ot Justus’ workmen; first in the German Benedictine monastery at Subiaco (Papal States), 1465 ; then at Rome. John of Spire carried printing to Venice (1469). A pres 3 was established in Paris in the Sorbonne (1470), and printing then spread rapidly over the rest of Europe, to Belgium. England (1471), and Spain (1474). } Aldo Manuzio (Aldus Manutius) (1447—1515) founded a celebrated print¬ ing press in Venice, 1488, from whence issued the first editions of Aristotle, Aristophanes, Ihucydides, Herodotus, Lucien, Xenophon, Demosthenes, and 196 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Paris,* invented the types for the editions they edited, adding learned commentaries to the works they published. The Renaissance in Italy; the Humanists .—Alphonso the Mag¬ nanimous (1416—1458) had founded an academy at Naples, and in Rome Nicholas Y.+ founded the Vatican Library, where he collected five thousand volumes. In Florence Cosmo de Medici, J the merchant Pericles, who ruled a republic not less variable than the Athenian state, surpassed all other princes by the en¬ lightened taste with which he encouraged letters and art. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici,§ who transformed the purely moral authority wielded by Cosmo into a monarchical power, continued his liberality towards the learned in spite of this changed policy. He created an academy, and admired Plato so much that he revived a festival which his disciples had formerly celebrated in his honour. He founded the library that still bears his name, the Medico-Laurentian Library. The lesser Italian princes had their court poets, philosophers and artists : for instance the house of Este at Ferrara, the Montefeltro at Urbino, the Gonzagas at Mantua, the Sforza at Milan, the Benti voglio at Bologna. Lastly, John de Medici, who became pope under the name of Leo X., |j and united in his own person the glory of all these generous protec¬ tors of science and art. He deserved, through the incomparable greatness with which he presided over the intellectual movement, to leave his name to a century thus highly distinguished by its fertility in authors and artists. Plato, and later on some highly valued editions of Latin authors. Aldo Manuzio was the head of a family that perpetuated the fame of their press for a long time, his descendants being all men zealously anxious for the advance of science. * Henry Stephens (Etienne) (1470—1521) was the chief of an equally glorious family—of which Robert Stephens (1503—1559) and his son Henry (1528—1598) were the most illustrious and learned representatives. This dynasty, which may he compared to a royal dynasty, was continued until the fnd of the seventeenth century. t Nicholas V., pope (rom 1447 to 1455. | Cosmo de Medici, head of Florence from 1434 to 1464. § T.orenzo de Medici, from 1469 to 1492. || Leo X., pope from 1513 to 1521. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 197 The Greek and Latin tongues seemed to enter upon a new career. Taught, spoken, written as in the glorious days of Athens and Rome, they disputed the foremost place in Italy with the national language. Their masterpieces are the best calculated to form mankind ; and from that time the word Humanism was applied to the study of their works, which constitute what is called the Humanities. The Humanists were numerous in Italy, and the true chiefs of the intellectual movement—Lorenzo de Valla, Marsiglio Ficino, Angelo Politiano, the famous Count Pico de la Mirandola—who discoursed in every language, upon every variety of subject ; then the secretaries to Leo X. : Sadolet, one of the most elegant Latin poets ; Cardinal Bembo, whose prose rivalled the beauty of Cicero’s orations ; Sannazaro, the Virgilian poet; Pomponius Laetus, the founder of the Roman Academy, through whom the comedies of Plautus and Terence were per¬ formed again,* &c. Italian Literature. —But the Humanities also influenced the authors who remained faithful to their native language. At first, the imitation of ancient literature was very unsuccessful in the theatre. The tragedies of Trissino,f the comedies of BibbienaJ even of Ariosto, could not prevail against the Italian love for simple farces. These farces, revived from the attelance and the mimes, with the traditional personages called Punch ( Pulcinella ), Harlequin ( Arlecchino ), Pantaloon ( Pan talon*■), &c., made the tour of Europe, and for centuries were the delight of the popular theatres. * The dates of the Humanists are: Lorenzo de Valla, 1406 — 1457, who lived at Rome and Naples ; Marsiglio Ficino, 1433—1499, born at Florence; Angelo Politiano, 1454—1494, who lived at Florence and was tutor to John de Medici, afterwards Pope Leo X. ; Pico de la Mirandola, 1463—1494, third son of John Francis, third prince of Mirandola; Sadolet, 1477—1547, secre¬ tary to Leo X., and bishop of Carpentras ; Bembo, 1470—1547, horn at Venice, secretary to Leo; Sannazaro, 1458—1530, of Spanish origin, who chiefly resided at Naples, and merits a place amongst Latin and Italian poets; Pomponius Laetus, 1425—1497. t Born at Vicenza, 1478—1550. He dedicated his poem of “ Sophonisba ” to Leo X. . I Bibbiena, 1470—1520, imitated the writings of Plautus. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 1 98 At the same epoch pastoral dramas first appeared, and accom¬ panied by choruses and music, they afterwards developed into a quite modern form of art, the opera. The pastoral romance was more successful with Sannazaro’s “ Arcadia,” an imitation of Virgil’s poems. Berni * * * § attempted to revive satire, which Aretino f rendered licentious and eccentric. The Poets : Ariosto , Tasso .—The imitation of the antique fur¬ nished the forms and rules of poetry, but inspiration was chiefly derived from the chivalric poems of France, whereon the Middle Ages had lavished all the imagination of feudal and Christian society. After some attempts at epic poetry from Luigi Pulci,J who recited the “Morgante Maggiore ” at the table of Lorenzo de Medici, and from Boiardo,§ who wrote the “Orlando Innamorato,” Ariosto,|| the poet of the epoch, appeared. Taking up the legend of Roland, already disfigured by Boiardo under another form, Ariosto composed and published his great work, “ Orlando Furioso,” where his imagination revelled in fantastic palaces, marvellous adven¬ tures, golden lances and winged horses, but where he sketched profoundly human characters. Inspired by Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, he borrowed the arts of description and word-painting from his great masters, whilst at the same time he retained the spirit of the “Chansons de Geste,” and animated his characters with Christian sentiments. His poem is the most vigorous expres¬ sion of the society of that epoch, still enthusiastic for chivalry and religion in spite of a curious retrogression towards pagan idolatry. These characteristics are still more clearly seen in Tasso’s poem, “Jerusalem Delivered.”11 Following the plan of the “ Iliad,” he glorified the Crusades at an epoch where they were not likely to recommence, and blended Christian miracles * Berni (1490—1536) excelled in burlesque, which in Italy took his name, Bernesque. f Peter 1’Aretino or from Arezzo, in Tuscany (1492—1557). X Born at Florence (1431—1487). § Matteo Maria Boiardo, Count of Scandiano (1430—1494). || Ludovico Ariosto, horn at Reggio (1474—1533). U Torquato Tasso, born at Sorrento (1544—1595), lived chiefly at the court ol Ferrara. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE, 199 with chivalric legends and gallantries. We find one sign of the new times in this poem : women are celebrated under the names of Armida, Clorinda, and Hermione; and the charm of the “ Jeru¬ salem Delivered” lies in the tenderness of sentiment, though the extravagance of its conceits almost spoils it. Tasso’s work is well- nigh the last epic poem, for this style, which appears sponta¬ neously in young naive societies, was not suited to the rationalistic, studious spirit of the sixteenth century. History and Politics : Machiavelli, Guicciardini .—History and politics were more suited to the men of the Renaissance. Machia¬ velli,* a disciple of Livy, educated in the schools of war and diplomacy of his time, joined the skill of the ancients to the penetration of the moderns. His discourse on the first “ Books of Livy” analyses the causes of the greatness of Rome. His poli¬ tical correspondence displays, together with sagacious observation of human conduct, thorough acquaintance with the interests of states. His “ History of Florence ” is one of the most literary, if not the most conscientious, models of the art of narration. It is certainly more creditable to him than the famous book of the “ Prince,” to which he owes his fame, and in which, with audacious cyni¬ cism, he transformed the fraudulent and cruel practices of the sovereigns of his time into political dogmas. Machiavellism has always existed, but it owes its name to the author of the “ Prince.” Guicciardini! was more straightforward, and his “ History of Italy (from 1494 to 1582),” though diffuse, merits in some respects to be ranked among the best histories of his country. To these names we must add the Venetian Panuta, who wrote a History of Venice of 1518 to 1551. The “Letters of the Venetian Ambassa¬ dors ” are a valuable source of information respecting the political history of the time. It would be wrong to omit some allusion to the Dominican, Savonarola{ the apostle-tribune, who moved and ruled Florence by his eloquence. Savonarola was the last voice * Machiavelli, born at Florence (1469—1527). f Guicciardini, bom at Florence (1482—1540). J Savonarola (1452—1498). 200 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . of the Christianity of the Middle Ages, uttered against the Pagan Christianity of the Renaissance, and he had sufficient influence over the Florentines to induce them to burn their profane plays and their musical instruments. His influence quickly waned ; he failed to do at Florence the work which Calvin did at Geneva, and at last was burnt at the stake without protest from his fellow- citizens. Humanism in France; the College of France .—Fighting for more than half a century in Italy, the French were dazzled by the civilization of the land which they invaded, they admired the cities from which they exacted ransom, the palaces they occupied as masters, the magnificent churches which alone they respected. The manuscripts, pictures and sculptures excited their curiosity and envy, even more than the rich materials and elegant furniture. Charles VIII. and Louis XII. employed Italian workmen. Francis I. surrounded himself with scholars and artists. Humanism then appeared in France to revive the studies that had become fruitless under the influence of scholasticism. Fran¬ cis I. encouraged learning, and Danes,* Postel, Vatable, Turnebe, and Bude adorned his court. Bude induced Francis I. to create the College of France.! In spite of the protection that the Popes extended to the study of ancient languages, the ecclesiastical Sor- bonne disdained them. Francis I. wished that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin should have special chairs, to which he afterwards added chairs of science. The monarch thus encouraged a new method of * Pierre Danes, born in Paris (1497—1577) ; Guillaume Postel, born in Normandy (1505 or 1510—1581); Vatable, born in Picardy, died in 1547; Turnebe, born at Andelys (1512—1565), professor of Greek; Guillaume Bude, born in Paris, the firs-t Hellenist (1467—1540). f Leo X. had established the college of young Greeks at Rome. At Lou¬ vain, in 1517, Jerome Busleyden, canon of Brussels, founded a college where Hebrew, Greek and Latin were taught. Francis I., b\ the advice of Guillaume Bude, established two chairs, one of Greek, the other of Hebrew, in 1530 or 1531 ; this was called the ‘‘ College of the Two Languages,” and afterwards the “ College of the Three Languages,” or by the creation of a chair of Latin (1534). This was the origin of the College of France, after¬ wards enriched with chairs of mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and surgery. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE, 201 instruction by the side of scholastic teaching ; a fertile innovation, giving an impulse to education which was never afterwards lost. Erasmus * —Francis I. endeavoured to attract to his new col¬ lege the most famous doctor of his age, Erasmus, born at Rotterdam, who travelled in every country, and had no home but the republic of letters. Erasmus wrote in Latin, which he handled with con¬ summate ease : his biting satires against the monks and the abuses of the Church rendered him unwillingly one of the Precur¬ sors of the Reformation ; his aim was merely the diffusion of true learning. His “Praise of Folly” gives him a place amongst the observers of humanity and the keenest moralists, but his greatest work was perhaps his edition of the Greek Testament (1516). French Literature in the Fifteenth Century. —In France the old genius was happily mated with a native talent that in the fifteenth century had already produced the charming poems of Charles d'Orleans, the last of the poets of chivalry, and Villon the first of the modern school ;f the latter in his lyrics rises to true sentiment, and was the first real French poet. In his satires he is too often the laureate of the gutter. The moralities of the Basochiens, a confraternity of clerks and men employed by the Parliament, were based upon the mysteries represented by the Confraternity of the Passion ; but their allegories were not equal to the wit of the farces, which almost rose to comedy in the anonymous farce of Maitre Patelin, in which an unknown an¬ cestor of Moliere depicted real characters. The Enfants Sans Souci, like the old Greek comedy, ended by bearding the power that had en¬ couraged them at first and were suppressed in 1540. Pierre GringoireJ was a member, and Marot was the best author of this company. Prose was gradually shaping itself. Alain Chartier§ was consi¬ dered the father of eloquence by his contemporaries. His “ Qua- diiloguo Invectif ” is full of elevated ideas, and the reader feels that * Erasmus (1467—1536). t Villon (1431—1480 or 1489). + PierreGringoire (1483—1544). His principal work is the “ Jeu du Prince des Sots et de Mere Sotte. ” § Alain Chartier (1386—1458). 202 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. they are written by a man who loves his country. Commines,* in his “ Memoirs,” writes as a statesman, and is not content with merely chronicling events. He excels in the study of character, and is the first real French historian. Poetry in the Sixteenth Century; Marot , Bonsard , Jodelle .— From the first years of the sixteenth century, the elegant Court of Francis I. was charmed by the playful jests and the witty epistles of Clement Marot.f He shaped and polished the old language of the fabliaux, and by his translation of the Psalms helped on the movement of the Reformation. Pierre de RonsardJ strove to raise French poetry by imitating the ancients. In his enthusiasm for Greek and Latin forms, he gave it the classic bias which has been the bane of all French serious poetry until the rise of the Romantic school under the Restoration in the present century, but his minor lyrics are full of grace. Tragedy also appeared at this epoch : Jodelle§ composed the tragedy of Cleopatra , traced on the plan of the ancient plays. It was represented before the Court of Henry II. Dry as it was, it dealt the last blow to the mysteries of the Confraternity of the Passion, which were too crude for an epoch rapidly increasing in refinement. Jodelle formed one of the Pleiad, || that is, of the six stars who shone round Ronsard, and thus imitated the constel¬ lation of that name. Like his friends, du Bellay,IT Baif,** and Belleau, ft he exaggerated the imitation of the ancients, and another poet, Dubartas, J J who, nevertheless, attained the greatest popularity * Philippe de Commines (1445 — 1509). t Clement Marot (1495—1544). + Ronsard (1524—1585). § Jodelle (1532—1573). || The Alexandrian poets had also been united in a Pleiad: Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, Callimachus, Lycophron, Aratos, Philiscos and Ni- cander. This tradition determined Ronsard to form his pleiad, composed of Joachim du Bellay, Anthony de Baif, Amadis Jamyn, de Belleau, Pontus de Thyard, de Jodelle, and Ronsard. If Joachim de Bellay (1524—1560). ** Anthony de Baif (1532—1589). ft Remy Belleau (1528—1577). JJ Dubartas (1544 — 1590). FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR V RENAISSANCE. 203 in France and in England, carried it to a ridiculous excess. Agrippa d’Aubigne* alone, in spite of a fatiguing abuse of Greek mythology and moral allegories, sounded anew, in his “ Tragiques,” the note of a religious and political satire, the forcible accents of which come from the heart, filled in his case with deep indignation at the persecutions under which Protestants were then suffering. Law; History .—While poetry was thus rising in spite of the pedantry that surrounded it, prose, on the contrary, which advances more gradually and seriously, was greatly benefited by the influence of the ancient jurisconsults, philosophers, historians and orators. Roman law was expounded with the aid of history by the celebrated Cujas.f The learned Dumoulin completed an analo¬ gous work on the common law. These two scholars thus created the French judicial school, which was soon honoured by the names of Olivier, l’Hopital, Pasquier, Harlay, de Thou, &c., to whom the French magistracy owes the reputation for erudition and integrity which it long maintained. Antiquity was still considered the fountain of political science, and was so treated by La BoetieJ in his treatise on Voluntary Servi¬ tude, and Bodin§ in his work on the Republic. Although La Boetie’s tirades against tyranny are too full of rhetoric and imitation, he and Bodin, a faithful disciple of Aristotle, were yet two of the earliest political writers. De Thou|| endeavoured to imitate the ancient historians, but he lost himself in the complicated annals of the sixteenth century. It thus happens that the author, who ren¬ dered the greatest service to history, was a translator only, the Bishop Amyot.1i Amyot reproduced Plutarch’s biographies in ele¬ gant, simple language. No doubt by his picturesque style he gave a false colouring to an author who had written in classical language ; but this only gave an additional charm to Plutarch’s narratives, and the efforts made by Amyot to model French phrases upon * Agrippa d’Aubigne (1550—1630). + Cujas (1522—1590). % La Boetie (1530—1562). § Bodin (1530—1596). || Jacque-Auguste de Thou (1553—1617)* H Jacques Amyot (1513—1593). 2 34 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . Greek rendered the language more supple and enriched it with new figures and expressions. Brantome* endeavoured, not to translate, but to imitate Plutarch by forming a gallery of the Great French Captains ; his style is mercurial and at times vigorous, but he did not master his subject, and his book, agreeable as it may be, cannot be counted amongst trustworthy histories. In France as in England this was a period of noble translations un¬ equalled until quite recent times. Philosophy: Ramus , Montaigne .—But philosophy derived the most benefit from the study of the ancients. Plato, dethroning Aristotle, emancipated philosophy from the too narrow laws of scholasticism and reanimated it, after an interval of ten centuries. Ramus, f fascinated by Plato and by the dialogues in which Socra¬ tes expounds his ideas with as much simplicity as freedom, endea¬ voured to Socratise in his turn. The boldness of his ideas made him many enemies. Practical philosophy had already found a master in Michel de Montaigne,| who himself steeped in the knowdedge of the ancients, has filled his “ Essays ” with their pith and wis¬ dom. Montaigne freed himself from all methodical rules. He gossips, narrates, and argues unaffectedly; touching every variety of subject, giving excellent advice, and seems quite unconsciously to have been one of the precursors of modern pedagogues. But distrust¬ ing himself, alarmed at science, he exclaimed, “ What do I know ? ” Without wishing for, or even knowing it, he opened the door to the doubt and scepticism that his disciple Charron§ clearly formulated. Montaigne, the first of essayists, is the type of refined intellectual epicu- rianism, enjoying everything really great in literature, probing nothing too deeply; he is in spirit the Horace of the French Renaissance. PLabelais.\\ —Montaigne wrote for literary men. Before him Rabe¬ lais had philosophised for the crowd, with hearty mockery and a pen somewhat too coarse, even for those easy times. These are the two real chiefs of the French Renaissance. * Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur of Brantome (1540—1614). f Pierre de la Ramee, called Ramus (1510—1572). % Montaigne (1532—1592). § Pierre Charron (1541—1603). |l[ Rabelais (1483 or 95—1553). FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTER V RENAISSANCE. 205 Spanish Literature .—Spain at that date exercised intellectual as well as political ascendency. Her language, perhaps the finest of the Romance tongues, had been formed during the Middle Ages; more forcible and sonorous than Italian, it derived from the Arabs strength and a rich vocabulary. From the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Spaniards had their “ Chansons de Geste,” “ The Poem of the Cid,” the equivalent to the French “ Chanson de Roland.” Poets whose names are now lost, sprang up in Christian Spain, writers of stirring ballads, chiefly historical, relating in short, graceful verse the exploits and gallantries of the knights. This literature was continued by a succession of masterpieces which made the Spanish literature of that date well-nigh the first in Europe. The cultured classes imitated the Italian poets, and even borrowed their metres. Boscan* copied Petrarch. Garcilaso de la Vega,| even whilst following Petrarch, Bembo, and Sannazaro, caught their full grace and sweetness, but unhappily introduced their conceits and affectation also. Castillejoj rebelled against the too frequent imitation of the Italians, and rejected a pastoral style, which he deemed unworthy of a warrior-race. Hurtado de Mendoza, § a learned ambassador, poet, novelist, and historian, initiated in Spain the picaresque or realistic novel, by his masterpiece, the first part of “ Lazarillo de lormes. Fernando de Herrera || revealed the beauties of the classic ode to Spain, and celebrated the exploits of a Christian hero, Don Juan of Austria. Fr. Luis Ponce de Leon (1528—1591) was the first of the great Spanish mystic writers. In fact, at this time the destruction of religious unity rekindled a more fervent faith in all Catholics, and Spain produced Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, and Saint Theresa, whose prose writings are admirable, * Boscan (1500—1544). t Garcilaso de la Vega, born at Toledo in 1503, died at Nice, 1536. + Castillejo (1494—1556). \ Hurtado de Mendoza (1503—1575). || Fernando de Herrera, a priest oi Seville (1524—1597). 206 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. and whose poems remind us of Blake in their dark doggerel gemmed with passages of inimitable beauty. Cervantes .—The writings of chivalry had not yet ended. The “ Amadis de Gaul,” translated from old Celtic legends by Montalvo, obtained great success in Spain, and pastoral novels again became fashionable with Jorge de Montemayor. But these, particularly the romances of chivalry, soon encountered a terrible adversary in the famous Cervantes.'* This valiant soldier, who lost his left hand in the battle of Lepanto, and during his whole life was subject to the pressure of narrow means, was indignant with his countrymen for their liking for these romances, and their false extravagances. He found them an admirable subject for parody, and in his marvellous “History of Don Quixote de la Mancha,” he made a hero of a poor hidalgo, whose head had been turned by these writings. If the work of Cervantes had been merely a literary satire it would probably have been for¬ gotten in spite of its merits ; but Cervantes to a biting wit, a vivid imagination and a rare talent for depicting landscapes and charac¬ ters, added a depth of observation that has rendered his novel a mirror of humanity. Blended with curious episodes, the sole blot on the work, the burlesque, amusing adventures of Don Quixote and his companion Sancho Panza, Cervantes introduced wise maxims, shrewd remarks upon the passions and vices not only of the society of his times, but of men of all ages. Walter Scott said that his book was one of the master works of the human mind. Lope de Vega .—Cervantes had endeavoured to give the Spanish theatre the form that his knowledge and intelligence pointed out as the ideal. But he ceased writing for the stage when he saw the wonderful success achieved by Lope de Vega (1562—1635). Gifted with marvellous imagination and inexhaustible fertility (for it is said that he wrote fifteen hundred plays), Lope de Vega, who * Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, born at Alcala de Henares (1547—1615). His principal work, “Don Quixote” (for Cervantes wrote many poems, novelettes and plays), was published in 1605 and 1615. But Spain was a long time before she acknowledged the glory of Cervantes, who lived and died in poverty. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 207 was soldier, priest, and monk, added historical and religious dramas to comedies of intrigues called “ cloak and sword.” * Although composed of a series of improbable adventures, these comedies attracted the crowd by the clearness of the plot, and the vivacious and natural dialogue. With regard to historical trage¬ dies, Lope de Yega never attempted to bind himself by imitating the ancients. He introduced history into his plays, without troub¬ ling himself about unity of time or place. His school even in the sixteenth century added so much lustre to Spanish literature that it strongly influenced the literature of other countries, particularly of France. Portugal; Camoens .—Portugal has only one great name, that of Camoens, f who in the Lusiads celebrated the discoveries and exploits of the Portuguese. His work is at the same time a magni¬ ficent epic and a history. Birth and Brilliancy of English Literature .—In England, men¬ tal energy was kindled by the same rays that vivified Spain, France, and Italy. England from the earliest days of modern times had become a great power. The nation had been formed from mingled Celtic, Saxon, Danish and Norman elements ; the language, which after the Norman conquest had been strongly impregnated with old French idioms, and consequently with Latin words, was of Germanic origin. The literature is marked by a greater variety and breadth, as well as beauty of style, than that of any other Teutonic tongue. In the fourteenth century appeared a great poet, Chaucer, who has never been excelled as a blight and cheerful painter in verse of the life of his contemporaries. The Classical and Pagan Renais¬ sance of the sixteenth century, coinciding with the reformation which completed the individuality of the English character, and also with the reign of Elizabeth, completed the conditions most favour¬ able to the development of literature. From the sixteenth century, English literature shone with great brilliancy. Spenser, in his * So called because the personages generally wore a cloak (or capa) and sword. t Camoens, bom and died at Lisbon (1524—1579.) 208 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. “Faerie Queen,” made even epic allegory beautiful, and for splendid, indeed almost excessive, richness of imagery is without rival in English verse. In the theatre, after precursors like John Lyly and Marlowe,* who at any other epoch would have been supreme, Shakespeare appeared, the greatest dramatic genius of England, indeed, it is admitted, of the world. Shakespeare f (1564—1616).—This poet is a really imposing figure, the son of a burgess of Stratford, he became both actor and author, comedian and manager of the theatre ; under him the drama regained, in the sixteenth century, the power and inspiration of the great poets of Greece, added to the vigour and free imagin¬ ation of the poets of the Middle Ages. Cosmopolitan and yet deeply patriotic, the admirer of modern and ancient Italy, but still more the admirer of his own country, Shakespeare was alternately Italian in Romeo and Juliet and in Othello , Roman in Coriolanus and Casar , but above all English in his dramas founded on episodes in the national history like Henry V., Richard III., and Henry VIII., or Scotch legends like Macbeth. He was a genius who revived the past ages, clothing them with life, and was equally at home in violent scenes from the Italy of the Middle Ages, in the horrors of the war of the Roses, in semi-barbarous times, in depicting his contemporaries, or in weaving into his drama the delicate creations, the fairy glamour of poetic folk-lore. With a genius that breaks through all obstacles, he places an entire population upon the stage, carries history into the theatre, and although he gives full play to his imagination, he is yet more true to history than many * Marlowe (1563 —1593) wrote the three best tragedies that the English theatre produced before Shakespeare, Edward II., the Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus. t William Shakespeare, bom at Stratford-on-Avon (1564—1616), composed poems, comedies, historical dramas, and tragedies. The success of the early historical dramas encouraged him to persevere in their production ; he wrote Richard III. (1593), Henry IV. (1597—98), Henry V. (1599), King John, lastly Henry VIII. (1613). In the second period of his life, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he wrote his finest dramas, Othello (1604), Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and the romances of The Tempest and Cymbeline, and to this second period the Roman plays also belong, Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENAISSANCE. 209 historians. Nothing can equal the movement and warmth of these complicated dramas, which unravel themselves now in a palace, now in a street, now on a battle-field, placing on the stage and in close proximity men of all ranks, and replacing the old chorus by a crowd. Shakespeare thus passes to every key: grave and gay, often jocular, sometimes coarse. He descends to the common jests of the populace with as much facility as he rises to the sublime, and of his best pieces the world will never tire. But he has merited the admiration of posterity chiefly through his knowledge and description of the passions of humanity. The characters of his personages are even more true from a human than from an historical point of view. And, when he has had no model to draw from, he has created types of incontestable veracity: Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth, the types of criminal ambi¬ tion Othello, of jealousy ; Desdemona, the gentle victim of the noble but deluded Moor; Juliet, the graceful incarnation of love ; and, lastly, Hamlet, the philosophical dreamer, the man attacked by a melancholia unknowm to antiquity, the precursor of thousands of tormented souls, possessed by an inexplicable sadness that seems peculiar to modern times. Shakespeare had little knowledge of the ancients, but he is a true poet, touched with the imprint of the keen sensibility, the humour, and the weird fancy which are characteristic features of the Northern races. The Greeks and Romans admirably described the sad¬ ness produced by misfortune, but they would not have understood a vague melancholy and discontent with life in the flower of youth and manhood. Great as were his contemporaries, Ben Jonson, Massinger, Fletcher, Webster, and Ford, England never produced a second dramatic poet who could rank with Shakespeare, and at that time her literature was only beginning to develop ; though it afterwards excelled in various other styles. The Birth of Science .—Aroused by the great geographical discove¬ ries and the needs of navigation, the curiosity of the human mind was now directed to the observation of nature and the explanation of the system of the world. Science revived at the same time as literature. P 210 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. At first scientific men, like scholars, only devoted themselves to translations of and commentaries on the works of the Greek sages, which, although better known and better interpreted than formerly, could not, like the works of the poets, historians, and philosophers, satisfy the avidity of their readers, who were often dis¬ couraged by the small results obtained by their long labour.* Meri¬ torious as the works of the Greek mathematicians and astronomers undoubtedly were, particularly of the Alexandrine school, they had never reached any true explanation of the physical system of the universe, or of the movements of the planets and of the stars. The glory of seeking and finding this solution belongs to the moderns. In literature they are the disciples of the ancients. In science they are masters and creators. Too much honour can hardly be paid to those men who, dispersing the darkness that had accumulated through the errors of the ancients, have in some de¬ gree replaced the world in its true orbit, and made the earth turn round the sun instead of the sun round the earth. Copernicus (1473—1543).—Already some astronomers had, like Nicolas de Cusa, timidly essayed to correct the errors of our senses. Already the knowledge of the sphericity of the earth, victoriously proved by the discoveries of Christopher Columbus, had pointed to the truth. But the great facts of the solar system were first perceived by an obscure Canon of Frauenberg, in Prussia. Coperni¬ cus, born at Thorn, in Poland, in his little town on the Vistula, * The principal savants of the fifteenth century are: the Italians, Paccioli, the great artist Leonardo da Vinci, and Paul Toscanelli (1397—1482), who in 1468 erected a dial to determine the solstice, and made curious observations on the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. Lorenzo Volpaja constructed a clock, or rather an ingenious machine, for Lorenzo de Medici, which not only marked the hour, hut also the movements of the sun and planets. In Germany astronomy began to free itself from astrology under Pur- bach (bom in 1423), who printed the first almanack in 1457, Jean Muller (Regiomontanus), who published an important work on the comet of 1472, and an almanack in 1473. In Spain Ferdinand de Cordova commented upon the “Almagest” of Ptolemaeus. In France the mathematical sciences were successfully cultivated by Pierre Dailly (died in 1420), sumamed the “Eagle of the Doctors of France.” FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENT UR Y RENAISSANCE. 21 1 profiting by the knowledge acquired in several journeys to Italy, consecrated his entire life to the observation of the stars and to calculations of their respective positions. It was not until the end of his career that he decided to publish a book on the “Revolu¬ tions of the Heavenly Bodies,” which annihilated all the systems adopted, or rather imagined, until then. The theory of Copernicus that the earth and planets move round the sun, superseded the old Ptolemaic theory that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun, stars, and planets moved round the earth as centre. The Copernican theory is the foundation of modern astronomy. It must, however, be remembered that as early as the third century be¬ fore Christ Aristarchus of Samos had discovered not only that the earth moves, which was known to Pythagoras, but that it moves round the sun. This first explanation of the solar system was natu¬ rally very defective. Copernicus made many mistakes—such as his idea that the earth, in her course round the sun, always turned the same side towards it—but still he had at least glimpses of the truth. But, as usual, for a long time men refused to accept this truth. Copernicus, who died at the same time that his book appeared (1543), did not suffer personally from the attacks of his opponents, but during the sixteenth century his system encountered many adversaries.* Tycho-Brahe .—Astronomy made still further progress with Tycho- Brahe,+ a Dane, who, after erecting an observatory, Uranienborg, i.e. the City of the Heavens, on the small island of Hven, three leagues from Copenhagen, and passing twenty-five years there in profitable observations, was at last forced to leave it and placing himself under the protection of the Emperor Rudolph II., to settle himself in the castle of Benatek, near Prague. His life-work chiefly consisted in the vast array of facts stored up by his long and patient investigations for the use of those who followed after him. * Still some of these astronomers deserve honour. Apianus was one of the first to propose the use of coloured glasses for observing the sun, and the ob¬ servation of the moon’8 movements to determine longitude. t Tycho-Brahe (1547—1601). 212 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . The Reform of the Calendar. —The progress of astronomical science in the sixteenth century led to an important reform in the calendar. The Julian calendar was based upon the tropical year (three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, or six hours), but there was a difference of eleven minutes too many on the exact year, which accumulating from century to century produced real dis¬ order in the recurrence of the yearly festivals. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII., after consulting the celebrated astronomers of his time, ordered the suppression of ten days, from the 4th to the 15th of October, 1582. Still, as the Julian calendar, they retained one extra day inserted every four years, but it was arranged that certain leap-years* should be suppressed to maintain the quasi- perpetual equilibrium. Mathematics. —The progress of astronomy had been greatly aided by the advance of mathematics. Tartaglia, Cardan, Ferrari, and others! resumed the work of the old Greek geometricians, and continued it with so much ardour that they sent each other solemn challenges for contests of figures, as the knights did for their combats in the tilt yard. They invited each other to solve problems and equations, and the learned world paid great attention to these pacific rivalries, which, however, were * Secular years should only be considered leap-years when their numbers after the suppression of the two last ciphers could he divided by 4 ; 1700, 1800, 1900 are not leap-years, but the year 2000 will be. The error still existing is so minute that an interval of four thousand years is now required before the equinox will advance one single day. t The Principal Scientific Men of the Sixteenth Century. —Tartaglia, horn at Brescia (1500—1557), algebraist, wrote a general treatise on numbers ; Louis Ferrari (1522—1565) ; the Germans Adam Riese (1489—1559), Rudolf Stiffel (14S6—1567), Prsetorius (1537—1616), whose works were very useful to Kepler; the Landgrave William IV. of Hesse (1532 — 1592); the Belgian Van Broomen (Adrian Romain) (1560—1615), mathematician and astronomer; the Dutchman Gerard Mercator (died in 1594), author of a system of projec¬ tion where the parallels and the meridians are represented by straight lines, intersecting each other at right angles; Jerome Cardan (1501—1576), horn at Pavia, philosopher, astrologist, mathematician ; Fernel, physician to Henry II. (1497—1558); Buteo (Jean) of Dauphine (1492—1572); OronceFinee (bom at Brian^on), who claimed to have solved the problem of the quadrature of a circle ; Jacques Peletier (1517—1582). FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 213 not always without bitterness, for the hot passions of the six¬ teenth century invaded even the sanctuaries of science. The French mathematicians rivalled the Italians, and through their noble emulation the science of geometry was built up. Pierre la Ramee, called Ramus, the celebrated philosopher, secured a solid foundation for it by translating Euclid’s “Elements.” A jurisconsult, Viete (1540—1603), created algebraic language. Until then numerals were always used for operations, the unknown and its quantities only being represented by abbreviations and signs. Viete represented all quantities by letters. He thus de¬ veloped geometry and trigonometry. Medicine : Paracelsus , Vesalius, Ambroise Pare .—Medicine made a decisive step with Paracelsus,* who rejected the Greek and Arab authors to devote himself to the direct observation of nature and a search for her remedies. Andreas Vesaliusf made it the basis of a serious study of anatomy and the human body. Religious respect for the dead had been carried to such a point that dissection of corpses had not been allowed. Vesalius, physician to Charles V. and Philip II., braved this prejudice, and from that time the healing science began to develop. Ambroise Pare,! surgeon to Charles IX. and Henry III., deserves to be called one of the benefactors of humanity. He healed as much as possible, instead of always amputating. Yet medicine and surgery, like other sciences, were still in their infancy. Astrology and Sorcery .—The efforts of true science were obstructed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by the obsti¬ nacy of the astrologers and sorcerers. It even seems as though the chimerical sciences had doubled their propaganda, judging by the terrible cruelty used for their suppression by the Inquisition and the princes. Sorcerers multiplied; in vain were they burnt by thousands, for in a few years there were 6,500 cases of sorcery in the electorate of Treves. The moral epidemic (for it was really that) spread everywhere. The horrible persecution only increased * Paracelsus, born near Zurich (1493—1541). t Andreas Vesalius, born at Brussels (1514 -1564). X Ambroise Pare, born near Laval (1517—1590). 214 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the evil which it was intended to cure. Besides, this tendency to persecute astrology and sorcery was a real hindrance to true science. Learned men dared not publish all their theories, and more than one great student perished a victim of his boldness because his works combated some popular errors. Human thought had not yet attained liberty, and even the century of the Reformation, far from being a century of free examination, was an age of persecutions. The executions of the printer, Etienne Dolet, and of the learned de Berquin, in the reign of Francis I., and of a number of others in all countries, the growing severity of the Inquisition in Spain, proved that in this society, outwardly so pagan, what was called religion still ruled the State, and many of its chiefs, blinded by ignorance, never realised how Christianity was distorted and dishonoured by these cruelties. The Renaissance of Art in Italy .—Art had escaped from the fetters that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries hindered the flight of the human mind. The true Renaissance was the re¬ vival of art. Architects, painters, and sculptors attained a per¬ fection that has been the despair of later ages, although it has served as their model. There is, however, not much reason for astonishment, for in reality this Renaissance in Italy dated back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The epoch specially designated the Renaissance was only the epoch of its maturity. Italy had preceded other countries in the development of wealth, industry, commerce, and the social spirit which triumphed over civil disunion. For several centuries it had been elegant, cruel, polished, and barbarous. The streets of its cities were the scene of wars and assassinations, mingled with joyous festivals of rare magnificence. Its petty sovereigns, while encouraging the poets, employed assassins ; the admiration of the antique was joined to a reckless, ferocious disposition ; religious observances followed or preceded grave crimes. Under an outer dress of exquisite refinement, in halls peopled with Greek and Roman statues or adorned with valuable paintings, tragedies took place which render the history of the Italian principalities and republics full of sinister incidents. But this state of civil war, of ambuscades, leagues, and FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR V RENAISSANCE. 2 r 5 persecutions, preserved the mind in such continual activity that the arts profited by it. The most marked feature of the Renaissance is the many-sided culture, the versatility, the fulness of the life of its devotees. The powers of the scholar, soldier, poet, theologian, and artist in more than one art were often united in one individual. Architecture: Brunelleschi , Bramante , Michael Angelo .—The real school of the Italian artists was antiquity—at least, ior architec¬ ture and for sculpture, since they had no examples of the painting of the ancients. To this love of antiquity they added religious inspiration, if not genuine, still forcible enough to produce master¬ pieces of art, for the churches were the chief works of the architects. The Pointed or Gothic style had hardly been acclimatised in Italy, where, in architecture, Byzantine influence had always pre¬ dominated. At the end of the thirteenth century the study of the Roman monuments, the ruins of which were then being ex¬ plored, inspired Arnolfo di Lapo, the architect of the cathedral of Florence. He designed the cathedral upon the plan oi the primitive basilicas. Brunelleschi* completed Arnolfo’s work by adding the cupola, an octagonal arch on an eight-sided drum, the chief work of the Renaissance. This dome, which afterwards inspired Bramante and Michael Angelo, was 358 feet high. From that time the Italian cities erected buildings in imitation Ox the antique, and architecture merited the name of classic. Rome was embellished with palaces, like the Massimi Palace, the object of study and admiration of all artists, with its Doric vestibule and courts ; and the Farnese Palace. But the churches were the chief objects of emulation to the archi¬ tects, Peruzzi, Antonio de San Gallo, Yignoles, and Jacques de la Porte. The monument which best represented the new art, which most majestically transmitted profane traditions and blended them with religious requirements, is the immense basilica of Saint Peter’s at Rome, commenced under Julius II. from the plans of the cele¬ brated Bramante (1444—1514), continued under Leo X. and his * Brunelleschi, born at Florence (1377—1444), was at the same time archi¬ tect, sculptor, and engineer. 216 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. successors, and only completed under Sixtus V. A series of illus¬ trious artists after Bramante—Gioeondo, Julian de San Gallo, Raphael, Peruzzi, Antonio de San Gallo, and lastly Michael Angelo, FIFTEENTH A ND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENA ISSANCE. 217 laboured upon this gigantic work, one of the wonders of modern times by its mass, by its extraordinary proportions (for it could con¬ tain several cathedrals), by the beauty of its marbles, stuccoes, and mosaics, and by the boldness of its dome, which rises to nearly 420 feet above the pavement of the church. It is a triumph of science and of art, of lines and curves, the perfection of magnifi¬ cence in architecture, and the most wonderful monument ever raised to the Christian religion with the aid of pagan tradition ; but it is wanting in the deeply religious sentiment that pervades the Gothic cathedrals. In the following century Bernini placed a double semicircular colonnade in front of the porch of Saint Peter’s, worthy of this prodigious temple. St. Paul’s, in London, is the great specimen of the style of the Renaissance and of the employment of the dome in England ; it was built by Sir Christo¬ pher Wren, 1675—1710. French Architecture .—In France Gothic architecture struggled for a long time against the influence of the Italian masters. It inspired the belfry of Chartres, the central spire of Rouen Cathedral, and the spires of Saint Andrew, at Bordeaux. It embellished the tower of Saint Jacques-la-Boucherie in Paris, and in Rouen inspired the stone lace-work of the church of Saint Maclou, the Palais de Justice and the Hotel de Ville at Saint Quentin, the Hotel de Cluny at Paris.* Cardinal George d’Amboise, who retained the Gothic traditions in his Cathedral at Rouen, was one of the first to intro¬ duce the Italian school in his elegant castle at Gaillon, one of the most graceful specimens of the art of the Renaissance. Louis XII. sent to Italy for Giocondo, to rebuild the castle of Blois (the stair¬ case, chapel, and the building which contains the State Hall).f * Roufland Leroux was one of the principal architects of Rouen, and also designed the castle of Gaillon ; Roger Ango built the Palais de Justice. The Church of Notre-Dame de Brou, near to Bourg-en-Bresse (1511), was the last masterpiece of the architecture of the Middle Ages. But already the artists had commenced to apply the decorations of the Renaissance to churches com¬ menced in the Gothic style, the churches of Saint Eustache and Saint Etienne du Mont at 1 aris, of Saint Michael at Dijon, and of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. t Giocondo also built the ancient Cour des Comptes in the Palais de Justice in Paris. 2 r 8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Under the influence of lessons from Italy, the old feudal castles transformed their massive towers into elegant turrets, and lost their appearance as fortresses to become dwellings, embellished by sculptured windows ; the shores of the Loire and of the Cher, the home of the Valois-Orleans and of the Valois-Angou- lemes, were adorned with magnificent residences, where Italian art was happily blended with the old Gothic architecture, and where the old military defences, now become useless, were only a pretext for new decorations ; such were the castles of Meillant, Azay- le-Rideau, Chenonceaux, &c. Francis I. encouraged this graceful architecture, which is most perfectly carried out in the imposing castles of Chambord and of Fontainebleau. The result of this movement in other countries was the Elizabethan house in England, and the Spanish, whose galleried apartments look on to a square enclosed garden or patio, two of the most convenient and graceful forms of human habitation ever invented. Philibert Delorme, Pierre Lescot .—The French soon tired of mere imitation. By studying the monuments of Rome they acquired correct ideas respecting the application of ancient tradi¬ tions to the requirements of their country and climate. From 1545 Jean Bullant* built the castle of Ecouen for the Constable de Montmorency. Pierre Lescot t commenced rebuilding the Louvre in 1546. His work, which we still admire (on the south-west portion of the same court of the Louvre), is remarkable for a series of pro¬ jecting arcades, of columns, and a succession of curvilineal pediments, which happily break the straight line of the upper cornice; this is one of the most finished specimens of the French Renaissance. Philibert Delorme J built the castle of the Tuileries for Catherine de Medici, and the castles of Meudon, Madrid, and Monceaux, of Muette, Saint Maur-des-Fosses, and the superb castle of Anet, all now destroyed. * Jean Bullant, who died in 1578, worked at the Tuileries, the Hotel Car- navalet, and also built the Hotel de la Heine, that afterwards became the Hotel de Soissons. t Pierre Lescot de Lissy, seigneur of the Grange de Martroy (1510—1578). | Philibert Delorme, bom at Lyons towards 1515, died in 1570. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 219 Italian Sculpture .—Sculpture had preceded architecture in Italy, and from the thirteenth century Nicholas of Pisa had carved the The Castle of Chambord. 221 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . pulpits of Siena and Pisa and the tomb of Saint Dominic at Bo¬ logna. He was followed by Andrea de Pisa* * * § and Andrea Orcagna. In the fifteenth century Lorenzo Ghiberti f made himself famous by the bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence, to which he devoted forty years’ labour. Donatello,| Mino de Fiesola, Luca della Robbia, § and Sansovino ornamented the churches with nume¬ rous statues. Lastly, Michael Angelo appeared, the universal artist, who whilst yet quite young, opened his career by sculp¬ ture. He adorned the mausoleum of Lorenzo de Medici with mag¬ nificent statues of “Dawn,” “Twilight,” and “Night,” and deco¬ rated the churches of Rome with his masterpieces. Torreggiano merited the rank of Michael Angelo’s rival. Benvenuto Cellini, || jeweller, engraver, goldsmith, chaser, sculptor, and author, has left some sculptures at Florence, but worked chiefly at Fontainebleau. The “Perseus” ornaments the Loggia de Lanzi at Florence. French Sculpture .—In France sculpture had ornamented the cathedrals, but, like the other arts, it had been influenced by Italy. Jean Juste and Michel Columbe commenced the school of the Renaissance. This school chiefly directed its attention to the decoration of tombs : the tomb of Louis XII. and of Anne of Brittany at Saint Denis; the tomb of Louis de Breze in the Cathedral of Rouen (attributed to Philibert Delorme or to Jean Goujon) ; and the tomb of Francis I. (sculptures by Germain Pilon).1T Jean Goujon, surnamed the French Phidias,** immortalised himself by the caryatides of the hall in the Louvre, the group of Diana in the Louvre Museum, the bust of Henry III., and some bas- reliefs, among which are included the decorations of the Foun¬ tain of the Innocents. Jean Cousin equalled him by his magnificent * Andrea de Pisa (1270—1345). t Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378—1455). J Donatello or Donato (1383—1466). § Luca della Robbia (1388—1450). || Benvenuto Cellini (1500—1570). II These French tombs are far surpassed by those at Avila and Burgos in Spain, by those of Michael Angelo and others in Italy ; and even by the tomb of Maximilian at Innsbruck, in the Tyrol. ** Jean Goujon (1545—1572). FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 221 mausoleum to Philippe de Chabot, Admiral of France, which is considered the masterpiece of French sculpture in the sixteenth century; it is now to be seen in the Louvre. Painting; the Earliest Italian Masters of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio. —The By¬ zantine painters, like the ancient Egyptians, had failed through conventionality and religious restrictions. Yet from the thir¬ teenth century the progress of study in Italy and the mental ardour awakened in the West placed Cimabue in the way to true art, which emancipated itself under Giotto* in the fourteenth cen¬ tury. This little shepherd, whom Cimabue had noticed drawing his sheep on the sand, and who became painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, mosaic-worker, &c., really founded the Italian school. He observed nature, studied foreshortening and perspective, and gave his figures both life and expression. Painting was at that time treated in water colours, but although its materials were imperfect, it made great progress. The Italian love of fresco decorations for churches and palaces gave birth to a great number of artists, and the walls of civil or religious edifices were covered with vast pictures which time has unfortunately effaced. Andrea Orcagnaf painted a grand fresco of Hell in Santa Maria Novella of Florence, and an eccentric “Last Judgment,” inspired by Dante, for the Campo Santo at Pisa. Fra Giovanni, J surnamed Fra Angelico, was the most devotional of painters. Michael Angelo observed that “ the good monk must have visited Paradise, and obtained permission to paint his models from there.” Masaccio§ (1401—1448), by his frescoes and pictures, was one of the first restorers of painting. An old man’s head painted on canvas, and now preserved in the museum of Florence, is a masterpiece of drawing and observation. The Florentine school was founded. * Giotto of Tuscany (1276—1336). t Andrea Orcagna, painter and sculptor (1320—1389). + Guido di Pietro became a monk and adopted the name of Fra Giovanni di Fiesola (1387—1455). The picture of the “Coronation of the Virgin” is in the Louvre. § Tommaso Guidi, called Masaccio. 222 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The Earliest Flemish Masters; Invention of Fainting in Oils (1410); the Brothers Van Eyck. —Religious feeling, which is so deeply imprinted on the works of the earliest Italian painters, who lived almost in the Middle Ages, was still more fervent in the northern countries, particularly in Flanders, where the corpora¬ tions of artists, formed in imitation of the drapers’ guilds, worked with the ambitious desire to illuminate the churches, like religious manuscripts. The wealth of the Flemish cities was not only dis¬ played in the growing luxury of the houses belonging to the manu¬ facturing burghers, but also in the Guildhalls and in the orna¬ mentation of oratories and altars. The Dukes of Burgundy encouraged the first efforts of art, and an Illustrated Bible, by Jehan of Bruges, who became famous towards 1372, is preserved in the Museum of the Hague. This artist, the first Flemish painter, was employed by the Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles V., to design the cartoons for the famous tapestries of the Apocalypse, which are preserved, or at least some portion of them, in the Cathedral of Angers. In a short time nearly every town produced some artists, and the Renaissance commenced amongst the fogs of Flanders at the same time as under the beautiful Italian sun. In Flanders the brothers Tan Eyck, by the invention of oil colours and varnish, gave to painters the medium by which their com¬ positions could be preserved practically for ever. By this invention (discovered about 1410), Jan Tan Eyck* rendered to art the same service that Gutenberg rendered to literature by his discovery of printing. Towards the middle of the fifteenth century an Italian, Antonello of Messina, came to Flanders, was initiated into the new method of painting, and carried it into his own country, where the artists gladly adopted it. Character of the Italian Schools of Fainting , Christian and Pagan Subjects. —Painting in oil was discovered at a favourable moment, when the sudden impetus given to the studies of ancient * The brothers Tan Eyck were natives of Maas-Eyck (Eyck-sur-Meuse). The eldest was called Hubert; the second, the inventor of oil painting, Jan. He died in 1440. leaving a number of works now scattered in Ghent, Brussels, Berlin, London, and Fans. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 223 art and literature aroused and excited the enthusiasm of the artists. The Renaissance of painting was the result of the Renaissance of letters. Fascinated by Dante and Petrarch, who had aided them to understand Homer, Virgil, and Horace, the painters evoked and represented in immortal pictures the immortal descriptions of the ancient and modern authors. But although mythology and history greatly influenced the work of the Italian masters, the Christian religion had a yet larger share in its development. From this point of view the Italian painters are the followers of the sculptors in wood and the illuminators. Dramatic and touching histories from the Bible, the lives of the patriarchs and prophets, the Gospel parables, the impressive incidents of the Passion, legends of saints and martyrs, mysterious ecstasies of the faithful, all furnished sub¬ jects, which with infinite variety in the combination of the natural and of the supernatural, of heaven and earth, of men and angels, never seem to have wearied admirers in spite of their perpetual repetition. The artists transferred the adora¬ tions, prayers, and aspirations of the Christian world to the walls of their churches or the pages of their illuminated manu¬ scripts. But this does not imply that all these artists were imbued with the naive ardent faith of the masons who built the cathedrals, the sculptors who ornamented their walls, and the artists who decorated the Bibles. What we know of the luxurious life, corruption, and scepticism of the sixteenth century remove all illusions on that head, and we can hardly suppose that the artists who surrounded Julian II. and Leo X. were better Christians than the warrior Pope or his epicurean successor, whose elegant but dissolute court would have drawn upon him the anathemas of the Fathers of the Church. This state of society explains the curious fashion in which some of the Italian painters have often travestied rather than idealised Chris¬ tian subjects. They treated them in the style of Greek art, using them only as a pretext for representing the human body in every posture, and for thus displaying their anatomical knowledge. As a rule they have taken their subject from religion, their inspiration 224 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . from antiquity ; they have painted Christian figuies like heathen deities. The Virgin of the Rock (picture by Leonardo da Vinci). Italian Schools ; the Florentine School: Pernrjino , Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519).—Masaccio, in the fifteenth century, founded the first school of painting at Florence, and its renown increased FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 225 steadily until the end of the sixteenth century. Pietro Vanucci,* called Perugino, gave a particularly graceful expression, a vivid colouring and a golden tone, to his religious pictures. He was worthy to be Raphael’s master. Near Florence, at the Castle da Vinci, in 1452, Leonardo was born : like Michael Angelo, he was at the same time sculptor, painter, and architect, in addition to his great powers as a mechanic and engineer. Brought into France to be the ornament of the brilliant court of Francis I., his pictures are not numerous, for Leonardo allowed himself to be fascinated too much by scientific to the detriment of artistic effort, and some of his finest efiorts, such as the “ Last Supper,’’ a fresco in an old convent at Milan, quickly perished.f He died at Amboise in 1519. Leonardo, the first of the great masters, inspired the monk Bar¬ tolommeo della Porta,{ known by the simple name of the Frate, beautified his figures of saints with an elevated expression and a fine tone of colour. Andrea del Sarto was distinguished by the purity of his drawing, the unity of his compositions, and the grace of the attitudes in which he placed his religious or profane personages. § Florence produced Giorgio Vasari, less known by his paintings than by his history of the painters. || * Pietro Vanucci (1446—1524), called Perugino, because he was born at Perugia. The Louvre contains a “ Nativity,” a “ Virgin in Glory,” and a Madonna.” The Vatican possesses a “Resurrection.” But the museum Bernard 0 ” hiS chief work > the “Apparition of the Virgin to Saint * lhe Louvre possesses some fine specimens of Leonardo da Vinci. « The Virgin of the Rocks,” “Saint Anne and the Virgin,” the “ La Belle erronmere, a badly named portrait, supposed to represent a Duchess of Mantua, and the celebrated “ Giconda.” England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Naples, and 1 lorence, also possess pictures by him. X Fra Bartolommeo della Porta (1469—1517) painted among other works : : S r‘ M. of hi, convent. He also painted a Saint Sebastian, which was sent to Francis I {Andrea Vannuchi (U88-1630), called Andrea del Sarto because he was 1 or s son, hai} left sixteen fine pictures now in the Pitti Palace. The louvre contain, an Entombment,” two “Iloly Families,” two “ Assump- ..ons, and two Annunciations.” One of his finest works is the portrait of Lucrezia della Fede, a worthy pendant to the “ Giconda ” || Giorgio Vasari (1512—1574). Q 226 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The Roman School: Michael Angelo (1474—1564).—Although a native of Tuscany, Michael Angelo Buonarrotti founded the school of Rome. For nearly a century Michael Angelo lived and worked, the glory of every art, foremost in sculpture as well as in painting and architecture. Disdaining narrow frames, he delighted in vast surfaces, which he covered with grand compositions, reproducing on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel the Creation of the World and Scripture History, interpreting scenes from the Bible, and making them live again before our eyes, with a vigour that equalled the inspired descriptions of Moses. Thoroughly master of anatomy, knowing every movement of the body, and how to vary the attitudes, exhausting all the resources and mechanism of the art of drawing, Michael Angelo was not afraid of handling even the subjects which had inspired Dante’s genius, and he painted the “ Last Judgment,” a fresco which filled the whole wall of the Sistine Chapel facing the entrance. A colossal composition, where three hundred person¬ ages are represented ; a poem in colour, cleverly arranged; a skilful combination of many scenes, harmoniously grouped—this unique fresco compels admiration by the elevation of the subject, by the life that illumines the bodies of the elect and torments the condemned, by the contrasts between the terrestrial and celestial groups. Michael Angelo shut himself into the Sistine Chapel for nine years, working with enthusiasm, and no one else has attained such extraordinary power or such astonishing majesty. Raphael (1488—1520).—Shorter, yet more productive in pro¬ portion to its duration, the career of Raphael d’Urbino marked the highest point of the Christian yet pagan art of the Renais¬ sance. In his frescoes and pictures, his portraits (Julius II., Leo X., and the Fornarina) and his Holy Families, Raphael, with¬ out apparent effort, attained perfection by his genius for composi¬ tion, drawing, and painting. We admire the calm effect produced by a skill certain of its own powers, making no efforts to express its thoughts, pious or secular, observing yet idealising nature, and satisfied when it had succeeded in representing upon canvas the images by which it wished to please and touch the spectators. Raphael’s genius was essentially Greek. This is not only because FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 227 he made great use of mythology and history in his work, but chieliy because he had caught anew the serenity and grace of the old ideals. The principal pictures by Raphael can be admired in mu¬ seums, but we must go to the Vatican to see the Loggia, the external gallery of one of the palace courts. In the ceiling of each of the triforiums of these galleries Raphael painted four Raphael’s “ Violin-player.” picture, and thus obtained a series of fifty-two subjects, com¬ prising the principal scenes of sacred history—a really grand work, Ifri which the master employed his pupils’ services, chieliy those of Giulio Romano. In the same palace Raphael painted the chambers, that is, four large halls, where he arranged his vast compositions: the “Dispute of the Holy Sacrament ” (also called the “Theology”), and the “School of Athens” 228 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. (or “Philosophy”), the “ Parnassus ” and “Jurisprudence,” the history of Heliodorus stabbed on the threshold of the temple of Jerusalem, the “ Deliverance of Saint Peter,” the “ Pope Saint Leo stopping the Advance of Attila,” and the vast scenes wherein Raphael glorified Constantine, the protector of the Church. In these large compositions the arrangement is majestic and noble, the groups harmonize, the drawing is free, vigorous, correct, and elegant, the figures are graceful without affectation, and the whole picture is full of delicate sentiment which produces an undying charm. But the artist surpasses himself in the “ Transfiguration,” a picture which was exhibited at the head of the bed on which Raphael lay after death; it was carried in his funeral procession. Raphael, in spite of the eminent artists that have succeeded him, has remained incontestably the inimitable model and the educator of the painters who follow him.* The School of Lombardy : Correggio (1494—1534), of Parma. — Michael Angelo and Raphael had carried the secrets of the Floren¬ tine school to Rome, and had created the Roman school. But Italian genius for art is so predominant, that masters were found in most of the Italian cities. * The works of Raphael are chiefly found in the museums of Italy. The museum of Florence preserves the “Virgin and the Bird,” the “Virgin Seated” (one of those masterpieces which have been copied by engraving and distributed all over the world), “ Saint John in the Desert,” the “ Vision of Ezekiel,” and the portraits of Julius II., Leo X., and the Fomarina. The “Saint Cecilia” is at Bologna. At Rome there are the four magnificent “ Sybils ” of Santa Maria della Pace, and the powerful “ Isaac ” of San Agos- tino, in which Raphael measured himself against Michael Angelo. The “ Triumph of Galatea,” and the “ History of Psyche ” in the Famesina: in the Sciarra Palace, the portrait of a young man, name unknown, called the “Violin-player” because he holds an old-fashioned bow in one hand with some flowers. At Madrid there are three portraits and seven pictures, the “ Holy Family ” and a “ Spasimo,” or “Christ carryinghis Cross.” London possesses the seven cartoons, from Hampton Court, now in the South Ken¬ sington Museum, drawn for some tapestries made in Flanders, and afterwards acquired by Charles I. The National Gallery contains the “ Enthronement of the Virgin,” from Blenheim, and a “ Saint Catherine.” Lastly, the Louvre Museum has some portraits, the “ Holy Family,” supposed to have belonged to Francis I., and a “ Saint Michael overcoming the Devil.” FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENAISSANCE. 229 In the north, where Leonardo, who inhabited Milan for a long time, had also introduced Florentine methods, the so-called Lombardy School had boasted even before Leonardo’s appearance of Andrea Mantegna * of Padua, and Bernardino Luini. Then alone, without seeing either Florence or Borne, and with¬ out any other inspiration than a single picture by Raphael (the “ Saint Cecilia”), but which he felt awakened his genius, Antonio Allegri,! called Correggio, almost rivalled the great masters. At Parma he painted the “Ascension” which decorates the dome of the church of San Giovanni, and the “Assumption” painted on the Duomo of Parma. Correggio was not only elegant and graceful, his painting is distinguished by a softness and suavity which none of his pupils have been able to equal. Caravaggio, an original painter who only studied his own works and followed his own ideas, uncultivated, illiterate, disdaining the antique, affecting to despise Raphael and Correggio, recognised but one master, nature. But he only represented the trivial, common side of nature, out of harmony with his refined epoch, though full of energy and truth. | The Venetian School: Giorgio Barbarelli (1477—1511), Titian (1477—1576.)—The clear sky of Venice reflected in the blue waters of the Adriatic, seems to have given the painters of that city some¬ thing of its colour and lustre. The Venetians are masters of colour, and their artists lavished the most brilliant tints upon * Andrea Mantegna (1431—1506). f Antonio Allegri, called the Correggio because he was horn in the borough of Correggio (1494—1534). The museum of Parma still preserves the “ Saint Jerome,” the “ Virgin with the Cup at Florence there is a “ Virgin adoring the Infant Jesus;” at Naples, “ Hagar in the Desert ” and the “ Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine.” Dresden possesses six original pictures by Correggio, amongst which is the “ Nativity,” or the “ Night of Correggio.” Paris also possesses two compositions, a “Marriage of Saint Catherine,” and the masterpiece called the “Sleep of Antiope.” + Michael-Angiolo Amerighi da Caravaggio (1569—1609). Rome has a “ Descent from the Cross ” and the “ Gamblers ” by him ; Vienna, the por¬ trait of a “ Young Girl playing the Lute the Louvre, the “ Death of the \irgin,” which departs from tradition, and even from the religious style, the “ Fortune-teller,” and some portraits. 230 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. their pictures. The Bellini, * two brothers, commenced that famous Venetian school afterwards so seductive and so fertile. Giorgio Barbarelli f (1477—1511) who died very young, decorated the Palace of the Doges at Venice with his frescoes, remarkable for their warm tones. He left very few pictures, for which the European museums eagerly compete. Giorgio or Giorgione was Titian’s contemporary. Titian, like Michael Angelo, lived nearly a century and occupied this long career with a quantity of works, decorating the Venetian churches and palaces, composing religious and secular pictures for princes and for wealthy citizens, scarcely able, in spite of the great facility with which he worked, to satisfy his crowd of customers of bishops and kings, and it is said that the most illustrious of them, the Emperor Charles V., condescended to pick up the great artist’s brush when he dropped it one day in the royal presence. With the greatest freedom, he passed from sacred to heathen subjects, from saints to mythological divinities, from Holy Families to Venus and Adonis, giving them all life with his magic brush, even to the coldest allegories or the most un¬ truthful apotheoses. Art with him was completely emancipated, and in religious subjects he was even less scrupulous than the other painters of the Renaissance. Titian allowed himself to be led away by his imagination, his taste, his caprices. But he portrayed his most capricious ideas in such glowing colours, his painting is of such brilliant tone, that it is still dazzling after the lapse of several centuries.! * Gentile Bellini (1421—1501). The Louvre possesses the ‘‘Reception of a Venetian Ambassador at Constantinople” by him. Giovanni Bellini (1426—1516) was called Jean Belin in France. t Giorgio Barbarelli de Castelfranco (1477—1511). At Venice, in the Academie des Beaux-Arts, we notice the “ Tempest stilled by Saint Mark at Florence, “Moses in the Trial of Burning Coals;” in the Pitti Palace, “ Moses saved from the Water; ” at Madrid, a “ David killing Goliath” and a “ Family Portrait” (a wonderful work) ; at Dresden, the “ Meeting of Jacob and Rachel;” at the Louvre, the “Open-air Concert” and a “Holy Family.” f Titian, Tiziano Vecellio, of Cadore (1477—1576), died of the plague when he was ninety-nine years old. At Venice, where he passed the greater por¬ tion of his long life, many of his works are preserved, amongst others a FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR V RENAISSANCE. 231 Tintoretto , Paul Veronese. —Titian, who was jealous in spite of his glory, had dismissed one of his pupils from his studio. This was the son of a dyer, who rendered the name of his trade famous by becoming Tintoretto.* This artist endeavoured to be original instead of merely a copyist, and to avoid one of Titian’s defects, for the latter was so much preoccupied with his colour that he neglected his drawing, which Tintoretto studied under Michael Angelo. His reputation was so great that he was invited to fill the churches and palaces of Venice with his work. He decorated the ceiling of the Great Council Hall, in the Ducal Palace, with a vast composition 64 feet long by 30 feet wide : the “ Glory of Paradise.” He seemed to have derived his spirit as well as his drawing from Michael Angelo, and was called the “Furious; ” but he worked too quickly, and never attained the perfection of his master, although he succeeded in rivalling Titian by his brilliant colouring. Paul Veronese, another of Titian’s rivals, was also one of the great magicians of art. He decorated the Hall of the Council of Ten, “Visitation of Saint Elizabeth,” a “Presentation in the Temple,” an “ Assumption ” (a masterpiece) in the Church of Saint John and Saint Paul, the death of a monk, known by the name of “ Saint Peter Martyr.” The Senate by a special decree forbade that this picture should he carried beyond the limits of the territory of the Republic under penalty of death. Florence displays saints, which might be mistaken for Greek statues. Rome and Naples also possess some of Titian’s pictures, but Madrid has retained the most (forty- two)—portraits of Charles V., of Philip II., a “ Christ bearing the Cross,” an “ Original Sin,” two of the “Entombment of Christ;” a large allegory, a kind of apotheosis of Charles V. and his family; an admirable “Offering to Fertility,” containing more than sixty figures of young children playing ; the “Arrival of Bacchus at the Isle of Naxos,” an “ Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto,” &c. The pictures of Titian now in the Louvre are not all authentic, but there are three fine specimens—the “ Crowning with Thorns,” the “Entombment,” and the “Disciples at Emmaus.” The portrait of Francis I. was not painted from nature but from a model. * Giacomo Robusti (1512—1594), surnamed II Tintoretto, because he was a dyer’s son. At the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Venice, the “Ascension,” the “ Assumption, ” a “Madonna,” a “ Virgin in Glory,” and a “Miracle of Saint Mark ” are by him. The “ Miracle ” is one of the masterpieces of art, and represents the deliverance of a slave from execution through the miraculous intervention of Saint Mark. 232 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. in the Ducal Palace, with the “Apotheosis of Venice.” He also painted the “ Abduction of Europa,” and above all four “Meals of our Lord” for monastic refectories. Of these works, the “ Mar¬ riage of Cana ” is one of the finest ornaments of the Louvre Museum. Paul Veronese broke through the traditions of the Roman school: he did not seek for historical truth but dressed all his personages in the fashion of his own times whatever epoch they may have lived in. His apostles are rich Venetians, feasting in palaces. His groups are so well arranged, his figures (which were all portraits) have so much nobility, so much life, his colour¬ ing is so bright and rich, that one never wearies of admiring his prodigious works.* To this school we may add Canaletto (1697 —1768), who painted the canals, the buildings, and landscapes of his native city. The Bolognese Schoo 1 : the Caracci. —The city of Bologna filled a place apart in the schools of painting, chiefly through the Caracci: Louis Caracci and his two cousins, Augustine and Annibal.f The last named, the boldest and the most original, succeeded in religious pictures, but above all in landscapes, for his works are the first fine examples of that style found in Italy. But the Bolognese school was particularly renowned in the seventeenth century through the pupils of the Caracci—Domenichino, Guido Reni, and Albano. Painting in Sjjain. —The influence of Italy spread all over Europe, and every artist desired to emulate the great masters. The relations between Italy and Spain were so closely linked that Spain was one of the first to imbibe enthusiasm for Italian art, and the schools of Valencia, Toledo, Seville, and Madrid were * Paolo Cagliari, of Verona, called Paul Veronese (1528—1588). The cele¬ brated “ Marriage of Cana ” is more than 30 feet wide and 21 feet high. In London we possess the “ Alexander’s Visit to the Family of Darius ; ” the faces are all portraits of the Pisani family. f The Bologna Museum has thirteen works by Lodovico Caracci (1555— 1619). Agostino Caracci (1558—1602) has left amongst other remarkable works an “ Assumption ” and a “ Communion of Saint Jerome.” The Louvre possesses twenty-six pictures by Annibale Caracci (1560—1609), in¬ cluding “Madonnas,” a “ Resurrection,” two landscapes, and two pendants, “ Hunting and Fishing.” FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENAISSANCE. 233 formed. Yet, however great the merits of Alonzo Berruguete, Juan de Juanes, Luis de Morales, el Mudo—surnamed the Spanish Titian—or of Alonzo Sanchez Coello may have been, Spanish painting did not really flourish until the following century.* It required time before study could produce its fruits. Painting in France. —In France, Italian artists were instructors of the French. Leonardo da Yinci, Andrea del Sarto, Bosso, f Primaticcio, \ and Nicolo Abati, § reigned at the court of Francis I., and formed what is called the school of Fontainebleau. But from the sixteenth century France produced a master, Jean Cousin, who excelled in painting and sculpture. || Jean Cousin designed some admirable church windows, but the Louvre possesses only one picture by him, a chef-d'oeuvre, the “Last Judgment,” where, in a narrow frame, the artist shows in the arrangement of his composition and his knowledge of the nude, a skill beyond that of any French artist of his time. Flemish Painting. —Flanders, as we have said, in some measure anticipated Italy, but the Flemish artists, without losing their original characteristics, were influenced by the great Italian move¬ ment, and profited by the lessons of those to whom they had taught painting in oil. Roger Van der Weyden^! went to Italy at the moment when Masaccio at Florence, Bellini at Venice, and Fra Angelico at Rome, were restoring the art of paintin' Hans Mending** has left considerable and varied work, displaying * Juan de Juanes (1523—1579), Luis de Morales (1509—1586). The Mudo (Juan Fernandez Navarette) (1526—1579) decorated the Escurial. Alonzo Sanchez Coello, died in 1590, painter and courtier to Philip II. We must also quote Pablo de Cespedes (1538—1608), who imitated Correggio. t The Rosso (Griovanni-Battista), born at Florence (1496—1541). X Francesco Primaticcio, born at Bologna (1490—1570). § Nicolo Abati, of Modena (1512—1571). Ii Bom at Sorez, near the city of Leno, which has raised a statue to him. The dates of his birth are not accurately known (1500 ?—1590 ?). If 1399—1464. The Town Hall at Beaume has a “ Last Judgment ” by him, and his works are also found at Louvain, Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid. ** Ilans Memling (1435—1495). His principal works are at Bruges in the St. John’8 Hospital. 234 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. scenes from the life and passion of Christ, in admirable landscapes, full of elegance, feeling, and charm. It would take too long to enumerate the artists who now appeared in all the Flemish cities, but we must not omit Quentin Matsys,*' the friend of Erasmus and of Sir Thomas More. The imitation of Italian painting was carried so far in the sixteenth century that entire colonies of Flemings settled in Florence and Rome. The taste for art aroused by wealth and luxury was so great that in 1560 the city of Antwerp alone contained three hun¬ dred and sixty painters and sculptors. Dynasties were created, and the talent became hereditary in certain families. Peter Breughel the Elder separated himself from the imitators of the Italians : he remained Flemish, not seeking to rival the idealising genius which suits the vivid imagination and brilliant sky of Italy, but chiefly devoting himself to the study of nature and to a realism more in harmony with the climate and spirit of his country. He depicted scenes of taverns, ports, and villages ; and his numerous works, scattered over the whole of Europe, have earned for him the title of the great comic artist of the Flemish school, through the gay tone that pervades his subjects. But this was only a beginning, and in the following century Flemish genius attained a degree of excellence that quite equalled the Italian art of the sixteenth century, f German Painting: Holbein , Albert Purer .—The excellence of the Flemish painters aroused emulation in Germany. From the Rhine cities, the nearest to the Belgian provinces, art pene¬ trated into Germany, and in the sixteenth century the country boasted of Holbein, from the school of Augsburg, who lived in Basle and England.} His works, composed of historical pictures * Born at Louvain (1466). f Peter Breughel the Elder (towards 1526—1569). Many of his pictures, both religious and secular, are at Vienna. Amongst the latter, the “ Fair ” and the “ Marriage Feast ” are both noticeable. + Hans Holbein, called the Younger, because he was the son of an already noted artist (1495—1543). He painted the “ Meeting of the Cloth of Gold” and the “Battle of Pavia.” The Louvre contains a portrait of Erasmus by him. FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUR Y RENAISSANCE. 235 and portraits, are now in Hampton Court Palace. Basle contains his best designs and cartoons ; amongst other things the famous “Dance Macabre,” or “Dance of Death.” Although his style was still naive, we cannot but admire Holbein’s knowledge and correctness, and above all his brilliant colouring, which places him amongst the masters of the Renaissance. At Dresden appeared Lucas Sunder or Lucas Kranach, a friend of Luther’s, who has left a portrait of the Reformer and his disciple Melanchthon.* At the same time Albert Diirer, whose genius was universal, since he was sculptor, architect, painter, engraver, and author, unites in his pictures the Flemish method with Italian in¬ spiration, but his art seems to belong to a much earlier period. His serious style is powerful, profound, and mystical. He was the last great German artist. The Reformation, in its hostility to images, turned Germany from the cultivation of the arts, which the long vicissitudes of the Thirty Years’ War also forcibly interrupted. Painting in Germany commenced and ended with Albert Diirer and Holbein, t Ceramics : Bernard Palissy .—Art tended to embellish every¬ thing. Princes, nobles, and burghers prided themselves on a worthy use of their wealth ; elegant furniture of Henry II.’s time, tapestries worked from designs furnished by the great painters were used to ornament the sumptuous dwellings which the archi¬ tects built with so much taste and skill and the sculptors decorated so carefully. The old forgotten art of ceramics now revived. From the fifteenth century, Luca della Robbia, sculptor and painter, was seized with the idea of taking his earthen models and of enveloping them in a vitrified unbreakable coating. His process was * Lucas Kranach (1472—1553). Berlin possesses a rich collection of Kranach’s works. But his types of women are heavy and German. There is nothing in them resembling the Italian pictures. t Albert Diirer, Albrecht Diirer (1471—1528). His works are in the Museum at Madrid, a “Calvary,” some “Allegories,” a “Portrait of the Painter;” at Munich, seventeen pictures, comprising a “ Descent from the Cross,” a “ Nativity,” the “ Four Temperaments ” or the “ Four Evange¬ lists;” at Vienna, portraits, “Madonnas,” and a “Trinity,” a large mystical work. 236 the history of civilization . imitated, and the Italian majolicas, attributed to the Renaissance were eagerly competed for. Francis of Medici himself owned work¬ shops and furnaces; he ranked amongst the artists. Tuscany, the Marches, and Yenetia, became covered with factories, from whence issued an infinite number of varied and elegantly shaped vases. Italian artists went to France, Amboise, Lyons, Nantes, and Croisie, but Bernard Palissy,* at first a common glazier, soon Jug by Bernard Palissy. resolved to do better, to abandon the use of painting on the sur¬ face, and to discover enamel through fusion. Pursuing his idea with rare pertinacity, sacrificing his modest resources, burning even his furniture and the floors of his house to feed his furnace, some¬ times weary but still unconquered, Bernard Palissy was one of those men who cannot be too highly honoured, for he was one of those * Bernard Palissy, bom at Capelle-Biron, near Agen (1510 ?—1590). FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURY RENAISSANCE. 237 extraordinary inventors who triumph over difficulties, and en¬ rich the world with new sources of wealth and with masterpieces of art; in fact, Bernard Palissy succeeded in making enamel, in encasing in unalterable colours, figures of animals or human faces upon his vases, dishes, and cups. Modern races had regained all that the ancients had acquired, they now possessed ceramics as well as sculpture, painting, and architecture. Jfusic .—We cannot judge the music of the ancients, but mo¬ dern times are supreme in this art, or rather this language of the soul. The instruments of the Middle Ages, the rebecq, monochord, and spinet, were perfected : the rebecq became the violin. An Antwerp carpenter, Hans Buckers, improved the key¬ board by giving it four octaves. From that time chants with different parts could be arranged for the Masses, and religious music found a voice through Palestrina (1529—1594), several of whose chants are still used in churches. Religious music opened the way to secular music, which in the following centuries so successfully translated the sentiments of the heart. Such progress in the arts denotes the great power that the human mind acquired in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; men learned to see and to aspire after the beautiful, a sublime pleasure which never wearies but which raises man above the common passions of daily life. CHAPTER X. THE REFORMATION. Summary: The Religious Reformation,its Causes—Luther (1483—1546); Cha¬ racter of his Reformation—The Reformation in the Northern Countries— The Reformation in England—The Reformation in Switzerland; Zwingle ; Calvin (1509—1564)—The Principles and Consequences of Calvinism — Restoration of Catholicism; Religious Wars—Division of Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism—Influence of the Protestant Reformation upon Politics, and upon the Economic and Intellectual Movement. The Religious Reformation , its Causes .—The careful study of the intellectual and artistic movement of the sixteenth century furnishes us with the explanation of the religious revolution which took place at the same date. The mental freedom, the greater bold¬ ness of reasoning, the multiplicity of writers and thinkers, reopened the religious discussions that had been stifled by the harshness of governments and of the Inquisition. Literary paganism had also weakened the old beliefs, and the scepticism of the ancient philo¬ sophers could not fail to shake the faith that had hitherto been so firm. The religious revolution had the inevitable result of literary and even of artistic revolution. Art, as we have seen, had become paganised in the churches and in the pontifical court. Artists when interpreting the finest scenes of the Bible or Gospel history no longer sought for the inner meaning, they devoted all their attention to form, costume, the harmony of the groups, composition and colouring. At the time when architects, aided by ideas gathered from pagan temples, were erecting the largest church in the world, the construction of this very church of St. Peter cost the Holy See one-half of its empire, lost through the scandals that the necessity for providing the immense sums required for the building had provoked. THE REFORMATION. 239 But these scandals were not altogether new. The vast territorial wealth of the Church had led to abuses, and had seriously changed her evangelical character. The great schism of the West, the conflicts between rival Popes anathematising each other, and the disputes between the Popes and the Councils of Constance (1414) and Basle (1431), had considerably weakened the authority of the Court of Borne, and their deplorable effects had survived the re-establishment of unity. The division of the Church had commenced in Germany with the wars of the Hussites, and Germany was already on the verge of separation from the Catholic Church. The great dispute between the Papacy and the Empire which had troubled that country for so long had roused a strong hatred against Borne, to whom every misfortune was attributed. The clergy too were richer there than in any other country and eccle¬ siastical feudalism, more powerful and more oppressive than that of the laity, was frequently in collision with the feudal lords. Ger¬ many, particularly in the North, had become impatient under the dominion of its prince-bishops, and was the first country in which the Beformation preached by Luther could find an echo. Luther (1483—1546); Character of his Reformation .—The Augustinian monk Luther, a Professor of the University of Wittem- berg, who so deeply moved both Germany end the world, first conceived his reformation after a visit to Borne, where his sincere piety had been scandalised by the scenes which he witnessed in the city which he had deemed so holy. He felt the necessity of re¬ calling the Church to Evangelical simplicity and purity. Luther, unlike the heretics who preceded him, had at first no inten¬ tion of attacking dogma. He did not lose himself in theological discussions which passed over the people’s heads. Vehemently denouncing the sale of indulgences, the abuses and wealth of the clergy, he at once aroused the enthusiasm of princes and people ; of the people who found the echo of their own sentiments in his ardent words ; of the princes, who regarded with covetous¬ ness the possessions of the clergy. Luther did not appear as an innovator, but as a reformer (1517—1520). He did not come 240 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. as lie averred, to change religion, but to restore it, and instead of avowing all his proposals at once, he only gradually unfolded them; first denying indulgences, then the worship of saints, appealing from the badly-informed Pope to the well-informed Pope, and finally rejecting the Papal authority to claim a trial by a council; he seemed during the greater part of his life to leave a door open for discussion and reconciliation, only increasing in boldness as he created a solid bulwark of supporters, and never really formulating his doctrine until the diet of Augsburg, in 1530, through his dis¬ ciple Melanchthon. It was to these tactics and to the character of his preaching, which really never altered the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, that Luther owed his escape from the same fate that John Huss had suffered a few years before. At first Luther’s Reformation appeared to be a stricter applica¬ tion of the acknowledged rules of Christianity. Its real meaning was not understood until later on. Luther denying the saving effi¬ cacy of works, observances, and ceremonies, and interpreting St. Augustine’s doctrine upon grace according to his own impressions, preached the justification by faith alone, by faith the gift of the divine grace. Without carrying, as others have done since, this prin¬ ciple to its extreme limits, so dangerous to the doctrine of free will, Luther reduced the number of sacraments to four, and en¬ deavoured to curtail the pomp and magnificence of Catholic worship. He also, whilst retaining the sacrament of orders, destroyed the sacerdotal caste by the marriage of the priests, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy by severing it from its head, the Pope. He divided the Church into as many parts as there are nations and replaced it under the rule of princes, who embraced the Lutheran Reformation with extreme ardour, because it added to their wealth and power. Luther, then, although he riveted the Church to the State, yet owed his popularity to his teaching of liberty. Rejecting the exclusive authority of the Church he laid the Bible and the gospel open to each man’s private interpretation ; it was free examination. On one side Luther bound the Christian to his faith ; on the other he opened the door to discussion, and consequently to doubt and denial. Luther himself, forced to contend with the THE REFORMATION. 241 Anabaptists, who applied the Bible in a brutal and sanguinary sense, saw during his lifetime some of the effects of this contra¬ diction full of grave consequences for his reformation, which, through free examination, was before long considered insufficient and erroneous. Luther’s doctrines, however, spread rapidly in Germany, par¬ ticularly in the North; the protection extended to the Lutherans by the powerful Electors, who were Lutherans themselves, the bait offered by the vast domains now usurped by the nobles and secu¬ larised even by the bishops and abbots, who gladly seized the opportunity of converting the estates of the Church into personal properties, the hesitation of Charles V., then embarrassed by his long struggle against Francis I. and against the Turks, all com¬ bined to secure the triumph of the Reformation in Germany after the peace of Augsburg (1555), and from that time new causes of animosity were added to political rivalries. The Reformation in the Northern Countries .—The Lutheran Reformation, so favourable to the development of monarchical power, was established by the kings, Gustavus Vasa, in Sweden (1524—1529), and Frederick of Holstein in Denmark (1530). In Sweden it appeared rather as a schism and a reaction against the Roman domination, for Gustavus Vasa respected the ancient hierarchy, which, as soon as it had acknowledged his supremacy, no longer inconvenienced him, and he also retained a great part of the liturgy so as not to disturb the habits of the people. The doctrine was Lutheran, but the ritual, although simplified, still recalled the Catholic worship. The Reformation became more radical in Denmark under Chris¬ tian III. (1537), for he replaced the bishops by superintendents, who could not at first acquire the moral and political influence wielded by the former heads of the Church. The Reformation in England .—In England Henry VIII., at first (1521) surnamed the Defender of the Faith, because he refuted the Lutheran doctrines, separated himself from the Catholic Church (1534) and proclaimed himself the head of the Anglican Church. He profited by the aversion which the people had conceived towards R 242 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION ,. the Papacy, which had been too exacting in its demands for Peter’s Pence, and too ambitious in its pretensions of exercising real sove¬ reignty over the English kings. Still, Henry VIII. only succeeded in establishing his religious and political despotism through the terror excited by his violence. But the Lutheran doctrines, although attacked as well as the Catholic dogmas by a king who separated from the Church without being willing to own himself a Protestant, had made great progress, and under Edward VI. and Elizabeth, they largely influenced the reorganization of the Anglican Church. Protestant in its doctrines and in the simplicity of its ritual, this Church, like the Swedish, was hierarchised, governed by bishops, retaining in its liturgy many of the prayers used in the Catholic liturgy. In England more than anywhere else, the Church became united to the State, and suffered from the absolute rule first of the Tudors, then of the Stuarts. The Reformation in Switzerland : Zwingle ; Calvin (1509—1564). Principles and Consequences of Calvinism. —A priest of Zurich, Zwingle, had preceded Luther in preaching the reformed gospel (1484—1531). He endeavoured to reconcile his doctrines with those of the German reformer, but Luther, proud of his success, refused to recognise the more liberal principles of Zwingle, who had modelled his Church upon the republican organization of the Swiss cantons. The Frenchman Calvin, a refugee in Geneva, went even further than Zwingle, and propounded, with a logic characteristic of his country, the extreme conclusions of the Lutheran doctrines. He carried the doctrine of free grace and justification by faith to the belief in predestination, and that of free examination to the inde¬ pendent interpretation of the Scriptures by each individual, conse¬ quently destroying all religious authority. He again simplified the creed and the ritual, rejected the sacraments retained by Luther, denying his doctrine of the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist, and thus reduced the Christian worship to pious meetings under the presidency of pastors, who, though venerable, had probably never received any particular consecration. Calvin’s religion, wholly subjective, entirely spiritual, was the last THE REFORMATION, 2 43 expression of the reaction against the tendency of Christianity in the Middle Ages to materialise the faith, and to fall back into the errors which formerly disfigured the heathen creeds. The simple organization of his Church seemed also a reaction against the social hierarchy established in Europe, and his equalising doctrines pleased the free Swiss populations, the commercial burgher cities of Holland, a part of the bourgeoisie and nobil^ of France, im¬ patiently resenting the feudal yoke, and, lastly, the patriarchal clans of Scotland ; they seemed the first step towards the re-estab¬ lishment of that social equality, which afterwards asserted itself even in Catholic countries. The whole tone of Calvin’s reforma¬ tion was derived from a spirit of equality and republicanism. Free examination applied to religious dogmas could not fail to be also applied to political theories, until then absolute as dogmas. The Calvinist reformation foreshadowed the philosophical spirit of the eighteenth century, which inspired the leaders of the French revolution. Yet Calvin, who exerted himself to preserve the strict unity of his doctrines, could not prevent his principles from tending to an infinite multiplication of Protestant sects. His followers were always subdividing, and no Church ever broke up into so many Churches, that varied according to the character of the people, and even of the individual. Still less did he imagine that the rule he laid down to strengthen the faith, could on the contrary seriously weaken it. In Geneva and France free examination has resulted in scepti¬ cism, rationalism, and even atheism, a result that would have caused terrible grief to this austere, rigid preacher, who made Geneva a kind of convent, could he have foreseen in the future the progress of materialistic doctrines, that are as hostile to the Protestant as they are to the Catholic faith. Restoration of Catholicism ; Religious Wars .—Vanquished at first, Catholicism retreated ; but it soon regained confidence, defined its dogmas at the Council of Trent (1545—1563), and feeling its need of renewed study and austerity, it closed round its chief, whose power has since been unquestioned. At the same time a new religious order was created to confront 244 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the Protestant doctrines, an order mingling with the world, seeking to control education, and later on to direct sovereigns, absolutel} 7 subject to the wishes of the Pope and opposing to the spirit of independence in Europe the example of implicit obedience. This was the Jesuit order, which, by the zeal of its missionaries and the learning of its members, rendered the greatest services to the Church, and then ambitiously endeavoured to seize the direction of the world. Catholicism then rallied. Unfortunately, instead of content¬ ing itself with moral weapons it attacked heresy with material force. And then commenced the great drama of the religious wars, the most terrible of all wars. The fire broke out (1565) in the Spanish provinces of the Low Countries, where the sovereign, Philip II., endeavoured to arrest the spread of heresy by severe measures. He made himself the champion of Catholicism, and contended against the Reformation in England by conspiracies, in France by the sword of the Guises, in the Low Countries by the Duke of Alva’s cruelty and the execu¬ tioner’s axe. Towards the year 1572 Catholicism appeared to triumph. Mary Stuart, although a prisoner, made Elizabeth tremble. The Duke of Alva trampled on the terrified Flemings at Antwerp. The horrible massacre of Saint Bartholomew is a lasting stain upon French Catholicism. Then the scene suddenly changed. A young republic, beggared yet undaunted, sprang from the inundated plains of Holland, and at Brielle raised the standard of Protestantism. England, pacified by the execution of the unfortunate Mary Stuart (1587), was saved from a Spanish invasion by the dispersion of the Armada (1588), and became the bulwark of the Reformation. In France the defeated League (1576—1598) fell at the feet of Henry IV., whose victory secured, though, alas ! for too short a time, the prevalence of toleration. Division of Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism. —Re¬ ligious unity was definitely shattered, and Europe found herself completely divided between the two forces of Christianity. Roman Catholicism retained the southern countries, Spain and THE REFORMATION. 245 Italy, and the central kingdoms of Austria and France, where the old faith was too deeply rooted to be moved by the attacks made upon it; Protestantism retained England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Northern Germany. An austere religion, appealing more to the reason than to the imagination, with less of ritual and ceremony, without pictures or images, was doubtless more in harmony with the populations that, as a rule, inhabited cold barren plains and mountains, populations ac¬ customed to calculate and to reflect, rather than to feel and admire; active, indefatigable, not caring to lose time in festivals, and in the evenings finding in the perusal of the Bible a new charm and interest added to the domestic life that is so dear to them. Influence of the Reformation upon Politics and upon the Economic and Intellectual Movement. —The Protestant Reformation consider¬ ably changed the political situation and the national alliances. It aroused a national spirit in the Low Countries, and added the republic of the Seven United Provinces to the list of States, a re¬ public that through its maritime power was destined to fill an im¬ portant position. Religious animosities added bitterness to rival politics and augmented the great troubles of the seventeenth cen¬ tury. The Protestant powers leagued together to counterbalance the Catholic powers, and thenceforth all possibility of European political unity was ended, the idea even becoming absolutely chimerical after religious unity was hopelessly destroyed. The economic revolution received a new impulsion from Protestantism. The increase in the number of working days, the necessity that forced the reformers, excluded from all offices and lrom all the Liberal professions, to devote themselves to industry and commerce, added greatly to the number of workers in Catholic countri s. The equalising spirit of the Calvinistic countries also tended in a great measure to weaken the nobility and to raise the industrial and commercial classes, who prided themselves on the wealth they had acquired by their labour. Protestantism also quickened intellectual production and scien¬ tific researches, now freed from all restraints. Holland and Switzer¬ land became the favourite countries for the refuge of persecuted 2^6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. authors. Amsterdam and Geneva printed the proscribed books. The philosophical spirit developed with a boldness until then un¬ known. But the Reformation was not at first favourable to art, for it prohibited religious pictures. German art, which had scarcely ap¬ peared, was suddenly arrested; English art only awakened two centuries later, and the empire of Italian and Flemish art was still undisputed. We may say that Dutch art rivalled the art of the Belgian Catholic provinces, as we shall see later on, but that was the result of the more realistic than ideal genius of the northern artists. If we seek for the real influence of Protestantism we shall find it in the practical, and in a measure positive, spirit of this particular form of the Christian religion. It appealed less exclusively to imagi¬ nation and sentiment. It was cold, simple, not antagonistic to asceticism, as shown by Puritanism, but hostile to the religious Orders separated from the world; it disturbed the ordinary condi¬ tions of civil life as little as possible, imposed less observances and severities ; it rarely proscribed, excepting for Sunday, which was strictly respected, any working days, and therefore accommodated itself better to the ever increasing labour which the peoples’ aspirations for a more comfortable life inevitably produced. Pro¬ testant countries were in advance of all others in this desire for comfort combined with the cultivation of a simplicity which tended to abolish the differences of customs between the various classes. Above all, they contributed to form the modern spirit, turned towards the amelioration of the earthly life even in Catholic countries, which became less disdainful of material advantages. By suppressing the religious corporations and sacerdotalism they developed the civil spirit, which has ended by dominating even the countries where the clergy have retained their influence. But the sixteenth century is only a starting point, and we must follow through succeeding ages the quadruple evolution that has brought society to contemporary civilization. CHAPTER XT. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-RELIGION-POLITICS-TRADE AND FINANCE. Summary : Protestantism and Catholicism in the Seventeenth Century— Thirty Years’ War in Germany—The Presbyterians and Puritans in England; the Revolutions of 1640 and 1688—Religious Wars in France under Louis XIII., the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes under Louis XIY.—Influence of the Religious Revolution on Society—Cha¬ racter of Christianity in the Seventeenth Century—Religious Orders for Women; Sisters of Charity; Saint Vincent de Paul—Political Europe in the Seventeenth Century; the Great Wars; Progress of Military Art —The European Equilibrium; the Treaty of Westphalia (1648); Dip¬ lomacy—Preponderance of France ; the Wars of Louis XIV.—Internal Policy of the Kingdoms; Triumph of Absolute Monarchy in France— The Monarchy of Louis XIV.—The Central Power; Provincial Ad¬ ministration— Police, the Army, Justice, Finance—The Church— The Monarch and Economic Interests —Results and Vices of Absolute Monarchy in France—Absolute Monarchy in Spain—Monarchy in the various States of Europe—The Stuarts in England—The Revolutions of 1640 and of 1688 — The Declaration of Rights ; the Constitutional Monarchy—The Economic Movement—Maritime and Colonial Empire of Holland—England, her First Colonies ; the Navigation Act—Economic Progress of France; Sully. Richelieu—Colbert’s Services; Development of French Industry—Colbert’s Theories, the Protective System ; the System of Balance—Internal Commerce—Naval and Mercantile Fleets —Commercial Companies, Colonies. Protestantism and Catholicism in the Seventeenth Century; the Thirty Years' War in Germany. —The war between Catholicism and Protestantism, which had filled nearly the whole of the six¬ teenth century, was prolonged into the seventeenth. During thirty years (1618—1648), Germany was troubled by a bitter conflict between the Protestant States in the North and the Catholic States in the South, who grouped themselves round the power¬ ful house of Austria. The latter, endeavouring to realise both religious and political unity, successively overthrew the Elector 248 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Palatine (1618 —1625), and the King of Denmark (1625 —1629), both protectors of the Reformers. For a moment fortune wavered between the Austrians and the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adol¬ phus, who, in 1630, brilliantly defended the Protestant cause, but who fell two years later at the moment of victory at Lutzen (1632), leaving the Northern Germans and the Swedes at the mercy of the Emperor Ferdinand II., the victor at Nordlingen (1634). A French Cardinal, a prince of the Church, Richelieu, then undertook (a sign of the times and of the new spirit awakening) the defence of the German Protestants, and separating, with a clear-sightedness little common at that date, religion from politics, he unhesitatingly raised the sword fallen from the hands of Gustavus Adolphus and secured, by the intervention of Catholic France, that freedom for Protestants in Germany which he deemed essential to the in¬ terests of his country. Another Cardinal, Mazarin, continued his able and farseeing policy, and directed the negotiations for the peace of Westphalia, 1648, which guaranteed the religious independence of the Protestant princes as well as their political position. Germany could now enjoy toleration, although incomplete, for only one religion was admitted into each State, yet still a great advance towards the pacification of men’s minds by full liberty of conscience. The Presbyterians and Puritans in England; the Revolutions of 1640 and of 1688.—This pacification cost England more than fifty yearfi of trouble. At first united against the Catholics, who were proscribed after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 with methodical and merciless severity, the English Protestants afterwards divided. The Presbyterians, disciples of Calvin, and the Puritans, his ex¬ aggerated imitators, revolted against the royal and Anglican yoke. Unskilful despots, the Stuarts provoked a civil war (1640) in which they were worsted, and which ended by the execution of Charles I. (1649) and the dictatorship of a Puritan, Oliver Cromwell. Restored to the throne, the Stuarts had not yet pro¬ fited by their terrible lesson; Charles II. and James II. * recommenced religious persecutions, and the latter even endea- * The Stuarts: JamesI. (1603—1625); Charles I. 1625 -1649); CharlesII. 1660—1685); James II. (1685—1688). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ,. 249 voured to reinstate Roman Catholicism in a country which hnd freed itself from it for more than a century. He fell in 1688, and England, under her new King, William of Orange, preserved her Protestant traditions by extending toleration and restoring peace amongst the dissentient sects by liberty of conscience. Religious Wars in France under Louis XIII., the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes under Louis XIV. —The glory of promoting this pacification in France belonged to Henry IV., who promul¬ gated the admirable Edict of Nantes (1598). But his policy, wise as it was generous, was abandoned by his widow Marie de Medici, who provoked a new civil war. The Protestants then conceived the idea of forming as it were a Calvinist France in the heart of Catholic France. Richelieu destroyed these hopes before they were definitely planned, and with the same energy that he had displayed in the conduct of foreign affairs, he consolidated the peace of the country by the peace of Alais (1629); without touch¬ ing the stipulations of the Edict of Nantes relative to the Pro¬ testant worship, he re-established political unity without restrain¬ ing religious liberty, and calmed excited feelings without wounding consciences. Unfortunately Louis XIV., in the second half of the seventeenth century, led away by the passion for unity and absolute rule, offended both men’s consciences and sentiments by the Revo¬ cation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). This persecution, although applauded by society at that epoch, depopulated one quarter of the kingdom, arrested the progress of French industry, which had been almost entirely in the hands of the Protestants, transferred French manufactures to foreign States, making them flourish at the ex¬ pense of France, and to use Saint-Simon’s energetic expressions, “presented the spectacle of a proscribed people, stripped, fugitive, wandering ; without a crime, seeking a refuge from their native land.” Influence of the Religious Revolution upon Society ; Character of Christianity in the Seventeenth Century. —But the violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had led, amongst Protestant as well as among Catholics, to a reaction, which tended to the greater influence of Christianity. The Protestants, divided as they were, 250 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. at least agreed upon the necessity for personal devotion, for living faith, for obedience to the maxims of the Bible and the Gospel. Although less visible in its external demonstrations, religious sentiment was as deeply imprinted amongst the Puritans as amongst the Anglicans ; amongst the Calvinists as strongly as amongst the Lutherans. Society in England, Germany, Holland and Switzer¬ land even assumed a religious tone, and atfected a severity which has not yet disappeared, although greatly softened in our own days. Assiduous attendance at church, the taste for the perusal of the Bible, the passion for theological and moral discussions, the, at all events outward, rigidity of manners, the strict observance of the Sabbath rest, imposed by public opinion quite as much as by the civil authorities, distinguish Protestant countries, where religion concentrated in the soul assumes an importance that heightens the earnestness and gravity of the populations of the north. Protestantism has imprinted its seal upon the English and the Dutch, the Swiss and the Germans. It has become a national cha¬ racteristic, it is part of true patriotism, and rules society, which, in these nations more than others, glories in the name of Christian. Catholicism in the countries where it still predominated devoted itself, without renouncing its external pomp, to returning to a more serious practice of the Christian virtues. New religious orders, founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, endeavoured— some, like the Capuchins and the Feuillants—to re-establish the severe rules of the old mendicant orders ; others—like the Con¬ gregation of the Oratory and the Reformed Benedictines of Saint Maur—to revive learning at the same time as piety amongst the clergy. Saint Vincent de Paul, in 1632, founded the Congregation of Lazarists, intended for the education of missionaries ; wdiilst the Congregation of Saint Sulpice devoted itself to the special instruc¬ tion of the clergy and the creation of seminaries for their education. The Trappists, under the direction of Ranee, were vowed to agricultural labour and to absolute silence. The celebrated abbey of Port Royal des Champs, near Paris, became a luminous centre of erudition; it carried austerity to a point which, by the doctrines it had borrowed from Jansenius, nearly approached the THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 25 1 Calvinistic severity, and won for it the hostility of the Jesuit order, which—more worldly, more disposed to soften the rules of Chris¬ tianity—drew upon itself Pascal’s biting and eloquent reply, the Provincial Letters. Belgians Orders for Women: Sisters of Charity; Saint Vincent de Paul .—Women particularly thronged the new orders founded for them, such as the Visitation, founded by Saint Francis de Sales and Madame de Chantal; the Ursulines, which followed the rule of Saint Augustine; the Carmelites, which adopted the reform accomplished in Spain during the sixteenth century by Santa Theresa, vowed to the strictest seclusion and to an extraordinary asceticism. But Saint Vincent de Paul, the apostle of charity, exercised the greatest influence over women. With moderate resources but infi¬ nite zeal, Vincent de Paul, in 1617, founded at Chatillon-les-Dombes (Ain), the first Confraternity of Servants and Nurses for the Poor ; then, in 1634, the Confraternity of Daughters or Sisters of Charity ; and lastly, in 1688, the admirable work of Foundling Hospitals, by which he rescued so many children from death or from crime. Preaching by example and devotion, this humble peasant of the Landes, who, protected by the noblest families, refused all honours for himself, inspired the Sisters, who consecrated themselves to the care of children and invalids, with his own self-abnegation, and by his heroism in the misfortunes of France well deserved the surname of Grand Almoner of France, the Steward of Providence. The Sisters of Charity still follow his precepts and practise his virtues, exhibiting their patience and gentleness to modern society. Neither the Greek nor the Roman world ever knew the gentle face of a Sister of Charity sacrificing her life in alleviating human misery, never shrinking from death, but on the contrary making death itself recede before her admirable, cheerful courage. Political Europe in the Seventeenth Century: the Great Wars; Progress of Military Art .—But although the seventeenth century was remarkable for a spirit of charity, which contrasted with the still prevalent intolerance, it effected no improvement in the relations THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 2 52 between the nations. Henry IV., after healing the wounds of civil war in France, had dreamed of creating a European confederation. He perished in 1610, at the moment when he hoped to realise his plan, which was too reasonable and too generous to be even yet accomplished. Scarcely had this patriotic and humanitarian king disappeared, when the Thirty Years’ War broke out, a result of the religious quarrels of the sixteenth century, and of the struggle for pre-eminence always carried on between Germany and the House of Austria. It was really a European war, for it reddened Europe with blood from Hungary to the Baltic Sea, from the North Sea to the Danube, and from the Rhine to the Alps and Pyrenees. It witnessed the formation of great armies, and the exploits of a number of generals who rivalled each other in skill and courage: King Gustavus Adolphus and his followers, Bernard de Weimar, Banner, Torstenson, and Wrangel ; his adversaries, Wallen¬ stein, Tilly, Gallas, Piccolomini, Jean de Werth, and Merci, and the French Captains Turenne, Conde, Fabert, Guebriant, Rantzau, &c. Gustavus Adolphus revived strategy and tactics. His bold and sudden marches, the way in which he marshalled his troops on an improved system whilst extending his lines, the use he made of his cavalry, which then formed the greater part of the armies, the topographical knowledge with which he placed his artillery, gave birth to military art. His reforms were adopted everywhere. The heavy horse soldiery was reformed and lances taken away ; it was separated from the arquebusiers, who formerly mingled in its ranks and who became dragoons. Nearly all body armour was abandoned and the men retained only their open helmets and breastplates; they then became cuirassiers. The cavalry, posted on the wings, reconnoitred the front and scoured the country ; it had found its true mission. The old bands of in¬ fantry were divided into regiments, the arquebus was replaced by the musket, the foot soldiers were relieved of the iron corslet, which hindered their march. The close order of four ranks deep was still retained, but it was a substantial improvement upon the okl irregular masses that were so difficult to move. Discipline THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 253 was established and uniforms were introduced. Louvois, the Secretary of State in the wars of Louis XIV., organized the French army, diminished without suppressing the pikemen, formed files of soldiers to throw grenades—grenadiers—substituted the rifle for the musket, and the rifle, completed by the bayonet, became the most terrible weapon of modern times. He ordered that the men should walk in step, and forced the noble officers to serve before commanding, to study before directing. He fur¬ nished Louis XIY. with admirable armies, numbering four hundred thousand men, provided with stores of provisions, ammunition, clothes, and all the necessary baggage for such large numbers. At the same time sieges became scientific. Fabert invented parallel trenches at the siege of Stenay (1654), and Yauban and Cohorn perfected the art of attack and defence of cities and posi¬ tions. The old Roman and feudal walls became useless, since balls could form breaches in them and bombs could be dropped even into the city. Yauban lowered the fortifications, making them level with the ground, and relied for protection upon a simple earthen wall preceded by a moat and interrupted by so many angles and zigzags that it was impossible to approach it from the front; the wall sheltered powerful batteries which kept the assailants at a distance ; citadels or forts, often designed in the form of stars, also defended important places. The science of military engineering was created. The European Equilibrium; the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ; Diplomacy .—The different kingdoms of Europe, occupied with the increase of their military strength, endeavoured to maintain equilibrium and to prevent any nation from imposing its rule upon the others. The Thirty Years’ War ended in the peace of West¬ phalia (1648), which for the first time established a kind of balance of power between the various kingdoms of Europe. The House of Austria found itself obliged to renounce its pretensions to universal monarchy; in the North of Germany, Brandenburg and the Pro¬ testant States acted as a counterpoise. The Protestant Powers, Sweden and Denmark, Holland and Switzerland, entered the Euro¬ pean alliance. Diplomacy, which exerts itself to prevent or to limit wars, found 254 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . its influence increasing through the growth of military art, for as the means of destruction become more rapid and the weapons more terrible, there is greater hesitation before using them. The Con¬ gress of Munster, in Westphalia, was the first European congress where the delegates of the Powers devoted themselves to regulating the relations between nations, to arranging differences, to contract¬ ing alliances, and to fixing the peoples’ rights, and from that time the horrors of war have somewhat diminished. Preponderance of France; the Wars of Louis XIV. —France, al¬ though she had contributed so much to the establishment of the European equilibrium, was not long before she disturbed it under Louis XIY. If this prince had confined his ambition to claiming the natural frontiers of Gaul it might not, even though it aroused jealousy, have provoked a coalition of Europe against him. But the invasion of Holland (1672) and later on, in 1689, the haughty pre¬ tension to force England to receive back a sovereign she had al¬ ready deposed, the tendency of Louis XIY. to resume the role of Philip II., and lastly his ambitious desire to unite Spain to France, irritated Europe, and all the Powers revolted against a preponder¬ ance too openly asserted. France became wearied by the inces¬ sant coalitions formed against her, always beaten, yet always renewed —the triple alliance of 1668, the Augsburg League (1686 and 1688), the great coalition of the Hague (1701). The French power, so formidable on land and sea, crushed by the victories of Marlborough and Eugene, was falling to pieces. Louis XIY. before dying saw the work of the Congress of Westphalia ruined by the Congress of Utrecht of 1718, and the European equilibrium rearranged to his disadvantage. Internal Policy of the Kingdoms ; Triumph of Absolute Monarchy in France. —France owed to her unity the preponderance that she gained and which she had compromised in the course of the seven¬ teenth century. Henry IY. had strengthened the absolute power by making it popular. Cardinal Richelieu rendered it terrible. Feared by the nobility, who bowed before his priestly rank, he had commenced his work of centralization by the institution of Intendants (1635). These magistrates, already ancient but ob- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 255 scure, acquired a formidable ascendency that diminished or rather ruined the authority of the governors of the provinces by gradually concentrating all the civil powers in their own hands. After Richelieu’s death a reaction broke out, and the Intendants disap¬ peared for a time. Parliament and the prince united against Maza- rin, but the frivolous war of the Fronde proved the impotence of the nobility and magistracy, who bent humbly before the sceptre of Louis XIV. The Monarchy of Louis XIV .—Louis XIV. revived imperial maxims. He was the law. He personified the country. “ L’Etat, c’est moi.” The Roman doctrine which resumed in one man millions of men, had never been proclaimed with more frankness or arrogance. Louis XIV. also adopted the principle of feudal royalty, he declared himself the owner of the kingdom. Suzerain of all the nobles and of the nobles’ serfs, he possessed the whole of France, for gradually the royal dominions had extended all over the country. Lastly, and above all else, Louis XIV. realised the type of Christian royalty. He considered himself the representative of God. Like Charle¬ magne, with greater refinement of manners and customs, he united in himself the Christian king, Roman emperor, and German chief. The State found itself identified with the king ; everything gave way to him. All was done for the king’s service ; justice emanated from the king, judicial authorities were the king’s men ; the troops were the royal army; the money, the royal coinage ; the prison, the king’s prison. The nobles fought for the king’s glory, and the taxes, which crushed the people, were raised for the king’s pleasures and extravagances, although his prodigality was lavished upon unworthy recipients. Louis XIV. never separated the man from the king ; he did not understand what is called private life, and had no scruples about displaying his weaknesses and scandals. 1 he Central Power ; Provincial Administration. A central power was organized, like that of the old Roman empire. Councils or Committees (Superior Councils, Councils of State, Councils for the Provinces and the post, finance, commerce, war and conscience) were called to enlighten the sovereign, not to control him. Secre- 256 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. taries of State (Foreign Affairs, War, the Navy, the King’s House¬ hold) were the instruments, docile even to servility, of the master who could plunge them into the obscurity from whence he had up¬ lifted them. The Chancellor presided over the administration of jus¬ tice ; a permanent officer, no doubt, but still liable to exile and to be replaced in his office if not in his dignity. The General Controller of the Finances, although one of the most important personages, had no more security or independence than the other Secretaries of State. The dignities of Constable and Admiral had been abo¬ lished by Richelieu, as throwing royalty too much into the shade, and the Sovereign was the direct chief of the army, as well as of the navy. In short, the necessity for watching over a vast kingdom and for regulating a number of details which the sove¬ reign wished to direct, had induced the Kings of France to reconstitute, in their own fashion, with many incoherences and traces of the feudal spirit, a central administration, a weakened image of the Imperial administration of the Romans, a rough draft of the Government of modern States. But so faulty were the methods, that they united the tyranny of centralization with the drawbacks of provincial government, without the advantages of either. The State watched, regulated and domineered over every¬ thing. The Police; the Army; Justice; Finance .—General security was served by the army, and by a new, essentially modern, institution, the police. Louis XIV. appointed the first Lieutenant-General of Police in 1667. The work of legislation, commenced under the Valois in the full fury of religious war, and continued by Richelieu, was resumed and completed by the Ordonnance Civile of 1667, and by the Ordonnance Criminelle of 1670, which remained the codes of France until the Revolution. The judicial administration retained still more of the incoherence of the administration of the Middle Ages; the tribunals of the baillages (bailiwick) and the senecliaussees (seneschal’s juris¬ diction) became confused with seignorial justice and ecclesias tical justice; the presidiaux, courts of appeal for the com¬ moners, but first courts for the nobles, had above them the THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 257 Provincial Parliaments, and the Parliament of Paris superior to the rest through the extent of its jurisdiction, the authority of its magistrates and the fact that it admitted no appeal. Added to this, the Parliaments, outside their judicial attributions, intervened in administrative affairs and increased the confusion by their quasi- universal assumptions. The financial administration was not less complicated. High treasurers, intendants of provinces, farmers of taxes, monopolies, privileges, excise, custom houses and duties between neighbour¬ ing districts, made any fair and profitable system of taxation impossible. The iniquity of the mediaeval system of exempting the privileged classes, the nobles and the clergy, from taxation, and making the whole burden fall on the commoners and the labouring classes, became more apparent and more galling as the nobles left the country to reside only at the court. The army was apparently quite modern, formed into regiments and disciplined according to the requirements enforced by the advance of military art. Its recruitment by means of money, the right of ownership possessed by colonels over their regiments, by captains over their companies, and the monopoly of command retained by the nobility, made it a military caste. Nor was it exclusively national, for it included some foreign regiments. The Church .—Louis XIY. made even the Church subservient to his authority. Without being a titular head, like the Pro¬ testant sovereigns of England and Sweden, he yet held the clergy under his control by the nomination to bishoprics, and the gift of ecclesiastical benefices. Jealous even of the papal authority, following the example of St. Louis, he upheld the Gallican Church by the assembly of the clergy and declaration in 1G82, and forced the Church to purchase his protection by strict obedience. The confusion between the civil and religious powers was felt amongst Catholics as well as amongst Protestants. The State sanctioned the Church laws by her own, and Louis XIY. recommenced reli¬ gious persecutions, desiring that in France there should be but one faith, as there was but one king. 7 O Results and Vices of Absolute Monarchy in France. —Louis XIV, S 2 5* THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. like Henry IV., was fortunate in his ministers, especially in Colbert, who did much to soften the mischiefs of absolute power and extravagant taxation by developing the industries and internal commerce and communications of the country. Owing to him no other country possessed such a well-arranged central and provin¬ cial administration, in spite of the many incoherences we now see in it. No other kingdom had such strong political unity, and if the king s agents only thought of the royal power, they were also working to lower the barriers that centuries had raised between the various parts of France, which nature had formed for unity. The monarchy secured tranquillity and order unknown in the Middle Ages, yet indispensable to the development of prosperity. If it had not yet attained unity of legislation, it was preparing for it. It rendered France a great military, maritime, agricul¬ tural, industrial, and commercial nation. It opened to her the seas, and the trade of America, Africa, and India. At the same time the magnificence and elegance of Louis XIV.’s court formed an example that every court endeavoured to imitate. The artificial magnificence of Versailles is the expression of his character and policy, the monument and symbol of his royalty. He created it on a sterile spot. He made the soil, and by immense works he carried water to it. He built a palace, and founded a town. And the palace, with its fine view over the gardens, reproduced the regularity and majesty that charmed the king. The immense avenues, that ended on either side in the marble court and royal chamber, seemed the prolonga¬ tion and the radiation of the master’s glance, which seemed to fall upon everything and everybody. Even the gardens were artificial. Yet his influence formed the style and dominated the taste of courtly Europe for more than a century. Absolute Monarchy in Spain .—Spain had already, during the course of the seventeenth century, displayed the disadvantages of absolute monarchy, exercised with unparalleled harshness and want of in¬ telligence. In one century, from 1598 to 1700, from Philip III. to Philip IV. and Charles II., she had virtually descended all the steps THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 259 of decadence. She had lost her preponderance in Europe, part of her annexed provinces, and her population was weakened by the expulsion of 500,000 Moors and by perpetual emigration to America. Her agriculture was so completely ruined that entire districts had lapsed into solitudes; lastly, she no longer possessed either industry, commerce, a navy, or an army. Political and religious despotism had never ended in more complete degradation of a haughty people or in more frightful misery amongst a people who still owned rich gold and silver mines. This decadence of Spain, contrasting with the prosperity and greatness of France, is one of the saddest and most instructive facts of the history of the seventeenth century. Still the lesson was lost upon France, which, instead of profiting by it, infatuated with monarchical pride, only sought to make Spain a satellite of her own. Monarchy in the various States of Europe. —The monarchy was equally absolute in the Austrian States, where the Emperor, less implicitly obeyed in Germany, found himself free to exercise his authority without control. The Scandinavian States, however, although the royal power had been strengthened by the religious power, had not renounced the old traditional form of national representation. The nobility restrained the monarch, who was forced to hold the formal assemblies of the States, and in spite of his attacks on their privileges and of his efforts to become absolute, he was obliged to respect the old feudal liberty. The Stuarts in England; the Revolutions of 1640 and of 1688.— France, in love with unity and order, turned towards a Roman ideal which ennobled the majesty of Louis XIY. England, less penetrated with Roman ideas, more Germanic by blood, tem¬ perament, and intellect, aroused the older maxims of liberty that had lain dormant under the Tudors, and held up before the eyes of astonished Europe a light which afterwards guided other nations. The Tudors had suspended public liberties without destroying them. They directed the religious reformation with politic tyranny, using but not opposing the authority of their docile parliaments. The Stuarts practised and openly displayed both political and religious tyranny; persecuting the Presbyterians and 26 o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . Puritans in the name of Anglicanism ; haughtily dismissing parlia¬ ments, which in exchange for subsidies demanded satisfaction for their grievances, James I. and Charles I. teased, wearied, irritated, and finally roused the English people, who, menaced in their liberty and their conscience, rebelled against the sovereign. The Long Parliament of 1640 triumphed over the King. Cromwell appeared, strong in his religious convictions, stronger in his military genius ; after many victories in the field he controlled Parliament and con¬ demned the King. The execution of Charles I. (9th of February, 1649) caused profound dismay in monarchical Europe. Cromwell, however, too republican to form a dynasty, and too prudent to impose a form of government on the country which it could not Understand, contented himself with reigning under the title of Pro¬ tector, and left, after his death, the door open to a restoration of the monarchy, which was not long delayed (1649 — 1660). The Stuarts, reinstated, fell back into the faults and infatuation which were apparently traditional in the family, the most tragic example of mis¬ fortunes sought and found. The gay, frivolous Charles II., the pensioner and imitator of Louis XIV., discredited himself so much by the corruption of his court, and so greatly irritated even those members of Parliament who had recalled him, that a fresh revolution seemed imminent. But Charles II. yielded, and the English, in 1679, gained a first advantage by the Habeas Corpus Act, a valu¬ able guarantee of individual liberty. At this date we find England dividing into the two great parties of Whigs (Liberals) and Tories (Conservatives), who by their opposing forces secure the equilibrium and stability of government. Charles II. succeeded in coercing the Whigs, but his brother, James II., in a few years provoked a uni¬ versal uprising. Then, when the Stuarts had already endured so much through the protection which they extended to Anglicanism, which, after all, was a variety of Protestantism, James II. en¬ deavoured to bring England back to Catholicism. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had succeeded in France against a minority. James II. could not hope to triumph over a majority. He at¬ tempted it, and was deposed (1688). At the same time the English recovered their religious and political liberty. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 261 The Declaration of Rights; Constitutional Monarchy ( 1689).— This time they would not risk it again. They forced such condi Westminster Palace, London. 262 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tions upon William of Orange that it may be said of this Prince, at the same time chief of a Republic and of a kingdom, “ that he was stadtliolder in England and King in Holland.The Declaration of Rights, 1689, confirmed the Great Charter, which it amplified. The King could not raise taxes or maintain a permanent army without the consent of Parliament, and the members so greatly diminished the royal prerogatives that the real power passed into their own hands. The Habeas Corpus Act and trial by jury pro¬ tected the citizens from any arbitrary deed. The right of petition became as recognised as religious liberty. The Anglican Church retained her privileges as the Established Church, but every Pro¬ testant sect was free ; Catholicism was the sole exception. How¬ ever definite a constitution may be, it is only valuable through the method in which it is applied, and the admirable theories which Locke advanced in his “ Essay on Government ” would scarcely have sufficed to establish the constitutional government in England in a definite manner but for the spirit with which the Parliaments maintained their rights. William III.,* a Dutchman, could not break through the chains that bound him. He was succeeded by a woman, the good Queen Anne. The English, after her death, invited a German House to ascend the throne, because it offered them a guarantee for fidelity to the Protestant faith, and these Princes, foreigners in their new kingdom, considered themselves fortunate in being delivered from the difficulties of government; they allowed the Whigs and Tories to dispute for the direction of affairs, and the nation governed itself. After the revolution of 1688, England became a kind of aristocratic republic. The division into parties was not made according to class ; it did not take place in horizontal lines, if we may use the expression, as it afterwards did in France, but in vertical lines ; that is to say, each of the two great parties is composed in nearly equal proportions of nobles and commoners. The aristocracy, like the people, was divided between the Whigs and the Tories, and whtn one or the * William III, first constitutional king (1689—1702); Anne Stuart (1702 —1714); house of Brunswi-k-Hanover, George I. (1714 —1727); George II. (1727—1760); George 111. (1760—1820), &c. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 263 other was in power, through the decision of the election, it had its representatives in the government as well as in popular support. This mechanism, complicated yet simple, produced harmony between authority and liberty, and its results, fertile in the greatness and prosperity of England, could not fail to attract the attention of the philosophers and statesmen of Europe. England has instructed European powers in political liberty. The English Revolution, national and local, exclusively political and religious, had in no way modified the social constitution. It did not directly affect the condition of the separate classes of society, nor alter the tenure of property. Owing to the wisely progressive spirit of the Tory lords, the nobility retained its terri¬ torial power, which it preserved by continuing the right of primo¬ geniture. No country has shown more anxiety to preserve its traditions, or more respect for the past. England had no need to destroy the society of the Middle Ages, because she was free from the worst abuses of those ages. Just as she transformed the old buildings by adding to them whatever was required for comfort or luxury in modern times, she continued the traditions of political liberty which she had won and preserved through the Middle Ages. Feudal through custom and the hierarchy of classes, modern in her principles of government, she is well represented materially by the immense building where Parliament meets. Although rebuilt in 1840-52, the Houses of Parliament, placed near to Westminster Abbey, have been designed in the Gothic flamboyant style; they are surmounted by a veritable forest of gables, battle¬ ments, buttresses, and turrets, which recall the Middle Ages to an assembly imbued with new maxims, and where the boldest discussions between the representatives of a free people are publicly held. The Economic Movement; Maritime and Colonial Empire of Holland .—The seventeenth century continued and extended the movement which urged European nations towards navigation, in¬ dustry, and commerce. But the chief actors had changed. The Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, by attaching the Por- 264 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . tuguese colonies to a monarchy in decadence, led to their ruin. Spain, exhausted by the ambition of Philip II. and the insensate despotism of his successors, in spite of its vast colonial empire, through bad administration had become, from the most influential, one of the weakest powers in Europe. The Dutch replaced the Spaniards and Portuguese upon the seas. The war for liberty had stimulated their energy ; the narrow limits of their country, and the small resources offered by their low marshy lands, compelled them to venture upon the seas, in search of richer and more fertile countries. Restricted from buying the products of India from Lisbon, they resolved to go to India themselves. England had founded her East India Com¬ pany in 1600, and in 1602 the Dutch East India Company was founded. The Dutch replaced the Portuguese in the markets of Hindustan, settled at Ceylon, took possession of the Moluccas, then of the magnificent islands of Sunda, Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Amboyna, and Timor. In the island of Java, they founded a city (1619) to which they proudly gave their old historical name Batavia, the city of the Batavians. From 1609 they traded with Japan, and to secure the road did not neglect the necessary settlements on the coasts of Africa, which led to the formation of the West India Company (1621). This company also traded with America. The Dutch had occupied several points on the Western coast of North America, and founded (1614) New Amsterdam on the site now occupied by New York. In the seventeenth century, they possessed a merchant fleet which surpassed all the combined fleets of other countries. Am¬ sterdam replaced Antwerp, ruined by the closing of the Scheldt. She became the Northern Venice. The Dutch were now the only European importers of spices, cinnamon, sandal-wood, indigo, Chinese tea, lacquer, Japanese porcelain and silk. In the Baltic they had, through competition, ruined the commerce of the Hanse¬ atic cities. All the Continental peoples were their tributaries, and the Zealand fishers, so long obscure and poor, now exchanged their barrels of herrings for barrels of gold. England, her First Colonies; the Navigation Act .—The English THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 265 were the chief rivals of the Dutch in these enterprises.* In the seven¬ teenth century the English colonies were founded, and with extra¬ ordinary labour the settlers cleared the forests of New England, dug the soil, worked the mines, and replaced the solitude by admirable cultivation and industrious cities. But however inclined the English might be to imitate the Dutch, they were at first unable to rival them. Cromwell forced them to make the attempt. By the Navigation Act (1651) completed under Charles II. in 1660, the coasting trade was reserved for Biitish vessels, as well as all trade with English colonies. By a single blow the Dutch found themselves excluded from the ports and colonies. They were still more injured by the clauses in the Navigation Act which provided that the produce of Asia, Africa, and America could be carried only in the English ships. The Emopean nations could import only the produce of their own soil and labour to England. Now the Dutch had not sufficient agricul¬ ture noi industiies to nourish their commerce. They were only commission merchants, the carriers of the seas, as they were called. These provisos completely ruined their trade with England, and * The {skilful policy of Queen Elizabeth encouraged the navigators, and in her reign Hawkins (1562—64) and Frobisher (1576—78), Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish, distinguished themselves by their bold expeditions ; Cavendish and Drake went round the world in 1577—80, 1586—88. John D ivis discovered the straits that bear his name. Sir Walter Raleigh at¬ tempted to found a colony on the land which he called Virginia in honour of the Queen. Through the intolerance of James I. and of Charles I. the half¬ desert coasts of North America were settled with Puritans, who took refuge there, seeking safety for their property and their faith, and liberty for their discussions and their prayers. To the south of the Protestant colonies of Massachusetts (1620), New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, a Catholic Irishman, Lord Baltimore, established himself, and, in virtue of a r'.yal charter, founded the colony of Maryland. The impetus that Cromwell had given to the navy led to the conquest of Jamaica. The wars with Hol- Lnd under Charles II. put the English in possession of the Dutch settlemenls, which became the states of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware; and a 'tl>’» the English nobles, encouraged by Charles II., founded in the hot them plains the State called Carolina, which was afterwards divided. The 6.une prince also conceded to William Penn, one of the heads of the eccentiic I’cct of the Quakers, the vast forest which became P» nnsylvania. In tire eighteenth century this long list of colonies is closed wiih Georgia. 266 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. they only submitted to thorn after two sanguinary and disastious wars. England succeeded in depriving Holland of the empire of the seas, and after the revolution of 1688 the momentary union of the two countries, under the rule of W illiam III., was naturally unfavourable to Holland, the less important of the two States. Economic Proyress of Fvciucc: Sully , Richelieu. Fiance, pacified by Henry IV., was vigorously urged to industry by his efforts. Supporting and at times correcting his minister Sully, he assisted by his authority all the measures that the latter introduced for the relief of agriculture, and in his turn forced the Minister to attach more importance to industry, the value of which the se\eie Huguenot, the enemy of all luxury, could not understand. It France had not the mines of Mexico or Peru, Sully replaced them by agriculture and pasturage, and Henry T\ • by silk manufactories. The commencement of the agricultural, industrial, and commer¬ cial prosperity of France dates from the reign of this generous Prince, who wished that every peasant could add a fowl to his Sunday dinner. Richelieu, anxious for progress as well as eager for power, com tinued the economic as well as the external policy of Henry I\ . He had not time to follow it with the same attention, but he protected the peasants, the manufacturers, and the commerce, particularly foreign trade. By the development of the navy he opened distant countries to commerce, and France followed, though at some dis¬ tance, the colonial movement of other nations. Champlain continued to organize Canada, New France, as it was then called. The French acquired some of the West Indian islands, Saint Christopher, Barbados, part of Saint Domingo, and established themselves in Guiana, and in Senegal. Colbert's Services; Development of French Industry. Colbert, so justly called the Minister of Peace, under Louis XIV. ready created French industry ; inviting foreign workmen, subsidising manufactures, and even establishing royal ones. The establish¬ ments of Sedan, Louviers, Abbeville, and Elbeuf rivalled those of the Belgian provinces and of Holland. The woollen industry employed 60,000 workmen. The tapestry weavers, although en- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 267 louraged from the time of Francis I., now became remarkable .n the royal manufactures of Beauvais, the Savonnerie, and above all the Gobelins. The working of glass, imported from Venice, was commenced at Tourlaville, near Cherbourg. The cities of Lyons and Tours increased their silk looms and improved the manufacture. Their lace and velvet rivalled the Venetian lace and the Genoese velvet. "Wrought iron, steel, fine porcelain, and morocco leather were also from that date manufactured in France. But there is no doubt that Colbert, with excellent intentions, to prevent fraud, and to maintain the good quality and fame of French manufactures, renewed and even increased the old restrictions that formerly prevailed in the corporations. He held industry too much in leading-strings ; whilst he encouraged it on one side he fettered it on the other ; but if he thus misused his authority, by interfering in questions which were not in his province, he at the same time gave the impulse to and laid the foundation of the industrial power of France. Colbert's Theories; the Protective System ; the System of Balance. —lie laid this foundation chiefly by the system he applied to com¬ merce—the protective system. Inspired probably by the Naviga¬ tion Act, Colbert resolved that France should provide for herself. By raising a wall of duties against foreign merchandise he forced the country to manufacture the articles required by the people. This system of protection, which defends a growing industry against the competition of more advanced rivals, was good under Lhe circumstances and in the degree applied by Colbert, for without ■t manufactures could not have developed. But it became inju¬ rious through its exaggeration ; privileges, which at first act as an incentive to a backward industry, afterwards become an obstacle to progress, an encouragement to routine, a fatal bribe to manu- acturers, and a burden to the consumers. The science of Political Economy, the true “ Wealth of Nations,” was not yet founded, and Colbert could but follow out the best ideas of his time. Internal Commerce .—More praiseworthy are the measures taken hy Colbert to encourage internal trade. The list of tolls was revised, and the necessary examination led to the suppression of many heavy burdens on commerce. The Loire was subject to 268 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . twenty-eight tolls, and had become so impracticable that land carriage was preferred ; and this carriage also was greatly ham- pei ed. The territorial unity of France had been made by successive additions, and many of the provinces retained their own customs dues. Colbert endeavoured to abolish these customs dues, and, though forced to respect existing treaties, he led twelve provinces to associate ; these provinces, which had only a single line of custom¬ houses, were called the “ Provinces des cinq grosses fermes.” The opening, maintenance, and security of the highways and canals was the object of Colbert’s active solicitude (Canal d Oileans, Canal de Languedoc). The Ordonnance du Commerce, published in 1678, served as a model for the code of 1807. Colbert also instituted a Council of Commerce, over which Louis XIV. pre¬ sided every fortnight, he established insurance offices, punished bankrupts severely, but could not succeed in his attempts to im¬ pose unity of weights and measures. Naval and Mercantile Fleets ; Commercial Companies; Colonies. _Colbert endowed France with a navy. Louis XIV. had 176 men of war, many of them carrying more than 100 guns. In order to man them, Colbert established the naval conscription, which still serves to recruit the sailors of the fleet. At the same time Colbert gave a sudden impulse to the mercan¬ tile navy, and the protective system, which aided industry, also encouraged the shipowners. The Dutch could not enter the French ports without paying a due of fifty sous per ton (equal to six francs, or five shillings of the present coinage), the French commenced to build ships, and the mercantile fleet developed. In 16^9 Richelieu declared that maritime commerce was not derogatory to the nobility. An edict of Louis XIV. in 1669, also allowed the nobles to engage in wholesale trade. Colbert formed a West Indian Company, in which he took great interest. But commercial inexperience, joined to administrative routine, the cupidity and bad faith of the merchants, added to the pride am tvranuy of the governors, upset the best-laid plans and rume tn most, brilliant calculations. In 1678 a Senegal Company obtains the exclusive monopoly of a shameful trade, then practised by othe THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 269 nations, the slave trade. The Northern Company, directed against ho Dutch, and the Levant Company, formed for the improvement 270 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of trade with Turkey, were as unsuccessful as their Indian sisters. Colbert had the merit of raising the colonial power of France by purchasing several of the Antilles.* But he made the mistake, common to all nations at the time, of applying to the colonies the government, the administration, the categories of classes, the religious intolerance, and the taxes of the metropolis. Added to this the prohibition upon intercourse with foreigners, and upon the cultivation of certain plants, upon tobacco, for instance, in America; the regulations that forced the colonists to send to France for all that they needed, and to sell their produce only to France ; privileges to certain persons in the colonies, severe rules for the relations between them and the native populations, who were treated as inferiors ; all proved impediments which pre¬ vented the colonists from deriving any benefit from the rich and fertile soil. Yet the French held the St. Lawrence, a magnificent stream, and the great lakes which feed the river with their surplus waters on its way to the ocean. Bold travellers, P. Marquette and the Sieur de Jolliet (1678), then Robert Cavalier de la Salle (1680), descended and explored the rich valley of the Mississippi, the king of rivers. A settlement was founded at the outlet of this immense valley, and the country w T as named Louisiana. France found herself admirably placed for taking possession of the New Continent, but she neglected the opportunity and America was ultimately appropriated and developed by the Anglo-Saxon race. * France then possessed in America: Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland, the islands of Martinique, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Marie Galante, Saint Chris¬ topher, Saint Bartholomew, and St. Martin, Saint Croix, the Tortugas, a part of Saint Domingo, Guiana; in Africa, some settlements in Senegal and in the island of Madagascar, the Mauritius, and Bourbon Islands; and Surat, in Asia. CHAPTER XII. LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ARTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Summary : The Intellectual Movement; French Society in the Seventeenth Century; Conversation; Wit—French Literature; Taste ; Malherbe ; the Authors of the first half of the Seventeenth Century, or the Age of Richelieu—Classical Tragedy; Corneille (1606 —1684) — Renaissance of Philosophy ; Prose; Descartes ; Pascal—Authors of the Reign of Louis XIV. ; the King’s Personal Influence—Poetry: Racine, Moliere, Boileau—Eloquence in the Pulpit : Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Fenelon— Madame de Sevigne ; La Bruy ere—La Fontaine—The Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns—The Opera; Quinault—Memoirs ; History— Philosophy ; Malebranche—Education ; the Learned Societies—Origin of the Periodical Press—Literature in England : Ben Jonson, Bacon —Milton (1608—1674)—Bunyan—Locke (1632—1704)—Holland ; the Jew Spinosa—Germany 7 ; Leibnitz—Spain; Calderon; Literary Deca¬ dence— Science, Mathematics — Astronomy: Kepler (1571 — 1630); Galileo (1564—1642); Newton (1642—1727)—Physical Science; Bacon’s Experimental Method — Galileo, Toricelli, Pascal, Mariotte—Steam ; Denis Papin—Natural Science; the Botanical Gardens; Tournefort— Medicine—The Arts; French Architecture — Sculpture; Puget — Painting ; the Italian School; Guercino, Albano, Domenichino, Sal¬ vator Rosa—Painting in Spain ; Ribera, Velasquez, Murillo—French Painting ; Nicholas Poussin, Claude Lorraine — Flemish Artists in France; Philip de Champaigne; Van der Meulen—Greatness of the Flemish School : Rubens, Van Dy r ck, Jordaens—Animal Painters ; Snyders—The Painters of Genre ; David Teniers—The Dutch School; Rembrandt — Gerard Dow, Terburg, Matzu — Ruysdael, Hobbema — The Results of the Seventeenth Century. The Intellectual Movement; French Society in the Seventeenth Century; Conversation; Wit. —The improvement of the material conditions of life, security, tranquillity protected by a power which no one dreamed of disputing, and luxury increasing with industry, all modified the aspects of society. The nobles instead of fighting visited each other. The court, peopled with the noblemen, 272 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. now rivals only in elegance and deportment, gave the tone to the city ; women asserted their empire, enforced politeness, and the chivalric spirit as it softened ended in gallantry. Chiefly in France, but also in Italy, from the reign of Louis XIII., the intercourse of society and the art of conversation were sedulously cultivated, and the assemblies and drawing-rooms almost recalled the Academy of Athens in the days of Greek literature and philosophy. The Hotel de Rambouillet became the model of these learned but not pedantic assemblies, where French society became refined, displayed its gaiety, and purified its language. Conversation became an important business, and woman’s quick, delicate intelli¬ gence gave a lively fascination, a refined, agreeable tone to con¬ versation, so that it won admiration for the French language and made it the fashionable tongue in almost every court of Europe. French Literature ; Taste, Malherbe ; the Authors of the First Half of the Seventeenth Century, or the Age of Lichelieu. —French literature, the expression of this elegant, polished society, natur¬ ally and without effort attained regularity, easy nobility, simple majesty, charming though studied grace, poetic sentiment, elo¬ quence, comic humour, and at the same time philosophic severity. It was a golden age of letters, one of those fortunate epochs when literature asserts its power, like the ages of Augustus and Pericles. The prolonged study of the ancient classics gave birth to a new literature also worthy to be called classic. Devo¬ tion to these models, softened by woman’s influence, animated by the still living faith of Christianity, produced a literature antique yet modern, agreeable if not deeply inspired, correct and elegant through imitation, which revived the beauty of its Athenian and Homan models in works that were yet eminently French. Malherbe,* from the reign of Henry IV., controlled the poetic taste, and under Louis XIII. continued a dictatorship which purified the language from the defects of the sixteenth century, regulated the metre, gave just value to words, and fit cadence to the rhyme. Yaugelas,f grammarian rather than author, * Malherbe (1556—1628). t Vaagelas (1585—1650). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 273 commenced the reformation of prose. Balzac * and Yoiture aided him, one by his breadth, the other by his grace. Balzac marred his rhetoric by pomposity and heaviness. Yoiture, one of the heroes of the Hotel de Kambouillet, diminished his grace by his conceits and subtleties, which were as affected on the one hand as the pomposity of Balzac on the other. But these authors and a number of others of secondary rank, were really only the pre¬ cursors of the great writers. Classic Tragedy ; Corneille (1606—1684).—Pierre Corneille re¬ discovered, we can truly say, the ancient tragedies. More restrained, more sober than Shakespeare, who never bound him¬ self to any rules, more concentrated than the Spaniards, from whom he borrowed the subject of his first masterpiece, “ The Cid ” (1686), he arranged his plays in the triple unity of time, scene, and action, without too much injuring their probability, and increased their interest by the rapid succession of the scenes. Though Corneille cannot compare with the Greek tragedians, nor with Shakespeare in the wide range of his power, nor even with the Spanish dramatists in the rich beauty of their verse, his plays are admirably adapted for the stage. He has real enthusiasm for the heroic virtues and for patriotism as then understood. As rhetorical declamation in verse his pieces have never been sur¬ passed. They give a dignity to every worthy actor of them, and it is probably owing to them that the stage in France has had a greater influence, and exercised more power than in any other country, and that too even when actors were excommunicated by the Church. Renaissance of Philosophy; Prose; Descartes , Pascal.—AX the same time that tragedy was influencing and elevating the heart and soul, ancient philosophy reappeared to occupy the intellect. One year after Corneille had written the first masterpiece of dramatic art, Descartes published the first book of true philosophy. The “ Cid ” gave a tone to poetry, the “Discourses on Method,” by Descartes, * Balzac (1594—1654). Uses of “ The Pri nce; ” “ The works of Balzac consist of letters and trea- Aristippus,” and the “ Christian Socrates.” T 271 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. formed a model of prose at the same time that it defined the rules of thought. Descartes, applying the laws of scientific observation that Bacon had formulated in England, to the phenomena of conscience, sought therein a new metaphysical basis for theology. From his famous formula: “ Ego cogito, ergo sum,” “ I think, therefore I am,” he proved the existence of God, and built thereon his whole system of philosophy. Although the doctrines peculiar to Descartes have been aban¬ doned, his methods have remained ; he initiated the methods by the aid of which modern philosophers have penetrated further into the abstract world than the ancient philosophers. The Car¬ tesian philosophy retained the Christian character, the mark of the seventeenth century. Although bold enough to argue outside religion, Descartes’ chief aim was to base religion on human reason. He never ceased to subordinate reason to faith.* Pascal treated reason as still more strictly subject to faith. To him we owe some of the deepest and most philosophical reflections on religion ; intended as a defence they are sometimes almost destructive by their incisive penetration, and remaining a fragment only, they suggest more doubts than they solve. But as an author his chief service to French prose consisted in freeing it from Descartes’ long periods, by rendering it lighter and more concise in his inimitable masterpiece, “ The Provincial Letters ; ” a biting satire on the Jesuits’ doctrines, their wit has saved these letters from the oblivion that has fallen upon all the subtle works of the doctors of that age. Pascalf and Descartes, however, were universal geniuses, and their scientific influence was as great as their literary position. These authors shone during the first half of the seventeenth century, which has been distinguished by the name of the Age of Bichelieu. Pascal’s masterpieces, however, were not written until * Descartes (1596—1650), bom in Touraine. The two chief works of Descartes are the “Discourse on Method” and “Metaphysical Medi¬ tations.” t Blaise Pascal, born at Clermont (1623—1662). THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, ETC. 275 after Richelieu’s death. Descartes passed most of his life in a foreign land. But Corneille was numbered among the Cardinal poet’s pensioners and fellow-labourers. Richelieu honoured authors so much that he was even jealous of them ; but the greatest service that he rendered to literature was by establishing the French Academy (1635), that literary senate which is really unique, the arbitrator in all questions affecting the language or taste, despotic, yet beneficent, often imitated by foreign nations, though it is doubtful whether its merits compensate for its defects. Authors of the Reign of Louis XIV.; the King's Personal In¬ fluence .—It is a question how far Louis XIY. influenced the litera¬ ture of his age by his policy and his person. The distinction and grace which rendered him the model of his nobles, as much as the severity which made him their master, the correctness of his judgment, the good sense which revolted from all extremes (except of his own ambition), all influenced the men of genius whom he encouraged. La Fontaine alone, the most independent and the truest genius of all, revolted from the stilted pomp and trammels which pleased the King. He was therefore neglected, for Louis XIY. only esteemed those who fell into the place marked out for them, received the reflection of his majesty and merged their glory in his own. Poetry : Racine, Moliere, Boileau .—Racine,* Moliere,! Boileau, J three friends and three of the writers most honoured by Louis XIV., possessed very different styles. Racine divides with Corneille the glory of French classical tragedy. Inferior in force and declama¬ tion, his verse is more flowing and harmonious; he deals better with the softer passions. If we except the Spaniards he alone has succeeded in making religious and Biblical themes acceptable on the modern stage. Moliere may be regarded as the creator of French comedy, in spite of Corneille’s “ Menteur.” Far higher than either Racine or Corneille, he is supreme in his own art and within his limits. * Racine, born at Ferte-Milon (Aisne) (1639—1699). t Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de Moli6re (1622—1673). X Boileau (1636—1711). 276 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. For the only pure comedy which has equalled that of Moliere we must go back to the Greeks. He is unrivalled in modern Europe. Although Boileau cannot be admitted to the same rank as his two friends, he was a laborious poet and a better critic. His in¬ fluence over poetry ruled in Europe down to the beginning of the present century. Through Pope it prevailed in England to the age of Byron and of Wordsworth, who mark a new school. He is the head of the Classical in opposition to the Romantic school. Eloquence in the Pulpit: Bourdaloue , Bossuet, Fenelon .—But the inspiration of Christianity was chiefly demonstrated in the orators of the pulpit: Bourdaloue,* Bossuet, Fenelon. Bourda- oue was only a sermon writer, and his reputation never attained the height of that of the two other preachers. He was too logical, too formal, and too special. Bossuet and Fenelon were of wider genius. The former,! orator, historian, philosopher, filled the pulpit with the most sublime eloquence, particularly in his funeral orations. He threw a penetrating glance over the past in his “ Discourse upon Universal History,” and reconciled philosophy with religion in his “ Treatise on the Knowledge of God and One’s Self.” Fenelon]: also showed himself a philosopher in his treatise on the “ Existence of God; ” he was not an historian, but his romance of “ Telemachus ” revived the primitive ages of Greece, and his sermons were masterpieces of grace and unction. In addition, in his ideas on education Fenelon was in advance of his time. In politics Bossuet could conceive nothing finer than the monar¬ chical government of Louis XIV., and he endeavoured to base it upon divine authority. One might have been tempted to think, had one not known that his inspiration was chiefly drawn from the Bible, that instead of modelling the monarchy of Louis XIV. upon the divine monarchy, he had modelled his idea of God on the image of Louis XIY. * Bourdaloue (1632—1704). t Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, born at Dijon (1627—1704). t Fenelon (1651—1715). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 277 Fenelon, in bis Telemacbus, through Bernardin de St. Pierre, led up to the theories of J. J. Rousseau, and may thus be reckoned one of the precursors of the Revolution. Yet Bossuet and Fenelon still remain the most brilliant person¬ ifications of Christian genius, as understood by French genius, polished and shaped by assiduous study of the ancients. Maclame de Sevigne ; Jean de La Bruyhre. —Women, who had contributed to the elegance of this society, could not fail also to find expression in a superior writer. This genius was Madame de Sevigne,* whose letters, lively, observant, and witty, still charm us by their pictures of a past society, which there re¬ appears as in a mirror. The first of feminine letter-writers, she raises, embellishes, animates and illumines all that she touches, and she touches every subject save the highest. In fact all great subjects were forbidden; to handle them was full of danger. La Bruyere warns us of this. And thus this moralist, who emulated La Rochefoucauld! though more lively in style, endeavoured only to paint eccentricities and types. His book is a comedy without action, full of malice and of true observation. La Bruyere, however, raised his tone when attacking libertinage, and was, as he said himself, a Christian and a Frenchman. La Fontaine .—La Fontaine was also a classical scholar, and although he seemingly avoided all rules,! he yet enjoyed and admired the works of antiquity. La Fontaine is the first of fabulists. He excels in the art which conceals all art. His naivete is inimitable, yet he never descends to puerility, still less to the nonsensical. He has a true feeling for nature, a horror of what is artificial; he was in advance of his age, or rather he be¬ longs to all ages, like his own work. * Marie de Rabutin, Marquise de Sevigne (1627—1696). Amongst the women who rank as authors we must also name Mdme. de la Fayette (1633—1693), one of Mdme. de Sevigne’s friends, who brought romance back to natural life. t The Duke of La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) published some maxims of great wit and rare precision, but too much stamped with his own disillusion¬ ment on the subject of human virtue. \ Jean de la Fontaine (1621—1695). 2/8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The Opera; Quinault* * * § —One of the most singular alliances be¬ tween the imitation of the ancient and modern taste, was the creation of opera, which took form with Quinault, at the same time that Lulli’s + music added another charm to the poet’s verses, and aided the expression of sentiment. Opera owes most of its success to the musicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it dates from the seventeenth. Memoirs; History. —Full of great events, the seventeenth century occupied itself with transmitting them to posterity. Memoirs, that were already numerous and interesting in the sixteenth century, were now multiplied ; those written by Car¬ dinal de Retz form a masterpiece of wit and style, if not of modesty. | It is a vivid picturesque description of the Fronde, of which he was one of the most active leaders; it is not history, for the witness is partial, but it is one of those paintings which history cannot dispense with.§ With the exception of the “ Discourse on Universal History,” by Bossuet, in which a high philosophy of history is visible, there were only learned works written, distant imitations of ancient history, like those of Mezeray|| and Vertot,H Boulainvilliers’** Dissertations, Saint-Real’slf elegant work on the “ Conspiracy of Venice,” the ecclesiastical history of Fleury,J| &c. Philosophy ; Malebranche. —In philosophy, Descartes had opened a path which was chiefly followed by Malebranche,§§ a priest of the Oratory. In his book on the “ Search for Truth ” he differed * Quinatft (1635—1688). t Lulli (1633—1687). See “ Music” in the following chapter. \ Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614—1679). § Saint-Simon belongs to the eighteenth century, hut we must name amongst the important memoirs of the epoch those of Sully and Richelieu, so important for politics, of the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, of Mdlle. de Mont- pensier, Mdme. de Motteville, the Abbe de Choissy, and Gourville. || Mezeray (1610—1683). If Vertot (1655—1735). ** The Count de Boulainvilliers (1658—1722). ft Saint-Real (1639—1692). ++ Fleury (1640—1723). Malebranche (1631—1715). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 279 from his master’s theories by his theory of the “ Vision of God,” which he exaggerated by carrying it to mysticism. He endeavoured to conciliate philosophy with the Christian religion, already com¬ bated by Bayle and by Spinoza. Education; the Learned Societies .—None of these writers would have been able to train themselves without the organization of a classical education. The Jesuits had founded a number of col¬ leges ; the Jansenists shone at Port-Royal, that school of virtue and knowledge, where judicious methods of education were elabo¬ rated in solitude. The University itself, although hampered by the routine of the Middle Ages, opened its colleges to the new methods. The birth of modern education is with some reason attributed to the seven¬ teenth century, though Ascham, who found some disciples, had pointed out the way a century before in England. Colbert, the successor of Richelieu, had also encouraged associa¬ tions of learned men, and he created those noble societies which, placed round the French Academy, have acquired so much renown, the Academie des Inscriptions (1663), the Academie des Sciences (1666). The intellectual movement spread into the provinces, and in most of the important cities learned societies were founded, which chiefly developed in the eighteenth century, many in union with the French Academy, and priding themselves on being, in a measure, daughter institutions. The movement also spread to other countries. Origin of the Periodical Press .—Timid and shy, the periodical press, that in the nineteenth century rules the world, first appeared in the seventeenth century. The first French newspaper, the Mercure Franqais, founded by Richer in 1605, became the organ of elegant society: it carried the echoes of the salons into the town, and the rumours of the town into the salons. It was a mere gazette. Theophraste Renaudot, in 1635, pub¬ lished a real newspaper, the Gazette de France, but after 1644 this did not interfere with the continuation of the Mercure. Of course we must not expect these first attempts of the press, still unconscious of its power, to display much boldness; this in fact would have THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 280 been cut short at once, by a power that even distrusted books, and by a Parliament that showed little mercy for any forcible language that did not emanate from itself. Literature in England ; Ben Jonson; Bacon .—English literature from the seventeenth century w r as still dominated by the great name of Shakespeare. But Ben Jonson was honoured by his side. He was a classic, theoretically fascinated by the unities of Aristotle, imitating Juvenal as a satirist, but succeeding better in lyrical poetry, and in his tragedies drawing inspiration from Tacitus and Sallust.* Francis Bacon, f a member of Parliament, Baron Yerulam, Viscount St. Albans, Lord Chancellor of England under James I., led men’s ideas back to philosophy and science. Exerting himself to embrace both the intellectual and physical world, he formed the scheme of an immense work, the “ Great Restoration of Science,” of which he only completed three parts. The most important was the “Novum Organum” (1620), by which he opened a method of investigation of nature by induction which had been too much neglected since the days of Aristotle. To deduction he opposed induction. Bacon mounted from the particular to the general, a method attempted by Descartes in creating philosophy, and by men of science in discovering the laws of the physical world. Bacon placed the human mind on the right path. In England Bacon’s principles were almost immediately applied to philosophy by Hobbes (1588—1680), whose philosophy has been lately revived, but whose writings in his own day had more influence on politics than on philosophy. Milton (1608—1647).—The two revolutions of 1640 and 1688 produced grave effects upon men’s minds, and almost equal conse- * Ben Jonson, born in 1574; his dramatic career extended from 1596 to 1633. His three best comedies are the “Silent Woman,” the “Alchemist,” and the “ Fox.” He also won fame as a writer of masques. f Bacon (1561—1626). The first part of the “Great Restoration of Science” was the “Advancement of Learning ” (1605); the second the “Novum Organum;” the third was composed of various treatises on Natuial History. THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, ETC. 281 quences on literature. That of 1640 was chiefly religious; it ruined the theatre, and almost put secular poetry to flight. But it inspired the genius of Milton, an independent in politics as in religion, an ardent reformer, who lost his sight through overwork; after the storm had calmed, he wrote his fine poem of “ Paradise Lost.” In secular poetry he reached his highest mark in “ Comus ” and in “ Lycidas ; ” but the majestic organ roll of his blank verse in the “ Paradise Lost ” has influenced English literature in all departments. His “ Samson Agonistes ” is the one English tragedy successfully modelled on the old Greek drama, if we except Mr. Swinburne’s “ Atalanta in Calydon.” Bunyan ,* the son of a poor tinker, was also filled with religious inspiration. A courageous, persecuted preacher, he wrote the “ Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to the next; ” not less original for being on an old theme, and the one allegory whose characters are flesh and blood, and which has thus become really popular. The restoration of Charles II. was also a restoration of pleasure, laughter, light, humorous poetry. Samuel Butler,\ in his burlesque epic of “ Hudibras,” derided the savage zeal of the sectarians, and in his satires lashed the licentiousness of the court of Charles II. The theatre applied itself to the imitation of the French theatre, but was unsuccessful both in tragedy and comedy. John Dry den,\ in the first rank, not through his tragedies and comedies, but in secondary stylos, excelled in political satire and in the Ode. His poetry, though it introduced the classical couplet, is far more vigorous than that of Pope, as are also his translations ; his style, especially in prose, is full of merit, and through it he is worthy to be called a classic. Locke (1632—1704 ).§—The revolution of 1688 "was in its turn * Bunyan (1628—1688). t Butler (1612—1680). + Dryden (1631—1700). His political satires were “Absalom and Achi- tophel,” “ MacFlecknoe,” &c. § Locke, besides his “ Essay upon Civil Government ” and his “ Essay upon the Human Understanding,” also wrote “ Thoughts concerning Educa¬ tion,” a work which ranks amongst the most remarkable of its kind. 282 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . represented by Locke, who was its theorist and its apologist. In liis “ Essay upon Civil Government ” he explained the new govern¬ ment, and already anticipated the “ Social Contract.” In politics as in philosophy he was already almost a man of the eighteenth cen¬ tury. In fact, if he adopted Descartes’ method, he combated his doctrines. In his “ Essay upon the Human Understanding,” seek¬ ing for the origin of ideas, he imagined he had found it in reflection and sense ; he w r as the father of the English idealists and, by reaction, of the Scotch empirical school. English literature was never subjected to rules in the same way as French literature. It was the true expression of an energetic, active, varied society, which had grasped political and religious liberty. Less polished less elegant, it sought, not for beauty of form, but for strength of ideas, yet it almost reached perfection of expression in Milton’s poems. The coffee-houses and clubs filled the office of the salons and academies of France. Holland : the Jew Spinoza. —Holland, which was also a land of liberty, then afforded a refuge to a colony of sceptics, and French scholars, such as Bayle, Basnage, and Leclerc. The Jew Spinoza* formulated a philosophical doctrine, that contrasted with the French doctrines. Only seeing substance in the world, he pretended that God cannot exist without nature, even as nature cannot exist without God. He thus tended to pantheism. Spinoza denied free will, and in politics supported the omnipotence of the State. His doctrines were afterwards developed by disciples, who were never more numerous than at the present day. Germany : Leibnitz .—The German, Leibnitz, a mathematician and philosopher, protested against Descartes, whose books he called “ the antechamber of truth.” But he endeavoured to reconcile his doctrine with Locke’s theories. He combated innate ideas, and made an important restriction in the maxim of philosophers of the experimental school : “ There is nothing in the mind that has not first been in the senses.” Leibnitz added, “unless it is the mind itself.” f * Born at Amsterdam (1632—1677). His most important work was called the “ Ethics.” t Leibnitz, born at Leipzig (1646—1716). THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, ETC. 283 Spain: Calderon; Literary Decadence .—Spain rapidly decaying in the seventeenth century, still retained a reflection of her literary glory of the preceding century. The school of Lope de Vega multiplied religious and secular dramas and comedies. Montalvan and Tellez* * * § were of almost inexhaustible fertility. Guillen de Castrof borrowed from the popular romances his magnificent drama of the “ Cid,” which inspired Corneille. Alarcon,| by his comedies, furnished models that Corneille imitated in the “ Menteur.” Calderon de la Barca,§ first soldier, then priest, was perhaps the most fertile, and certainly the greatest dramatic poet of Spain. His secular dramas are animated with powerful and passionate interest, and in them he exalts the sentiment of honour, always so dear to Spaniards. His comedies were full of complicated intrigues and surprises. He used considerable variety in the metres he employed; deficient in the study of character, no writer has lavished more brilliant poetry on his plays. We quite forget who utters the sentiments in the dazzling beauty of the verses. Even scholastic abstractions can gain a hearing thus. Decadence had commenced in literature as well as in politics. The Inquisition stifled thought by its increasing suspiciousness. Spain was then full of intolerance, and the butcheries of the autos-da-fe || threw a sinister light over the popular rejoicings of which they formed part. Poets therefore took refuge in affected conceits, and Luis de Gongora founded a school of bad taste; Gongorisms reigned without rival. Such a country could not develop philosophy and history. The historians were only historiographers.il * Montalvan (1602—1638) ; Tellos, better known as Tirso de Molina (1613—1648) ; both belonged to the Church. f Guillen de Castro, born at Valencia (1567—1631). X Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, born at Mexico, came to Europe towards 1621. § Calderon de la Barca, born at Madrid (1600—1681), wrote a great many religious dramas, or sacramental acts (autos), secular dramas, and comedies. || There were great autos da-fe in 1623, even in 1680 under Charles II. H However, Mendoza showed real talent in describing the revolt of Granada under Philip II. Juan de Mariana, a Jesuit, in his “ History of Spain,” 284 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Science ; Mathematics. — The seventeenth century, which in literature revived the glory of the ancients, had its peculiar distinc¬ tion in its scientific progress. It is strange to note that the human mind has attained real knowledge chiefly through combinations of figures, numbers and lines, and through the science of mathematics ; thus freeing itself from the dreams of astrology, discovered through astronomy the true movements of the celestial bodies; lastly, observing physical phenomena, experimenting with them, studying their laws, it has made them instruments which have increased the power of industry tenfold. Men of science are the most active pioneers of civiliza¬ tion, the most worthy of admiration and of the gratitude of all. They have really created the modern world. Mathematicians have no nationality. They develop themselves almost simultaneously in every country ; in Italy there arose Gali¬ leo, Cavalieri,* Viviani, Ricci ;f in France Descartes, who applied algebra to geometry; Pascal, who wrote his “Essay on the Conic Sections,” and invented a new method of geometrical analysis—the arithmetical machine ; Fermat, J to whom we owe the perfection of algebra, the method of maximum and of minimum, the calculation of probabilities ; Roberval, one of the founders of the Academy of Science ; in Germany Kepler, who invented logarithms, the philo¬ sopher Leibnitz, who discovered the differential and infinitesimal calculus ; in England Napier, Henry Briggs, who shared with Kepler the honour of the discovery of logarithms, Barrow, the master of Newton, Newton himself, who would not have been so illustrious an astronomer had he not been a greater mathematician ; in Holland, Huyghens, one of the creators of the science of me¬ chanics ; in Belgium, Simon of Bruges and Gregory of Saint Yin- endeavoured to imitate Livy ; Antonio de Herrera wrote a “History of the Indies.” We must also quote Moncada, Coloma, Antonio de Solis, the last particularly; he wrote the “ Conquest of Mexico.” * Bonaventura Cavalieri, horn at Milan (1598—1647). t Vincent Viviani (1622—1703) ; Michael Angelo Ricci (1619—1682). X Born near Montauban (1601—1665). He was a councillor of the Parliament of Toulouse. THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, E TC. 285 cent; in Switzerland, Jacques Bernoulli, and others whom we cannot enumerate here. Astronomy ; Kepler (1571—1630) ; Galileo (1564—1642); New¬ ton (1642—1727).—In the sixteenth century, Tycho-Brahe still mingled astrology with astronomy. One of his disciples, Kepler, born in Wurtemberg, calculated instead of dreaming. Striving to find unity and harmony in the apparent disorder of the world, he nearly touched the law of universal gravitation. He at least found some laws, which bear his name, like those of the eclipses. He wrote curious works on light, refraction, eclipses, and comets. Galileo, born at Pisa, constructed the first astronomical telescopes magnifying the diameter one hundred times, studied the moon, the stars and planets, and discovered Jupiter’s four satellites, the spots on the sun, the revolution of the sun on its axis, and, reviving the system of Copernicus, he confirmed the rotary move¬ ment of the earth. Superstition was still so powerful that Galileo, although protected by the more enlightened Popes, was condemned to retract his works by the tribunal of the Inquisition; but this did not impede the earth’s motion, and Galileo himself, rising after abjuring his pretended error, murmured, “And yet it moves! ” Galileo had marked the earth’s place in the solar system. Isaac Newton, the son of a Lincolnshire farmer, gifted with an ex¬ traordinary aptitude for mathematics, discovered the law which binds the earth to the celestial bodies. He proved that the sun acted upon the planets and that the planets acted upon each other in proportion to their bulk, and formulated the universal law in the simple words, “ The force of attraction of a body is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.”* This principle, which became the starting point of all astronomical studies, was not well understood at first, and yet it is one of the most astonishing discoveries that • Newton also determined, by the flatness of Jupiter’s poles, the real form of the earth ; from the flattening of the globe at the two poles he deduced the precession of the equinoxes, and referred the phenomena of the tides to the law of universal gravitation. 286 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. have been made by man. Newton solved by it one great secret of the universe. The heavens were opened to fruitful observation. Edmund Halley calculated the orbit of a comet which appeared in 1681, and which has retained his name. Flamstead * wrote a catalogue of the stars, and was the first director of the Greenwich Observatory (1676). Observatories had already been established at Copenhagen (1632) by Longomontanus, at Dantzig (1641), founded by Hevelius, and at Altorf, in Bavaria (1667). The one in Paris was commenced in 1667, and completed in 1671, from Cassini's plans. The family of Cassini was a dynasty of savants, that resembled the dynasties of the Flemish painters, f The Abbe, Jean Picard, J shared the first labours of the Paris Observatory. § Picard also devoted himself to determining the meridian of Paris, and his labours were continued by Jacques Cassini, who prolonged the meridian to the south as far as the Canigou, to the north as far as Dunkirk. Huyghens,|| a universal savant, manufactured his own telescopes, which surpassed all that had yet been attempted. He was the first to see Saturn surrounded by a luminous band—which was the ring (1655); he afterwards discovered one of the satellites, and Domi¬ nique Cassini discovered some of the others. IT * Edmund Halley (1656—1742). Flamstead (1646—1719). t Jean-Dominique Cassini, born in the county of Nice (1625—1712); his son Jacques Cassini, born at Paris (1677—1756); Jacques’ son, Cassini de Thury (1714—1784) ; Jacques-Dominique Cassini, son of the last-named, died in 1845. X Picard (1620—1682). § On their side P. Zucchi, James Gregory, and the French Professor Casse¬ grain had perfected the telescope. The micrometer adapted to magnifying glasses and telescopes served to measure the objects depicted upon them. || Born at the Hague (1629—1695). IT We must add Hevelius (1611—1687), of Dantzig, who devoted himself to the study of the moon, and who drew the first maps of it; Grimaldi (1618—1663), of Bologna, who also drew a lunar map, and who discovered the phenomenon of the diffraction of light. Simon Marius and David Fabricius, German astronomers, studied the stars ; Simon Marius discovered the first nebula. Richard Norwood measured the distance between London and York (1635). THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, ETC. 287 A Dane, Olaus Roemer,* brought to France by Picard in 1672, and lodged in the Observatory, bad a large share in the astro¬ nomical labours of the French; then, recalled to Copenhagen, he continued his researches there. He succeeded (1700) in arranging a magnifying glass that, while remaining fixed in the plane of the meridian, was movable on its axis. He calculated that the light was eight minutes coming from the sun to the earth. Physical Science; Bacon's Experimental Method. —The labours of astronomers and mathematicians were valuable aids to physical science. Bacon estimated them at their true value ; he kept them ever in view when exalting the dignity of science. He advised savants to observe nature, to study and analyse phenomena, and to found laws on facts alone. “ Man is the servant and interpreter of nature ” was his motto. The recognition of this places the name of Bacon at the head of the list of natural philosophers, although personally he made no scientific discovery, and though, while an admirable moral essayist, his conduct fell far short of his teaching. Galileo; Torricelli; Pascal; Mariotte .—A few men of great genius had not waited for Bacon’s writings before devoting them¬ selves to experiment. We are amazed when we think what simple daily facts have led men to their greatest discoveries, Galileo watched a lamp that oscillated in the cathedral of Pisa (1583). He observed that even when this oscillation diminished the arcs, although smaller, were all traversed in the same space of time. He formulated hence the law of the isochronism of the oscillations of a pendulum ; and afterwards determined the law of gravity. A Florentine gardener, having constructed an unusually large pump, observed with surprise that the water never rose above thirty-two feet; Galileo vainly endeavoured to explain the fact. His disciple, Torricelli, solved the difficulty, and his experiments on the weight of the atmosphere led him to construct the tubes which led to the invention of the barometer. Pascal continued Torricelli’s experiments, measured the height of the column of mercury at Clermont, and on the top of the Puy * Olaus Roemer (1644—1710). 288 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. de Dome (1648), and found that the height was inversely propor¬ tionate to the elevation of the country. He verified this fact by fresh observations at Paris, on the tower of Saint Jacques-la-Bou cherie.* Descartes, although learned in physical science was rather a mathematician, and followed a mistaken theory of vortices, which, however, may be noted from an historical point of view, for it, perhaps, directed Newton towards the road which led to his discoveries. The Abbe Mariotte,f who died in 1684, and who had belonged to the Academy of Sciences from its foundation, discovered the law that has retained his name, and that has been too much generalized, namely, “ that the temperature remaining the same, the volume of a given mass of any gas is in inverse proportion to the pressure that it supports.” The German, Otto de Guericke, J applied himself to forming a vacuum, and constructed the first pneumatic machine. The Irishman, Boyle, § contributed to the formation of the Royal Society of London, which soon became celebrated. We must also add Samuel Morland|| to this list; he devoted himself to the study of mechanics, and particularly of hydrostatics. Steam; Denis Papin. —Lastly, one of those discoveries which effect a revolution in the world dates from this epoch ; that of the power of steam. Denis Papin,H born at Blois, but driven from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had from the year 1674 made various experiments upon water heated in the open air and overheated in a closed vase. His invention is attributed to the observation of the effect produced upon the lid of a saucepan by the steam of the boiling water. However that may be, he succeeded in constructing, under the name of the digester, an apparatus intended to extract, by steam at high pressure, the gelatinous * Robert Hook (1638—1703), in England, continued these experiments on the weight of the air and barometers, and was the inventor of the ordinary clock-faced or wheel barometer. t Mariotte (Edme) usually resided at Digne. His law dates from 1676. X Otto de Guericke, of Magdeburg (1602—1686). § Robert Boyle (1626—1691). || Samuel Morland (1625—1695). IT Denis Papin, born in 1647, died at Marburg in 1714. 1 HE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, E TC. 2 89 portion of bone. He also invented the first steam-engine with a piston, and launched on the Fulda, in Germany, a real steam-boat, which ignorant and jealous sailors destroyed. Another century passed before this new force, which Papin had discovered, could be turned to account; it has since changed the face of the world. Natural Science: The Botanical Gardens ; Tournejort. —The science of botany was less novel, for the observation of plants had always been favourably regarded, but it now made great progress.* Amsterdam possessed a botanical garden under the direction of Frederic Ruisch ; Italy had one at Bologna, which became cele¬ brated under the supervision of the brothers Ambrosini; France had one in 1626, under Richelieu, and Guy de la Brosse was the first superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. But France chiefly gloried in Tournefort.t He not only studied and brought back a considerable number of plants from the missions confided to him under Louis XIV., but he formed a classification, which was accepted for more than a century. Medicine. —In the sixteenth century, the progress of surgery had stirred the emulation of the physicians. The celebrated Har¬ vey} then commenced his labours, and he discovered the laws of the circulation of the blood, and thus in a measure the vital prin¬ ciple. Sydenham§ studied the laws of epidemics; there are also to be named the Dutchman Boerhaave, || one of the founders of clinical medicine ; and the Frenchman Pecquet,H whose name has been given to one of the canals in the human body which serves to distribute the chyle. The old a priori medicine vainly en¬ deavoured to contend against experimental science, and speedily * The brothers Bauhin, in Switzerland; Parkinson, Morison, and Ray; ihe Germans Jung, Jungermann, Hermann, &c., devoted their lives to the study and description of plants, whilst the exploration of distant countries was continually providing new species for observation. f Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, bom at Aix (1656—1708). } William Harvey (1578—1657). § Sydenham (1624—1689). His name is still attached to a composition of laudanum invented by him, || Boerhaave, born near Leyden (1668—1738). ^ Jean Pecquet, bom at Dieppe (1622—1674). U 290 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. succumbed under the ridicule which Moliere directed against the pedantry of the doctors, who were formerly powerful enough to humiliate the surgeons, by causing their college to be amalgamated with the company of master barbers. The Arts ; French Architecture. — The progress of science prepared the means of ameliorating the conditions of life; art continued to embellish it. But the Italian imagination, so brilliant in the sixteenth century, was now exhausted. Bernini,* * * § in¬ toxicated by a premature success, endeavoured to surpass his masters, and introduced into architecture, as decorative ele¬ ments, the excess of ornament, scrolls, festoons, and garlands. Borromini f exaggerated these caprices, which degenerated into extravagances. French architecture was still modelled upon Italian architecture, and followed its blunders. At this epoch it was chiefly dominated by the Jesuit style, perhaps the worst of all Christian religious styles, marking the curious contrast between the success of the Order in science and education and its absolute failure in art. The French architects borrowed the cupola from the fine buildings in Italy, at first modest in the Church of the Sorbonne, but larger and bolder at Val-de-Grace, and lighter at the Church of the Invalides. Civil architecture was more fortunate. Jacques de Brosse built (towards 1611) the Luxembourg Palace for Marie de Medicis, the facades of which recall the architecture of the interior of the Pitti Palace. Richelieu erected the Palais-Cardinal (now the Palais Royal). Mazarin the College des Quatres Nations (now the Institute). Lemercier J continued the embellishment of Fontaine¬ bleau, where he developed the plans of Pierre Lescot, and con¬ structed the central pavilion crowned with a quadrangular dome. Paris was embellished with the triumphal arches of the Porte Saint- Denis, the work of Francois Blondel, § and the Porte Saint-Martin. * Jean-Laurent Bernini, bom at Naples in 1598, designed the colonnade of St. Peter's Place, the Navone fountain, &c. f Francois Borromini (1599—1667). J Lemeicier (1595—1660). § Francois Blondel, Sieur des Croiseltes (1618—1686). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — LITERATURE , ETC. 291 Architecture servilely followed the will of Louis XIV. To satisfy the prince’s taste, Claude Perrault placed a colonnade ; The Palace of Versailles (old picture). 2Q2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. in imitation of the antique, in front of the Louvre of the Renais¬ sance ; he procured a majestic effect with this fine arrangement of fifty-two columns and pilasters coupled and fluted, ninety-one feet high, over a distance of 576 feet. His work at the time excited great enthusiasm. But in Paris Louis XIY. found it impossible to maintain his favourite use of the straight line; he therefore constructed the immense palace of Versailles. Its fa 9 ade, which looks over the garden, is of imposing dimensions. Jules Hardouin Mansart * * * § had built a magnificent chapel there, and he wished the palace to be of the same height. Louis XIV. refused, to the great detri¬ ment of the building, over which the chapel dominates like a monstrous cenotaph. Versailles repeats, of course, the colonnade, which was then considered the most perfect form of architectural decoration. French Sculpture ; Puget. —Pierre Sarazin continued the tradi¬ tions of the sculptors of the sixteenth century; he designed some remarkable mausoleums, and the Caryatides of the central build¬ ing of the Louvre.f But Pierre Puget, J a free and independent genius, refused to submit to the orders of Louis XIV.’s ministers. Obeying his genius, he did not shrink from the most complicated works. “ I am nourished on great works,” said he ; “I am at home on them, and the marble yields before me, however large the block.’' He carved the enormous group of Perseus and Andro¬ meda, Hercules in repose, Milo of Crotona and the lion, and the bas-relief of Alexander and Diogenes. Painting; the Italian School;• Guercino, Albano, Domenichino, Salvator Rosa. —Painting, which had been the glory of Italy in the sixteenth century, was still cultivated with ardour. The school of Bologna at last distinguished itself above the others with Guercino, § * Jules Hardouin, called Mansart, great-nephew of Francois Mansart (1646—1708). f Born at Noyon (1588—1660). He built the mausoleums of the Prince de Conde and Cardinal de Berulle. X Pierre Puget, born at Marseilles (1632—1694). § G. F. Barbieri, surnamed il Guercino (1590—1666). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 293 flattered by a too-ambitious title, “ the magician of painting.’’ Albano, * * * § called “ the Anacreon of painting,” loved to reproduce mythological subjects in small proportions. Domenichino, + one of the chief painters of the Bolognese school, executed some fine reli¬ gious and secular works ; the Vatican museum possesses his most renowned picture, “ The Last Communion of St. Jerome.” Guido Beni, { a prolific artist, was more theatrical, and treated his religious subjects with irreverent and even with meretricious prettiness, with sentimentality instead of with true feeling, and he marks the debasement and decline of true religious art. The Neapolitan school boasted of one remarkable and popular artist, Salvator Rosa,§ at once painter, poet, musician and actor. Born at Naples, he lived chiefly away from his country, distributing his battle-scenes, landscapes, and sea-pieces everywhere. Painting in Spain: Pdbera, Velasquez, Murillo. —Italy, although in decadence, still attracted and inspired painters. She awakened the genius of the Spanish painter Ribera. || Living like a vaga¬ bond in Rome, he studied the pictures of Caravaggio and Correggio, then settling at Naples he accumulated wealth, and became one of the most important personages of his time. But though he de¬ serted his country, he never renounced it, and infused Spanish fire into Italian imitations. He preferred subjects in which he could introduce violent contrasts of light and shade. He was a realist, who revelled in the terrible, the savage, and the hideous, and we are forced to admire the power of his work. * Fiancesco Albano (1578—1660). f Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino (1581—1641). % Guido Reni (1575—1642). The Louvre possesses a great number of Guido’s works, amongst others four large compositions from the History of Hercules. § Salvator Rosa (1615—1673). The most celebrated picture by Salvator Rosa is the “ Cataline’s Conspiracy ” in the Pitti Palace at Florence. || Jose Ribera (1588—1659). Naples, in a Carthusian convent now con¬ verted into a hospital, has Ribera’s ‘* Communion of the Apostles,” “ The Pro¬ phets,” a “ Descent from the Cross ” (a masterpiece); and at the Museum, “ Saint Jerome in the Desert.” The Louvre possesses “ The Adoration of the Shepherds.” At Madrid we find “Jacob’s Ladder,” The Twelve Apostles,” “ Mary the Egyptian,” and “ The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew.” 294 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Zurbaran * * * § has been surnamed with some exaggeration “the Spanish Caravaggio,” probably because of the bluish tints which he preferred, but no one ever depicted the rigours of an ascetic life better than he. Herrera the elder and Pacheco f are chiefly distinguished because they were the masters of Velasquez. Velas¬ quez,! painter and friend of Philip IV., the greatest painter of the Spanish school, succeeded in every style—history, portraits, land¬ scapes, scenes of familiar life, animals, flowers, and fruit. Jean- Jacques Rousseau called him “ the man of nature and truth.” His portraits are masterpieces and seem almost able to speak. Ve¬ lasquez was not so ascetically or mystically religious as other Spanish painters, and his paintiugs have a wider range. He is the artist of the Court rather than of the Convent and the Church. But in Catholic Spain religious painting could not be abandoned, and Murillo rendered it glorious. A follower of Velasquez, he also imitated the Italian masters. At Seville he painted innumerable works for the churches and convents, and many of them have now been collected in a convent, which has been converted into a picture gallery. His Virgins, the ecstasies of the saints, his Annunciations and Assumptions are distinguished by a nameless charm which reproduces the mystical inspiration of the artist, who is classed amongst the glories of Spain and of painting. § * Francisco Zurbaran (1598 —16G2). t Herrera the Elder (1576—1656), Pacheco (1571—1654). ! Don Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velasquez (1599—1660). Sixty-four of Velasquez’s pictures are in the Royal Museum of Madrid. Amongst his pictures of familiar life we find “ The Spinners,” “ Vulcan’s Forge,’’ “ The 1 'runkards,” “ The Scene of the Portrait of the Infanta Margarita,” or “ The Menins.” Amongst the historical pictures we find “ The Surrender of Breda,” called also “ lh j . Picture of Lances.” § Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1618—1682). Amongst his works we notice at Seville “The Multiplication of Loaves in the Desert,” “Moses Striking the Rock,” several Madonnas, Conceptions or Apotheoses of the Aurgin. The Royal Museum at Madrid possesses forty-five specimens of his work. The Museum of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg has nineteen. The Louvre contains a “ Holy Trinity,” a “ Conception,” “ The Young Beggar,” and “ The Aurgin,” so called of Seville. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 295 But after Murillo and Juan Carreno,* an imitator of Velas quez, the arts in Spain fell into the decadence that had already affected literature. The languor which had seized the nation spread to literature and art. French Fainting : Nicholas Poussin ; Claude Lorraine .—In the sixteenth century the French had been not only instructed, but also supplanted in their own country by Italians; in the seven¬ teenth they rivalled their teachers. Simon Vouet,f after fourteen years’ sojourn in Rome, brought back specimens of the Bolognese school, and himself deserved to be a model to the painters who succeeded him. Nicholas Poussin arrived at Rome, like Ribera, as a beggar, settled there, and, like him, remained true to his own country. The grave, austere tendency of his genius was blended with great knowledge of anatomy and philosophy and familiarity with history and poetry. Poussin shows us how much science has done to raise and nourish art. In religious subjects, in secular pictures, and in landscapes, for he cultivated ail sty Its with equal success, Poussin carried the arrangement and com¬ position of his subjects, the expression of sentiment, and the alwaj^s noble style of his personages, to great perfection. He is one of the most brilliant disciples of the great Italian masters, and at the same time an original artist who retained in his pictures the logic and good taste that belong to his native land. He is the prince of the elder French school. | * Juan Carreno, died in 1685. f Simon Vouet (1590—1649), painter to Louis XIII. The works that still exist by him are a “Presentation in the Temple,” an “Entombment,” a “ Madonna,” and “ Roman Charity.” % Nicholas Poussin (1594—1665). Poussin painted several large pic¬ tures. At Paris we find a “Lord’s Supper,” “Saint Francis Xavier in India,” “ Saint James’s Vision of the Virgin.” But he preferred what are called easel pictures, and we must name amongst his biblical and religious works “Rebecca at the Fountain,” “Moses in the Bulrushes,” “Moses Saved from the Water,” “ Manna in the Desert,” “ The Judgment of Solo¬ mon,” “ TheFour Seasons ” represented by four pictures, “ Adam and Eve,” “ Ruth and Naomi,” “ The Return of the Spies from the Promised Land,” 296 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Claude Gelee, called Lorraine, first of all French landscape painters, was also influenced by the real Italians. His poetical talent, in love with nature and the real, delighted in landscapes and sea-pieces, the former breathing calm and freshness, the latter sparkling with sunlight. He has been surnamed the “ Raphael of landscapes.” * J. C. Callot (1592—1685), a really powerful engraver of beg¬ gars and ruffians, and the picaresque and grotesque style, should not be omitted in the catalogue of French art. Eustache Lesueur (1617—1655) is an example of the clear, correct, classical style, which was now inaugurated, and which dominated French art until the nineteenth century. Lebrun, Mignard, Rigaud, are still more artificial and theatrical, their work is infected by a false mythology, and they are rather decorators than true painters. Flemish Artists in France: Philip de Champaigne; Van der Meulen. —By the side of the French artists, and almost French themselves, worked the artists from the busy hive of Flanders. Francois Porbus,f the younger, who painted portraits of Henry IV., Marie de Medicis, and Louis XIII. ; Jacques Foucquier, Philip de Champaigne,! Van der Meulen. For the two last there is almost a contention between Flanders where they were born, and France where they lived. Philip de Champaigne, painter to Anne “The Deluge,” one of his masterpieces. The Louvre also possesses an “Adoration of the Magi,” “The Rest in Egypt,” “The Blind Men in Jericho,” “ The Vision of St. Paul.” As specimens of his secular work, Paris has “ The Rape of the Sabines; ” as mythological subjects, “ The Death of Eurydice ” and “ Flora’s Triumph.” “ Arcadia ” is one of his most charm¬ ing pastorals. * Claude Gelee, bom in Lorraine (1600—1682). The Louvre contains several landscapes by him, a view of Campo Vaccino in Rome, and some sea- pieces. London, Madrid, St. Petersburg, and many other galleries also possess examples of Claude Lorraine’s work. f Francois Porbus (1569—1622). ! Philip de Champaigne was bom at Brussels (1602—1674). The Louvre possesses twenty-three pictures by him, amongst them a “ Dead Christ ” and the portrait of Richelieu. A friend of Port Royal, he also painted a portrait of Sister Angelique Arnauld. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 297 of Austria, worked in France and left most of his pictures there ; they are distinguished by their noble composition, and by the correctness which afterwards became the glory of the French school. Van der Meulen * was the historiographer of Louis XIY. He was present at every war, and reproduced what he saw on large or small canvases, according to his subjects. Although a foreigner, he was so much influenced by French patronage that he consecrated his talent to the glorification of his country’s enemy. Greatness of the Flemish School; Rubens. —These lead us to the Flemish school itself, the most prolific and most brilliant in the seventeenth century. The Flemings, through their study of Italy, replaced the latter, and the seventeenth century was their golden age. Rubens,f by his prodigious activity, his facility and powerful work, and also by his brilliant colouring, recalled the great artists of the sixteenth century, whom he surpassed by his wealth, his luxury, and the favour which he enjoyed in his own country, in France, Spain, and England, where he was the guest and painter of sovereigns. Religious and mythological, historical and alle¬ gorical, portrait or landscape, he mastered every style. It was no longer the concentration of an artist striving to attain perfec¬ tion in a few finished works, but the genius of an artist revelling in the somewhat coarse beauty of the flesh, delighting in difficulties, * Van der Meulen, bom at Brussels (1634—1690). The Louvre and Ver¬ sailles contain most of his work. t Peter Paul Rubens, bom at Siegen, in the Duchy of Nassau, belonged to a Belgian family, proscribed by the Duke of Alva ; he returned to Belgium young, and settled at Antwerp (1577—1640). His industry was immense, and his pictures are distributed everywhere. Antwerp contains one hundred pictures; Munich, ninety-three; Vienna, ninety; the Prado of Madi*id, sixty- six ; the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, sixty-three; the Louvre, fifty-four; England, more than two hundred. We must mention some of his most remarkable works: “The Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Ildefonso ” (Museum at Vienna), “ The Adoration of the Shepherds ” (St. John’s Church, Mechlin), “ The Last Judgment ” (in the Pinakothek at Munich, his largest picture), “ The History of Decius” (six pictures at Vienna), a “ Miraculous Draught of Fishes” (Church of Notre-Dame at Mechlin), “The Battle of the Amazons” (Munich), “ The Descent from the Cross ” at Antwerp, the twenty- four pictures in the Medicis Gallery of the Louvre, &c. 29S THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. in love with his occupation, throwing in the principal lines of his frequently happy compositions, and concealing all imperfections of drawing and unshapeliness of outline under a brilliancy of colour that dazzles the eye. Van Dyck; Jordaens. —Rubens, admired and feted, had a large school, from which some pupils issued that rivalled their master. Van Dyck* travelled like him, and was also a favourite with princes. He painted magnificent pictures for churches, but he was chiefly celebrated for his portraits. He painted thirty-eight portraits of Charles I. and Henrietta, without counting nobles or princesses, who eagerly competed for the honour of seeing their own features reproduced on canvas by a brush which gave them the expression and vitality of nature, whilst it flattered them by a distinction and grace peculiar to Van Dyck’s work. Jordaens,t another of Rubens’ pupils, succeeded equally in portraiture, but he also touched every other subject, religious or popular, allegorical or historical. Gaspard de Crayer treated reli¬ gious and historical subjects, and with Corneille de Vos deserves mention ; nor must Franz Snyders, the painter of the chase, be forgotten among the contemporaries of Rubens. The Painters of Genre; David Teniers .—David Teniers, son of a painter, son-in-law of Velvet Breughel, raised himself to the first rank by the creation of genre painting. Teniers depicts life, and particularly the Flemish life. Teniers saw with the eyes of genius the blustering sensual life of his fellow-countrymen; he reproduces the smoky taverns, the card parties, the pots of beer, the abundant feasting, the animated fairs of his country, and portrays initimably the coarse, shrewd humour of the peasants of * Van Dyck, born at Antwerp (1599—1641), died young, but, nevertheless, left an immense number of works. England alone possesses three hundred and fifty ; Vienna, sixty-seven ; Munich, forty-one; St. Petersburg, thirty- two ; the Louvre, twenty-four ; Madrid, twenty-one; and Dresden, nine¬ teen. f Jean-Jacques Jordaens, bom at Antwerp (1593—1678). His two best pictures are in the Brussels Museum. The “ Miracle of Saint Martin ” and “ Autumn;’’ the “ Satyr” and the “ Peasant” (at Munich) are also men¬ tioned, and the “ Triumph of the Prince of Orange,” allegory (at Brussels). THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY—LITERATURE, ETC. 299 the north. Teniers brings us down to earth ; but better than any historian he has desciibed for us one side of the spirit of his age.* The Dutch School; Rembrandt. —Nature awakened the Dutch genius ; the green trees, the damp meadows, the herds of cattle, the sea and the ships, impressed and inspired the artists of the land that has been wrested from water by the patient industry of its inhabi¬ tants. For a long time the Dutch, united to the Flemings under the Spanish rule, had only the Flemish artists. But art emanci¬ pated itself at the same time as the country, and in the seventeenth century a school appeared that rivalled the Flemish. Rembrandt was the chief and the most glorious of its masters. Whilst Rubens sought for brilliant light and exaggerated colouring, Rembrandt found new poetry in the opposition of light and shade. He sought for night effects and contrasts of colour. He loved to illumine and brighten his figures on a dark background. His work was con¬ siderable, and is distributed amongst the different museums of Europe. His masterpieces, “The Anatomy Lesson” (at the Hague), and “ The Night Watch,” at Amsterdam, are popular classics, continually reproduced by engravings. Rembrandt de¬ signed his pictures admirably; they at once seize the imagination, and by his cleverly graduated distribution of colours, by his power¬ ful contrasts, they leave a profound impression. He was also in the first rank of portrait-painters, f * David Teniers (1610—1694), born at Antwerp ; his pictures are every¬ where. Madrid has fifty-two ; Vienna, forty-three ; St. Petersburg, forty- six ; the Louvre, thirty-four ; Munich, twenty-nine ; Dresden, twenty-four; the National Gallery, nineteen. His “ Confraternity of the Arquebusiers of Antwerp” is considered his masterpiece. It was painted in 1643, and is now in the Museum of the Hermitage. Forty-five personages are repre¬ sented, and they are all admirably painted. t Rembrandt Van Ryn (1608—1674). We must cite besides “The Ana¬ tomy Lesson” (the Hague) and “The Night Watch” (Amsterdam), “ The Syndics of the Corporation of Cloth Merchants at Amsterdam.” The Louvre possesses “ The Angel Raphael Leaving the Family of Tobit,” “ The Disciples at Emmaus,” “The Good SamaritanMunich has a “Cruci¬ fixion,” an “ Entombment,” a “ Nativity,” a “ Resurrection,” an “Ascen¬ sion;” and lastly, the celebrated “ Descent from the Cross.” England pos- 300 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Gerard Dow ; Terburg; Metzu. —Gerard Dow, the most cele¬ brated disciple of Rembrandt, was a portrait and genre painter, who paid great attention to details and to the subject of his works.* Terburg f followed the same line with equal spirit and brilliancy. Metzu was equally successful with simple subjects, and his pictures reveal correct observation.! To these names we must add those of Mieris,§ a pupil of Gerard Dow, of Wouvermans, j| who delights in battle pieces, of Van der Hayden, and, above all, of Paul Potter,H the finest animal painter of the age. Ruysdael; Hobbema. —Ruysdael** was the head of the landscape school, and was the most poetic of the Northern landscape painters. His country scenes incite to reveries, for Ruysdael not only saw nature, he lived with her and translated her soul. His friend and pupil, Hobbema,ff only painted her smiling and serene. We ought to add the names of many other artists to our list, for Holland boasted of a number of painters of great merit, up to Van Huysum,!!; who prolonged the glory of the Dutch school as far as the middle of the eighteenth century, but with whom the school ended. sesses many of his portraits. The Museum at Cassel has twenty-eight of Rembrandt’s works. The Hermitage at St. Petersburg contains forty-five. The Dutch School abounds in artists who follow Rembrandt. We must name Bartholomew Van der Heist; Albert Cuyp (1605—1672); Adrian Van Ostade (1610—1685), who recalls Teniers by the genre scenes in which he delights. * Gerard Dow (1613—1680). His masterpiece was the “Dropsical Woman” (Louvre). “ The Empiric ” (St. Petersburg), “ The Charlatan ” (Munich), and “ The Night School,” at Amsterdam, also deserve mention. t Gerard Terburg (1608—1681). X Gabriel Metzu (1658—1664). § Franz Mieris (1635—1681). || Philip Wouvermans (1620—1668). U Paul Potter (1625—1654). ** Jacques Ruysdael (1620 or 1625—1681). The Louvre contains only a few of his works—“ The Sunstroke,” “ The Thicket,” a “ Tempest; ” the Museum at Amsterdam contains a “ Waterfall ” and a view of the Castle of Bentheim. The Museums of London, St. Petersburg, Munich, and Vienna all possess works by Ruysdael. At Vienna is preserved a masterpiece, “ The Forest.” ft Mindert Hobbema (1638—1709). His works are rare. At Munich there is a “ Dutch Cottage ; ” at Berlin, a “ Forest of Oaks,” &c. X+ John Van Huysum (1682—1749). THE SE VENTEENTH CENTUR Y—LITER A TURE, E TC. 301 The Results of the Seventeenth Century .—Art in the seventeenth century assumed the realistic tone it was to retain. In some degree it descended to earth, although French art still tended towards the idealism of the Italians. Thought, already freed, though the century was given up to intolerance, had opened the vast fields of natural science, where reason braced and strength¬ ened herself, and by her speculations more and more daring and practical, approached nearer to the Infinite reason, whose laws she had vainly sought to understand by a priori argument. Modem languages had their classical authors, who again inspired others. Science made its appearance with discoveries that have produced marvellous results. Human society was transformed and polished. Kingdoms were established, and England offered a model of liberty. The march of ideas was accelerated in the seventeenth century. Already over Europe, still priest-ridden and still feudal, a breath of criticism was passing, which in the eighteenth century broke down the old barriers, prejudices, and tyrannies. CHAPTER XIII. THE ARTS, SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL MOVEMENT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Summary : New Character of Art in the Eighteenth Century — Architecture —Sculpture—Artistic Furniture of Modem Times—The styles of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI.—French Painting—Painting in Germany and England—The Scientific Movement; Mathematicians; Euler, d’Alembert, Clairaut, Lagrange—Astronomy; Bradley, Her- schell, Maupertuis, Mechain, Delambre — Laplace — The Physical Sciences; Thermometers ; Air Balloons—Steam Engines; Newcomen, James Watt—Electricity—Franklin ; Lightning Conductors—Dynamic Electricity ; Galvani and Volta — Chemistry ; Priestley, Scheele, Lavoisier—The Natural Sciences ; Buff on, Linnaeus—Medicine; Jenner —The Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb and for the Blind ; the Abbe de l’Epee; Valentine Haiiy—French Literature in the Eighteenth Cen¬ tury; the Followers of the Traditions of the Preceding Century; Mas¬ sillon, Saint-Simon—Decadence of Poetry—Voltaire the Dramatist— Voltaire the Author, his Historical Works—Voltaire the Philosopher— French Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century; Condillac, Helvetius, the “ Encyclopedia,” d’Alembert, Diderot—The Political Writers; Mon¬ tesquieu, the “Espritdes Lois”—Jean-Jacques Rousseau; the “ Contrat Social;” “Emile”—Birth of Political Economy; Gournay, Quesnay, Adam Smith—The Novel ; Lesage, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre— Prose Comedies ; Marivaux, Beaumarchais—Character and Influence of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century — English Literature; The Essayists; Addison—The Novel; Defoe, Fielding—Poetry in England —Philosophy; History ; Eloquence — German Literature ; Lessing— Poetry ; Klopstock—Goethe—Schiller—Wieland—German Philosophy ; Kant—Italian Literature—Music; its Progress in Modem Times ; Ra¬ meau, Gluck, Pergolese, Gretry—The German School—Bach, Handel, Haydn— Mozart. New Character of Art in the Eighteenth Century. —Art, so brilliant in the seventeenth century, underwent an eclipse in the eighteenth. It seemed as though exhausted, and became second-rate, whilst THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 303 society, which had acquired wealth, sought for and encouraged it more than ever. It failed through imitation, and was less earnest because society itself had become more frivolous, and re-acting upon art made it the expression of social life. An age of transition —the close of the movement commenced in the fifteenth century, the starting point of a new revolution—the eighteenth century lived on the past, whilst preparing for the future, enjoyed the advantages already acquired and dreamed of greater; it still struggled in the midst of confusion produced by the conflict of modern ideas with the shackles of the Middle Ages. It was an age of discussion, of argument, not of sentiment. Now art lives by sentiment. Sceptical or indifferent towards religious questions, the eighteenth century was no longer in¬ spired by Christianity ; middle class and worldly, it had lost the inspiration of nature ; dry, mocking and frivolous, it had not, even in spite of its humanitarian theories, the inspiration of the heart. Architecture. —Already, the architectural works produced in the seventeenth century had been perceptibly inferior to those of the sixteenth. The Italian and French architects had confined them¬ selves to copying, often to dwarfing their models. France can only boast of the architects Louis ,* 4 Gabriel,! Servandoni,| and Soufflot.§ They imitated, either the colonnades of Louis XIY.’s time, or, like Soufflot, the Italian cupolas ; they invented only details, and chiefly sought for the agreeable and pretty. They be¬ came coquettish to please their century; Oppenord|| even went so far as to introduce the style of the Italian decadence, called the * Louis built the Theatre Franc;ais at Paris, and the galleries of the Palais-Royal; at Bordeaux the Grand Theatre, the finest that had yet been seen. t Jacques-Ange Gabriel (1710—1782) constructed the Ecole Militaire, the buildings in the Place de la Concorde and the Chateau de Compiegne. X Servandoni, born at Florence (1695—1756), settled in France. He de¬ signed the doorway of Saint-Sulpice. § Jacques-Germain Soufflot, born at Irancy (1714—1781), constructed the Pantheon, in imitation of Agrippa’s Pantheon, surmounting it, like St. Peter's at Rome, by a high dome supported by a colonnade. || G’dles-Marie Oppenord was a decorator rather than an architect. 304 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, rococo. In other countries this style became the churriguer- esque, plateresque, and the sham classical where stucco replaces stone. ScuJjAure. —Sculpture, however, maintained its nobility with William Coustou,* and Etienne Falconet,+ but Bouchardon J chiefly devoted himself to modelling Cupids and Psyches in the Pompadour style. Houdon also sacrificed himself to this style, but by his statue of Yoltaire he belongs to the nineteenth century. In Germany Dannecker has left us his Ariadne. Far superior to any of these, Canova revived true art by his works, which orna¬ ment Rome and Vienna. § Artistic Furniture of Modem Times .—One of the most remark¬ able features of the eighteenth century is the development and transformation of decorative furniture. In the Middle Ages it commanded little attention. A few carved benches placed before the wide chimneys, a few massive chairs, four-post bedsteads raised upon platforms, a few primitive chests, were the sole ornaments of the immense chilly halls of the great castles. Turners and wood carvers chiefly occupied themselves in decorating the stalls in the churches. In the sixteenth century, furniture still perpetuated the Gothic forms. The Renaissance revived a taste for the classical, and ornamented furniture, like architecture, imitated its pediments and arcades. The articles of furniture employed for domestic purposes became more numerous, the exploration of distant countries excited a taste for Eastern curiosities, painted boxes from Turkey, Oriental carpets, Chinese porcelain. The Renaissance style was most * William Coustou (1678—1746), brother to Nicholas, carved the Ecuyers de Marly, now removed to the Champs-Elysees. t Etienne Falconet (1716—1791) executed the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, now at St. Petersburg. J Edmund Bouchardon (1698—1752). 5 Canova (1757—1822) designed at Rome, in the Church of the Apostles, the mausoleum of Clement XIY.; at St. Peter’s, the tomb of Pius VI., and other works now in the Vatican Museum; at Vienna, the mausoleum of Maria-Christina of Austria, daughter of Maria Theresa. He also wrought the fine group of “ Theseus Conquering the Minotaur.” THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 305 graceful; it was the epoch when the credence, a simple table in¬ tended for the testing of the viands, became a carved, ornamental buffet; or a cabinet, presenting an architectural effect, carved with figures in relief, medallions with busts, and arabesques. Woods softer and finer than oak were eagerly sought for ; first walnut was used, then ebony, enlivened with inlaying of mother-of- pearl and ivory. The Italians particularly excelled in this manufac¬ ture, which led to marquetry, with woods of different colours. Boule, or Buld, Furniture ; the Styles of Louis XIV ., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. —In the seventeenth century, under Henry IV. and Louis XIII., an epoch of transition, furniture was remark¬ able for its carvings, but heavy and cumbersome in appearance. The cabinet became a sideboard, a chest arranged with drawers. Louis XIV., who aimed at grandeur, retained the vast dimensions of the furniture ; but he was also anxious that it should look well in his immense apartments, where the walls and ceilings were pictures framed in gilded reliefs, or were hidden under magnificent Gobelins tapestries. The celebrated cabinet-maker, Andre Charles Boule,* then appeared. He conceived the idea of making his furni¬ ture in ebony, and covering large surfaces with devices in thin tortoiseshell inlaid as arabesques, with foliage and ornaments of brass and copper, relieved with engravings by hand. This brilliant mosaic was accompanied with bas-reliefs in chased and gilded bronze masks, foliage, mouldings, entablatures, corner pieces, which formed a frame to the design and points of light, which prevented the eye from losing itself in unmeaning confusion. Boule’s furniture was most appropriate for the decoration of the gigantic drawing¬ rooms and state apartments fashionable under Louis XIY. ; large ornamental consoles filled the spaces between the windows and were laden with gold, jasper, porphyry vases, with gilded mountings and garlands, reflected in innumerable mirrors, f Furniture had adopted the style which it still retains, only varied in its ornaments. Boule first opened the school; he had four sons and several pupils, who gave the tone to the eighteenth century. * Boule (1642—1732). f Jacquemart, “ Histoire du Mobilier.” X 306 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Furniture then became the chief object. Louis XV. avoided large apartments, and preferred small rooms, tiny retreats, where the walls were hidden by simple wood panellings elegantly carved and relieved by golden lines. Nobles and commoners imitated the king. Life became less solemn, more friendly. Comfort was com¬ bined with elegance, variety and softness in chairs, a profusion of small objects, commodes, chiffoniers with drawers and secretaires. The coquetry of women reacted upon the decoration of apartments. The taste of the century was reflected in the capriciously varied shapes of the furniture. However, a reaction took place towards the end of Louis XY.’s reign. The simplicity, though artificial, of Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette affected it, and from that time furniture, whilst still elegant, has been more regular, preserves the graceful style that characterized it in the reign of Louis XVI., and is better adapted to manners becoming more and more bourgeois, and to moderate fortunes, that each day become more numerous. French Painting .—French painting easily adapted itself to the new tastes, and the light graceful compositions of Watteau* and Boucher, f suffice as examples of that smiling art, which only seeking flowers, garlands and love, falsifies nature under pretext of loving it, and falls into affectation under the name of ele¬ gance. Nature herself reappeared upon the canvas, with the sea pieces of Joseph Yernet,! and the village scenes, the poetic figures by Greuze, § the precursor of the following century, at the opening of which he died. Painting in Germany and England .—On the other hand coun¬ tries which had not before produced anything now opened schools of artists. Germany, sterile since Albert Diirer, boasted, in the * Watteau (1684—1721). He chiefly excelled in pictures of elegant festivals. t Boucher (1730—1770). In the midst of insipid, fanciful landscapes he places shepherdesses and sheep not less be-ribboned than their guardians. % Joseph Vemet (1714—1789). One gallery in the Louvre is entirely filled with his sea pieces. S Greuze (1725—1805); one of his finest pictures is the “Accordee de Village.” THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 307 eighteenth century, of Denner,* * * § who was so skilful in his profes¬ sion that he was continually attempting the impossible ; of Die¬ trich, f a talented copyist rather than an original artist, and above all of Raphael Mengs,| a follower of the Italians, a patient worker, who widely influenced and gave a false bias to the Spanish school, but completed only a few pictures. The English also at length profited by the lessons of the Italians and Flemish artists. In the eighteenth century they had, if not a school, at least some celebrated artists, William Hogarth,§ excellent as a painter of contemporary manners, and as a moralist in art. Reynolds,|| supreme in portraiture, and not less distinguished as a writer on art, is considered the first great English painter. Gainsborough,H great as a portrait painter, was especially the founder of the English school of landscape-painting, of which he is among the best representatives. The Scientific Movement; Mathematicians; Euler, d'Alembert, Clairaut, Lagrange .—England and Germany were unequal to the task of reviving art, exhausted as it was in France,in Flanders, in Holland, as well as in Italy and Spain. But they had an important share in the scientific and literary movement, the most honourable characteristic of the eighteenth century, and the first step towards future progress. A family of savants, natives of Switzerland, but settled in Italy, had, during the eighteenth century, continued the mathematical work commenced in the preceding century ; these were the Bemouilli,** * Balthazar Denner, of Hamburg (1685—1747). t Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Weimar (1712—1774). Dresden possesses fifty-one pictures by him. | Raphael Mengs, born in Bohemia (1728—1779). His father, a painter in enamel, in order to force him to study the great masters, shut him into the Vatican with bread and water. The Museum at Madrid contains a great “ Adoration of the Shepherds ” by him. § William Hogarth (1697—1764). The National Gallery contains his “ Marriage a la Mode ” and the “ Cock Fight.” || Reynolds (1723—1792). IT Thomas Gainsborough (1727—1788). Richard Wilson is also mentioned (1714—1782). ** Jean Bemouilli (1667—1748). His brother Jacques, then Nicolas and Daniel Bemouilli. We must add for Italy, G. Riccati (Venice, 1676—1734). 3o8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. who particularly devoted themselves to the calculation of proba¬ bilities. England boasts of many distinguished mathematicians.* * * § Germany is particularly honoured by the celebrated Euler,f who, although born at Basle, lived at St. Petersburg and Berlin. He wrote for a Princess of Anhalt-Dessau, “ Letters upon some Subjects of Physics and Philosophy,” which brought science with¬ in the range of all. He formulated the integral calculus, the inverse of differential calculus. The small republic of Geneva, afterwards a literary centre, had also its savants, amongst others Gabriel Cramer, author of an “ Introduction to the Analysis of Curved Lines in Algebra; ” and the Trembleys, a family of savants like the Bernouilli. France produced brilliant mathematicians. D’Alembert, J de¬ serted as a child by his parents, was gifted with such extra¬ ordinary facility for calculations that at twenty-four he was a member of the Academie des Sciences ; he wrote a “ Treatise upon the Integral Calculus,” a “Treatise on the Equilibrium and Move¬ ment of Fluids ; ” he also took part in all the great astronomical works. Clairaut,§ like d’Alembert, was an infant prodigy, and at twelve years old attracted the attention of the learned world by a memoir on four Geometrical Curves. He afterwards travelled to Lapland with Maupertuis, to measure a degree of meridian, and also to make immense calculations upon Halley’s comet. He also published “Elements of Geometry.” Lastly, Lagrange|| ac¬ quired universal renown by his “ Analytical Mechanics,” his “Cal¬ culation of Variations;” his glorious career was prolonged into the first years of the nineteenth century. Napoleon called him “ the high pyramid of mathematical science.” * Chiefly, Brook Taylor (London, 1685—1731); Roger Cotes, professor at Cambridge (1682—1716); MacLaurin (York, 1698—1746); Matthew Stewart (Edinburgh, 1717—1785). f Euler (Leonard) (1707—1783). Another savant, Henry Lambert, bom at Mulhouse, died at Berlin (1728—1777). He was at the same time a mathematician and astronomer. + D’Alembert (JeanLerond) (1717—1783). § Clairaut (1713—1765). || Lagrange, bom at Turin, settled in France (1736—1813). THE ARTS , ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 309 Astronomy; Bradley , Herschell , Maupertuis, Mechain, Delambre, (&c .— French, German, and English were seized with noble emulation, all striving to formulate with precision the laws of astronomy, that had been dimly seen during the preceding cen¬ tury. In England, Bradley,* * * § by the observation of a slight move¬ ment of the stars, was led to explain it by the mutation of the earth’s axis, combined with that of the light of the stars: he thus discovered the cause of the aberration of light, and at the same time proved the truth of the systems of Copernicus and Galileo. Instruments for observation were then perfected, and Herschell, born at Hanover, first introduced reflecting telescopes. Herschell, who settled in England himself in 1774, constructed a reflecting telescope, with which he observed Saturn’s ring and Jupiter’s satel¬ lites. He afterwards discovered the planet Uranus, thus further extending for us the limits of the celestial world.f In France the Academie des Sciences and the Government com¬ missioned (1785) Godin, Bouger, and La Condamine to go to Peru, in the Western hemisphere, with the Spaniard Ulloa, to measure an arc of the meridian near the equator. Maupertuis,J on his side, left (1786) for Lapland, with Clairaut, Camus, Le Monnier, and the Swedish Professor Celsius. Lacaille § also under took the works of triangulation to verify the great meridian of France. These voyages and studies served to prove the flattening of the earth at the poles, and the measurement of a degree of the meridian seemed to the Constituent Assembly to be the surest basis for the determination of the unity of measure, or the metre. Mechain jj * James Bradley, professor at Oxford University (1692—1762). f William Herschell (1738—1822). + Moreau de Maupertuis, bom at Saint-Malo (1698—1759), was invited by Frederic II. to reorganize the Academy at Berlin. He was chiefly celebrated for his disagreement with Voltaire. § Lacaille (1713—1762). || Andie Mechain, born at Laon (1744—1805), aided Cassini deThury and Legendre to determine the difference of longitude between the observa¬ tories of Paris and Greenwich, and contributed to the “ Connaissance des Temps.” 3io THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. and Delambre * * * § measured the meridian between Dunkerque and Barcelona, and later on Arago and Biot continued their measure¬ ments in Spain.! D’Alembert and Lagrange also contributed to the progress of astronomy by studying the librations of the moon. Fontenelle,! at the same time author and savant, had as it were prepared for these great works by his popular book, “ Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.” Lalande§ engraved a celebrated astronomical map, and being an eminent professor, educated a great number of pupils. Bailly || also merited a high rank amongst learned men by his “History of Astronomy,” before he presided over the Revolution, of which he was one of the most celebrated victims. Laplace .—But one name stands out above all others; it is that of Laplace,H who resumed Newton’s calculations. He ex¬ plained the movements of the stars, the inequalities of the planets, and formulated with regard to Jupiter’s satellites two theorems, known by the name of the laws of Laplace. The penetrating genius of Newton had been baffled by certain variations, which to him appeared inexplicable. He thought that the world’s system at certain times required the intervention of the Creator, to restore its equilibrium. Laplace solved the problem and justified the eternal wisdom of God, who does not need to retouch His work, but who has traced unalterable laws without a flaw. The great mathematician recognised that if the planetary ellipses are variable the great axis of each orbit remains the same; and consequently the revolution of each planet is limited to an impassable course. * Joseph Delambre, bom at Amiens (1749—1805), bad a large part in the elaboration of the metric system, but was particularly distinguished for bis “ History of Astronomy.” f This was the largest arc then measured. It has lately been continued from Mount Mulabacen, across the Mediterranean, to the Atlas range. X Fontenelle, died in 1757, it is said in bis hundredth year. § Lalande (1732—1807). II Bailly (1736—1793). If Laplace (1749—1827). Although he lived into the nineteenth century, Laplace is still one of the most illustrious savants of the eighteenth. His maoterpiece was the “ Treatise on Celestial Mechanics,” published in 1799. THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 311 Besides this, Laplace studied the lunar perturbations and proved that the rotatory movement of the earth round its axis is invariable. He also explained the equilibrium of Saturn’s rings. Physical Sciences ; Thermometers ; Air Balloons. —The physical sciences, which had been backward until then, now seemed by their activity anxious to regain lost time. Experiments with the thermometer, commenced in the seventeenth century, were con¬ tinued into the eighteenth by Fahrenheit,* then by Reaumur,! and by the Swede Celsius. J Towards the end of the century the brothers Montgolfier made (1783) their first experiments with air- balloons at Annonay, before the states of the province of Yivarais. Invited by the Academie des Sciences to go to Paris, they repeated their experiments at Versailles, in presence of Louis XVI. The 21st of November in the same year, Stephen Montgolfier dis¬ patched another balloon from the Chateau de la Muette, in which Pilatre de Rozier boldly ascended. Man essayed to take possession of the air; but although the science of air-balloons has since made some progress he has not yet succeeded. Steam-Engines ; Neiccomen ; James Watt. §—Man lias, learned to discipline the forces of nature in a wonderful way. An iron¬ monger and a glazier from Dartmouth, Devonshire, Newcomen and Cowley, taking advantage of the discoveries made in the preceding century with regard to steam, constructed engines furnished with boilers, in which the steam was formed, and with them succeeded in pumping mines. But although this first attempt was of the greatest importance, it cannot be compared to the labours of James Watt. This poor workman, an artisan of a town in Scotland, invented some improvements that almost formed the modern steam-engine. Instead of condensing the steam in the same cylinder in which it worked the piston, he conducted it * Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1690—1740) constructed a thermometer with spirits of wine, and afterwards with mercury, divided into 212 degrees. f The Reaumur thermometer, divided into 80 degrees, was invented in 1730. I The Celsius, or Centigrade, thermometer dates from 1742. § James Watt (1736—1819). 3*2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. into a separate receptacle, where it returned to liquid: he had discovered the condenser. He also invented the system by which the steam acts upon both sides of the piston, and found means to transmit two successive movements to the beam of the machine, resulting from the raising and lowering of the piston. Finally, by the use of the crank, he transformed the reciprocating movement of the propeller of the machine into a rotatory move¬ ment. A French engineer, Joseph Cugnot, constructed in 1770 some steam-carriages, which, although unserviceable, were the first attempts at locomotives. In America, Oliver Evans, the inventor of the high-pressure machine, built in 1790 some steam-carriages that travelled on the usual roads. This was a complete revolution, the importance of which was little suspected. Electricity .—In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries men first suspected the existence of electricity. The Englishman Hauksbee succeeded in 1709 in constructing an electric machine, by replacing the sulphur machine of Otto de Guericke by a glass globe rubbed by the hand. Stephen Gray and Wheeler, also English¬ men, contipued (1729) these experiments on electricity, and dis¬ covered that there were conducting and non-conducting substances. D. Dufay,* a French naturalist and physician, formulated a theory of electricity, in which he recognised the two sorts; he proved that electric sparks could be drawn from the human body. The Abbe Nolletf aided Dufay in his labours, and afterwards continued them. The Germans, Boze, Wolfius, and Winckler, modified the electric machine, which was still further perfected by the Eng¬ lishman Bamsden. At Leyden, in Holland, Munschenbroek, while electrifying water in a phial, accidentally placed one hand upon the metallic conductor which led the electricity from the machine into the water; he instantly felt so violent a shock in the arms and chest that he thought he was killed. This accident led to the invention of the Leyden jar (1745). The Abbe Nollet, in Paris, Watson * D. Dufay (1698 -1739). f Nollet (1700—1770). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 313 and Bevis in England, also made curious experiments on tbe transmission of electricity, at the same time giving the Leyden jar its definite form. Franklin; Lightning Conductors. — These studies in electricity suggested to the scientists, Gray, Nollet, Barberet, and Romas, its connection with thunder. In America, Franklin, at first printer and publisher, natural philosopher, politician, and diplomatist, invented a curious experiment with a kite which he launched into the air, near Philadelphia, during a storm (1752). The same experiment was at that time being repeated in Paris by Dalibard, with a long iron wire on an isolated body. Buffon repeated it again with an iron rod, placed upon his Chateau de Montbard. Professor Richmann, a member of the Scientific Academy at Saint Petersburg, died, stricken by lightning, at the moment when he was essaying some new experiments (1753). De Romas, the same year, resumed them at Nerac with more success, obtaining conclusive evidence. The principle of lightning conductors was found. Franklin erected the first at Philadelphia in 1760, but time was still required before this protective invention, enthusiastically adopted in America, was used in England in 1762, and it was not used in France before 1782. Sir W. Snow Harris applied it to ships in 1830. Dynamic Electricity ; Galvani and Volta. —Galvani,*' a professor at Bologna, was led by some experiments upon frogs, to affirm the existence of an electricity which he believed to be distinct from atmospheric electricity, and which he called animal electricity ; we now call it dynamic electricity (1789). Volta, f disputing Galvani’s theories, placed on the contrary the source of electricity in metals, while the Bolognese professor placed it in the bodies of animals. He constructed (1799) with pieces of copper or silver joined to pieces of zinc, yet separated by pieces of cardboard soaked in salt water, a pile which accu¬ mulated electricity at each extremity or pole, at the one positive electricity, at the other negative electricity. This pile formed a * Galvani (1737—1798). f Alexander Volta, horn at Como (1745—1827). 3H THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. current, and its power was destined to produce marvels that daily- become more astonishing. Chemistry; Priestley, Scheele, and Lavoisier. —Chemistry really appeared in the eighteenth century, with Priestley, Scheele, and Lavoisier. The Englishman Priestley,* * * § experienced in nearly every science, made numerous experiments upon the gases, and investi¬ gated particularly the properties of carbonic acid gas, oxygen, azote, oxide of carbon, and bicarburated hydrogen. Scheele,! who was born at Stralsund, but lived in Sweden, made new discoveries about oxygen and the analysis of the air, disco¬ vered chlorine, arsenic acid, Prussian blue, prussic acid, oxalic acid, &c. In France the eminent Lavoisier J solved the composition of the atmosphere, decomposed and recomposed water. In 1783 he made some admirable experiments before Louis XYI. and several savants ; he really founded the school of modern chemistry. Berthollet, Fourcroy, Cavendish, Lavoisier’s disciples, continued his labours; Guyton de Morveau§ of Dijon, Berthollet of An¬ necy, Fourcroy, born in Paris, by their instruction, aided greatly in diffusing a taste for chemistry. In England, Cavendish distin¬ guished himself by his experiments upon hydrogen, nitric acid, &c. To these names we must add the Irishman Kirwan, and the German Goettling. The Natural Sciences; Buffon , Linnaeus. — The natural sciences were defined, enriched by careful observations, and at last reduced to accurate classification. Buffon, || an elegant writer as well as an illustrious student, deserves to be called father of natural history, and by his clear, interesting style has added greatly to men’s knowledge of and * Joseph. Priestley (1733—1804). t Charles William Scheele (1742—1786). X Lavoisier (1743—1794). § Guyton de Morveau (1737—1816); Claude Louis Berthollet (1748—1822); Ant. Fourcroy (1755—1809); Cavendish (1731—1810); Kirwan (1750—1812); Goettling (1755—1809). || Jean-Louis Leclerc, Count de Buffon, born at Montbard (Cote-d’or) (1707—1788). THE ARTS , ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 315 taste for that science. Daubenton studied animals anatomically, and was the first to reconstruct fossil animals. He introduced merino sheep into France. The Swede Linnaeus* formed an ingenious botanical classification, which was in use for a long time. Medicine; Jenner. —The progress of natural sciences added greatly to the advance of medicine, which, freed in the preceding century from the yoke of routine, made fresh steps forward with the Frenchmen Bordeuf and Barthez.f In Paris, the Boyal Society of Medicine was founded in 1778. In Italy, Vallisneri § was both naturalist and doctor ; Spallanzani, || an anatomist, made important observations upon the circulation of the blood, the digestion, &c. Morgagni U inaugurated pathological anatomy. In England, Clieselden,** a surgeon, attempted the first operation upon cataract, and restored sight to one that was born blind. Lastly, Jennerff remarked that inoculation with cowpox preserved from smallpox, that formidable scourge which, until then, no one had been able to combat. His successful experiments created a great sensation, and won for him honours that could not be too great considering the service he rendered to humanity. The Institutions for the Deaf and Dumb and for the Blind; the Abbe de VEpee; Valentine Haiiy. —The highest ambition began to be devoted to the relief of suffering humanity. The Abbe de l’Epee4 + following the principles taught in Spain by the Benedictine Pedro Ponce (1520—1584) and improved by Juan P. Bonnet (1620), enabled the deaf and dumb to share in life’s duties and pleasures, by substituting the movements of the hands for the sounds of the voice, and by creating a visible alphabet which replaced the ears * Charles Linnaeus, bom at Bashult, in Sweden. (1707—1778). + Bordeu (1722—1776). X Barthez, born at Montpellier (1734—1806). § Vallisneri (1661—1730). || Spallanzani (1729—1799). U Morgagni (1682—1771). ** Cheselden (1688—1732). ft Jenner, born at Berkeley, Gloucester (1749—1823). XX Charles Michel, Abbe de l’Epee, born at Versailles (1712—1789). 3>6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. by the eyes. On the other hand, for those who were deprived of sight, Valentine Haiiy,* * * § ' brother to the mineralogist, invented an alphabet in relief, and replaced the lost sense by the sense of touch, developed to marvellous accuracy and delicacy. Lastly, Doctor Pinel,f protesting against the barbarous methods of treating the insane, who were, at that time, kept in chains, treated them as invalids, who could be cured, or at least relieved, by kindness and attentive care. These are three great conquests of civilization, victorious over the infirmities of nature. French Literature in the Eighteenth Century ; the Followers of the Traditions of the Preceding Century; Massillon; Saint-Simon .— One century cannot separate itself from the traditions of the age preceding it. What Linnceus said of nature, “ She does not advance by bounds,” can also be asserted of literature. The classical and religious traditions of the seventeenth century were at first continued even in the midst of the licence of the eighteenth century. Massillon, who had already attracted some attention at the end of the preceding century,f prolonged the glory of the Christian pulpit by his Lenten sermons. More rhetorical, less earnest, less of a theologian than his predecessors, he was equally popular. His sermons mark the beginning of a style which culminated in Scotland in the sermons and rhetoric of Hugh Blair (1718— 1800). Saint-Simon § carefully concealed his wonderful ‘‘Memoirs,” in which he paints the opening of the eighteenth century, as well as relates the misfortunes of the end of the seventeenth. But, although antagonistic to Louis XIV., Saint-Simon is still a man of the past, tainted by the privileges of the nobles, not comprehending the working of the ideas that he was watching, preoccupied with the * Valentine Haiiy (1745—1822). f Pinel (1745—1826). + Massillon (1663—1743), priest of the Oratory, afterwards Bishop of Cler¬ mont, preached before the aged Louis XIV. during several Lents, and his masterpiece, the “Petite Careme,” was pre.tdied before Louis XV., then a child. § Saint-Simon (1675—1755). THE ARTS , ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 317 pettiness of an etiquette which his vanity raised to the proportions of State events. His style, although very original and quite personal, still retained the long periods and even the spirit, indeed sometimes the incoherence, of the sixteenth century. Decadence of Poetry .—Poetry disappeared in this new society, intoxicated with the progress of wealth, mocking, sceptical, or even materialist. The lyrical impulse of J. B. Rousseau came from the mind, not from the heart.* Gresset’s “ Vert Vert,” the history of a parrot, is a masterpiece of light and graceful verse. Gilbert’s satires were powerless against the mocking tone of the age; his last verses on his own approaching death surpass in true pathos, and are almost equal in form, to Gray’s “ Elegy.” Only one poet foreshadowed the Renaissance of true poetry, Andre Che¬ nier,! whose genius was unfortunately cut short by the revolu¬ tionary axe. He was a Greek by birth and spirit. Comedy in verse now languished far behind Moliere or even Reynard, with Destouches,! Piron,§ author of the “ Metromanie,” and Gresset, the author of the “ Mechant,” mentioned above. But comedy was fortunately transformed at this epoch by its alliance with music. Favart || and SedainelT mark the rise of comic opera, which has so completely usurped the place of the older “ Masques.” Voltaire (1694—1778); his Plays .—Tragedy was attempted by the genius of Voltaire, a man of universal genius, poet, philoso¬ pher, and historian, whose name alone 'symbolises the epoch. Voltaire filled the eighteenth century with his life and works. In taste a disciple of the writers of the preceding century, an admirer of the ancients, whom he really never understood, he trod the road opened by Corneille and Racine ; while a residence beyond the Channel had introduced him to Shakespeare.** But Voltaire * Jean Baptiste Rousseau (1670—1741). Gresset (1709—1777). Gilbert (1751—1780). f Andre Chenier (1762—1794). J Destouches (1680— 1754). $ Piron (1689—1773). || Favart (1712—1792). U Sedaine (1719—1797). ** The principal tragedies by Voltaire are, “ CEdipus ” (1718), “ Brutus ” 3«3 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. made his tragedies a medium of political, of so-called philoso¬ phical, and even of anti-christian propaganda. He never misses an opportunity of attacking religious faith, without, however, directly assaulting Catholicism. The same philosophical and poetic ten¬ dencies reappear in the “Henriade,” in which he unsuccess¬ fully attempted to give France a national poem. His utter want of the true patriotism and earnestness required for such a pur¬ pose are shown in “ La Pucelle,” a licentious libel on the noble life of the “ Maid of Orleans,” and a lasting disgrace to its au¬ thor. Voltaire , the Prose Writer; his Historical Works. —Voltaire was more at home in prose. It was his proper weapon. He wielded it as no one else had done before him, and moulded it to the image of his intellect. He is the true father of modern French, clear, unam¬ biguous, pleasant without pretension, noble without heaviness, grave without pedantry, lively without yulgarity. He applied this animated style to history, and gave admirable models of narrative in “Charles XII.,” and the “Century of Louis XIVo” History in his hands was lacking in earnestness, but he appreciated it as an art. Voltaire the Philosopher. —But Voltaire was philosopher and philanthropist above all. Not a philosopher in the scientific, nor a philanthropist in the religious sense. His philosophy, and we use this expression for want of another term, consisted in subjecting everything to the examination of reason, to argument, to a search for truth. His philanthropy consisted in hatred of intolerance of all kinds ; he thus put an end to the persecution of Protestants in France, though he had no sympathy with their doctrine. He chiefly constituted himself the defender of the generous ideas of humanity, of tolerance and justice, and his influence, like his popularity, was immense, increasing with his age and the diffusion of his ideas. French Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century ; Condillac, Helvetius, the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert, Diderot. —Doctrinal phi- (1730), “Zaire” (1732), the “Death of Cgesar” (1733), “Alzire” (1736), “ Mahomet” (1741), and “ Merope,” (1743). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 319 losophy in the eighteenth century owed its existence in France solely to Condillac,* * * § who, resuming and exaggerating the theories of Locke, asserted that everything in us springs from sensation. This theory of sensation was also taught by Helvetius,f and resulted in a doctrine of materialised Epicureanism utterly inimical to true morality. La Mettrie \ and d’Holbach§ also propagated this specious philosophy. No fresh discoveries either in science or philosophy came from this school. Their great literary product was the “ Encyclopaedia,” whose chief editors were d’Alembert and Diderot, || both masters of a clear scientific style ; the influence of the “ Encyclopaedia ” on the age was immense ; but rather on the world of practical politics and current thought than on that of strict science and literature. To philosophers we can add moralists, but only in small numbers, particularly Vauvenargues,1T who preserved the traditions of the seventeenth century, and who resembles both Pascal and de la Bruyere. The Political Writers; Montesquieu (1G89—1755), the “ Esprit des Lois .”—This contradictory age, in spite of its frivolity, produced some deeper thinkers, like Montesquieu. He passed twenty years in writing a single book, the “ Esprit des Lois,” which analysed the different forms of government and the various legislations which had succeeded and combated each other in the world. Montesquieu admired the English government more than any other, and proposed to adopt it as a model: his book, one of the few legal and political treatises which can be read with pleasure as a work of literature, dealt a serious blow to absolute monarchy in France. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778); the “ Contrat Social * Condillac (1714—1780). t Helvetius, born at Paris, the descendant of a Dutch family (1715—1771). X La Mettrie (1709—1751). § D’Holbach (1723—1789). || Diderot (1713—1784). 11 Vauvenargues, born at Aix (1715—1747). He wrote an “ Introduction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind,” followed by “ Deflections and Maxims.” 320 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. “ Emile ."—The name of Rousseau attained the same rank as those of Montesquieu and Voltaire, and exercised probably a greater in¬ fluence on his contemporaries. Born in the city of Geneva, which was then a centre of French learning, Rousseau went early to France, where, being poor, he was forced to ply all kinds of trades to earn his living and his education. He was a self-made man ; and this fact inspired him with too much pride to allow him to believe in any one but himself. His work is the result of a current of thought which may be traced from Fenelon and Bernardin de St. Pierre down to the Revolution. His false sentiment, his morbid sensuality, his artificial view of nature, influenced a whole school of literature, of which Cha¬ teaubriand in France, the early writings of Schiller and Goethe in Germany, and Byron in England may be considered as ex¬ amples. His “ Contrat Social ” is echoed in the “ Declaration des Droits de l’Homme ” in 1789. His “Emile” marks an epoch in the history of education. His “ Confessions ” are the antithesis of those of St. Augustin, and might be almost called an apology for vice. In style he marks a new era, he leaves an impression of deeper earnestness, he can play as an artist with the strings of passion and of pathos; it is not the merely cynical mocking persiflage of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists. Morbid, half insane, as his nature was, he has deeper power to move his readers than these more brilliant, but no less superficial writers. In some remote degree he may be considered as the founder of the Romantic school, and of the new feeling for nature. Birth of Political Economy : Gournay , Quesnay, Adam Smith .— But a new science was now rising, destined eventually to over¬ throw the sentimental and unpractical political philosophy of the school of Rousseau : this was political economy. Towards the end of Louis XIV.’s reign, Vauban and Bois-Guillebert had directed their attention towards the financial and commercial organization of the State. Vauban had displeased the King, and affected public opinion by his book on the dime royale (the royal tithes). Bois- THE ARTS , ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 321 Guillebert, a Royal Intendant, had protested against the abuses of the protective system and the tyranny of the internal taxation.* But the real authors of political economy belong to the eighteenth century, Gournay t and Quesnay.£ Gournay’s axiom was the celebrated motto applied to the Manchester school of our day, Laisser fciire , laisser oiler , that is to say : eveiybody has a right to make what he likes, and how he likes, to sell every kind of merchandise at the price that suits him best to any purchaser he can find. Quesnay—the son of a lawyer, a distinguished surgeon, doctor to King Louis XV., who called him his thinker, probably because he felt the need of having some one who thought for him —studied chiefly rural interests. He sacrificed everything to agriculture, apparently considering industry as merely a source of revenue. The theory of the Scotchman Adam Smith, § who lived for some time in France, was more general and more just: in his eyes wealth consisted in labour. He demanded liberty for labour. A visit to a pin manufactory taught him another principle, the division of labour. He was also the first to establish the law of supply ana demand upon the rise and fall of prices. The Novel: Lesage; Bernardin de Saint-Bier re. —Lesage, [| in his amusing book of “ Gil Bias,” took up the picaresque or reali tic style. “ Gil Bias ” is perhaps the best description of the life of another country ever written by a foreigner. Spaniards long refused to believe that the tale had not been stolen from one of themselves. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre U has also survived with his charming idyll of “Paul et Virginie,” which seemed already inspired by the truer sentiments of the succeeding century, and acquired an immense popularity, not in France alone, but in all neighbouring countries. Voltaire aimed chiefly at satire in his novels. * Bois-Guillebert, or Guilbert, died in 1714. t Gournay, born at Saint Malo (1712—1769). £ Quesnay (1694—1774). § Adam Smith (1723—1790). || Lesage (1668-1747). U Bernardin de Saint Pierre (1737 —1814). Y 322 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Prose Comedies : Marivaux ; Beaumarchais. — Comedy lan¬ guished in verse, but the light, witty prose of the eighteenth century was admirably handled in the theatre. Lesage wrote “ Turcaret,” a remarkable picture of the financiers of the times. Marivaux,* avoiding great subjects, and devoting himself to sentiment, almost fell back into the language of the precieuses. He added to it so much grace and delicacy that his comedies are still favourites with literary men. At the end of the century the tone was raised. Comedy became an aggressive weapon with Beaumarchais,! who dared to place on the stage social questions, which were becoming more and more burning. He created the immortal type of “ Figaro,” the incarnation of the equalizing aspirations of the people. He concealed his attacks against the nobility in pieces so diverting, so amusing, that the nobles themselves applauded them. However, putting the allusions on one side, the “ Barber of Seville ” and the “ Marriage of Figaro ” are excellent comedies, written in a witty, satirical style, and still hold their own in literature and on the stage, like the plays of Goldsmith and Sheridan in English. Character and Iujhience of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century. —Play or novel, works of economist, philosopher or his¬ torian, had at that period another aim as well as the great object of pleasing the reader. Authors put forth ideas which soon trans¬ lated themselves into facts. The liteiature of the seventeenth century, nobler, more majestic, more serious, held itself aloft in the higher spheres of art and sentiment. It had above all contributed to the formation of taste, still contributes to it, and remains a most substantial nourishment for the soul and the intellect. The authors of the eighteenth century worked chiefly for their own time. Literature had never given greater proof of the influence which it exercises over politics. As we shall see later on, the * Marivaux (1688—1763). f Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732 — 1799). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 323 French Revolution proceeded directly from the philosophical movement. Moreover, this influence was universal. The writers of the seventeenth century had been admired by the whole of Europe ; those of the eighteenth were sought for with keener interest. France, declining from a political point of view during the sad reign of Louis XV., exercised an intellectual supremacy over the neighbouring nations, thirsting for every work published in Paris. Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert were cultivated by sovereigns, who invited them to their courts or maintained an active corre¬ spondence with them. English Literature ; the Essayists; Addison .—The impulse given to literature in England in the seventeenth century continued. The appearance of periodical publications, the Essayists, the press, had been one of the results of the Revolution of 1688. Daniel Defoe,* the first of the political Essayists or pamphleteers, commenced in Newgate Prison the publication of the “Review,” which appeared three times a week, and which he edited without assistance during nine years. Steele then published the “ Tatler ” (1709), and the “Spectator” (1711), of which Addison was the chief editor, and which was considered the best among these periodicals.! Addison, inferior as a poet but noticeable as a critic, nourished on the study of the ancients, was above all an amiable, pleasant moralist, striving to extend the love of virtue. His polished and elegant style is, however, a little tedious, it recalls the traditions of the French school of the seventeenth century, although the substance of his work was impressed with the bourgeois character of the reign of Queen Anne and the first George. The Novel: Defoe ; Fielding .—Daniel Defoe, who created the review, also brought the novel into fashion, by fictions to which * Daniel Defoe (1G63-1731). t The Reviews published during the eighteenth century : the “ Rambler,” the “Idler,’’ the “Adventurer,” the “Mirror,” the “Lounger.” Edinburgh became a particularly important literary centre. 3n THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. he gave an air of complete veracity. He captivated his readers by the apparent truthfulness of his narrations, and the “Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” are still popular all over the world. Richardson,* in his novels, followed rather the example in style, but not in morals, of the French school. His novels are written for women, Fielding’s for men. Fielding! did not shrink from painting vice, and in knowledge of human nature and sheer strength as a writer, stands high above his contemporaries. Goldsmith! touched all hearts by the natural pathos and grace of the “ Vicar of Wake¬ field.” As a poet, and also in comedy, he was above any of his contemporaries. Very different was the harsh, bitter genius of Swift, § the most powerful prose writer of his day ; his “ Gulliver’s Travels ” (like his other works) is a keen satire on human nature and human life. Lawrence Sterne,|| an eccentric humourist, is at his best in “Tris¬ tram Shandy,” in his “ Sentimental Journey” he introduced into England the shallow sentimentalism of the School of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Poetry in England. —Poetry was still classical with Pope,H whose personal deformity affected his whole character. At twenty years of age he published his “ Essay upon Criticism ; ” then exercising the vivacity of his wit in satire, he sought to reanimate philosophy in his moral epistles, above all in the “Essay on Man.” An admirer and translator of the ancients, particularly of Homer, Pope attained remarkable elegance in style ; his works are a reflection of the great French literary century. Pope became the chief of a school. Amongst his disciples, Young ** had, curiously, a far greater influence and vogue abroad than in England. His “Night Thoughts ” consist of sorrowful meditations on the nothingness of life. Gray and Collins are far superior as classical poets. Thomson! + * Samuel Richardson (1689—1761). t Fielding (1707—1754), + Goldsmith (1728—1774). § Swift (1667—1745). || Lawrence Sterne (1713—1768). Pope (1688—1744). ** Young (1681—1765). XX James Thomson (1700—1748). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 325 had more passion, and, in the “ Seasons,” he first of the poets sang the epic of nature ; with him began the descriptive school. Samuel Johnson* is also named amongst the poets, but he was only a versifier. He succeeded better in criticism and wrote in a more sonorous and studied prose than any one before him. He was the acknowledged master of his day; but is now best known by the memoirs of his faithful observer and admirer Boswell. English poetry, at that time somewhat cold and formal, found life and truth to nature in the pious William Cowperf,the precursor of a real renaissance. Enthusiastic in his love of nature, Cowper painted it without affectation, obeying only his inspiration and the intense sensitiveness of his own personality. Robert Burns,! the son of a poor Scotch farmer, reached without effort the true lyrical note. He is the greatest poet Scotland has produced. He is the first true song-writer in Great Britain since the Elizabethan age. George Crabbe § prolonged his career into the present century ; he was both a preacher and a realistic poet. Chatterton,|| “ the marvellous boy,” published some fictitious English poems of the fifteenth century, an imitation of the ancient ballads, and by an energy and literary inspiration unparalleled in one so young, gave promise of great achievements, the accomplishment of which was prevented by his untimely end. Macphersonli counted upon the growing taste for the past with marvellous skill and audacity. He forged a long poem, “ Fingal,” purporting to be a prose translation from the work of a Celtic bard, Ossian, and by his skilful imitation deceived the public, which believed in the genuineness of the work. The poem must be closely studied before the fraud can be detected. This grandiose work, however, had a great success and exercised con¬ siderable influence. Weary of the regular beauties of Latin and Greek, the English and even the French were seized with admira- * Samuel Johnson (1709—1784). X Robert Burns (1759—1796). || Chatterton (1752—1770). t William Cowper (1731—1800). § George Crabbe (1755—1832). II Macpherson (1738—1796). THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 326 tion for the songs of the Celts. It led finally to the regular study of the wild warlike poetry of the Northern countries. Philosophy; History; Eloquence .—English philosophy, more serious than French philosophy, followed out to their extreme consequences the doctrines of Locke. Berkeley* denied the reality of all sensuous experience. Humef denied the reality of all mental or spiritual experience. His doctrines alarmed one of his fellow- countrymen, Thomas Beid,| who recognized the existence of certain powers in the mind anterior to experience, and the re¬ action that he directed against the empiricism of Locke’s disci¬ ples was continued by his pupil, Dugald Stewart,§ and by T. Brown. || The philosopher Hume was also an historian, endeavouring to imitate Livy by the clearness of his narration, but sceptical and pre¬ judiced : in him, the philosopher injured the historian. Robert¬ son, 11 on the contrary, a heavier but more conscientious writer, formed himself on the Greek historians. The scholarly Gibbon,** greatest of English writers c f history, was the author of “ The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” a mastei'piece, hardly superseded by modern works, but impressed with the prejudices of the century, and hostile to Christianity. We must not omit, in this short summary of the literary activity of the English, some refer¬ ence to the orators, who recall the glory of ancient Athens and Rome. A government by debate, the English Government demands of necessity political eloquence. The House of Commons, and after¬ wards the House of Lords, re-echoed with the powerful voice of William Pitt,if afterwards Lord Chatham, whose speeches are placed amongst the classics. The Irishman BurkeJ J appeared when Pitt was nearly dying. “It was,” said Macaulay, “a splendid sunset, and a splendid dawn.” But Burke had too much fire, too * Berkeley (1684—1753). % Thomas Reid (1710—1796). |1 T. Brown (1778—1820). ** Edwa d Gibbon (1737—1794). ++ Burke (1729 — 1797). f David Hume (1711—1776). § Dugald Stewart (1753—1828). If William Robert-on (1721—1793). t+ William Pitt (1708—1778). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 327 much impetuosity, and his eloquence, more philosophical but less practical, full as a torrent, flowed forth in floods of invective, metaphor, and dazzling imagery to almost empty benches. Fox,* no less ardent, no less impetuous, had far greater power in political debate. Sheridan i gained renown by his showy eloquence, and the second William Pitt,| who inherited his father’s oratorical power as well as his patriotism, ruled the House of Commons by his ardent speeches, his progressive arguments, his demonstra¬ tions, which impressed his hearers by the arrangement of the whole rather than by brilliancy of detail. As a politician he was far in advance of his time, but was hampered by ill-health, and by the prejudices of the King and of his own party. German Literature; Lessing. —Civilization in the eighteenth century had made so much progress that Germany was able, in her turn, to boast of a literature. German genius, aroused by Luther, had required two centuries more before it fully awakened. The language which the great Reformer had, as it were, moulded into form, by his translation of the Bible, had not yet been adopted for literary work. Leibnitz had thought and written in Latin. In the eighteenth century the German language was used by two Swiss critics and professors at Zurich,§ who borrowed the system of reviews from the English. It was also used for scholarly and philological works by Heyne[] on “ Virgil,” and by August WolfH on “Homer,” for history by Louis de Schloezer** and the Swiss Jean de Muller,ff who wrote a fine history of his native land. Lessing, born in Switzerland, acquired a great reputation as a critic and author by his collections of “ Letters on Contemporary Literature,” and his “ Hamburgische Dramaturgie,” the best criti cism upon the theatre which had appeared in the eighteenth * Charles James Fox (1749—1806). f Sheridan (1751—1816). f William Pitt, 2nd (1759—1806). § Bodmer (1698—1783), Breitinger (1701—1776). || Heyne (1729—1812). f August Wolf (1759—1824). ** Louis de Schloezer (1737—1809). ft Jean de Muller (1752—1809). X+ Lessing (1729—1781). THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 328 century, although it is frequently very exaggerated in its injustice to the French theatre. The “ Laocoon " was a calmer, more philo¬ sophical composition—a discussion on the general principles of art, an aesthetic work. Lessing opposed the ancients to the moderns. The scholar Winckelmann* * * § aided still further the diffusion of a taste for antiquity by works on art: he published the “ Letters on the Discoveries of Herculaneum,” and a “ History of Art amongst the Ancients.” The Germans, however, affected French literature, and Rousseau awakened the reflections of Herder,f who searched deeply into antiquity before writing his observations of human society. At¬ taching himself to ideas rather than to facts, Herder wrote a “ History of Poetry amongst the Hebrews,” and his “Ideas on the Philosophy of History.” This last work is a remarkable essay, a general view, in the fashion of Bossuet and De Montesquieu, but with more freedom, of the gradual development of humanity in every direction. Poetry; Klopstock .—German poetry made its first attempt with De Haller,| who sang of the Alps, then with Gessner,§ the author of some sentimental idylls, and of a narrative poem, “ The Death of Abel.” It brought forth also Klopstock, [| a religious poet, an imitator of Milton, who wrote a mediocre Christian epic— “ The Messiah.” Goetlie —French influence, penetrating more and more into Germany, produced there a literary revolution, towards 1768 and 1772. The town of Gottingen became a centre of writers who strove to break through the routine of tradition. One of the authors of this revolution was Goethe, the most illustrious of German writers. An universal genius, poet and scholar, critic and artist, in love equally with nature and the ideal, versed in science * Winekelmann (1717—1768). f Herder, bom in Prussia (1744—1803). X Albrecht de Haller, of Berne (1708—1777). § Gessner (1730—1787). |; Frederic-Gottlieb Klopstock, cf Quedlinbnrg (1724—1803). % Johann-Wolfgang Goethe, born at Fiankfort-on-Maine (1749—1832). THE ARTS , ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 329 and philosophy, matter-of-fact observer and dreamer, lover of the past and of the present, Goethe was already in advance of the eighteenth century, to which only one half of his life belonged. Following by turns the ancient Greek poets, and the morbid sentimentality of the school of Rousseau, he passed from light poetry to novels (“ Werther,” “ Wilhelm Meister ”), then to the drama, then from historical tragedy (“ Egmont ”) to a pastoral idyll (“Hermann and Dorothea”), and finally took leave and summed up his legendary epic, of which “ Faust ” transports us so far from antiquity. Goethe is the ideal of the man of letters, bent on the improve¬ ment of his intellectual and imaginative powers to the utmost extent. Unmoved by the deeper religious and political passions of his day, he strove to live in a lofty mental sphere, a region of supreme art far above all these. He is the greatest German poet, and one of the few of all time. Schiller * —Schiller was Goethe’s friend. Less devoted to art but not less poetical, he was also one of the principal partizans and leaders of the literary revolution. He excelled in the drama and in history, which he looked upon as an art. His “ History of the Revolt of the Low Countries,” and above all, his “ History of the Thirty Years’ War,” are models of prose diction. A lyrical poet in his ballads, he is yet more renowned for his tragedies : “ The Robbers,” “Don Carlos,” the celebrated “ Wallenstein,” “ Mary Stuart,” “Joan of Arc,” and the drama of “ William Tell,” which is full of enthusiam for nature and liberty. He does not require so much exertion of intellect as does Goethe for the enjoyment of his dramas, and, though a lesser poet, is, perhaps, really more popular. Wieland. \ —Wieland first published some didactic and religious poems; then, falling in love with French genius, he passed to the philosophical school of the eighteenth century. He afterwards wrote some light, mocking, and rather sensual poems. Then, * Schiller, born in "Wurtemberg (1759—1805). * Martin Wieland, bom in Suabia (1733—1813). 330 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . settling down, he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Erfurth, and was distinguished at the learned court of Weimar, at that time known as the Athens of Germany. He wrote some political and satirical novels, and returning to poetry, published “The New Amadis,” in the style of the heroic-comic poems of Italy, and lastly “ Oberon,” his masterpiece. German Philosophy : Kant .—Although Wieland had taught phi¬ losophy he was not counted amongst the philosophers. Germany had then a leader of philosophy, Kant,* * * § at first a disciple of Leibnitz and Wolf, then an admirer of Hume, lastly the creator of an original system which has exercised great influence. His philo¬ sophical writings, like those of most of his successors, are more thorough and profound than any previous system, but obscure, too little based on fact and observation, and with too much of a priori reasoning. Kant endeavoured to classify human knowledge ; he connects our knowledge with the senses, under¬ standing, and reason, but subdivides the faculties, and criticises them until he almost reaches scepticism. His criticism of practical reason rectifies whatever is too absolute in his criticism of pure reason. Kant inspired Fichte f and the chief philosophers of contempo¬ rary Germany, whose successive systems through Schelling to Hegel have been opposed chiefly by the English School, by the French school of Comte, and by the physiologists. Italian Literature. —Italy, who in the seventeenth century ap¬ peared dead, strove in the eighteenth to lift the stone from the sepul¬ chre. She had received from Yico+ a philosophy of history, which his contemporaries ignored, but which is still worthy of study. She uad poets like Cesarotti,§ Gozzi,j| who excelled in light comedy, and above all Alfieri,1i the Byron of Italy, whose austere trage- * Emmanuel Kant, born at Koenigsberg (1724—1804). t Fichte (1762—1814). X Giovanni Battista Yico, born at Naples (1668—1744). § Cesarotti, of Padua (1730—1808). || Carlo Gozzi, of Yenice (1718 —1806). U Alfieri, born at Asti (Piedmont) (1749—1803). THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 331 dies were full of ideas. Economists, like Beccaria * and Filan- gieri,f promulgated fruitful theories upon legislation, and created a political science of higher morality and utility than that of Machiavelli. Italy had derived more benefit from French writings than any other country, and later on French arms were to complete her awakening, that is to say her deliverance. Music; its Progress in Modern Times .—The expression of feeling received at this period powerful assistance from music, old as the world itself, no doubt, but yet never in a position to rival the other arts until the eighteenth century. Instruments were then per¬ fected ; the organ, developed since the fourteenth century by more or less gigantic pipes, filled the churches with its grave reli¬ gious music; then the harp, the bass-viol, the violin, so simple yet so penetrating, the flute with its variations, the harpsichord that in the eighteenth century became the pianoforte, blended their notes and facilitated orchestral combinations. Kings had cham¬ ber music as well as the chapel music, and gradually, like all other arts, musical composition emancipated itself from ecclesiastic guardianship, under the auspices of which it had first appeared. Louis XIV. had his concert of twenty-four violins, called the King’s violins, and during his reign Lulli wrote a number of remarkable pieces as well as his operas. But the opera came from Italy. In this home of gaiety and amuse¬ ments music was introduced into the dramatic representations from the fifteenth century. Italian opera made its first appearance in Paris in 1645, thanks to Mazarin, who had sent for a troupe of Italian artists, and Lulli’s operas were only imitations adapted to the special character of the French people. His choruses were very harmonious, and many of his pieces reveal graceful inspira¬ tion ; besides this, Lulli considerably increased the strength of the orchestra (1G33—1687). Rameau , Gluck, Pergolese, Gretry .—Lulli had many pupils, but music only started upon its real career in the eighteenth century * Beccaria, born at Milan (1738—1796). f Filangieri, born at Naples (1752— 178 S). 332 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . with Rameau,* who produced twenty-two very varied operas, and who knew how to adapt his music to the words uttered. His music, really beautiful although now out of fashion, was soon surpassed by that of Chevalier Gluck, f This eminent artist was really modern, he thoroughly adapted his music to the situations represented, and his lyrical tragedies of “Alcestis” and “Orpheus” are still admired. His pathetic airs produce real emotion in the soul. However, the Italians protested against the new taste. Proud of Pergolesi 1 and of Piccinni, § they had zealous partisans in Paris, where the quarrel of the Piccinnistes and the Gluckists divided the drawing-rooms. Gluck and French taste won the victory. French taste has also a very eminent representative in Gretry, |] who introduced humour into his music, and who was the father of a style that became highly popular in France—the comic opera. At the end of this century Mehul became dis¬ tinguished. H The German School : Each, Handel, Haydn. —Germany also had her masters, who were of a very different genius. At the same time that her literature appeared, her great masters were heard. John Sebastian Bach,** an organist, the most celebrated member of a family of distinguished musicians, wrote some remarkable musical compositions, chiefly religious ; then Handel, ff who aban¬ doned Germany for England, excited so much admiration in that country by his oratorios and his church music, that he received the honour of a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Haydn, J J born in Austria, chiefly succeeded in instrumental music, was second to Handel alone in oratorio, and discovered an infinite variety of combinations of chords and sounds in his symphonies, his quar- * Rameau, born at Dijon (1683—1764). t Gluck, born in the Upper Palatine, lived in France (1714—1787). X Pergolesi (1710—1736). His masterpiece was the “ Serva Padrona ” and the “ Stabat Mater.” § Piccinni (1728—1800). || Gretry, bom at Liege (1761—1813). U Mehul (1763—1817). He composed the “Chant du Depart.” ** John Sebastian Bach, born at Eisenach (1685—1750). ft Handel,bom at Halle(1685 —1759). “Messiah,” “Israel in Egypt,” &c. ff Ha^dn (1732—1809). “ Creatiun,” &c. THE ARTS, ETC., OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 333 tettes, trios, concertos, and sonatas. These commenced the learned school called the Classical School. Mozart. — Austria also gave birth to one of those natural geniuses who seem to owe little to art—Mozart.* Yet this German belongs rather to Italy, where his musical education was really carried on. His charming airs, simple in spite of profound knowledge, issue from the soul, lively, gay, or sad, but free and clear; his graceful, flowing melodies express the most varied sentiments of the per¬ sonages of “Don Juan ” or “ Les Noces de Figaro,” not to speak of any other of his chefs d'oeuvre. Man, thanks to Mozart and to all the masters of the eighteenth century, the precursors of the masters of the nineteenth, had acquired a new language, which seemed stolen from the most melodious of birds. Music, the least sensual of all sensuous delights, came to add an elevating pleasure and a new grace to civilization, and quickly became almost a necessity of life in the larger cities, and in the family life of the educated classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. * Mozart, born at Salzburg (1756—1791). “Don Juan,” the “ Requiem.” CHAPTER XIV. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Summary : The Economic Movement in the Eighteenth Century ; Insti¬ tution of Credit—Law’s System ; the Bank Note—Geographical Dis¬ coveries — Maritime Commerce ; the Colonies ; Colonial Power of England —The Colonial System of Modern States—Colonial Produce—Emanci¬ pation of the English Colonies in America ; the United States—Industry in Europe ; French Industry—Industry and Commerce in the Central and Northern Countries of Europe—Political State of Europe ; the Latin Slavs ; the Civilization of Eastern Europe; Poland—The Partition of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795)—Origin and Development of the Kingdom of Prussia—Frederic II. (1740—1786); the City of Berlin—The Greeks and Slavs; Formation and Progress of the Russian Empire—Peter the Great (1672—1725)—St. Petersburg (1703)—The Work of Peter the Great—Catherine II. (1762—1796)—Character of Russian Civilization — The Scandinavian States ; Stockholm, Copenhagen—Austria ; the Re¬ forms of Joseph II.—The Principalities of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire—Portugal, Pombal—The Bourbon Dynasty in Spain ; Reforms of E Conde d’Aran da—Italy—Results of the Work of Modern Times—State of France in 1789—Monarchical Principles—The Feudal Constitution of the Government and Administration—Justice—Finance — The Army—The Church—Feudal Character of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce—Character of Society—Political, Economic, and Social Causes of the Revolution. The Economic Movement in the Eighteenth Century ; the Institu¬ tion of Credit. —Economic interests had benefited by the mental impulse produced by literature and the progress of science. Men studied commerce as well as politics, and the eighteenth century revealed the power of credit. Among the ancients slaves manufactured all the articles required. If capital were wanted it could only be obtained by submitting to the exactions of the usurer. Among moderns the liberty of the workman has considerably developed industry, and it has been still EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 335 more aided by the facility of credit. In the Middle Ages this new system faintly dawned in the letters of exchange, which we have already alluded to, their invention being traced to the Jews. Paper already played the part of money. The discovery of America threw an immense quantity of specie into circulation, and increased commercial relations. Voyages became more frequent, bills of exchange, trading bills, and notes to order became general. Banks* were established which advanced loans to merchants upon securities of value. The first real bank was that of Barcelona in 1401. The Bank of Stockholm (1668) was the first to issue bank notes. The banks of Amsterdam and Hamburg were in the seventeenth century remarkable for their large business. The Bank of England dates from 1694. It was the first to undertake to cash the bills of ex¬ change before they became due, retaining a commission propor¬ tioned to the time that was yet to elapse : what we are now so familiar with as discount. But if all these banks aided business, they did not yet constitute real credit. The Scotchman Law perceived this. Law’s System : the Bank Note .—Habituated in his own country to the business of a backer from an early age, Law realised the advan¬ tage of the use of paper as money, and resolved to render it more general. The Begent Philippe d’Orleans allowed him to try his system in France; in the vain hope of paying the State debts, he brought the finances of the kingdom to the verge of bankruptcy. There was some truth in the Scotch financier’s principle, namely, that multiplying specie would multiply trade. But what may be true of specie is not true of paper ; paper has no value by itself, and if multiplied indefinitely it no longer represents anything. Law also deceived himself in wishing to convert the State into a great commercial company. The proposition he made to the Be- gent was certainly dazzling, the General Company of Commerce, being identified with the State, would pay the public debts with its shares, and then, in the future, would render taxes unnecessary. The bank was the solid part of Law’s system. Founded in 1716 * From the Italian word banco , bench on which the Lombard money¬ changers were seated. 336 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. with a capital of six millions, divided into twelve hundred shares, it received deposits of money, discounted commercial bills, and itself issued bank notes, payable at sight in specie, unvarying in weight and standard. During periods when the coinage was subject to considerable alterations this was a great advantage. The bank, moreover, discounted at a moderate rate, and in that way freed commerce from the usurers. It w r as made a Royal Bank (4th December, 1718). Everybody disputed for its notes, so useful in large transactions, and as precious as money, since they could be at any time exchanged for specie. Its credit was founded. Law wishing to extend it, ruined it. The Company of Commerce was at first limited to trade with the colonies, it then farmed the taxes, secured monopoly of coinage, and its shares were competed for with a feverish eagerness that raised their price to an exorbitant premium. To satisfy the public avidity and facilitate the exchange of shares, Law multiplied his bank notes indefinitely. The value of the paper exceeded ten milliards, whilst the specie in France was only one milliard. Confidence was shaken, was lost; everyone rushed to convert his paper into cash. Law made the mistake of joining the Company to the Bank, the chimera to the useful insti¬ tution (1720). Nominated Controller-general he attempted to make notes the only medium of change. This was impossible, and soon the State, itself exhausted, declared that notes would no longer be accepted as money: this was a frightful catastrophe. Law r fled from the kingdom (December, 1721). The counterpart of Law’s system in England w 7 as the South-Sea Bubble (1710—20). No doubt this catastrophe discouraged any fresh trial of credit for a long time : the State acknowledged itself the debtor of the Company’s creditors, and the public debt was increased by thirteen millions of annual interest, but during the years of abundance Law had freed agriculture from the tax of one-tenth upon the land, and from the arrears due upon the capitation tax ; he had suppressed a number of onerous duties, and moreover the interest upon money had diminished. Commerce and industry had taken such bold flight that even the catastrophe did not stop it. The powers of banking were better understood, it was seen that paper could EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 337 circulate as money not issued beyond the limits of the real value that it represented. The sale of shares, which facilitated the union of large capitals by companies, continued more wisely. This originated the speculation and market of the Parisian Bourse reorganized in 1724. Geographical Discoveries .—The extension of commerce followed hard on that of geographical discovery. The discoveries of the sixteenth century had been continued in the seventeenth, when America had completely revealed her extent and internal wealth. The Dutch had discovered a portion of the innumerable islands which people the Pacific Ocean, and which were to form a fifth part of the world, Oceania. They also sighted the vast territory which they called New Holland, but which passed to the English and was called Australia. It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that the English and French navigators explored Oceania. Dampier, in 1688—90, visited the north-west coast of Australia, and discovered New Britain. Wallis, Carteret, Bourgainville, and afterwards the famous Captain Cook, revealed the existence of numerous archipelagoes. Cook sighted New Zealand, discovered New Caledonia, the Society Islands, the Friendly and the Sandwich Islands. He crossed the Antarctic Polar Circle three times. Afterwards his course was followed by Laperouse, d’Entrecasteaux, Vancouver, and others. The Dane Behring left his name to the strait which bounds the eastern extremity of Asia. The entire globe was thus traced upon maps that became more and more exact, and man learned the utmost limits of his domain. Maritime Commerce; the Colonies; Colonial Power of England. —The merchants advanced closely behind the explorers, and European commerce extended speedily and continuously. England reaped the fruits of the Act of Navigation and of a policy which had been almost exclusively directed towards the conquest of the seas. In 1703, by Methuen’s treaty, she had opened Portugal for herself, and inundated the country with her merchandise, thus killing the native industry. Portugal became a British market, or rather farm. Spain even, although so jealous of her colonial mono- z 338 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. polies, conceded to England the assiento , the monopoly of the slave trade, and the right of annually sending one ship to Porto-Bello laden with merchandise, a ship there was no need to replace, for her cargo was continually resupplied. It was a floating depot. The Austrian War of Succession, and the Seven Years’ War caused the decadence of the French navy. England threw herself upon the French colonies, which were badly protected, and commenced to establish that immense empire in Hindustan w 7 hich Dupleix had dreamed of securing for France. She seized Canada and her maritime commerce, which, in 1700, amounted to 830,000 tons, rose in 1770 to 700,000 tons. The English, to supply their trade, developed their industry and exported Norwich cloths, Dublin and Exeter linen, cotton stuffs from Manchester, and ironmongery from Leeds. The invention of mechanical looms for spinning wool (1767 to 1787), and the appli¬ cation of Watt’s steam-engine (1769 to 1775), gave a new impulse to industry, and produced the rapid advance which has not paused since that time. England, who supplied Europe with exotic pro¬ ductions, intended also to furnish her with manufactured goods. She endeavoured to become the sole manufacturer and the sole merchant. Colonial System of Modern States .—England failed, and her own colonies were the first to turn against her. From the fifteenth century modern states retained the old principle that their colonies, daughters of the mother country, should trade only with her. The colonies were regarded merely as an easy market from whence to procure exotic produce, and an outlet for the industry of the mother country. The colonies could receive the goods they required from her alone, and certain industries were even prohibited to them. If the Indian companies prospered it was in spite of the active opposition of the English manufacturers, who protested against the importation of the beautiful silken and cotton materials sent from India. The colonies and distant trade were considered to be simply a source of raw materials, of productions foreign to our climate. Industrial labour must remain the privilege of Europe. In a word, the consequence was to drain, not to enrich the colonies. EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 339 Colonial Produce. —But the prosperity of the colonies was not long retarded, owing to the extended use, which now commenced in Europe, of exotic or colonial produce, such as sugar, coffee, cocoa, tea and spices. We may also add the productions of Asia, and above all of America, cotton and wool, various kinds of precious woods, a great number of skins, some materials for dyeing, several varieties of dried and candied fruits. The cultivation of tobacco, first planted in Virginia in 1616, speedily became a source of great wealth to that state. The culture of the sugar-cane commenced in Jamaica in 1506. In 1702 the cultivation of rice was introduced from Madagascar into the Carolinas. In 1720 the French planted coffee in Martinique, and coffee, one of the sources of wealth in Arabia, was grown in the British West Indies from 1732. The consumption of coffee, sugar, cocoa, and tobacco increased con¬ siderably in Europe, and produced a revolution in social habits as well as in food. Emancipation of the English Colonies in America: the United States .—The mother countries persisted in their claim of exclusive commerce with their colonies. England endeavoured to enchain her American colonies in this way, but the latter, filled with the same feverish activity, wished to develop themselves freely. The immense line of coast, the vicinity of the French and Spanish colonies, facili¬ tated a contraband trade, which secured large profits to the colo¬ nists, but which produced frequent quarrels with England, quarrels which resulted in the War of Independence. We need not dwell here upon this War of Independence (1776 to 1783), which was even more political than economic in character, arising from the claim of the Home Parliament to tax the colonies without their representation or consent. The English colonies in America emancipated themselves with the aid of France, excepting Canada, which remained in the power of the English. The rapid advance of the United States justified their separation, and has been of almost equal advantage to the mother country. England has more legitimately compensated herself for the loss of her American colonies by the extension of her Indian empire, and by the extension of Australia, where she founded Sydney 340 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. (1788), which, originally a convict station, is now one of her most prosperous colonies. Industry in Europe ; French Industry. —England could no longer continue the only merchant in the world. The industrial pro¬ gress of other countries was to deprive her of the hope of being the only manufacturer. France, whose industry had been momen¬ tarily arrested by the emigration of the Protestants, had resumed her work. In the eighteenth century she already contained many important centres for spinning flax, hemp, and wool. Valenciennes, Cambrai, and Saint-Quentin were remarkable for their laces and their cam¬ brics, due to the fine quality of flax grown in the district. Lille had become the most important factory for sewing cottons; the cities of Amiens and Abbeville manufactured common stuffs. Mans, Laval, Alencon, and Lisieux produced such an immense variety of materials that more than 50,000 looms were usually occupied in their fabrication. Brittany employed its flax in the manufacture of fine light linens, amongst which the fabrics of Cholet had a great reputation. The linen industry also prospered in Bearn and Gascony. The cotton industry was then first appear¬ ing, and France as yet only used four millions of kilogrammes of raw cotton. The great metallic industries were scarcely founded.* A reaction commenced against Colbert’s protective system, necessary in a country where industry is being created, but more injurious than advantageous as soon as industry has gained strength. The family pact between the Princes of the House of Bourbon (1761) and the commercial treaties had mutually opened the French and Spanish markets ; a commercial treaty was arranged with England in 1786. Industry and Commerce in the Central and Northern Countries of Europe .—Holland, who had fallen from her past greatness, chiefly devoted herself to profiting by the advantages which her still * In 1787 the coal mines in France gave 2,150,000 quintals of this valuable combustible. In 1789 the production of the smelting furnaces amounted to 391,279 quintals, and the manufacture of iron to 408,059 quintals. EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 341 immense trade secured to her.* She had fought against England in the American War, for she was more interested than any of the other powers in maintaining the rights of neutrals and the freedom of the seas. This war was, however, of no advantage to her, and England had a fresh opportunity of weakening a navy which inconvenienced her. Holland, however, remained a colonial power of the first order. The other northern powers, Sweden and Denmark, had also renounced ambition and retired to their peninsulas, with the exception of Denmark, who still possessed Norway. They almost exclusively devoted themselves to their internal development, to industry and commerce. Political State of Europe; the Latin Slavs ; the Civilization of Eastern Europe; Poland. —In contrast to the ancient civilization which had become immoveable in the circle of the Roman Empire, modern civilization carried with it a germ of life, which stimulated it to expand in an ever-increasing circle. It now advanced in Europe towards the north and east. Slowly at first, under the German Emperors, the march for¬ ward had conducted Christianity and Latin civilization from the banks of the Elbe to the shores of the Oder and the marshes of the Spree, to the Vistula, then to the Niemen ; whilst Greek civilization and Christianity penetrated through the valley of the Dnieper to the centre of the vast plains of Eastern Europe. The Slav family, which had for a long time bent beneath the weight of invasions, raised itself and entered the arena with its rare physical vigour, its open intelligence, its suppleness, its numbers and strength. This Slav family had from the Middle Ages been distinguished * Holland had ceded to the English (Treaty of Versailles, 1783) her estab¬ lishment of Negapatam, in India, but she had recovered St. Eustache, in the Antilles, and she possessed, in America, Guiana and the Curasao Islands; in Africa, settlements on the Gold Coast and the colony of the Cape of Good Hope ; in Asia, Cochin, on the coast of Malabar, Madras on that of Coro¬ mandel, Ceylon, Malacca ; and lastly, the finest jewels of her colonial empire, the Islands of Sunda, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes Timor, and the Moluccas. She had also a settlement in Japan (Nagasaki). 342 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. in Eastern Europe by the tribes of the Lets or Polenes (Slavs from the plain), converted to Catholicism from the tenth century and organized in a kingdom, under the dynasty of the Piasts, in the eleventh (towards the year 1000). Adopting the Latin Church, they still further separated from the other Slavs, who had remained j)agans or had been converted to the Greek Church. In the fifteenth century the kingdom of Poland was augmented by Lithu¬ ania (1444), and, under the dynasty of the Jagellons, became one of the most powerful states of Europe, extending on one side to the Baltic, on the other to the Black Sea, and on the east beyond Smolensko. The Polish knights, as brave and as renowned as the old French knights, arrested the progress of the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The plain of the Vistula, so long uncultivated, became covered with cities, of which Warsaw (Varsawa) was the capital, and it was soon a centre of study, for the Poles had active and alert minds. Unfortunately, upon the extinction of the Jagellons (1572), the nobles rendered the crown elective, with the right of veto on the election, and commenced the era of civil dis¬ cord. Obliged to recede before the Turks in the south and the Swedes in the north, the Poles found their kingdom considerably diminished, although at the commencement of the eighteenth century it was still considerable, since it was bordered by the Car¬ pathians on the south, by the Baltic on the north, whilst on the east it extended beyond the Dnieper. The Partition of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795).—The decadence of Poland, far from being arrested, increased. The Polish nobility did not know how to follow the movement of Western ideas. A brilliant cavalry, when battles were being won by infantry, loving liberty even to anarchy, whilst the neighbouring peoples loved order even to servitude, this nobility, destroying itself, com¬ promised its independence for privileges, and ruined its nationality by its absurd pretensions. Always on horseback, blending conflict with deliberations, it cherished, as principle, that in a diet the resistance of one deputy would suffice to negative a resolution, and that the enemies of a law united in confederation could EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 343 oppose the law by the sword. It became simply a system of legalised aristocratic anarchy. Moreover, the nobility, whilst lov¬ ing liberty for themselves, still caused the yoke of slavery to weigh heavily upon the peasantry. The neighbouring powers took advantage of this division of classes, and had only to contend against the nobles, who formed the sole organized military force. Lastly, the Poles, ardent Catholics, retained in the middle of the eighteenth century the spirit of intolerance, and their religious persecutions of the Greeks and the Protestants afforded the sove¬ reigns of Prussia and Russia a pretext for intervention. This inter¬ vention terminated in three partitions of the kingdom (1772, 1798, 1795). But the nation, attached to its faith, its customs and its language, resisted the Germans as forcibly as the Russians, and for more than a century obstinately refused to die, and, since it retains its language, its literature, and its aspirations, must even now be said to be captive, not dead. Origin and Development of the Kingdom of Prussia. —Prussia, although its primitive populations belonged to the Slav race, increased principally through its Germanic element. Its name is derived from Borussia, and the Duchy of Prussia enclosed in Poland, but its strength came from the Germanic populations, who fertilised the lands of Brandenburg. A German dynasty, the Hohenzollern, purchased the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1415, and raised it to the rank of the most important princi¬ palities of Northern Germany. The Duchy of Prussia, the pro¬ perty of the Teutonic Knights, was secularised by a cadet of the House of Brandenburg in 1525, and united to the Electorate in 1611. The Hohenzollerns seized with both hands, and never lost hold of anything they had once acquired. From 1648 their dominions were scattered between the borders of the Rhine and the Niemen. From that time they devoted themselves to uniting them, and in 1701, the Elector Frederick III. took the title of King of Prussia with the consent of the Emperor of Germany: the title was acknowledged by Europe in 1718. Frederick William I., who succeeded Frederick I., understood that his kingdom, which had neither unity nor frontiers, could not 344 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. last without a really superior military force. Recruiting men of great stature, subjecting them to a close and rigid discipline, he introduced a mathematical regularity into the manoeuvres, which transformed his battalions into automatic machines. Untroubled by the derision which he excited by an almost parsimonious economy, he created an army and the greatness of Prussia without overburthen- ing the country. Frederick II. made it illustrious by his victories. Frederick II. (1740—1786); the City of Berlin .—Gifted with rare genius, this skilful captain perfected the art of war, and with the aid of France, held Austria in check; afterwards, allied with Fmgland, he resisted France, Austria and Russia, who all opposed him at the same time. The two great conflicts of the War of the Succession in Austria (1740—1748) and of the Seven Years’ War (1756—1768) proved the vitality of the artificial kingdom, which, at first unsettled in the vast plains of Northern Germany, fixed its centre in the valley of the Oder by the conquest of Silesia. Frederick II., as intelligent in administration as in war, de¬ voted himself to the development of agriculture, industry, and commerce. He had to contend against a barren soil and a total ignorance of husbandry. In Upper Silesia he established colonies of Germans and foreigners, giving to each colonist his house, stable, barn, garden, and twelve to twenty acres of land, besides some cattle. When Prussia took her share of Poland, thousands of Polish families were transported into the sparsely inhabited districts of Pomerania. Berlin, with a population of only 6,000 inhabitants in the seventeenth century, owed, during the reign of the great Elector,* her first manufactures to the French refugees, who were received there after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Frederick II. raised the city from the ruins to which the Seven Years’ War had reduced it, and rendered it one of the most important cities in Germany, even whilst he retained its military appearance as its dominant characteristic. This great opponent of French politics appreciated the genius, literature, and art of France, and the patron of Voltaire peopled Berlin not only with barracks, but * Frederick William, the great Elector (1640—1688). EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 345 with colleges and academies. From that time a taste for science accompanied a taste for war amongst still unpolished people, and they contributed in an almost equal degree to the prodigious success of Prussia. The Greek Slavs : Formation and Progress of the Russian People: Peter the Great (1682—1725).—The development of Russia was still more rapid and extraordinary. The Slavs of Muscovy, long since converted to Christianity, and freed, in the fifteenth cen¬ tury, from the yoke of the Mongols of the “ Golden Horde,” were scarcely counted among the nations of Europe in the seventeenth century. Peter the Great, a semi-barbarian, appreciating something of the civilization of the West, forcibly implanted it in his kingdom, which he extended on one side to the Baltic, on the other to the Black Sea, thus providing it with some outlets and means of communi¬ cation with the rest of Europe. He formed an army, which he trained in the same school as the Swedish armies of Charles XII., subjugated and controlled the nobility, made himself the head of the Greek religion, undertook great public works, introduced manufactures and encouraged commerce. St. Petersburg (1703).—With rare perspicacity, he founded his capital near the Gulf of Finland, upon the shores of the Neva, in a region subject daring five months to intense cold, but close to the Baltic, and consequently nearer to the Western powers. Like Alexander, who made entire cities issue from the earth, Peter made his city, St. Petersburg, issue from the ice of the Neva, at first building it upon piles (1703). The small house in which the Czar installed himself to superintend the works was soon surrounded by palaces and superb churches. By the Ladoga Canal the city was placed in communication with the great water¬ way of the Volga, which opened a way into Asia, whilst the first Russian vessels appeared in the Baltic and the seas of Europe. The Work of Peter the Great. —The spectacle of a nation formed by the work of one man, perseveringly carried on during forty- three years, is a strange one. Peter the Great, who worked as a ship’s carpenter in Holland, handled men like the carpenter’s materials, and did not hesitate to use the axe. By his powerful 346 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. despotism he transported in one block all the arts of the West into Muscovy, which had until then remained Asiatic. The constitution of the Slav tribes was modified : the people were enrolled and classed as burghers and as serfs, whose situa¬ tion Peter the Great ameliorated without abolishing slavery. The public administration, the police, the military organization were based upon the Swedish, German, and French administra¬ tions. Peter invited to his court all the foreigners who could enlighten and aid him. He transformed the customs, habits, and costumes of the Slavs ; imposed the politeness and elegance of European manners by the stick; ordered drawing-rooms to be opened, and commanded festivals and masquerades, even imitating the follies of Western societies. It was an immense change of scene: the forests in the south fell to give place to harvests; marshes were drained, rivers rendered navigable ; the roads, if not opened, were at least indicated by posts marking the distances, and very useful in those vast plains, in winter covered by deep snow ; the cities were embellished; schools and colleges were opened, academies were founded. The Russians, at least the nobles and the burghers, were encouraged to educate themselves, and were offered a share of the treasures of ancient and modern science. There was no uncertain groping for them, they had only to translate the works of the West into their supple language. The progress which Europe had made in thirteen centuries Russia seemed to accomplish in a few years, thanks to this singular invasion, willed and regulated by the Czar, whose energy was victorious over the resistance which he met with, and whose ferocity was congenial to the barbarism of the Slavs. Catherine II. (1762—1796); Character of Russian Civilization. —Catherine II. resumed his work of reformation and carried it still further; she also continued and extended his conquests. She divided the enlarged territory into fifty governments, founded nearly two hundred cities, added to the embellishment of St. Peters¬ burg and Moscow, in which cities the magnificent churches, with their numerous gilded cupolas, recall the Byzantine style; re¬ organized justice and education, that is for the higher classes ; as for EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 347 the people, they were still fast bound in slavery and Catherine would not free them. Admiring the works of the French authors, she Moscow—Church of St. Vasily, Group of Minin, &c. 348 iHE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. collected around her the most eminent philosophers, and French literature became the model which Russian writers successfully endeavoured to copy. German by birth, French by education, she was yet, above all, Russian. She carried the sentiment of national honour to the highest point, and with her reign begins a Russian literature. But we must not permit illusions; it was a merely fictitious surface civilization, brilliant outwardly and at the court, but with no roots in the nation. The Russians remind us of the barbarians investing themselves with the tinsel of Roman civilization. The social constitution, far from being ameliorated, had been rendered more unequal by the distinction of classes.* The political constitution was a despotism, strengthened by reli¬ gious authority. Russia became a powerful monarchy, formidable through the forty millions of inhabitants that she already pos¬ sessed, through her easily recruited troops marching beneath the knout, and through the navy which commenced to issue from the port of Sebastopol. She was to weigh heavily in the scale of European forces, but she has yet much more to receive from the West than to give it. Russia was and still is, in spite of the progress accomplished since the eighteenth century, a society in course of formation. The Scandinavian States: Stockholm , Copenhagen. —Sweden, * The organization of the army was a type of that of the people; the whole of the administrative and political staff were enrolled in the same way. The fundamental idea of the tchin, that is to say of rank, belonged to Peter the Great; the tchin starts from the idea that merit is superior to birth, hut it is frequently favour that creates merit. Originally the ranks were divided into sixteen class* s ; they were afterwards reduced to fourteen. The grades in the army corresponded with the civil grades. In the army the six lowest grades of official rank confer personal nobility ; the eight others, heredi¬ tary nobility. In the civil order hereditary nobility partly depends upon the Czar’s will, and the personal nobility is in most cases replaced by official position. The Russian peasants were divided into eight classes—the odnodvortsi, or freedmen ; the free peasants, the peasants belonging to lands possessed by the odnodvortsi, the p* asants of the ports, the pea-ants of the forests, the peasants of the appanages, the peasants of the crown (the most numerous), the serfs attached to the soil, belonging to noble landlords. These have been gradually manumitted since 18G3. EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ,. 349 which from a political point of view had unceasingly declined since the follies of Charles XII., revived in the reign of Gustavus III. (1771 to 1792). French influence made itself felt during this reign and produced serious progress : abolition of torture, prohibition of mendicity, the foundation of houses for work, a better distribution of the taxes, encouragements to labour, industry, commerce, science, literature ; embellishments of the capital, Stockholm. As in Russia, these improvements were the work of the sovereign, who, by the State decree of 1772, had succeeded in rendering his power absolute, even whilst maintaining the ancient form of the control of the States. The mists which enveloped Denmark did not prevent develop¬ ment in the cities of Jutland, and above all in the Island of Zee- land. Copenhagen, which as a capital only dates from the fifteenth century, and was almost destroyed by fire in 1728, arose from its ashes, built in stone, and, like the German cities, endowed with vast edifices and studious academies. She was what she has always remained, one of the scientific capitals of the north. By the minister Bernstorff, in the reign of Frederick V., the Ger¬ man Struensee, in that of Christian VII., then by Andre, the nephew of the great Bernstorff, legislation was improved, all classes were de¬ clared equal before the law, and many other reforms were intro¬ duced. On the eve of 1789, a decree dated the 20th of June, 1788, destroyed the last bond which attached the peasant to the land—the sternsband : serfdom disappeared. The Scandinavian states are all Protestant. Austria; the Reforms of Joseph II .—In the centre of Europe, Vustria, which seemed vowed to immobility, was regenerated by Joseph II., another sovereign in advance of his people, an imi¬ tator less brutal though equally despotic, of Peter the Great and Frederick II. Simple in taste, opposed to pomp and display, Joseph II. (1765 to 1790) reduced the luxury of the court, taxed the estates of the nobility and clergy to relieve the inhabitants of the country, suppressed a number of judicial and feudal offices, per¬ sonal slavery, game preservation and statute labour. He preceded the French Constituent and Legislatee Assemblies in the suppres- 350 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. sion of the religious orders, which had become too numerous. He even attempted to reform the Church, and it might be said that during his reign Austria left Catholicism without entering Protestantism. Agriculture, industry, and commerce received an active impulse from Joseph II., who was not afraid to put his hand to the plough. Thanks to him, the wealth of Austria developed itself at the same time that schools, asylums, and hospitals were opened on all sides. Joseph II. encouraged literature and favoured artists ; he so well succeeded in attaching Mozart to his person that the great musician, in spite of the most brilliant offers from foreign princes, refused to leave his court. Joseph II. is the type of the doctrinaire reformer, his schemes succeeded chiefly on paper, and were soon practically abandoned. The Principalities of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire .— But Joseph II. could not exercise the same authority over Germany, although he was Emperor. Germany was still divided into three hundred principalities, forming the Holy Roman Empire, which, according to Voltaire’s witty criticism, was neither Holy, nor Empire, nor Roman. The Electors considered themselves equal to the Kings, and most of them were Kings. The three ecclesias¬ tical Electors, the Archbishops of Mayence, Treves, and Cologne, held all the lower valley of the Moselle, and some of the finest parts of the valley of the Rhine. In spite of the numerous seculariza¬ tions which had followed the wars of the Reformation, many of the ecclesiastical princes still made a great display. By the side of the bishop-princes came the dukes, landgraves, margraves, and the cities of the Empire. Below* the states which could be reckoned as such existed the ridiculous microscopic principalities, the duchies in duodecimo as they were called, and the possessions of eight or nine hundred nobles who, owners of some small borough or of some village, considered themselves sovereigns. Restrictions upon commerce, duties, tolls, monopolies, privi¬ leges of every kind, statute labour and crushing burdens upon agriculture, feudal serfdom, barbarity in the penal laws, intolerance of Protestants persecuting Catholics and of Catholics persecuting Protestants, harshness towards the Jews, and the literary censure EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 35 1 which directed books that were considered dangerous to be burnt by the executioner : in a word, all the miseries and all the abuses produced by long centuries of oppression still existed. Most of the German princes, especially the smallest, played at imitating Louis XIY. The Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel sold his subjects to foreign service, and in one year (1775) he furnished England with 12,800 men destined to fight against the Americans. But this multiplicity of small states, which facilitated local tyranny, the worst of all tyrannies, occasionally aided individual liberty. An author proscribed in one duchy passed into another. The court of Weimar shone with brilliant lustre ; a literary centre, it united all the great writers of the period. The University of Jena numbered eight hundred students. The Academy of Science at Munich dates from 1758. German literary men were enthusi¬ astic about Bousseau and Montesquieu, and admired the English economist Adam Smith; the newspapers sharply attacked the nobility of the Empire, and the need of tolerant edicts, of codi¬ fied laws, and of political and administrative reforms was felt on all sides. Portugal; Pombal .—The spirit of reform was everywhere. In Portugal the Marquis de Pombal, Minister of King Joseph I. from 1750 to 1777, whom the Portuguese have called the Great Marquis (0 Gram Marquez), revealed a rare spirit of decision joined to an inflexibility which has been compared to that of Cardinal Richelieu. Through his intelligent measures, agriculture and industry, which had fallen into a very depressed state, revived, commerce became more active and was enabled to defy the English competition, which had been so crushing since Methuen’s treaty. The grandees having conspired, he struck terror into them by some executions ; he made the all-powerful clergy tremble by proscribing the active and ambitious order of the Jesuits (1759), and thus set the example of a proscription which was soon imitated in Spain, France, and other countries of Europe. He reorganized education and dimi¬ nished the authority of the tribunal of the Inquisition. He sup¬ pressed the distinction between old and new Christians, in order that the Portuguese, “ children of the same Church,” should all 352 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. become brothers in the same body. He encouraged printing and the translation of the best French books, created the Royal College of the Nobles, instituted elementary and professional schools for the benefit of the people, and established some gratuitous ones. Never, perhaps, have so many liberal ideas been carried out with such absolute authority. Philosopher yet despot, Pombal favoured only those innovations which suited him ; he retained the censure upon all books, and even caused some of them to be burnt; he endeavoured to diminish privileges and to ameliorate the condition of the people, but he defended the Papal power with all the more energy because in so doing he defended himself. The Dynasty of the Bourbons in Spain: the Conde d'Aranda's Deforms .—Spain had been roused from her lethargy by the French dynasty of the Bourbons, Philip V.,* Ferdinand VI., Charles III. Louis XIV.’s grandson had received an almost depopulated king¬ dom, the number of inhabitants being reckoned about seven mil¬ lions, whilst in the Middle Ages the peninsula contained twenty-one millions. There were no roads : in this respect Spain resembled a wild country, and Castille could scarcely be crossed even on the back of a mule. More than sixty-three million acres had fallen out of cultivation in a beautiful climate, given up to useless pastur¬ age ; the mountains were dry and unwooded, the rich industries of Seville, Segovia, Cordova, and Valencia were almost entirely ruined, and the treasury w T as the poorest in Europe, in spite of the annual fleet of galleons bringing bullion from the mines of Mexico and Peru. The Italian Alberoni, who was at first Prime Minister to Philip V., exhausted the small remnant of strength which yet remained to the kingdom, in an attempt to domineer over Europe with a ruined state at home. However, he essayed some useful reforms in the interior, re-established discipline in the army, reanimated the navy, and established a royal manufactory at Guadalaxara, for which he imported five hundred families from Holland. If literature and art no longer included any great names, they were not the less honoured, and the Royal Academy of Fine * Philip V. (1701—1746). EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 353 Arts, of Languages and History, at Madrid, dates from the reign of Philip Y. The wise reign of Ferdinand VI., his encouragement of agriculture, the care with which he ordered the finances, brought Spain back into the right road, where she progressed with a more rapid step under Charles III. The Conde d’Aranda (1766) chiefly attacked the celebrated Order of the Jesuits, which had given umbrage to every government, and which had been driven out of Portugal in 1759, of France in 1764 ; it was proscribed in Spain in 1767 with more violence than in any other country. D’Aranda, in spite of the opposition of the Holy See, suppressed the right of asylum ; which converted the churches into a place of refuge for criminals ; he attacked the still all-powerful tribunal of the Inqui¬ sition, and restricted its jurisdiction, a boldness which led to his fall ; but the other purely material reforms which he had undertaken were continued by Florida Blanca, his rival (1777), then by Cam- pomanes (1788). Charles III. felt himself more at ease in aiding his Ministers to embellish Madrid, which henceforth was lighted by night, and was supplied with police ; and in encouraging agricul¬ ture. He sent eight thousand German labourers to the Sierra Morena, and caused plantations to be made on the barren naked plains of La Mancha and Castille; by his orders the works on the Aragon Canal were resumed, a linen manufacture was established in the royal residence of Saint Ildefonso, and the manufacture of steel weapons was revived in Toledo. In spite of these reforms, Campomanes and Florida Blanca had no intention of renouncing the principles of absolute monarchy, and the worship of royalty was still a religion, although the Spaniards regretted the liberty of their ancient representative assemblies, and were passionately attached to the fueros of their provinces. Moreover, Spain was still one of the most backward countries. Her population had only reached eleven millions ; in the official census, fifteen hundred deserted towns or villages w r ere mentioned. Industry, fettered by a number of onerous rights and by various kinds of monopolies, was unable to make any great advance. The industrial population only numbered one hundred and fifty thousand individuals. In 1789 it was estimated that A A 354 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Spain, which furnished other countries with precious metals, had the smallest amount of specie in Europe. Education, widely diffused amongst the upper classes (for there were twenty-three universi¬ ties), did not descend to the lower; the publication of books was severely scrutinised, and the ministers, who had adopted French ideas, prohibited even scientific works which were current in France and England. Italy .—In the eighteenth century Italy, not yet united, was subject to Austria and Spain. The country which had dominated the world in antiquity and had instructed it at the commencement of modern times, seemed erased from the list of nations. But there also it was only a semblance of death. The Italian spirit revived at the breath of French ideas. The masters were to be regenerated by their disciples. Milan belonged to Austria, and that power was then under the rule of Joseph II. His minister at Milan, the Comte de Firmian, had been educated in the lessons of French philosophy. Firmian encouraged science, established a chair for political economy, and protected the University of Pavia, where the natural philosopher Yolta afterwards distinguished himself. Austria also reigned in Tuscany under the name of a descendant of the Lorraine princes, the Grand Duke Leopold I. Leopold was an enlightened ruler, and reformed education, jus¬ tice, legislation, and administration after the fashion of the day. The Universities of Pisa and Siena flourished once more. Without any anxiety for his sovereignty, which was placed under the pro¬ tection of the great powers, Leopold suppressed the army, and made Florence a kind of Tarentum, where men became enervated in idleness. The Spanish princes, masters of the kingdom of Naples, the duchies of Parma and Plaisance, were Bourbons, descendants of Louis XIY. Dutillois was Regent of the duchies of Parma and Plaisance in the name of Don Philip, and in these miniature states copied the reforms of larger ones. The kingdom of Naples • had been governed by Charles IV., who became Charles III. in Spain, and who had given his confidence to a so-called Liberal Minister, Tannucci; the latter retained the power under Ferdinand IV., and in a Ministry which lasted forty- EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 35 : two years (1735 to 1777) be accomplished a number of im¬ provements. Naples saw a free, sound education arise in her midst, and in 1751 her university was enriched by a chair of poli¬ tical economy similar to the one that Firmian bad founded at Milan for Beccaria. Authors in Naples, as in Milan, expressed the philosophic ideas of the eighteenth century with the vivacity natural to their language and their country. They spoke of justice, truth, humanity, and liberty in a country where govern¬ ments were still absolute, where torture existed, where obsolete legislation and abuses of every description obstructed the path of modern civilization. The old regime still maintained itself, and the independent purely Italian States, Piedmont, the government of the Holy See, and the republics clung to it obstinately. Venice thought of her com¬ mercial profits only, but yet they were declining since the dis¬ covery of new worlds had changed the commercial routes. In Rome the pontifical chair had been filled by enlightened and skilful politicians—Benedict XIV., Clement XIII., Clement XIV., Pius VI.; but however generous they might be in the protection they ac¬ corded to literature and the sciences, they could not look favour¬ ably upon ideas which attacked the power of the Church and of religion. Piedmont, raised to the dignity of a monarchy since the Duke of Savoy had obtained the title, first of King of the Two Sicilies (1713), afterwards of King of Sardinia (1720), when Sicily had been taken from him, did not yet appear called to any high destiny. Victor Amadeus II. and Charles Emmanuel only thought of tacking between France and Austria, of siding with the strongest and of receiving with both hands. With regard to their internal policy, it was always that of absolute government. Liberty was so much restricted that the poet Alfieri, finding that he could not get scope to his inspiration, left the country, where, said he, the small king of so small a kingdom interfered in the small affairs of every family. But these futile doctrinaire reforms, this patronising playing with liberty by paternal absolute monarchs, could not last. The lot of the mass of their subjects was scarcely benefited thereby. 356 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. They read a far deeper meaning into the attacks of the philoso¬ phers on the old regime; their situation seemed to them at length intolerable, and the outbreak, the great Revolution came at last. State of France in 1789.—Why did this Revolution first start in France ? Because the contrast between the freedom of ideas, the theoretical liberty taught, and the misery and oppression of the people was greater there than in other countries. Louis XVI., king in 1774, might perhaps have averted the tempest had he persevered in the wise efforts which he made in the commencement of his reign (1774 and 1776) to carry out the reforms of Malesherbes and Turgot. Unfortunately, the character of Louis XVI. was not equal to his position ; he allowed himself to be stunned by the selfish clamours of the privileged classes, which urged him to a resistance for which he had little natural inclination, and in which he was unable to persevere, for he was alternately feeble and violent, incapable of either leading or stopping the movement in which he perished, entangled and crushed with the whole of the old society. Feudal Constitution of the Government and Administration .— Louis XVI. had inherited feudal traditions. His court was encum¬ bered with dignitaries whose offices, useless though they really were, yet sanctioned by time appeared a necessity of the state of the Sovereign. Although this etiquette wearied the King, who pre¬ ferred private life, he maintained it, sacrificing his tastes to the enforced pomp of the great receptions at Versailles, happy when he could snatch a few moments for his locksmith’s work or his geogra¬ phical studies, as was his Queen, Marie Antoinette, in playing the shepherdess at Trianon. The administration, a confused mixture of feudal and of Roman absolutism, with the memory only of lost liberties, was utterly incoherent. The intendants, of burgher origin, bowed before the governors of the provinces, all great nobles, whom they were com¬ missioned to annihilate. Moreover, the provinces were as confused as the jurisdictions, and the authorities as ill-defined as the adminis¬ trative divisions, for the thirty-three intendancies were confused EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 357 with the thirty-four financial generalities,* and were again entangled in the thirty-two military governments and in the ecclesiastical and judicial divisions, &c., all unequally defined; without counting the duchies, counties, vicounties, and baronies that still existed, or where the king’s agents encroached upon the seignorial officials. Justice .—Justice was still ruled by the principle of personality, so dear to the Germans. There were as many jurisdictions as privileged persons: tribunals of the convetablie, of the admiralty, of the marechals, of the waters and forests, and of the universities, financial tribunals and ecclesiastical courts were retained by the side of the royal justice, rendered by the tribunals of the provost- ship and the bailiwick, the presidial and the parliamentary courts, without alluding to the thousands of still existent seignorial justices. The venality of offices had confused the idea of duty and authority with that of property. The Roman law had stifled the principles of liberty, and delivered the accused to the dis¬ cretion of the judges, without any power of self-defence. Iniquity still prevailed in the procedure, which was always secret. Not¬ withstanding all this unwieldy apparatus of justice, the king could still imprison at will, for a term of years or for life, for any or for no offence, as if no tribunal at all existed, and Louis XVI. alone had, at last, abolished torture. The penalties were according to the rank of the accused, and the punishments were numerous and cruel—the whip, the brand, the hand cut off, the tongue cut out or pierced, the wheel, &c. Finance .—The public treasure was not distinguished from the king’s, since the King identified himself with the kingdom. The secret of the expenditure was the royal secret, and Necker was disgraced in 1781 for having by his compte rendu submitted the budget to public opinion, when it should have been known only to Louis XVI. The king had no need to account for the orders by which he disposed of sums, frequently of considerable amount, thus disturbing the most carefully-balanced budget. The nobility were exempt from taxation, though the perpetually- * Authorities are not agreed about figures, because the numbers varied and the denominations have often been mistaken for each other. 35 « THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. growing necessities of an expensive administration had compelled the sovereign to have recourse to excise, to taxes upon salt, and to a poll-tax payable by all. What made the weight of taxation and of the feudal abuses more bitterly resented was their extreme inequality. Inequality not only between the classes, but between the different provinces, between the lands of the different lords, nay, between the estates and parishes belonging to the same lord. Practical free trade and self-government subsisted side by side with the old abuses of feudal protection and seignorial justice. It is this which made the French Revolution a passion for equality rather than for liberty in its better sense. The Army .—Although organized according to the requirements of modern warfare, the army rested upon the feudal principle. The nobles no longer led their vassals, and in the last years of Louis XIY.’s reign the convocation of the arriere-ban appeared ridiculous. But, instead of vassals, the- nobles led soldiers re¬ cruited by themselves, and the regiments constituted a property, which was bequeathed with the castle, even to the children in the cradle. The nobility owed military service : in return, it received a monopoly of command. The reforms of Louvois and his suc¬ cessors had compelled the officers to work and to perform their duties, without affecting the privileges inherent to their caste, and of which the officers of the royal navy were equally jealous ; they were called officers of the pavilion blanc, and were full of contempt for the officers of the pavilion bleu , or merchant navy. The Church .—The Church, which should have been preserved from feudal contagion by its democratic principles, had, in the Middle Ages, allowed itself to be won by the allurement of rich livings; it had reproduced in itself the image of society, and also clung to its privileges, which assured it of considerable power. The bishoprics were still feudal estates, like the abbeys, and, even in the eighteenth century, the titular heads of abbeys were sometimes princes, who lavished upon their pleasures the revenues formerly created for the relief of the poor. The higher clergy, usually re¬ cruited from the nobility, rivalled the nobility in magnificence, "whilst the lower clergy issued from the racks of the people, and vegetated in EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 359 the depths of the country with scarcely the means of subsistence. The clergy also held fast to their special jurisdictions, to their tithes, to their exemption from taxes, and contented themselves with sharing in the public burdens through gratuitous gifts, which varied according to the pressure of the times. The pomp of some of the prelates and the frivolity of many of the abbes in the eighteenth century made the attacks of the philosophical sceptics popular ; and their privileges made the clergy hated by all who sought only for equality. The Feudal Character of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce .— The gilded crowd of lay and ecclesiastical lords, of ennobled judges, of officers prouder of their birth than of their courage, at¬ tached less value to their honorary privileges than to the innumer¬ able rights which they exercised in the country. No doubt, the division of property had commenced long before 1789, but the smaller properties could not be productive : they were crushed by feudal dues, statute labour and requisitions, quit rent and dues of every kind, tolls from the harvests, tolls from the vines, heriots, the abuse of the game laws, feudal service, &c., all burdened the peasant’s work. It has been truly said that the land was delivered, rather than divided, by the Revolution. Industrial labour had been unable to free itself from the tyranny of corporations. Moreover, royalty had monopolized certain pro¬ fessions to form them into offices, and thus create new taxes upon commerce and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were jurors, tasters of brandy, tasters of butter and cheese, sellers of poultry, measurers and sifters of wheat, measurers of freestone and of linen, town-criers, who announced funerals, &c. Exaggerated regulations arrested all spirit of ini¬ tiative ; every improvement carried out involved a new burden in shape of additional tax or fine ; the royal protection was re¬ quired before a hat-maker of Paris, named Le Prevot, could manufacture hats mixed with silk. Commerce was fettered by internal dues, the remains of the old frontiers of the small states of the Middle Ages. Colbert had certainly succeeded in forming a union of the twelve provinces, 36 ° THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. called the five large farms; but the others still constituted two zones, one of the provinces reputed foreign, the other of provinces treated as foreign. The list of tolls, although simplified, was still very long. Since the seventeenth century high roads had been constructed, which, though not so solidly built as the Roman roads, were equally useful. But these great arteries had no affluents, and the country roads were still impracticable in winter. Character of Society .—This state of things, which we can now judge dispassionately, is explained by the long duration of a society founded in the Middle Ages by w T ar and violence. Nobles of old race, or inheritors of titles acquired by money, regarded them¬ selves as a nation above the nation. No doubt the higher nobility disdained those whose title-deeds had not yet had time to become yellow, and above all the nobles of the magistracy, who wished to take rank with the nobility of the sword. But, whatever their divi¬ sions, they were all agreed in maintaining their privileges. The right of primogeniture enabled the family traditions to be maintained and the transmission of the estates attached to the title of nobility. The nobles—although their numbers did not exceed 88,000 persons according to some authorities, 140,000 according to others—dis¬ posed of one-fifth of the soil. Retaiuing their privileges they had lost the duties and responsibilities which had once almost com¬ pensated for them. They neither led armies to their country’s aid, nor acted as ministers to the king. They were simply his courtiers, an appanage of his state ; but rendering no service to the country or to the people in return for the sums they took from them. The lower they bent at Versailles, the higher they carried them¬ selves in their provincial domains, where they really played at being kings.* Through contact with the philosophical ideas and * The Nobility , the Lords in the Eighteenth Century .—“ Let us turn to lesser personages, to a nobleman of medium dignity, in his square league of country, in the midst of the thousand inhabitants who have been his villains or his serfs. Whatever may have been done to lower it, his place is still very high. ‘ He is still,’ say the intendants, ‘ the first inhabitant; ’ he is a prince, who has been gradually deprived of his public functions and restricted in his honorary and useful dues, but he remains a prince. In the church he has a special bench and the right of sepulture in the choir; the hangings bear EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 361 culture which they applauded in the drawing-rooms of Paris, they had divested themselves of their rough manners, not of their pride. They regarded themselves as of another race, another blood, than their tenants. Although the unity of the kingdom had his coat-of-arms ; incense is given to him, ‘the holy water presented to him first.’ Frequently the founder of the church, he is its patron, chooses the cure, tells him what to do; in the country he advances or retards the parochial masses to suit his own convenience. If he has a title he is grand judiciary, and there are entire provinces, such as Maine and Anjou, where there is not one fief without a justice. In this case he nominates the bailiff, the registrar, and other representatives of law and justice, attorneys, lawyers, seignorial constables, sheriff’s officers, and country tipstaffs, who served writs or judged in his name in civil or criminal cases in the inferior courts. For delinquents of various kinds he has his prison, sometimes his private gallows. On the other hand, as compensation for his expenses as justice, he receives the goods of a man condemned to death or confiscation within his estate; he succeeds to a bastard horn and deceased on his manor intestate or without legitimate children; he appropriates to himself all movable property, living or inanimate, found or strayed, the owner of which is unknown; he deducts one-third or one-half of all treasures discovered ; and on the coast he claims for himself all the waifs and strays, flotsam and jetsam from wrecks; lastly, and this was most fruitful of all in those times of misery, he became owner of all abandoned property that had been out of cultivation for ten years. High and mighty lords of a dovecot, of a frog marsh and of a warren, the more they lacked substance, the more they attached themselves to their name and honorary privileges. Without being ignorant of those humane ideas, diffused by the writers of the eighteenth century, they could not cede anything of their feudal rights, since they lived by those rights, and as a rule they were for the peasants only creditors forced to be harsh for their own existence. From this resulted violent animosities, which rapidly increased round the castle. “ The lord lived in isolation, a stranger to his vassals ; and his powerful authority and the privileges he had retained made for him a life apart. When he quitted this isolation it was necessarily to augment public misery. From the soil, ruined by the public treasury, he came to take a share of the produce, so many sheaves of wheat, so many casks of wine. His pigeons and game devoured the harvest. The peasants were forced to grind their corn in his mills, and to leave one-sixteenth of the flour. A field sold for six hundred pounds put one hundred into his pocket. “ The brother’s inheritance could only be enjoyed by a brother after being pared of one year’s income. Twenty other dues, formerly of public utility, now only served to nourish one private person.”—(H. Taine, “ Les Origines de la Societe Contemporaine.” Tome l er , “ L’Ancien Regime.”) 362 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. been created, a thousand local sovereignties counteracted and spoilt it. To this pride, which many bishops shared through their birth, the clergy added the arrogance of their territorial power and of their numerous privileges. A distinct class, they had even the pretension, through their religious character, of claiming the first rank. They were jealous of the nobility, which envied them in turn. The twenty-five millions of inhabitants, who in the towns and country formed the third class of the tiers etat, were regarded as a subject nation; and although this nation had singularly increased in knowledge and wealth, principally in the cities, although the middle class ( bourgeoisie ) furnished a considerable number of officers of justice and finance, it was still in a measure tainted with servitude, disdained by those who plundered or made use of it. The plebeians were no longer in fact, through the progress of society, yet always in law, subject to taxation and statute labour at will. Political , Economic , and Social Causes of the Pievolution .— The system w T as bad every way, it united the evils of despotism and excessive centralisation to those of inequality and local privi¬ leges. The confusion could hardly be greater, and was so through all parts of the social structure. For a long time society struggled in the midst of an inextricable situation. At the end of the eighteenth century the need of complete remodelling, not only of one or more parts of society, but of the fabric itself, was dimly felt. No doubt the Revolution began with the financial crisis which forced Louis XVI. to convoke the States General in 1789, but wffiat engendered this financial crisis except the utterly false constitution of societ}'' ? Passions are doubled by misery, for the formidable cry, “ Bread! bread!” was heard more than once in the eighteenth century before it re-echoed in threatening tones at the gates of the palace of Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789. But whence did this misery arise but from the oppressive law T s to which the land was still subject, and which ruined agricul¬ ture just as they fettered industry and commerce and prevented the establishment of a useful administration ? All these various STATE OF FRANCE IN 1789. POLITICAL STATE. Government. Absolute monarchy;—divine right. No written constitution. States General no longer held. Submission of the Parliament. Provincial States an¬ nulled. Administration. Six Ministers : 2 Ministers and 4 Secretaries of State.—High Chancellor (Justice) ; Controller General of Fi¬ nance ; Secretaries of the King’s house, of War, of the Navy, and of Foreign Affairs. The ministers divided not only business, but the territory. / Supreme Council; Council of State or parties ; Coun- Councils. J cil of Despatches; Coun¬ cil of conscience, of com- .merce, etc. Provosts. Bailiffs, Intend ants (33). —Governors of Provinces (32). Finances. Controller-General. Chamber of Accounts. Court of Excise. General Farmers; Financial gene¬ ralities (34). Taxes: Tallage, Poll Tax, Tax of one-tenth, Salt Tax, Town Dues. Public and Royal Treasures com¬ prised in one. Acquits au comptant. Justice. Parliament of Paris.—12 Provincial Parliaments. — 4 Provincial — 100 Presidial Councils. — Tribunals of the Bailiwick ; Ecclesiastical Tribunals or Courts.—Exceptional Tribunals. Unequal legislation ; one district fol¬ lowed customary, another written law ; inequalities of the penal code; cruel punishments. War and Marine. No law of recruitment ; the regi¬ ments belonged to the nobles. (White Officers (the King’s). Navy. - Blue Officers (Merchant ( Service). Foreign regiments. SOCIAL STATE. NobilLy. THREE CLASSES. Bight of Primogeni¬ ture. Exemption from tal- lage. Small or i Rank in the army, provincial no- f Large estates, bilitv. \ Feudal rights. Clergy. Eighteen Archbishoprics, 120 Bishoprics. Upper and lower clergy; Abbeys, real estates.—Tithes and privileges.— Ecclesiastical Justice.—Assemblies of the clergy.—Exemption from taxes.— Gratuitous gifts. Third State (Tiers Etat). Commoners and people paying taxes were inferior to the other orders Plebeians could not obtain rank in the army ; they were subject to statute labour and feudal claims. Protestants and Jews. No civil position.— Excluded from society. ECONOMIC STATE. Agriculture. Requisitions—Tithes.—Lack of all facility for communication between the villages.—Statute labour.—Feudal ser¬ vice.—Customs between the provinces. Feudal claims ; sporting rights, pigeons ; ban-vin ; an infinite variety of often perpetual dues. Result—Poverty. Industry. Corporations, wardens, freemen’s rights of privilege (Maitrises) abolished by Turgot; re-established after him. Regulations on the manufacture of stuffs; fetters upon progress. Commerce. Corporations:—Internal customs. Provinces of the five large farms, provinces considered foreign. High roads made during the seven¬ teenth and eighteenth centuries, but still numerous tolls, particularly upon streams and rivers. Colonies. Diminution of the Colonial empire in the eighteenth century. Retention of monopolies and of bur¬ densome regulations. Nobility of the sword and robe. 36 4 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. causes, both economic and political, could then be summed up in one only, the social cause, and the fate of all these reforms was bound up in the destruction of the feudal system, which excited hatred that had accumulated during centuries. The storm at last gathered and burst. The people in Paris rose, destroyed the Bastille, which was rather a symbol than a weapon of despotism. At the sound all the small feudal bastilles crumbled away, first in France, then in other countries. Upon these smoking ruins, in the midst of armies which clashed, and inundated the whole of Europe with blood, a German author—Goethe—said, when the sun set on Yalmy, “In this place and on this day com¬ mences a new epoch in the world’s history.” The Aerial Telegraph, 1794, BOOK IV. CONTEMPORARY PERIOD, CHAPTER XY. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, Summary : General Character of the Revolution, its Philosophical and Clas¬ sical Spirit—The Social, Economic, and Political Aim of the Revolution —The Social Work of the Constituent Assembly; the Principles of Equality; the Night of the 4th of August—Civil Equality ; Equality in the Family—Political Action ; the Principles of 1789—Administrative Reforms, Political Unity ; the Departments—Financial Reforms—The Civil Constitution of the Clergy—Representative Government; the Con¬ stitution of 1791—Economic Reform ; the Development of Small Land- owners; Relief of Agriculture—Liberty of Industry and Commerce— EfFort to Return to Ciedit; the Assignats; the Assembly and Law’s System—Result of the Work of the Constituent Assembly—The Legisla¬ tive Assembly; Fall of the Monarchy (10th of August, 1792)—The Re¬ public; the Convention (1792—1795)—Divisions and Violence of the Convention—The Thermidorian Reaction—The Constitution of the Year III.—Labours and Creations of the Convention-—The Directory (1795—1799) ; the Coups d’Etat—Social Disorder—Financial Disorder —The Army; the Law of Conscription—Preponderance of the Army; the Coup d’Etat of the 18th and 19th Brumaire (9th and 10th November, 1799). General Character of the Revolution: Its Philosophical and Classical Spirit. —French genius, developed in the last two centu¬ ries, had attained something of the brilliant clearness that formerly distinguished the genius of Rome and Greece. It was intensely logical. The French wished to apply philosophy to society, to trans¬ late into facts those truths that their authors had brought to light and propagated. Legislative changes had been either the work of one man, or of centuries. The French Revolution by the hands 3 68 THE HIS TOR Y OF CIVILIZA TION. of an entire people rejuvenated in ten years a society aged four¬ teen hundred. Never was such difficult work more impetuous, more methodical, and more violent; never were more confusion and blood seen in the midst of noble discussions, or passions more vile unchained to contend against reason, too often discredited, in the heat of the struggle, even by those who claimed to personify her. The Revolution was so largely if not completely produced by the philosophy of the eighteenth century that the special influence exer¬ cised by the three principal writers over the periods of this great movement has been carefully defined. Voltaire chiefly interested him¬ self in questions of tolerance, humanity, and justice ; Montesquieu in constitutional questions ; Rousseau in social questions. Voltaire excited the generous sentiments which characterized the first impulse ; Montesquieu formed the jurists, who distinguished them¬ selves in the Constituent Assembly ; and the most plausible theories of Rousseau were re-echoed in the politics and language of the Convention. It is singular how little practical influence the Revo¬ lution and Independence of the United States had on the course of the French Revolution in comparison with the wildest d priori theories of doctrinaires and philosophers. This language, as well as that used by the orators of the Con¬ stituent Assembly, also revealed another influence, that of a false classicalism. Studies in Latin and Greek had revealed the ideas of liberty so dear to antiquity. Souvenirs of republican Rome reared themselves in front of those of imperial Rome, which were also to have their day of triumph. Speeches, pamphlets, decrees were about to be filled with reminiscences of Greek and Roman history, and the modern world revived even the festivals and costumes of anti¬ quity. But all this with scarcely any real understanding of ancient history. Men imagined they were imitating Greece and Rome while making the most confused travesty of history. Social , Economic , and Political Aim of the Revolution .—We have defined the aim of the Revolution in explaining its causes. If the old society had suffered from misery, it was produced not only by the vices of the political constitution, but by its faulty social constitu- THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 369 tion. It was necessary to transform society in order to reform politics and satisfy conflicting interests. Economic progress could be produced only by social amelioration. It was afterwards necessary to render the political progress stable in order to make all other possible. This was the work of the Revolution, which in its advance followed this logical and natural order. Social Work of the Constituent Assembly; the Principles of Equality ; the Night of the Ath of August. —On the 5th of May, 1789, when the States General met in the Hall of Menus at Versailles, one might, save for a few changes of costume, have fancied oneself car¬ ried back to the Assemblies of the old monarchy : the obsolete ceremonial was exhumed, with all the old customs usual to these assemblies. The three orders were distinct by rank and costume, there were still three classes, three peoples ; but the spirit was no longer the same, and the deputies of the Tiers, or Third Estate, double in number to that of the two other orders, were no longer the timid men of 1614. Conscious of their strength, from the first day they touched the true question by demanding a vote by heads. The powerlessness of the States General had arisen from the division of the classes, which always enabled the votes of the two privi¬ leged orders to overrule all the popular demands. The deputies of the Third Estate understood and averted this danger. The celebrated oath of the Jeu de Paume on the 20th of June, the re¬ sistance offered to the royal injunctions on the 28rd of June, and Mirabeau’s eloquent apostrophe, intimidated the King and the privileged classes, who yielded on the 28th, recognising the exist¬ ence of a single Assembly. When sitting, the same twelve hun¬ dred deputies were seen who had met the preceding month, but it was no longer the States General, it was the National Assembly, blending in one majestic unity the deputies of the nobility, clergy, and people, binding in one sheaf the living forces of the country, mingling and consequently effacing classes, asserting the principle of equality even as the title of Constituent asserted the sovereignty of the people delegated to their elected representatives. Feudalism and absolutism, having been thus vanquished first by the firm attitude assumed by the deputies of the Third Estate, then by the B B 370 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . popular outbreak which destroyed the Bastille (14th of July), the Assembly commenced to work with decision. In the celebrated sitting of the night of the 4th of August, it decreed in a few hours the de¬ struction of the feudal system, upon the initiative and with the frantic applause of the privileged orders themselves, carried away by the strong current of reason and enthusiasm. It is said that after the prophet Mahomet had triumphed at Mecca, he made the tour of the Caaba with his newly-converted disciples, striking the hundreds of idols which surrounded it, and which fell broken in pieces by a crowd of their former worshippers. Thus, in the night of the 4th of August, rights and abuses of the nobles and clergy, the immunities of the provinces and cities, were all destroyed in the flush of generous excitement, even by those men who had profited by them. It was a triumph of generous enthusiasm victorious over egoism and self-interest. These enthusiastic resolutions were at once translated into decrees, which rapidly succeeded each other during the month of August, and in the principles formulated by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a judicial summary of the theories recognised and enjoyed by men of other nations, but which the philosophers of the eighteenth century thought they had discovered for themselves. It is an affirmation of all the duties of a citizen, and the guarantee of all his rights, which can be opposed as easily to the tyranny of one man as to that of the multitude. Civil Equality: Equality in the Family .—Society found itself reformed upon the natural basis. There was no longer any dis¬ tinction of birth or religion in the eyes of the law: this is called civil equality. Marriage, until then an exclusively religious action, was also to be a civil action, preceding the religious marriage. It became a contract placed under the guarantee of society as well as of conscience. Public officers were instituted to keep 'the registers of births, deaths, and marriages, which had formerly only existed in parishes, and in which all events relative to the individual subject were to be inscribed, without any allusion to titles or creeds. Equality was also enforced in the family, where the rights of primogeniture disappeared, and society returned to the equitable THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 371 division of property between tbe children, which had formerly prevailed amongst the Germans. Political Action ; the Principles of 1789.—Equality was the first of the principles which extricated itself from the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which are called the principles of 1789. The others referred to the organization of society founded upon liberty ; the sovereignty of the people ; popular origin of the law ; responsibility of the agents of the executive power; liberty of opinion, of worship, of the press; inviolability of property. Dis¬ puted, if not in their essence, at least in their application, they gave rise to long discussions in the Constituent Assembly, and were afterwards subjected to numerous vicissitudes, whilst it has been the work of succeeding generations, since that date, to seek for the balance between authority and liberty. Administrative Reforms: Political Unity; the Departments. —The Constituent Assembly had the merit of determining in a durable manner the direction in which the nation should move. It established administrative unity, and for the old provinces substituted smaller territorial divisions, which have been perpetuated through all the after political changes. From January 21st, 1790, the Assembly, destroy¬ ing the old provinces, voted the division of France into eighty-three departments. Paying no attention to either geography or history, contradicting both when necessary, the sole principle of division was to nearly balance the population of each department, placing under the same jurisdiction cities that had formerly been enemies, separating those that had been too closely allied, blending races as far as possible, in order to create above all rivalries devotion to the entire country, and to fuse local patriotisms into one and the same general patriotism. Perhaps the nobility of the aim made it exceed moderation, and the same result might have been obtained witn more respect for geographical necessities and historical traditions, which would have prevented the life-blood from rushing too much to the centre and draining the extremities. However, the names of the most important provinces have survived, like their costumes and manners, so difficult is it to destroy longstanding traditions. The departments were divided, in obedience to the same principles, 37 2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. into districts, the districts into cantons, the cantons into communes ; but the departments, districts, and communes only were adminis¬ trative unities, and they alone had directories and councils. The old local and provincial parliaments or law courts gave way to uni¬ form justice and procedure, under regular gradations. A Juge de Paix was appointed for each canton, a civil court for each district, a criminal one for each department. Trial by jury was introduced. All these offices of justice as well as the municipalities were made elective. However, the Constituent Assembly, whilst granting to all French¬ men the right of suffrage, added a few restrictions with the object of raising the title of citizen ; it formulated conditions of age, domi¬ cile, and property; it invented the distinction between active citizen and passive citizen, which bordered upon the ridiculous ; it applied the principle of secondary election by making the primary assem¬ blies, composed of active citizens, nominate the electors chosen amongst those who possessed the most important estates.* These magistrates of the commune, the electors (in proportion of one per cent.), were instructed to choose the administrators of the district and department, the judges, and lastly the deputies. The primary assemblies were composed of all the active citizens. To be an active citizen it was necessary to be French, twenty-five years old, and resident in the canton for at least one year, paying a personal tax of the value of three days’ work, and not in a state of domesticity. To be eligible as an elector it was first necessary to be an active citizen, and the Constitution of 1791 also exacted in important cities, as qualification, the ownership or usufruct of a property equalling an income of two hundred days’ work, or a rent equalling one hundred and fifty days’ work : in small towns the qualifications were reduced, the revenue of the property being lowered to one hundred and fifty days’ work, and the assessment of the rent to one hundred days. In the country it was necessary to be owner or enjoy the usufruct of property valued at an income of one hundred days’ work, or to be tenant or farmer of property * The primary assemblies at once nominated the electors, appointed the administrators, the magistrates and the deputies. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 373 valued at eighty days’ work—qualifications which do not essentially differ from those required in order to be freeholder, or neighbour, in the old communes. Financial Beforms .—From a financial point of view, the Con¬ stituent Assembly had to liquidate the past, to provide for the present, and to secure the future. It liquidated the past by voting —upon Necker’s proposal, and under the scourge of Mirabeau’s eloquent words—a tax of one-quarter of the income at which each citizen was assessed. It enriched the State with the property of the Church, “placed at the disposal of the nation.” It then provided for the present by expedients, by the creation of the assignats, which we will describe a little later, for we are now occupied with the durable reforms and principles. The Constituent Assembly applied the grand principle of the equality of all citizens as regards taxation. It abolished all the eccen¬ tric, confused, vexatious taxes of the old regime—a salutary clear¬ ance which cannot be too highly praised. Still, it retained a few fiscal souvenirs of the old regime, which appeared too profitable to be abandoned, and which were justified by the guarantees of authen¬ ticity which they gave to deeds and contracts; for instance, duties on registration, stamps, and mortgage. It deserves the credit of having clearly laid down the division of taxes—taxes on laud, taxes on personal property. It certainly abandoned excise taxes, that convenient resource of governments; but we must take into account the hatred which had been displayed against the excise officials, and which then rendered the re-establishment of an analo¬ gous administration almost impossible. The reproach that might really be made against the Assembly is its mode of collection of the direct taxes, and that, unfaithful to its own principle of the separation of the powers, it left to the departmental administrations, which were essentially political, the care of drawing up the lists and regulating the collection. Hence abuses quickly arose. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy .—Above all, the Assembly was guilty of a much more serious infidelity to its principles of separation and distinction between the powers. It combined the Church with the State; it endeavoured to assimilate the eccle- 374 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. siastical hierarchy to the civil functionaries, to subject it to the election of the citizens, who chose their pastor as they chose their judge, a theory which the French Church rejected with additional energy, from the fact that she was much less disposed to return to the elections of primitive times, since this elective principle had been adopted by the Calvinists. On the contrary, the Church, since the Council of Trent, had consolidated her hierarchy, attaching it more closely to the Pope, and the civil constitution that was imposed upon the French clergy destroyed this bond and broke the unity ; it was an absolute schism, which complicated difficulties and added religious to civil war. Representative Government ; the Constitution of 1791.—After renewing the administration the Assembly endeavoured to agree upon a more debateable question, that of the central government; and no one can reproach it with being unable to attain a definitive solu¬ tion ; for ten different solutions have since been proposed and tried in France. The Assembly had the merit of proclaiming, on this point, the separation of the legislative and executive powers, defining the rights of the king and those of the Assembly which was to govern with him. It applied the principle of the sovereignty of the people and overthrew the basis on which former French governments were founded. But clearness of ideas is only apparent in the Constitution of 1791. The Assembly organized the monarchy like a republic. It desired a king, yet annihilated him, leaving only empty honours and an illusive right of veto to Louis XYI. Economic Reform; Development of Small Landowners ; Relief of Agriculture. —The social and political reforms had suddenly produced important economic changes. The suppression of the right of primogeniture diminished the concentration of estates in the hands of the great families, and the suppression of the rights of mortmain, confiscation of the estates of the nobles, sale of crown and public lands, threw vast estates open to the general public. Some economists regret this crumbling of the great estates of the old regime, wffiich, according to their theories, pre¬ vented cultivation on a large scale and industrial establishments. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 375 They may be answered, that large properties renew themselves by the accidents of inheritance. One century has passed, and there is still cultivation on a large scale. On the other hand, a small property exacts more efforts from the cultivator, who exerts him¬ self to make his piece of ground produce all that it is capable of doing, to vary the rotation of crops, and to increase the fertility of the soil by manure. The yield has doubled, cultivation has invaded the smallest allotments capable of receiving it, and the soil has tripled in value. This, however, is but coincident with the general rise in values, and is not more marked in France than in other countries. But the chief contribution to the prosperity of agriculture was the relief afforded by the disappearance of the innumerable restric¬ tions which fettered it. The land was free, and henceforth the peasant worked on it with more energy, reflecting that he was labouring for his wife and family only. Liberty of Industry and Commerce. —Industrial labour was also free. The privileges of the artisans vanished like those of the nobles. The Assembly (16th of February, 1791) suppressed the corporations of arts and trades, the jurors and maitrises. Competi¬ tion was at once established, and excited the complaints of the former manufacturers and merchants, who did not understand that every one could have the right to manufacture and sell as "well as themselves. However, to maintain the rights of inventors, the, laws of the 7th of January and 25th of May, 1791, established the patent laws. Then a general tax w^as imposed upon all industry, which still exists, the license tax.* Commerce derived immense advantages from the suppression of internal customs and tolls, the ideas of Gournay and of Turgot; “ Laissez faire , laissez aller ” were applied, in the interior at least, for the difficulties of free trade have given rise to many controversies that have not yet been closed. Effort to Return to Credit; the Assignats; the Assembly and Law's System. —Seventy years had passed over the system of credit * The license tax is composed of a fixed and a proportional duty. 376 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. attempted by Law, and, in the financial crisis which was the inevitable consequence of so many changes, and of so much con¬ fusion, the deputies thought it advisable to return to it. Since the enormous mass of national property could not be sold immediately, it was decided to cede it to the communes, which could gradually effect its sale, and to furnish creditors of the State with bonds on the communes, which they would meet with the produce of the sales. This was the origin of the assignats, which then had a forced currency. The principle of the assignats was as sound as that of Law’s notes, since the assignats were guaranteed by a real value in land. But credit exists only on confidence. Now, in proportion to the increase of confusion, men doubted the success of the Revolution, and the assignats lost their value. When they became depreciated, the Government, to supplement their value by quantity, doubled them issue, and their abundance added to their depreciation. The assignats were retained by force during the whole of the Revolution, and an increasing quantity was perpetually required to represent the same amount of specie. However, although the system of the Constituent Assembly proved so disastrous, for it ended like that of Law, in ruin, it still aided in tiding over a perilous epoch. Paper served as money. The conditions of credit were better understood. The errors were at least corrected, the ruins were repaired : credit remained. It is now the most powerful lever of industry and commerce. Results of the Work of the Constituent Assembly .—We must, then, in order to judge the work of the Constituent Assembly in an impartial manner, take into account the difficult circumstances under which it was forced in great haste to remodel the government of society. This Assembly, which by its mixture of nobles, priests, burghers, artisans, and even peasants, reproduced in the commencement (for numerous vacancies occurred later on) the most exact image of the France of the day, then boldly undertook and carried through to the end, a task which had never been, and has never since been imposed upon an Assembly. It had demolished the old society, formed by fifteen centuries, and in two years had reconstructed THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 377 another, a quite new society, upon the foundation of the inalienable rights of man, such as they were imagined to be. Proclaiming and applying popular sovereignty, it asserted, if it it did not always observe, the idea of separation of the powers. It honoured, even to an abuse, the principle of election. For despotism it substituted law. It re-established equity in the social organization, in the distribution of justice, but to the task of introducing order into the finances it was not equal. It formed one nation of three jealous peoples, occupying the same territory; of thirty-six rival provinces, it made, by administrative and judicial unity, a single country ; by the just division of dues and charges, and the community of interests, a single mother country. Free to work in their fields or at their trades, free in their commerce, the citizens were also to be free in their consciences and opinions. If they violated the protecting laws of society, the latter only recognised them as guilty after the decision of other citizens sitting as jury. If men merited great rewards, humble birth no longer forbade them to hope for them. All privileges were abolished, all fetters broken, a great step towards the end of all misery. Defective, like all human work, the work of the National Assembly answered to the outcry for liberty and equality, freed from the oppression of the Middle Ages. This above all else is the social reform which made the Assembly triumph. Subsequent govern¬ ments have more or less restrained or extended liberty; they have maintained equality before the law, the corner stone of modern society, henceforth placed upon its basis. The Legislative Assembly; Fall of the Monarchy (1(M of August, 1792).—Through a disinterestedness which has been used as a reproach against it, the Constituent Assembly made the fatal mistake of excluding its members from the new Legislative As¬ sembly, which was to govern in concert with Louis XVI., and the mission of applying the Constitution of 1791 devolved on a genera¬ tion of young ardent deputies, who cared little for a constitution which they had not made, and which they took as a starting point instead of a settlement. Moreover, these deputies, carried away in their turn by the spirit of logic, wished to push to the utmost 378 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . results the principles of the Constitution of 1791. The monarchy was merely nominal, and Louis XYI., who since the return from Yarennes had lost all prestige, was personally a captive in the Tuileries, as he was morally of the Assembly which sat in the Riding Hall. The Girondins forced themselves upon him, filled the ministries with their friends (for the deputies could not be ministers), and in order to bind him to the Revolution, dragged him into war against Austria and the emigrants; then finding him far from docile to their counsels they abandoned him, and no longer endeavoured to avert the movement which was to end in the ruin of the monarchy. On the 10th of August, 1792, the Capetian Monarchy was destroyed. This ended the political revolution. Royalty, which had formerly taken the initiative in all reforms, was at last completely iden¬ tified with the privileged orders, which involved it in their own ruin. It had committed so many faults that it fell a victim to the popular hatred, under a king who recalled the goodness of Louis XII. Private virtues were insufficient to stem the current; in its violence, so long restrained, it swept away the oldest monarchy and the most ancient dynasty of Europe like an empty wreck. The Republic; the Convention (1792—1795.)—The National Con¬ vention, which met to the noise of the cannon which hailed the victory of Yalmy (21st of September, 1792), proclaimed the Republic. The name of this Assembly recalled the sovereign assemblies which had been formed in the English colonies of America after the War of Independence, a name that had not been wholly forgotten even in Southern France. It declared itself sovereign, and absolute sovereign. It concentrated the two powers, legislative and executive, in the hands of the deputies ; making laws and applying them, it was divided into committees for the administration, passing resolutions in general sittings; later on, sending deputies and commissioners into the country and even to the armies to exact obedience to its decrees, it extended its formidable shadow everywhere. It was the sovereignty of the people exercised directly through its delegates, without counter¬ balance and without a check. In three years the situation was reversed; it was no longer the sovereign, it was an Assembly that THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . 379 reigned, legislated, governed, administered, received and expended, made treaties and fought; it summarized and incarnated the nation, and for Louis XIY.’s celebrated speech, “L’Etat c’est moi,” might have substituted the words, “ L’Etat c’est nous.” Divisions and Violence of the Convention .—This excessive power, the dangers of which were not at first perceived, through the neces¬ sity of action in the presence of national danger, soon led to serious consequences for liberty, and even for society. Power belonged to the party who could best secure the popular favour, practically that of the Paris mob. To gain this each party outbid the other in violence, till at last exhaustion and reaction came. The Mountain, the extreme Left, bolder than the Girondins, compromised the latter in their violent policy by leading them to vote for the death of Louis XVI., then freed themselves from them by a revolt and proscription (Blst of May, 2nd of June, 1793). They then reigned by terror ; incapable even of remaining united amongst themselves, dividing into the exaggerated and the moderates, into Hebertists and Dantonists, destroying each other at the instigation and to the advantage of a dull, ambitious fanatic, Maximilian Robespierre, who sought to increase the anarchy in order to remain sole master, and who, in spite of his wish to return to better things, fell at last amidst universal odium, for if he possessed the craft of a Cromwell, he had neither his courage nor his intelligence. In the disorder of foreign war, complicated by civil war (the rising in the Vendee and the Girondin departments), the Con¬ vention carried the social as well as the political revolution to extremes. Proscription struck all those who clung to the old regime, the nobles or priests were imprisoned, rendered answerable for and victims of the blunders of the emigrants. The sans-culottes triumphed, destroying equality in their turn, crushing under foot the rights of man, and so completely overturning society that we may say that during fourteen months it no longer existed. There was no more order, for two-thirds of France was in revolt; no more security under the law of the suspected and the Committee of Public Safety; no more justice in the revolutionary 380 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tribunal, which only parodied its forms; no more equality, unless it were on the scaffold and in the bloody basket, where the heads of nobles and commons rolled together; no more religion, for the churches were shut and the priests proscribed; no longer a nation, since one part of France fought against the other ;—such was the situation produced by the broils of the Convention, and more hideous even than the guillotining in Paris were the massacres in the provinces, at Nantes and at Lyons. Prohibitions of entry pre¬ vented external commerce, the high rate of prices ruined internal commerce, disorder arrested industry, and the prevailing misery was extreme. More than once it became necessary, in Paris, to reduce the rations of bread sold by the bakers. No doubt the Convention—producing, so to speak, armies and generals—had by its savage energy repulsed the foreigner and pre¬ served French unity. But La Vendee was crushed from the month of December, 1793, and from November to December the frontiers of the north and east had been saved by Jourdan, the victor of Wattignies (16th of October), and by Hoche, the hero of Wissem- burg (22nd to 26th of December). Now the terror and anarchy redoubled precisely in the first six months of 1794, and the contra¬ diction between the fury of the Convention and the successes of the armies became so great that a revolt took place when the vic¬ tory of Fleurus (26th of June, 1794) rendered it more startling. It was really the cannon of Fleurus which overthrew Robespierre, and, as though in bitter derision, his colleague, Saint-Just, whilst still covered with the dust of the battle-field, took his place by him on the 10th Thermidor (28th of July), in the supreme hecatomb which put an end to all the hecatombs. The Thermidorian Reaction .—We must turn quickly away from such spectacles in our search for the progress of civilization, for they would be the denial of this progress had not society, for one moment overthrown, recovered its balance almost immediately. Arrived at results as absurd as they were odious, the Revolution frightened at itself halted in its work with the aid of the few remain¬ ing Men of the Mountain. The reaction, inevitable in human affairs, became rapid after the 10th Thermidor, and like the Revolution THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 3§r was carried to an extreme in its turn, and successful generals succeeded to the power of theorizing fanatics. At first the reaction was only manifested against the system of the Terror. The Convention recalled the proscribed deputies, the fugitive Girondins, and reunited its broken forces. This reaction soon tried the patience of the Mountain, the men who had over¬ thrown Robespierre and who felt threatened in their turn. The insurrection which they led against the Assembly on the 1st Prai- rial (20tli of May, 1795) failed, the revolutionary tribunal was abolished, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, at Paris, was disarmed. The Convention also hurried forward the consideration and vote for a new Constitution, to replace the ultra-democratic Constitution voted in 1793, now inapplicable. This reaction advanced so quickly that it awakened the hopes of the Royalists. The Con¬ vention, which was obliged to defend itself against the Jacobins on the 1st Prairial, was protected on the 13th Vendemaire (5th of October, 1795) by Buonaparte, whose success dates from that day. Then the Convention, which had been assailed now by the revolutionary sections, now by the reactionary sections of the Parisian militia, abolished this militia. The Constitution of the Year III .—-The Convention itself had suffered from its omnipotence. The sovereign with eight hundred heads had lost too many of them not to be cured of its ambition. The new Constitution, dating from the year III. (1795), therefore returned to the principle of the separation of the powers and to that of the duality of the Assemblies, so imprudently abandoned by the Constituent Assembly. The executive power was to be confided to a directory of five members, the legislative power to two councils— the Council of Ancients and the Council of the Five Hundred. The Convention returned to the election by two degrees, which had been suppressed. It divided—that is to say, weakened—the execu¬ tive power ; but it was a great step, as we have said, to have rendered it personal. The balance between the two councils was cleverly maintained, and the Council of the Ancients, a prepon¬ derant authority, could approve or reject the laws voted by the Legislative Body. In a word, if this Constitution had its defects, 382 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. if it too nearly annihilated the executive power, if by its too frequent elections it maintained perpetual change in the Legislative Body, it at least made a serious attempt to arrange a republican organiza¬ tion. One director was elected every year, and one-third of each of the Legislative Councils. It failed more through the fault of men than through its principles. Labours and Creations of the Convention .—The Convention— which had the merit, very rare in an assembly, of amending itself, of recognising and repairing its political errors—applied itself also, in the latter period of its career, to carrying on the work of social and economic progress. Already at the height of the civil war, under the pressure of financial necessities, it had, on the proposal of Cambon, unified the debt by creating the great book of the public debt. All the national debts were included in one single and same debt, bearing the same interest, and irredeemable. The credit of the State was thus founded. This system appeared so favourable that, from this time, loans have been continually added to loans; but this does not mean that this facility has not been abused nor that economy is not as imperative for States as it is for families. On the 9th of August, 1793, Cambaceres laid before the Con¬ vention the first project of the civil code. It was rejected as not sufficiently embodying the ideas of the Revolution. In 1794 and 1796 again his project was rejected without discussion. At length, under the Consulate (1800), a commission was formed to draw up the New Code, the first portion of which, the Civil Code, was promulgated in 1804. In the midst of the revolutionary confusion schools and colleges had almost disappeared. The Convention, adopting Condorcet’s general ideas, decreed, after hearing several reports by Professor Lakanal (which are still celebrated), a vast system of national instruction. In the primary schools the people were to learn the elements of the French language, of arithmetic, and the principles of surveying; in the central schools the wealthier classes could place at the disposal of their children the sciences, literature, the dead languages, and the most suitable of the living languages, history, and political economy. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 3 8 3 To form an army of distinguished professors the Convention decreed the foundation of an Ecole Normale (80th of October, 1798). Special schools were created for medicine, the law, and veterinary surgery. From this period date the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, 1794, the Conservatoire de Musique, 8rd August, 1795, the Bureau des Longitudes (21st June, 1795), the Ecole Poly¬ technique (28th September, 1794), established under the name of Central School of Public Works; the Natural History Museum, opened on the 10th June, 1793; the first organization of the Institute intended to replace the old Academies (25th October, 1795). For the encouragement of the Arts the Convention ordered the formation of the Museum, opened in the Louvre on the 8th November, 1793. The Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles was organized on the 28th July, 1795. The Archives were collected in a general depot under the direction of Camus. It is to the Convention that we owe the adoption in France (7th April, 1793) of the system of weights and measures called the metric system, which gave a scientific basis to the unity of weights and measures, according to the wish of the Constituent Assembly. A much less useful innovation was the Republican Calendar (24th November, 1793). It was retrospective, beginning from 22nd September, 1792 (1 Vendemaire, An I.), and lasted to 31st December, 1805 (10 Nivose, An XIV.). The Metrical System of money, weights and measures, and the Code Napoleon are the two great gifts of the Revolution to the civilized world. The Convention did its best to dissipate the memory of the days of blood. It reformed the government and the adminis¬ tration. It reanimated society, which it had terrified. Above all, and it is through this that its fury has been forgiven, it excited patriotism and military honour to the highest point. It excited France to enthusiasm, and when it retired peaceably on the 26th October, 1795, it had delivered the country, con¬ quered Belgium, Holland, and the provinces of the Rhine. It restored to France her natural frontiers, and realised in a few years the work so long dreamed of by tho old monarchy. 384 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. One century later we find that the magnificent extension given to France by the Convention has been seriously clipped and deformed. The Directory (1795—1799); the Covps-d'Etat .—The Govern¬ ment established by the Constitution of the Year III. compromised by its weakness and perpetual oscillations the situation which had been bequeathed to it by the Convention. Uncertain in its ad¬ vance, moderate in character, violent by necessity, passing from indolence to energy, and falling back into indolence, the Directory endeavoured to separate itself equally from both the factions, Jacobin and Royalist; this made its strength; but undecided and divided, it allowed itself to be too much drawn first to one side, then to the other, and this made its weakness. The Convention had believed that on withdrawing it would guarantee the security of the new Government, by voting a mea¬ sure contrary to that which the Constituent Assembly had voted. Far from excluding its members from the new Government, it de¬ cided that the new Councils should be taken, at least two-thirds of them, from the Convention. It also wished to secure a con¬ tinuance of its traditions and to perpetuate itself under another name. But the Councils were about to be renewed, and elections favourable to the Royalists modified the majority, above all in the Council of the Five Hundred. A division and a struggle then took place between the legislative and executive powers. The coup-d’etat of the 18th Fructidor (4th September, 1797) led to the exclusion of fifty-three deputies and of two Directors. The army was employed for this stroke, and thus a disastrous example w T as given. The precautions taken by the Constitution proved useless. The da^ of the 18th Fructidor had ruined the hopes of the Royalists, the Jacobins raised their head, and triumphed in the elections of the Year YI. The Directory, again overwhelmed, provoked some counter-elections by the minorities, and itself chose the deputies who were to enter the Councils. This was the coup-d’etat of the 22nd Floreal (11th May, 1798). The Councils revenged them¬ selves, and in their turn, on the 30th Prairial (18th June, 1799), forced three Directors—Lareveillere-Lepaux, Treilhard, and Mer- THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 385 lin of Douai—to send in their resignation. Thus the Govern¬ ment itself set the example of anarchy, and its administration was affected by these weaknesses and violences. Social Disorder .—To the disorder which these repeated coups d’etat produced in the minds of the people a real moral disorder was now added. The revolutionary tumult, which had troubled and almost annihilated social relations, overthrown the conditions of life, and led many consciences astray, was gradually subsiding. As in a lake troubled by a storm, the mud had been brought to the surface ; it required time before it sank again. The confusion was additionally great because a new society, endowed with new laws, sought to organize itself with the remnants of the old, broken by the tempest. During the crisis no one thought of anything but his safety. “What have you done all this time?” someone asked Sieyes. He replied, “I have lived.” When calm was re-estab¬ lished, joy overflowed in a generation that during fourteen months had scarcely dared to breathe. The reign of the carmagnole and clubs had passed, that of the drawing-room recommenced; ele¬ gance and intellect, being no longer causes of proscription, society abandoned itself to luxury and festival with a liberty that, no longer restrained by the old etiquette, soon degenerated into licence. The pillage of the State finances, inevitable under an administration that had become feeble after having been cruel, and speculations in paper money, created immense fortunes, and the newly rich sought to win pardon for themselves by prodigality; the dispersion of the wealth of families, the exile of the clergy, and the absence of religion, the abuse of divorce, the freedom of manners which led to freedom of morals; all produced a general relaxation, a species of madness, of which the worship of the Goddess of Reason in 1793—4, and Robespierre’s Decree of the Supreme Being are the culminating points. Comedy, in describing the Incroyables, has traced only the ridiculous side, which history cannot excuse, even whilst explaining it. Financial Disorder .—The financial disorder equalled the moral disorder. The issue of the assignats had boon carried to the sum of forty-five milliards, which were only worth four or five hundred 3 86 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. millions. A forced loan had been levied upon the rich. The Directory had at last found itself obliged to abandon the assignats, but it replaced them by another kind of paper money, the terri¬ torial mandates, also secured on the national property, though soon depreciated, yet with which two-thirds of the debt was repaid; it was a species of bankruptcy which was called the bankruptcy of the two-thirds. Only one-third of the debt was retained on the great book ; this was the consolidated third. The Directory might have faced this serious position by maintaining peace after the glorious treaty of Campo Formio. On the contrary, it provoked the formation of a new coalition by a policy of violent and unseason¬ able propagandism. The Arm\); the Law of Conscription .—The new dangers which France encountered in 1798 at least furnished the Directory with an opportunity of reorganizing the military forces. The wars of the Revolution had ended by giving France real armies ; this had been seen in 1794, 1795, 1796 ; the amalgamation of battalions of volunteers and of the troops of the line had been made; one uni¬ form only was used for the infantry, the blue coats and the white coats and the regimental names of the old monarchy had disap¬ peared ; two half-brigades, each of three battalions, and which soon afterwards took the name of regiments, formed the brigade ; above the brigade came the division, a real strategic unity, a copy of the old Roman legion, for besides the brigades of infantry it included cavalry, artillery—in a word, all that constitutes an army. The staff was organized, but the essential point, that is to say, a regular law of recruitment, was lacking, for until then requisitions, or a levy in mass, had always been resorted to. On the 19th Fructidor an VI. (5th September, 1798) the Coun¬ cils adopted a law which forced all young men between twenty and twenty-five years of age to enter the military service (with certain exceptions and dispensations) ; the defenseurs consents (this was the term used), were divided into five classes or years. The legislative power settled the number of the contingent, and the executive power proceeded to the roll-call, commencing by the youngest. Called or not called, the defenseurs consents were THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 387 on the list five years after their inscription, and then received their final dismissal unless the country were at war. This was the starting point of the regular levies which constituted the military power of France. Preponderance of the Army; the Coup d'Etat of the 18 th and 19 th Brumaire (9 th and 10 th November , 1799). — These long wars, by forming the army, gave a preponderance to the military element which soon facilitated the projects of General Buonaparte. His marvellous Italian campaign, in 1796—1797, had already raised him above all others; in Egypt he had increased his prestige by his brilliant victories of the Pyramids (1798), and Aboukir (1799), and the check of his army at Acre and the destruction of his fleet at the Battle of the Nile had not lessened it in France. He knew that he could easily overthrow a government so utterly divided if he could only find in it some accomplice to aid him in carrying out his designs. The defeats sustained in his absence, the loss of Italy, the internal disorganization, the disturbances which recommenced in the provinces, the financial crisis, the relaxation of all social bonds, produced the dread of a veritable dissolution of France, who, wearied with ten years of revolution, endeavoured to recover her balance, order, and prosperity. Buonaparte then ended the series of the coups d’etat of the Directory by a military coup d’etat. Having caused the removal of the Corps Legislatif to the Chateau de Saint Cloud on the 18th Brumaire (9th November, 1799), he wished to modify the Constitution of the Year III. The Council of Ancients accepted his propositions, but the majority of the Five Hundred rejected them with indignation. The General then appealed to his soldiers, who dispersed the deputies (19th Brumaire, 10th November). The Revolution was arrested, and France had a master. CHAPTER XVI. THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE—NAPOLEONIC EUROPE- DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. Summary : The Consulate; Constitution of the Year VIII.—Plebiscites— The Electoral System; the Lists of Notabilite—Administrative Reor¬ ganization—Justice; the Courts of Appeal; the Civil Code—The New Financial System ; the Control and Collection of Taxes—Religious Peace ; the Concordat (1801 — 1802)—The Legion of Honour (1802) ; Public Instruction, f;he Lycees—Economic Reforms; Credit, the Bank of France—The Work of the Consulate—The Empire; the Senatus-Con- 8ultum of the Year XII. (1804)—The Great Dignitaries ; the New Nobility—Napoleon’s Work ; Military Art—Finance—The Codes— Public Works—Industry—Exhibitions—Industrial Consequences of the Continental Blockade—The University—(1806)—Imperial Absolutism —The French Empire and Europe in 1810—Diffusion of Ideasof French Revolution in Europe ; Belgium, Holland, the Rhenish Provinces, Switzerland—Effect of French Revolution on Italy—Simplification of the Germanic Chaos—Effects of French Revolution on Germany— Effect of French Revolution on Spain ; the Constitution of 1812— Prussia; Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst—Effect of French Revolu¬ tion in Sweden and Russia—Principles of the Revolution turned against Napoleon. The Consulate ; Constitution of the Year VIII .—The new Govern¬ ment established by Buonaparte after the 18th Brumaire, assumed ancient names borrowed from the classical recollections which had continued in fashion during the Revolution. The painter David, under the Convention, sought in antiquity for the models of the festivals he was empowered to organize, and for the costumes he was asked to design. The directors and the members of the Councils made the Roman toga fashionable, accompanying it by eccentric ornaments, and the Roman cap, which they surmounted with ridiculous plumes. The titles of the new chiefs of the so-called Republican government were therefore also chosen from the Roman THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE. 389 republic; but there were three Consuls instead of two, and, in reality, there was only one—the First Consul, Buonaparte. “ This man,” says Sieyes, “ knows everything, wills everything, and can do everything.” The Constitution of the year VIII. was borrowed from one of Sieyes’ complicated plans, considerably modified by Buonaparte. It was a Monarchical constitution under Republican forms, just as the Constitution of 1791 had been Republican under a Monarchical form. Until then the Executive power had been subordinate to the Legislative power, then equal to the latter ; this time it was rendered superior. The First Consul, elected for ten years, then for life (1802), nominated and dismissed the ministers, ambassadors, the officers of land and sea, and the agents of the administration. He kept the initiative and the pro¬ mulgation of the laws, declared war, and made treaties of peace. He had as auxiliary a new body, the Council of State—a council of consultation nominated by the First Consul, a closed upper chamber where the laws which were to be submitted to the Corps Legislatif were elaborated, and, lastly, a great administrative tri¬ bunal. This was one of the most important wheels in the mechanism of the new government. The Executive power was concentrated and strengthened, the Legislative power divided and weakened. It included a Tribunate which discussed, a Corps Legislatif which voted in silence, a Senate charged to watch over the maintenance of the Constitution. Plebiscites. —The popular sovereignty, however, was recognised, for the Constitution of the year VIII. was subjected to the sanction of the people, who accepted it by 8,011,007 votes against 1,562, and the old Roman term of Plebiscite was revived. The modifi¬ cations introduced into the Constitution in the year X., by the nomination of Buonaparte as Consul for life, were also ratified by a plebiscite , which was again resorted to for the Empire, 3,572,329 against 2,569. The Electoral System; The Lists of Notabilite. —Buonaparte, however, intended to act against the electoral system of the assemblies of the Revolution, which seemed too liberal in his eyes. He borrowed from Sieyes’ plans the system of the lists of nota- 300 7 HE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . bilite. Every Frenchman was still an elector, but the electors of each ward chose every tenth man from amongst their number, and they formed the lists of communal notabilite. From this list the executive power selected the officials of the ward. The citizens of the communal notabilite again nominated one-tenth of themselves to form the departmental list, from which the officials for the department were chosen. The citizens on the departmental list again chose one-tenth of their number ; this was the national list, from which the Senate elected the members of the Tribunate, the Corps Legislatif, &c. The election thus passed through three degrees, without counting the intervention of the Executive power. Administrative Reorganization .—If Buonaparte prepared for a return to monarchy, and the incarnation in his own person of the entire people by virtue of the popular right, as Louis XIY. had formulated it in the name of the Divine right, he at least completed the administrative work of the Constituent Assembly. He established a civil hierarchy of the functionaries, dispersed throughout the de¬ partments. He strengthened the action of authority in all parts of France by his prdfets and his sous prejets , and consolidated political unity by organizing a powerful centralization which has survived every subsequent crisis. He established a series of small as¬ semblies for each department, district, and parish, parallel to that of the actual magistrates of the parish, district, and departments. The discussion of local interests was secured as well as the execution of the decisions of the sovereign power in each locality. Justice; the Courts of Appeal; the Civil Code .—The judicial divi¬ sions established by the Constituent Assembly were maintained, but it had left a deficiency. An appeal was carried from one tribunal to another. Buonaparte instituted twenty-nine Courts of Appeal, placed chiefly in the cities which had been the centres of judicial learning. The labours of the Civil Code, commenced by the Con¬ vention, were resumed, and ended (1803—1808). This code, founded on the principles of 1789, was composed of five great codes : the Civil Code (1804), the Code of Civil Procedure (1806), of Commerce (1807), of Criminal Instruction (1808), the Penal Code (1810). They were developed with a clearness, a close logic THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE . 39i Unknown until then ; in short, they recalled the precision of the Roman jurisconsults. It was the most important body of laws that had been formed since Justinian, the condensation of all French learning, the successful fusion of the old written law and the old law of customs, the reconciliation of all the Roman, Germanic, and Christian principles that had so long con¬ flicted with each other—the true code of modern society and one of the least imperfect monuments of human wisdom. Its importance may be estimated by the way in which all subsequent European legal codes, with the exception of England’s, have been influenced by it. The New Financial System , Control , and Collection of Taxes .—The Constituent Assembly and the Convention had been unable to organ¬ ize a sound administration of the finances. The First Consul estab¬ lished it upon a logical basis. He separated the assessment of taxes from the collection; a simple idea which averted all the abuses, all the vexations, and all the dilapidations of the public funds. A law settled the public debt, and the landed estates were assigned to a sinking-fund, which was to sell them gradually, in order to purchase stock, and diminish the public debt. Religious Peace; the Concordat (1801—1802).—The civil consti¬ tution of the clergy, in 1790, had produced a real schism. It had never been cordially accepted, and the Catholic clergy had been proscribed, The Constitution of the year III. proclaimed freedom of worship, and the Catholic worship was re-established in many localities. But from the end of December, 1799, the First Consul re-opened the churches that had been closed by the Administration, and regulated the religious question by a Concordat signed by the Pope. It was difficult for the Court of Rome to refuse to accept the material position which the sale of her property had created for the Church, and therefore it only asked for compensation, which, moreover, had been already promised by the Constituent Assembly. It was decided that in place of the lost property the clergy should receive their stipends from the State. The First Consul exercised the power of nominating the bishops that had been wielded by the old kings since Francis I.; the Pope appointed them. With the 392 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. agreement of the Holy See, Buonaparte made a new division of bishoprics and archbishoprics, greatly reducing their numbers. The Concordat, signed on the 15th July, 1801, adopted by the Corps Legislatif on the 8th April, 1802, and solemnly promul¬ gated on the 18th April, Easter Day, re-established religious peace. At the same time as the Concordat, Buonaparte caused a law to be passed by the Corps Legislatif, entitled Articles organiques, an essentially internal law, which was intended to define the relations between the Church and the State and to prevent encroachments by the Court of Rome. The Legion of Honour (1802); Public Instruction; the Lycees. —The Revolution had destroyed the orders of Saint Louis and Saint Michael. Napoleon wished to recognise all the services rendered to the state by the Military as well as by the citizens, to create a dis¬ tinction which should be open to all. He caused the law of the Legion of Honour to be passed (19th May, 1802). Though opposed at first as a violation of the principle of equality, it has become exceedingly popular. The future of France depended above all upon the education of the young. The First Consul did little for primary instruction : the expense alarmed him. He believed that secondary education was of more importance, and the middle classes, who in reality directed public opinion, appeared to him more in need of instruction. He therefore suppressed the Central schools and replaced them by twenty-nine establishments called by a Greek name, Lycees, in which he once more raised literature to honour. For superior and special instruction, he decreed, -when Consul, ten schools of law and six schools of medicine. The Ecole Poly¬ technique, which already existed, was improved. He added to it a school of Bridges and Roads, and then established at Compiegne a school of Mechanical Arts, which, transported to Chalons-sur- Marne, became the Ecole ties Arts et Metiers. Economic Reforms: Credit, the Bank of France .—Buonaparte, at the same time that he reorganized France politically, repaired or opened roads and canals, embellished the capital, stimulated agrh THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE. 393 culture, industry, and commerce. He had the glory of re-estab¬ lishing credit by a more careful adaptation of the schemes invented by Law, and the Constituent Assembly. The Bank of France, organized in 1800, and continually developed until 1806, was both a private and State institution. Formed by a group of capitalists, it received the deposits of private individuals, and of the public treasury (as a deposit bank), it discounted commer¬ cial bills (a discounting bank), and it had also the privilege of issuing notes (a circulating bank). This was a return to paper money. Without being riches by themselves, bank notes, simple pieces of paper, have considerably developed public wealth. How does this happen *? “ It is,” said the illustrious economist Rossi, “ because for a crowd of little known debtors, a debtor whom all the world knows, and whom all the world accepts, has been sub¬ stituted—the Bank. The Bank takes the drafts and gives the manufacturers notes, that is to say, money orders, that it draws on the public payable at sight and guaranteed by the stock of bullion and the directors of the bank. By its credit it supplies producers with the thing they lack, the disposition of their capital. With the credit of the Bank they obtain all that they require. An inter¬ rupted chain of creditors is thus formed, replacing each other, and transmitting more or less rapidly to each other, a more or less considerable portion of capital, a transmission which could not have taken place if the first creditor had not been supported by the credit of the State.” The role of the bank is not only commercial, it is also financial; it regulates the movements of specie, by raising or lowering the discount. If the specie leaves it in too great quantities, it is because the need of money is making itself felt, and the bank raises the value of money by raising the discount; that is to say, it requires a higher interest for the sums which it advances on commercial bills: it thus prevents its treasury from being emptied too quickly. If, on the contrary-, specie remains in its cash boxes, it is because specie abounds, or trade languishes; it lowers the charge for discount, extends its credit, and facilitates exchanges, to quicken the circulation, and raise the price of money. 394 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. “The Bank,” says Rossi, “ should be the pendulum of the mone¬ tary system, it ought to regulate its general movement, and render the oscillations slow and equal.” All this is common to the Bank of England, and banks in other countries, instituted long before the Bank of France. The Work of the Consulate .—The Consulate had then been a period of activity and greatness for France, during which the principal results of the Revolution had been fixed. The social revolution, consummated by the appeasement of parties ; the eco¬ nomic revolution developed by the energetic impulse given to it by the re-establishment of order; the political revolution consecrated partially at least by an administration, learnedly conceived and solidly balanced. All classes were included ; all arms worked ; and restored France, great in peace and in war, showed herself glorious before the world, the Civil Code in one hand, and in the other the sword of Marengo. The Empire : The Senatus Consultum of the Year XII. (1804).— But Buonaparte, who had acquired so many titles to the gratitude of the nation, compromised his work by wishing to carry it further. Not content with the powers he wielded, he wished to extend them still more, and to heighten them by the imperial title. After the memories of the Roman republic, those of the Roman empire re¬ appeared with the crowned soldier, who wished to combine both Caesar and Charlemagne. Haughtier even than Charlemagne, Napoleon would not go to Rome for his consecration : he made Pope Pius YII. go to Paris ; and, even whilst invoking the blessing of the religious ceremony, he took, and himself placed the crown upon his head (2nd December, 1804). It seemed at that moment, when no one could foresee the future, that this was the end of the political reaction. The monarchy was re-established, no longer the feudal monarchy of olden times, but a military monarchy, consigning the civil and religious character to the second rank. Moreover, the new sovereignty, although consecrated by the church, was based upon a plebiscite, and the national sovereignty. Napoleon pretended to crown, in his own person, the revolution, whose son he willingly THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE . 395 declared himself. But practically he crushed all maxims under his feet. He was absolute monarch in fact, if not by law. The Constitution of the year VIII. had been modified in 1802, when Napoleon had already received all the attributes of a king. He had increased his power over the Senate, which was to serve as his instrument in altering the constitution at his pleasure. He had reduced the Tribunate to fifty members, and taken the drawing up of treaties from the Corps Legislatif to confer it upon a privy council. The lists of notabilite rendered immovable, had trans¬ formed the electoral colleges into electoral colleges for life. The elections could make no further changes. Napoleon, proclaimed Emperor, had therefore nothing to fear from the constitution of 1802. The senatus-consultum of the year XII. was only relative to the new dignity conferred upon the First Consul and to the hereditary principle established in his family. To win acceptance for this usurpation, he increased apparently the importance of the Corps Legislatif, by restoring its influence in the Committees, and of the senate by nominating two commissions for the liberty of the press, and for individual liberty, purely illusory commissions under such a master as Napoleon. The Great Dignitaries: The New Nobility .—The senatus-con¬ sultum of the year XII., in order to heighten the lustre of the throne, surrounded it with great dignitaries, High Chancellor, High Treasurer, Grand Elector, Constable, High Admiral, and the great officials, the chief of whom were the sixteen Marshals of the Empire, who by their famous names rendered this resumption of the dignity of the old monarchy illustrious, whilst the other pompous titles recalled memories of the defunct Germanic Empire. Thus the mixture of ancient and German traditions, which is found in every part of the history of France, was continued. Napoleon, by his political ambition, found himself drawn into a kind of social reaction. He formed a new aristocracy, not only around the throne, but below it, by the concession of large fiefs and the creation of a new nobility, undoubtedly deprived of privi¬ leges, but in which he wished to embody the social traditions of the older nobility, and to conceal the plebeian origin of 306 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. his court and empire. He had also, by the electoral colleges for life, formed a veritable administrative aristocracy, dowered, in default of titles, with political rights. Napoleon’s Work ; Military Art .—The early years of the Empire were at first only a continuation of the Consulate. The glorious treaties of Presburg (1805) and Tilsit (1807) consolidated the French Empire in Europe. The marvellous success and the military qualities of the armies excited the national pride. Napoleon carried the art of war to a very high point. The mathematical combinations of his strategy and tactics left those of antiquity far behind. He formulated rules which enabled masses of men to be moved, and to be handled like machines, rendered hundreds of thousands obedient to a single will ; he perfected the modern army, which compels admiration by its discipline, its flexibility, the precision and rapidity of its movements. Finance .—Even in the midst of his most urgent military occupations, Napoleon thought of the administration, which he directed with the same energy as he did war. From the plains of Moravia and Poland he governed his Empire as though he had been in Paris. On his return to the capital he worked with feverish ardour to improve all the branches of the public service. He per¬ fected the financial system established under the Commune by placing tax-collectors in every important commune ; braved popular prejudices by adding indirect taxes to the direct taxes ; regulated the accounts by ordering them to be kept by double entry ; com¬ pleted the mechanism of the Bank; introduced strict honesty and economy into all the services, for he had to create not only an administration, but also the morals of an administration. The Codes .—Continuing the judicial improvements, he brought the study of the codes of Civil Procedure (1806), of criminal trials (1807), and of the Penal Code (1810), to a successful con¬ clusion, and restored to society the guarantees which it required to support and defend itself. But he still left in them too many traces of ancient ideas. He retouched the old commercial legis¬ lation, and in 1807 promulgated the Commercial Code, which retained the election of the jury, serving gratuitously; extended the NAPOLEONIC EUROPE. 397 sphere of the consular judges, who now became veritable magis¬ trates, whose importance was to be still further augmented by the increase of private fortunes. Public Works. —Public works had not received so great an impulse since the time of Louis XIV. and Colbert : roads, canals, ports in France and in the subject countries, were the objects of considerable grants. With the gold of Europe at his disposal, Napoleon did not fear to bury it in these productive works, which, continued after him, have changed the aspect of France and Europe. He lowered the Simplon, Mont Cenis, and Mont Genevre by making wide roads over them. He caused the famous mole of Cherbourg, commenced under Louis XVI., to be con¬ tinued. He dowered Paris, Milan, and Turin with useful or sumptuous monuments. He restored the prosperity of the port of Antwerp as a rival to England, and his solicitude, increasing with his ambition, extended to Hamburg and Home. Industry; Exhibitions. —Napoleon, whose intelligence was awak¬ ened to every modern necessity, understood the power of industry: he pensioned the celebrated Jacquard, who perfected the loom for weaving silk; encouraged the cotton industry, then new in France, founded by two manufacturers, Richard and Lenoir, who spread the use of the spinning-jenny, invented by an English wigmaker, Arkwright. He rewarded Oberkampf, who popularized the in¬ dustry of printed calicoes; the clock-makers, Carcel, Breguet, &c. Lastly, he invited chemists to endeavour to replace cane sugar by beetroot sugar, and thus created a new source of wealth. He resumed the project of exhibitions, already attempted under the Directory. In 1798 France offered the spectacle of a first industrial exhibition, but at that time only 210 exhibitors had assembled: at the Exhibition of 1806 there were 1,422. Industrial Consequences of the Continental Blockade. —No doubt Napoleon was compelled by his faulty foreign policy to renew the old economic errors with the continental blockade. The man who hurried to the Council of State, between two campaigns, to discuss the titles of the Commercial Code, ruined foreign commerce. Taking nations for war machines, and sacrificing interests like 39§ THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. soldiers, he conceived the project of closing the whole of Europe to English commerce. On every frontier were seen confiscations and destruction of merchandise. Europe was obliged to dispense with colonial produce. However, this system, which caused great sufferings in maritime countries, had analogous results to those produced by Colbert’s protective system. “You must be manufacturers,” replied Napo¬ leon to those who complained, “ and provide for yourselves the goods you have formerly sought from others, manufacture your printed calicoes, your sugar, your indigo. You can make it all for yourselves. Whilst I endeavour to win the freedom of the seas, the industry of France will be developed and created.” When in 1815 the Continent was reopened to England, she was astonished to find it peopled with factories. French industry particularly had greatly prospered, for other nations, deprived of English merchandise, had sent to it for the articles which they required. England therefore met with active competition. The University (1806).*—Napoleon from the time of his Con¬ sulate had organised education. But it was necessary to form a staff to devote itself to the laborious task of instruction. A law of the 10th of May, 1806, organized, under the name of the Imperial * The decrees of the 17th of March, 1808, and the 5th of November, 1811, completed the law of 18( 6, and assigned the direction of education to a Grand Master assisted by a Council. General inspectors visited the educa¬ tional establishments. There were as many Academies as there were Im¬ perial Law Courts. At the head of each Academy a rector was placed, also assisted by a council, and who himself had inspectors under his orders. In each academical chief town a Faculty of Letters and a Faculty of Science delivered the highest instruction. The EcoleNormale was formed to prepare young men destined to he professors. Those who formed part of the Uni¬ versity could not he expelled, except by the judgment of the body itself of which they were members; to strengthen the fellow-feeling by a feeling of ownership the decrees of the 17th of March, 17th of September, and 11th of December, 1808, secur'd to the University its private fortune, four hundred thousand pounds of income inscribed in the Exchequer, and the produce of entrance fees and special taxes; it has ceased to exist as an independent corporation since the law of the loth of March, 1850, Now the State teaches and confers degre* s on examination, but the name, University, has survived as a title of the whole body of higher public education in France. NAPOLEONIC EUROPE. 599 University, a body charged to instruct, the members of which contracted special and temporary obligations. It was in his idea a kind of lay corporation. “ I must,” said he, “ create a disinter¬ ested, serious, civil profession, who will labour only for literature and science; this is the ideal of my University of France, and I may say beyond France.” The new Charlemagne would have been flattered to see around him a galaxy of great authors. “ If Corneille had lived in my time,” he said, “ I would have made him a prince.” But this did not pre¬ vent his making Chateaubriand his enemy, or sending Madame de Stael into exile, thus assailing the two best writers of the day. Napoleon clung too closely to his absolute authority to endure an independent literature. After all, he appreciated science, and treated savants better than Louis XIV. treated poets. Nearly all were made senators or barons, and received endowments like generals. Artists also profited by the Imperial liberality, and painting recommenced to shine with David, Gros, Gerard, Girodet, Guerin, and Prud’hon. Imperial Absolutism .—If the moral, economic, and administrative work of Napoleon were fertile, and if in the period between the Consulate and the Empire he solidly established the course of modern society, his reign, from a political point of view, marks a complete reaction against the liberties that had sprung from tbe Devolution. Drawn by his ambition into more and more gigan¬ tic projects, he at last no longer took particular interests into account, but was irritated by resistance which, by delaying his too rapid advance, would have saved him. Liberty of debate no longer existed ; the Senate and the Corps Legislatif could only find words of praise for the conqueror of Europe. The Tribunate, which was by this time only a shadow of itself, but in which lingered a remnant of opposition, was suppressed in 1807. The Deputies were not even consulted ; a senatus-consultum sufficed. Conscrip¬ tion consequently became a positive scourge, and the defaulters were as many as fifty thousand. Individual liberty was no longer guaranteed ; Napoleon exiled arbitrarily, like Louis XIV. The liberty of the press existed still less, for the police overlooked the periodical press and the previous 400 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. censure of manuscripts was established. Lastly, commercial liberty, completely destroyed externally, was also fettered in the interior. In 1811 a deficient grain harvest raised the price of bread. Napoleon wished to victual Paris himself, and even went so far as to settle, in imitation of the Convention, a maximum for the price of grain ; in his eager haste to execute all his military and pacific enterprises, he thought that he would be forgiven the sacrifice of every liberty on account of the glory and wealth which he secured to France. But at least it was necessary to secure them, and he ruined them by endeavouring to domineer over Europe. The French Empire and Europe in 1810.—Napoleon intended to imitate Charlemagne and Charles Y. at an epoch when nationalities were too much formed to bend to the unity which he dreamt of establishing beneath the shadow of his imperial sceptre. He wished in ten years to reconstruct the Roman Empire, the work of seven centuries ; and for one moment he appeared to have succeeded. The French Empire attained its greatest limits in 1810. Napo¬ leon had defeated Russia and Austria at Austerlitz (1805), con¬ quered Prussia at Jena (1806), raised Poland at Eylau and Friedland (1807). Spain submitted to him in 1808, and he again defeated Austria at Wagram (1809). He entered Berlin and Madrid, and twice entered Yienna. By a simple decree he abolished the temporal power of the Pope, and placed Rome below Paris. He was the friend of the powerful Emperor of the North, who, at Tilsit and Erfurt, dazzled him by his flatteries; and he was son-in-law to the Emperor of Austria. His empire extended from Garigliano to the mouth of the Elbe, and included one hundred and thirty departments. Geneva and Ghent, Nice and Antwerp, Aix-la-Chapelle and Florence, Am¬ sterdam and Genoa, Hamburg and Rome, were governed by his prefets. To this immense empire were attached, as feudatory states, the kingdoms of Italy, Naples, Spain, Westphalia, the Confederation of the Rhine, in which the kingdoms of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony, also created by him, were included, DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. 401 and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Napoleon styled himself the mediator of Switzerland. Prussia, half destroyed, now only existed because he allowed her to do so, and was completely at his mercy. Austria, considerably enfeebled, had also, by close alliance, entered the French Emperor’s circle. Napoleon held one half of Europe under his hand. Russia, aggrandized by Finland, Wallachia, and Moldavia, possessed the other half. Peace depended upon the agreement between the two Emperors, and war upon the collision of these two ambitions. England paid very dearly for her maritime dominion. Isolated, and reduced to a contraband commerce, she avenged the closing of the Continent to her by capturing the colonies of France and of her allies, and laid the foundations of her vast colonial empire. Diffusion of the ideas of the French Revolution in Europe: Belgium , Holland , Rhenish Provinces, Switzerland. —The Convention had re¬ plied to the threats of the sovereigns and the invasion of French terri¬ tory by the propaganda of the new principles and by the emancipa¬ tion of the nations. It had decreed on the 15th of December, 1792, that in every country where the French generals entered they should proclaim the sovereignty of the people and the abolition of the feudal laws. The Rhenish Provinces, Belgium and Holland, received French laws, which have become acclimatized there. Switzerland, under the pressure of the armies sent by the Directory, also effected her revolution. Although the country had been republican from its origin to the fourteenth century, the aristocracy and feudal traditions still prevailed there. Several cantons still kept the people in subjection. In 1798 the Directory organized a new government, modelled upon the French Constitu¬ tion of the year III. The new Assemblies decreed absolute freedom of trade between all the cantons, the abolition of torture and of the tax on the Jews, permission for marriage to be celebrated between persons of different religions, and the complete abolition of feudal privileges. In 1808, Napoieon, in his quality of mediator, completed the pacification of Switzerland and the transformation of its social and D D 402 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. political regime. He divided the country into nineteen cantons (instead of thirteen in 1789). The Federal Act establishing the unity of Switzerland abolished the subjection of territories, the privileges of certain districts, or of birth and rank. It prohibited all internal town dues, of import, transit, or customs. Effect of the French Revolution on Italy. —In a measure the French repaid to Italy the debt they had contracted towards the country that had revived literature and the arts in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Italy was freed from the Austrian yoke, organized into republics, then, following the fluctuation of France itself, into French kingdoms. Napoleon’s rule was substituted for that of Austria. One part of Italy, and that not the least rich, the portion that lies between the Apennines and the Mediterranean, was annexed to France. The kingdom of Italy between the Apennines and the Adriatic was governed by Napoleon’s step-son, the Prince Eugene, and the kingdom of Naples by his brother-in- law, Murat. The free cities of Italy were destroyed, but the principles of 1789 were applied to a country hitherto governed almost entirely by petty foreign princes. The French codes, the encouragement given to agriculture, the embellishments of the city of Naples, remain as souvenirs of Murat’s reign. In the Kingdom of the North, the magnificent roads traced by Napoleon across the Alps facilitated relations with France and Switzerland. Milan became one of the most flourishing capitals of Europe ; the reform of diverse and obsolete legislation, regu¬ larity in the finances, and the suppression of ancient taxes and statute labour, encouragement given to industry, the creation of schools, protection accorded to science, literature, and the arts, all marked the commencement of a new era for Italy. Napo¬ leon treated Italy, whose language was his mother tongue, as a country which he wished to make a sister and friend to the French nation. Simplification of the Germanic Chaos. —Germany was shaken, but its condition was also simplified and ameliorated by the French rule. From the time of the Consulate, Napoleon had endeavoured to intro- DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. 4°3 duce some order into the chaos of the Germanic principalities, and favoured the secularization of a great number of ecclesiastical do¬ mains. He contemplated this spoliation of German wealth, which might have entailed civil war, with indifference ; he preferred secur¬ ing French adherents beyond the Rhine and believed he could rely upon German gratitude. He did more : when he had destroyed the German, i.e ., the last vestige of the old Roman Empire, he created German kingdoms, raising Wurtemberg, Bavaria, and Saxony to that rank, which he considered counterbalanced by the French kingdom of Westphalia. He augmented the importance of the grand duchies, and by breaking the dependence of a number of small princes and of knights on the Empire, he prepared the ruin of the feudal system, already greatly shaken by the secularizations of 1803. All the small dukes, princes, and knights whose territory was enclosed in that of the Confederate States, lost their direct sovereignty: they only retained empty honours, forming a class of privileged aristocracy, taking the first rank as subjects. A profound revolution which simplified German geography, relieved the people from a maintenance of small courts and of veritable armies of officials, distributed the power in the hands of a few sovereigns, overthrew the influence of the Empire, and hastened the welfare of Germany, not that of France. Effects of the French Revolution on Germany .—These changes, the submission of the majority of the German princes to Napoleon as the Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, the prolonged presence of the French armies, completely changed the social and moral state of the country. In Saxony, where the Protestants, even under Catholic electors, oppressed the Roman Catholics, the latter were raised and freed ; and for once the application of the principle of toleration, which had encountered so much resistance from the Court of Rome, proved beneficial to Catholi¬ cism ; in the Catholic states like Bavaria, it benefited the Protes¬ tants ; on the borders of the Rhine and Maine, it relieved the numerous Jews settled in those districts. No great solicitude for political liberty could be expected from Napoleon; however, the constitutions which he gave to the grand duchies of Warsaw, 404 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Frankfort, and Berg, and to the kingdom of Westphalia, were at least representative, impregnated with modern ideas, and feudal servitude disappeared everywhere. Maximilian-Joseph, the King of Bavaria, had taken as minister a Frenchman by birth and education, Montgelas, and his reforms were very extensive; the French administration was closely imitated. The adoption of the Code Napoleon was delayed in Bavaria until 1814—that is to say, it was never admitted there any more than in Wurtemberg and Saxony, where the old Saxon legislation is still retained. But French legislation triumphed in Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, and Frankfort; also in the grand duchy of Berg and the kingdom of Westphalia. It also penetrated into Poland, for the grand duchy of Warsaw, although under the nominal authority of the King of Saxony, was really under the all powerful influence of its creator, Napoleon. Effect of the French Revolution on Spain: the Constitution of 1812. _Iu Spain, owing to the imbecility of the Bourbon kings, and the shameful influence of favourites, a considerable party of the most highly-educated men would have welcomed a change, and became dfrancesados. But the excesses of the French soldiery, the requi¬ sitions and plunder of the generals, soon roused the country against them. When Napoleon entered Madrid he abolished the Inquisition, reduced two-thirds of the convents, abolished the feudal laws, suppressed the provincial custom-houses, the seign- orial justices, &c., but this failed to make his own usurpation popular. The clergy, who had great influence in Spain, excited the religions feeling against France at the same time as the national sentiment. The force of the new principles was, however, so great that a more enlightened portion of the Spanish nation employed them as weapons against the French, who had introduced them. The Cortes had retired to Cadiz, but still maintained its opposition to the Government of King Joseph, which had been organized in imitation of the Imperial Govern¬ ment. Not to allow itself to be outdone in liberalism, the Cortes greatly modified society and the constitution, abolished the seign- orial dues and privileges, revised the laws of mortmain and DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. 405 majorities, suppressed the mesta , which, to encourage the breeding of merino sheep, obliged the landowners to leave certain lands uncultivated, and open for the passage ot the wandering flocks. Then, exceeding the liberalism of King Joseph in their political reforms, they coupled the divine right of Ferdinand the Seventh with the contradictory principle of the national sovereignty, and took for their model the Constituent Assembly that had opposed Napoleon. The French constitution ot 1791 reappeared in the Spanish constitution of 1812, which, after the restoration, was unceasingly demanded by the Spanish Liberals. Instead of basing their reforms on the old constitutional and provincial liberties of Spain, the patriots unhappily parodied those of France and of England, and produced schisms which have never yet been healed. Prussia : Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst .—A singular thing is that the countries which resisted France reformed themselves more thoroughly than those which obeyed her ; for instance, Prussia, almost destroyed, reduced to five millions of inhabitants, occupied by French troops, forbidden to maintain more than 42,000 men under arms, was roused under Napoleon’s iron hand to find means of re-organizing herself. Tyranny, as often is the case, forged the weapons for her own destruction. Napoleon, who desired to control even the choice of the Prussian Ministers, allowed King Frederick William to employ Baron Stein, born in the Duchy of Nassau, whose sentiments he mistook. Stein undertook to regenerate the country, destroyed the serfdom of the land, abolished the territorial privileges of the nobility, allowed the burghers and peasants to acquire land, and the nobles to devote themselves to industry and commerce j he thus founded civil equality. He also created municipal life by introducing in the choice of magistrates the principle of election by all the citizens with certain qualifications. He also decided that advancement in the army should be regulated not by birth, but by merit. The nobility still remained, what it had always been, the first class in the state, and in possession of the upper ranks in the army, because it was exclusively military. Stein’s real intentions could 406 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. not escape Napoleon. Dismissed by a decree, declared the enemy of France and of the Confederation of the Rhine, the Prussian Minister took refuge in Russia, whence he continued to arouse Germany. Scharnhorst, a Hanoverian officer and Minister of War, secured by the most skilful measures a national army for Prussia. He determined to convert the whole nation into soldiers by making the army a simple training school, imposing the principles of enforced military service, but never raising the whole contingent at a time. He thus made all the citizens pass through the army in succession, replacing the trained soldiers by recruits, without ever exceeding the number allowed by Napoleon, or by the precarious state of the finances. He thus, between 1808 and 1812, prepared a strong reserve of men drilled and ready at the first signal to enter the line. Effect of the French Revolution on Sweden and Russia .—Sweden had herself asked for a French prince. Napoleon allowed Bernadotte to be elected heir to Charles XIII. There is no doubt that Berna¬ dotte betrayed his confidence and, what is more serious, France her¬ self, to preserve his crown. But it is not the less true that French ideas went and reigned with him in the Scandinavian peninsula, transformed the country, and drew it into the modern movement. Finally Russia was invaded in 1812 by an army composed of men of twenty nations, but which included one hundred and fifty thousand Frenchmen. Napoleon, according to the grandiloquent ideas with which he loved to clothe his ambition, as the head of the west, was to repel the barbarism of the east. This extra¬ ordinary enterprise, which was the direct cause of his fall, failed against the obstinate resistance of the Russian people. The French were compelled to retire from burning Moscow in the depth of the terrible winter of 1812. The Russians, joined by all the peoples whom the licence of the French, and the tyranny of Napoleon and his generals, had roused to fury, reached Paris. Such a mixture of nations had never been witnessed before. When, however, the wars were over, when the nations had returned to their countries, the old conditions had changed. The DIFFUSION OF FRENCH IDEAS. 407 Czar and the Russian aristocracy in their turn found themselves obliged to reckon with modern principles, which would not remain buried like the grand army in the snows of Russia. We may then without exaggeration compare this movement of the expansion of the ideas of the Revolution to that of the Greek ideas, sown by the Macedonian conqueror upon the highways of Asia. The new Alexander, in spite of the mantle sown with golden bees in which he at times enveloped himself, was only a successful general sprung from the Revolution, the principles of which he diffused and opposed at the same time. These kings of yesterday, these marshals in brilliant uniforms and haughty plumes, with whom he surrounded himself, were the sons of low- class parents, and their supreme chief delighted to recall his first experiences as an artillery officer before the Kings of old Europe. The French army was equality on the march, and wherever it passed feudalism was broken, to the great relief of the peoples. The tri-coloured flag displayed in every capital was, over a great part of Europe, the commencement of modern society. The Principles of the Revolution turned against Napoleon .—If the kings ultimately triumphed over Napoleon, it was because, opening their eyes at last, they understood the force of the principles which they had so long rejected. They promised to their people the liberty so strangely violated by Napoleon, and crushed the ruler of Europe under the weight of the nations that had revolted against his tyranny. By an outburst similar to that of the French in 1792, the peoples of Germany precipitated themselves against France, and rendered her responsible for the faults of the man who had driven her beyond the goal. In the name of the principles of the Revolution itself, violated by this crowned soldier, they came to stifle in Paris the Revolution; yet to it Europe owes, in a great measure, her new form, her new laws, and the immense progress that she has accomplished in our century. The impulse of the French Revolution is not yet exhausted; its ultimate issues are still uncertain. CHAPTER XVII. EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES SINCE 1815. Summary : Europe in 1815—The Holy Alliance — The different Governments in France since 1815 ; the Restoration (1815—1830); the Charter of 1814 — Attempts at Political, Economic, and Social Reaction — The Political Results of the Restoration; Representative Government; the Responsibility of Ministers — The Monarchy of July ; Parliamentary Government—Property Suffrage—Political Consequences of the Econo¬ mic Revolution; Progress of the Industrial Classes; Socialism—The Republic of 1848 ; Universal Suffrage; the Constitution of 1848—The Constitution of 1852 — The Second Empire and its Transformations (1852—1870)—The National Assembly of 1871; the Third Republic ; the Constitution of 1875—Political Results of the Contemporary Epoch in France—European Powers since 1815; Conflict between Modern Ideas and the Ancient Regime—The Great Wars since 1848—Europe as it now is — Progress of Liberal Ideas ; Parliamentary Government— England : Progress of Liberal Ideas since 1815 ; Catholic Emancipation (1829); Parliamentary Reform Bill (1831—1832) ; Abolition of Slavery (1834); the Poor Laws—Sir Robert Peel’s great Economic Reforms ; the Income Tax ; Abolition of the Corn Laws (1846) ; Repeal of the Naviga¬ tion Laws (1849) ; Liberty granted to the Colonies—Parliamentary Reforms in 1867 and 1884—England and Ireland—The English Consti¬ tution ; the Government; Parliament—The Aristocracy, the Gentry ; Local Administration, Parishes, Counties, Justice—Character of the English Nation—Belgium and its Constitution (1831)—Constitutional Monarchy in Spain (1837) ; Portugal—Holland : Constitution of 1848 —The Swiss Confederation ; the Federal Constitution—Denmark— Sweden : Constitution of 1866—Kingdom of Italy—The Holy See— Constitutional Austria (1861—1867); Austrian and Hungarian Parlia¬ ments— Constitutional Rule in Prussia (1850—1867)—The German Imperial Parliament (1871); Military Power of the German Empire— Russia : the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861)—Territory of the Princi¬ pal States ; Population—Military Power—Maritime Power—Financial Power—Political Europe at the present time. Europe in 1815.—Napoleon’s overthrow led to a complete re¬ arrangement of the map of Europe. He had neglected ancient GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 409 traditions, and had shaped and planned the states he conquered, dividing races like herds of cattle, without paying the least atten¬ tion to nationalities. The allied sovereigns when victorious, in their turn, followed the same course, and the famous Congress of Vienna, 1814—1815, was only a market where royal greed for terri¬ tory endeavoured to satisfy itself, the only check being the collision of rival ambitions. The political map of Europe after this treaty was entirely altered from its territorial aspect in 1789, and France paid dearly for her moment of expansion and the excitement of her triumph. She expiated them by mutilation in the first place, and then by the aggrandizement of rival countries who were strengthened by her losses. Reduced to the limits of 1789, she lost all the advan¬ tages gained by the conquests of the Revolution and the territories which completed her natural possessions, even Savoy being wrested from her. A kingdom was formed on her northern frontier by the union of Belgium and Holland. Prussia and Bavaria divided the Rhenish provinces, and threatened her adjoining territories thus left completely exposed to their attacks. The kingdom of Prussia, enlarged by part of the rich valley of the Rhine with a portion of Saxony and Pomerania, recovered the duchy of Posen, its share of the spoil of Poland. Although still subject to certain international restrictions, Prussia then extended from the Moselle to the Niemen, predominating through the whole of Northern Germany. Austria regained the provinces it had lost, with the addition of Venetia and Lombardy in Italy, and was the only power that could counter¬ act the influence of Prussia. The German empire was not re-established, but it had been replaced by a Confederation, outwardly governed by a diet, but in fact ruled by Austria and Prussia, whose rival ambitions were thus to a certain extent neutralized. Denmark lost Norwa)', which was given to Sweden, and in spite of itself some of its duchies were considered to belong to the German Confederation, and, after a war, these were incorporated with Germany in 1864. Switzerland was enlarged by three cantons given from the districts taken from France. 4io THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Russia seized the lion’s share, nearly the whole of Poland, and its possessions penetrated into Germany like a formidable wedge. England retained its new and vast foreign possessions and the empire of the seas. This partition of the countries by the Congress of Vienna was, however, redeemed by the proclamation of new principles: the perpetual neutralization of Switzerland, henceforth protected from all rival competitors ; the condemnation of the negro slave trade, and the establishment of free navigation on rivers. But at the same time the Europe of 1815 was arranged in a way very dangerous to France. It differed from the Europe of 1789 through the sudden aggrandizement of England and Russia, the simplification of German politics, and the confederative union, which so closely bound it to Prussia and Austria; the complete suppression of Poland, the retreat of Sweden towards the north and of Turkey towards the south; the re-organization of Switzerland and the destruction of small navies. In fact the balance of power no longer existed. The three continental military powers and one mari¬ time state composed so formidable a group that France, even while rallying the secondary powers to its support, could not withstand the immense resources of the combined empires. The Teutons and Slavs ruled over Europe, to the detriment of the Frank and Latin races. The Holy Alliance. —With the object of increasing this joint influence the sovereigns of these powerful empires entered into a close alliance formed to oppose the Revolution, and even the prin¬ ciples which had led to it. This was called the Holy Alliance, a political and mystic union, concluded between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, for mutual support in all those crises which might arise from the discontent of newly awakened populations. The Holy Alliance encouraged the reaction which tended to destroy the work of the sixteen years of revolution ; but it was unsuccessful, for those sixteen years had produced the effect of a century’s progress. The Different Governments in France since 1815; the Bestora- tion , 1815—1830; the Charter of 1814.—The political reaction in France had apparently reached its highest point under the Empire; GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 4 ir but, it was not yet complete, since in 1814 and 1815 the monarchy of the Bourbons was restored : a brother of Louis XVI., Louis XVIII., ascended the throne ; but this restoration was not as unconditional as that of Charles Stuart in 1660. The new king granted a charter, which indicated the extent of the reaction and at the same time limited its further progress. The preamble to this charter denied the principle of the sove¬ reignty of the nation, and asserted the old rights of the hereditary monarchy ; but, practically,the charter recognised the right of the country to be represented by two Chambers, the right of free public debate, of responsible ministers, of the public vote for the budget, for taxes, for naval and military supplies ; at the same time it provided for the maintenance of the principal institutions of the Consulate and the Empire; that is to say, the political and social organization of France, such as she issued from the chaos of the Revolution, and such as she still remains after the other storms of the con¬ temporary epoch. Of the two Chambers, the first, that of the Peers, was heredi¬ tary; the aristocracy intended to use it to entrench and re-establish its old position : the other, the Chamber of Deputies, was elected by a suffrage of two degrees (law of 1817), which imposed certain qualifications upon the electors who were to exercise the right of voting. These qualifications were increased by the law called the double vote in 1820. The Chamber was, therefore, the organ of the territorial and financial aristocracy, rather than that of the nation. Attempts at Political, Economic, and Social Reaction. — The Restoration in 1815 took advantage of the presence of the allied troops to return to the old system of proscriptions, and it avenged the Reign of Terror by a new terror, which fortunately did not last long. Louis XVIII., a man of sceptical, moderate views, was strong enough to resist the urgent demands of the returned emi¬ grants, and even used the principles of the new representative government against them by dismissing the Chamber in 1816 (the Chambre introuvable), when it proved to be more royalist than the king, and hardly concealed its opposition under the disguise of 412 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. fidelity. He pursued an oscillating policy much extolled by the minister Decazes, who sought to restrain and satisfy the ultra- Royalists alternately with the Liberals; but the assassination of the Due de Berry (February, 1820) restored the ultra-Royalists to power with the minister Villele. The work of reaction was then continued by the Parliamentary laws, and the laws against the press, and it was even carried into the economic department. A system of protection only favour¬ able to great landowners became a kind of political doctrine. This reaction was carried on beyond the frontiers of France, and the same French generals who had carried the principles of the Revolution into Spain proceeded, in the name of the Holy Alli¬ ance, to re-establish by armed force the absolute authority of the incapable Ferdinand VII., 1828. The Chamber, which to avoid frequent elections had given itself a term of seven years, was soon drawn into a more rapid course of reaction than it intended, under the rule of Charles X., who succeeded Louis XVIII. (1824—1830.) This Prince, who in exile “ had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing,” reproduced under the new society the spectacle of a coronation, copied from the ancient ceremonials, with the costumes and etiquette of the past. Under the lofty arches of Rheims Cathedral he vainly revived the ancient monarchy. By an indem¬ nity of a milliard (£40,000,000), which he caused to be voted for the emigrants, he compensated those whose property had been confiscated and sold by the Revolution. By the law of sacrilege he re-established the former subordination of the State to the Church, which was soon seen in the influence of the Congregation, a society formed to defend the throne and the altar at the same time. Charles X. also attempted a social reaction by proposing to re-establish the right of primogeniture. The project failed in the Chamber of Peers, thrown out by a number of digni¬ taries who had been raised to high rank under the Revolution. Charles X. failed in his attempt to silence the press in 1827 ; but he disbanded the National Guard, although it was chiefly recruited from the middle classes ; and finally, in July 25, GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 413 1830, he crowned this work of political blindness by openly violating the charter and endeavouring to re-establish absolute power. The Political Results of the Restoration; Representative Govern¬ ment ; the Responsibility of Ministers. —The Revolution of 1830 proved that the Restoration was mistaken in its estimate of the force of modern ideas. The representative government, which it had granted, had been gaining strength during fifteen years, and the systematic intervention of the Chambers in public affairs had naturally led to the Ministers becoming responsible for the acts of the governing power. The position of the Ministers had been badly defined in the Constitutions of the Revolution, which gave them little power, and still less influence. During the reign of Napoleon, they were responsible to their Master only, but afterwards their responsibility developed into a necessary and recognised accessory of office, when they became the executive of the Sovereign, and were at the head of a vast hierarchy of officials : the executive power became much stronger through this change than it had been even under the old regime. It was better obeyed and, still more important, it was more universally obeyed, for there no longer existed any excep¬ tions to the general laws, any special treaties with individuals or corporations ; the Convention, followed by Napoleon, had accus¬ tomed the country to complete submission. The sole guarantee against any abuse of power was therefore found in the control exercised by the Chambers over the Government, and this control could only be effectual through the Ministers being held respon¬ sible for the acts of the Crown. Louis XVIII. and Charles X. would probably have refused to admit that the Deputies had the right to dismiss their Ministers. But they found themselves obliged to present to the Chambers as ministers, those only who could, in accord with the Deputies, obtain a majority to vote for the laws proposed and for the budget. Louis XVIII. was much attached to the Due de Decazes, but he found himself compelled to sacrifice his friend in 1820, because the Royalist majority wished to abandon a liberal policy. The 414 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . Due de Richelieu, who had contributed to the fall of the Due de Decazes, succumbed in hi3 turn, because he endeavoured to mode¬ rate the reactionary impulse which triumphed with Villele (1821), But the latter, after a reign of seven years, was obliged to yield to a new Chamber, and was replaced by Martignac (1828). The royal authority was thus covered by the Ministers, who fell when they had made a mistake ; the King remained infallible. Charles X., instead of appreciating this mechanism, resolved to destroy it, and forced the Chamber to accept Prince Polignac as Minister, intending with his aid to nullify the guarantees given in the charter. The three days of the 27th, 28th, and 29th of July was the reply given to the famous ordonnances. This insurrection alone proved how completely constitutional government had become part of the institutions of the country. The public debates in the Chambers, the eloquence of powerful orators, enabled every citizen to follow the course of political events. Thus in spite of some unsettled years, the Government of the Restoration had raised France from the fallen and shattered state produced by the invasion, had paid the ransom exacted by the allies, and brought prosperity back to the country, whilst the results of the economic revolution, which had been arrested by the Napoleonic wars, were successfully tested through a period of internal and external peace. Moral and intellectual activity equalled the pro¬ gress of industry and commerce, and the Restoration was an epoch of revival in literature, science, and art. The Monarchy of July: Parliamentary Government (1830—1848). —The throne w r as re-established after the days of July as quickly as it had been overthrown. But the position of Louis Philippe bore no resemblance to that of Louis XVIII. The traditions of the Revolution, driven back for a moment, had triumphantly re¬ asserted themselves. The principle of the sovereignty of the nation was clearly proclaimed and acted upon. Although the Charter of 1814 w T as maintained, considerable modifications changed its character, and Louis Philippe did not grant, he accepted it; no longer a concession, it had become a contract. The Sovereign GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 415 bore the title of King of the French—that is to say, he did not reign in virtue of hereditary right, but of election. The mechanism of government was unchanged in outward appearance only. The Government of the Restoration was repre¬ sentative, i.e. the nation was represented in it ; the Government of Louis Philippe was a Parliamentary Government, in which the will of Parliament, the organ of the nation, predominated. As Thiers wittily remarked, a parliamentary Sovereign “ reigns, but does not govern.” Louis Philippe accepted his Ministers from the Chambers, and merely invested them with an authority which did not emanate from himself. The Ministers were answerable for each other; they formed an homogeneous cabinet which fell with the first hostile vote, and fell entirely. The responsibility was indivi¬ dual and collective ; and it placed the Ministers, and consequently the King, at the mercy of the Chamber. It would have been a Republican Government had the representation of the country been placed on a wider basis. Property Suffrage .—Parliament could not truthfully be called the nation. The election laws under the Restoration had been very slightly modified. The qualification for an elector had been lowered from three hundred to two hundred francs,* but even men who followed liberal professions could not exercise the right of voting unless they paid the taxes required by the law. A poor man, although he might be educated, was deprived of a right which was granted to an ignorant man because he owned a fortune. The new dynasty had not frankly accepted the principle of popu¬ lar sovereignty, and it resembled the Restoration as closely as possible, without, however, obtaining the support of the nobility and clergy, who accused it of usurpation. Representing neither legitimacy nor the popular rights, it was repulsed by the aristo¬ cracy and distrusted by the people, whilst it devoted itself to satis- * In order to vote it was necessary to be twenty-five years old and to pav two hundred francs in direct taxes. Members and correspondents of the Institute and retired officers were admitted to electoral rights with a qualifi¬ cation of one hundred francs. They were called assistant voters (electeurs adjoints). 416 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . fying the middle classes, whose loyalty was unequal to the task of protecting it. The Political Consequences of the Economic Revolution; Progress of the Industrial Classes ; Socialism. —The measures taken by the Government of July alienated the people at precisely the time when the development of agriculture, industry and commerce, had aug¬ mented the importance of the agricultural and working classes. The progress of industry, the inevitable crowding of large numbers of the population in the mills and factories had greatly modified the aspect of society. Whilst machinery facilitated the work of man, man became the slave of machines, and was consequently subject to a painful life of drudgery, forming a striking contrast to the ease and comfort daily becoming more widely diffused throughout the country. The working classes, ignorant of eco¬ nomic questions, incapable of reasoning about capital and labour, soon began to doubt whether any social revolution had really been accomplished. They deceived themselves with the false idea of the equality of man, not unnaturally confusing the relations between workmen and their employers with those that existed between the people and the old privileged classes. Led awaj 7 by skilful sophists, who persuaded them that the remedy for their sufferings lay in a second overthrow of social order, they at last believed that the whole social system ought to be changed in a country where the revolu¬ tion of 1789 had passed all the old customs through a sieve, and had attempted to regulate society according to the eternal laws of nature and reason. They dreamt of a chimerical equality of fortune amongst all men, and in order to realise their dream they demanded an authorised organization of industry, Socialism, which was to regulate the labour and profits of every man, distributing the one according to the strength, and the other according to the needs, of the individual, ignoring the fact that the individual has an in¬ curable tendency to spare his strength and to exaggerate the amount of his requirements.* * Socialism, in France .—Since the commencement of the century the pro¬ gress of ideas has been very rapid, and numerous theories, now quite forgotten, excited public feeling for a moment. Count Henry Claude de St. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 4 r 7 The July Government did not trouble itself about the Socialist movement until it threatened to interfere with public order. No effort was made to enlighten the people or to relieve the working classes of one at least of their principal grievances by admitting them to a fuller share of political life. It maintained a legally privileged class in the nation, above the nation itself : it fell iu consequence. The Republic of 1848; Universal Suffrage; the Constitution of 1848.—The nation which, on the 24th of February, 1848, had been victorious without a struggle, at once returned to the republican form of government, and the first public measure introduced by its leaders was the proclamation of universal suffrage (decree of the Provisional Government, 5th of March, 1848). The rank of elector was conferred upon every Frenchman who had reached the age of Simon, a scion of the same family as the celebrated author of the “ Memoirs ” (1760—1825), had, under the Restoration, founded the Industrialist School which taught that knowledge and industry formed the basis of society. It made a religion of philanthropy, exaggerated the defects of our social system, and aimed at the modification of the conditions of labour, property, and religion. The disciples of St. Simon wished to establish the absolute equality of man and woman, to abolish hereditary rights—in short, to found a new creed. This school created a great sensation, held public meetings and founded a sect on the hill of Menilmontant, under the direction of Father Enfantin, based on the principle of fraternity. The members of the sect tried to impress the public by their original costume and eccentric observances. r Ihe society of the St. Simonians was dissolved by a judicial sentence in 1833. Unpractical as this system now seems, some of the most distinguished writers and economists in France belonged to it for a time. Charles Fourier, born at Besantjon (1772—1837), tried to reform society on the basis of a new organization of labour; and by association and co-operation, he hoped to convert the world into an immense phalanstery, where universal harmony would triumph, where labour would be a pleasure, a passion. Considerant, Fourier’s principal disciple, a deputy, vainly sought the help of the Government Jor these projects. These ideas, however, were received with little favour by the lower classes, who could not understand complicated systems. They found more favour in America and the United States, where attempts were made to reduce them to practice. Other innovators de¬ manded the equalization of salaries and fortunes, and amongst them we find Cabet (1788—1856), the best known of the communist writers, who published the “Voyage in Icaria.” He endeavoured to carry his ideas into effect by founding a colony in the United States on the shores of the Red River, E E 4 18 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. twenty-one in the enjoyment of his civil rights. Without tran¬ sition, a change was made from 300,000 to 8,000,000 of voters. It decreed the establishment of national workshops, where work w T as to be found for all. The failure of these brought on an insurrection, which broke out and inundated Paris with blood in the fatal days of June, 1848, alarmed the middle classes and the whole country. The Consti¬ tution of 1848 was modified after this, and the Executive power strengthened; it established a single Assembly and a President, but it rendered them independent of each other, and thus prepared a source of perpetual conflict.* A nephew of Napoleon I., Louis Napoleon, owed his election as President of the Republic by more than 5,000,000 votes to the magic of his name. The task of carrying out the Constitution was confided to him, but for three but it was unsuccessful. Louis B^nc (1813—1882), whose popularity was chiefly due to his historical works, explained the ideas of the socialists in his hook on the “ Organization of Labour.” He formulated the maxim of the “ Right to "Work.” Substituting the State for the individual, his theory was based on the formation of a vast association under the patronage of the State. To counterbalance the inevitable inequality which exists between the requirements of each individual and their relative faculties, he would force the man who possessed the most faculties to contribute to the require¬ ments of the one who had the least. He deprived activity of its greatest stimulant, the hope of reward, and his theories would have proved the greatest encouragement to idleness. Whenever the State, assuming the office of arbitrator, wishes to dispose of the fruits of labour, by dividing them equally, without consideration being paid to the energy of the workers, this energy will cease, and labour will soon be at an end. Proudhon’s system was very different (1809—1865). He was the son of a cooper at Besanqon. By dint of hard work and economy, he managed to acquire some education, and became a voluminous writer. His talent is undoubted. He is the most radical writer of his school. His maxim, “Property is robbery,” struck at the basis of society. His works, in spite of their literary talent, were crushed by the condemnations of successive governments. But he still has followers. * The Constitution of the 12th of November, 1848, established a single Assembly of 750 members, a President, elected for four years, who had the control of the army and the administration, but exercised no power over the Assembly. The President was elected by universal suffrage. The A ssembly and the President had the same origin, and could equally claim to represent the country. This proved a source of continual conflict. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES . 4*9 years he endeavoured to throw discredit upon it, at last destroyed it by a coup d'dtat on the 2nd of December, 1851, and a year later was proclaimed Emperor. France once more swung violently from extreme liberty to extreme submission. The Constitution of January 14,1852.—The Constitution of 1852, drawn up by Louis Napoleon alone, but afterwards submitted to the sanction of a plebiscite (or vote by the whole people), was based upon the Constitution of the year VIII. It destroyed all parliamentary liberties, and concentrated all the power in the hands of a Presi¬ dent, elected for ten years. It suppressed the responsibility of the ministers, and whilst retaining the two Chambers, the Legislative Chamber and the Senate, it left them no originating power, and their debates, no longer freely published for the country, were stifled under a cold analysis. The tribunal was nearly silenced. A decree published on the 17th of February, 1852, subjected the press to a system of warnings and suspensions—a purely admini¬ strative system—which placed it at the mercy of the ministers, whilst its proper function was to exercise control over them. The power of the central authority was strengthened over the whole hierarchy; officials of every rank and every order were henceforth compelled to submit to a discipline which recalled the imperial rule. The Second Empire , and its Transformations (1852—1870).—It may, therefore, be said that this Constitution required little change to become suited to an imperial rule. The empire was re-established December 2nd, 1852, after the model of 1804, and in its turn was sanctioned by a plebiscite. France thus recommenced her history. The new Emperor added to his power by claiming the right of himself concluding commercial treaties, and of modifying by simple decrees the relations between the great bodies of the State and the executive power. Although the imperial monarchy was based upon universal suffrage and recognised the national sovereignty, in the title of each of its decrees, it gradually became less repre¬ sentative, like the monarchy of the Bourbons, and more absolute than it had been. The country remained silent for eight years : Napoleon III, 420 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. himself broke this silence. After the Italian war of 1859 had awakened liberal aspirations in the country, by an authoritative stroke (a commercial treaty with England, 5th of January, 1860) he inaugurated free trade, and on the 24th of November of the same year he added political liberty to it. He gave the Senate and legislative body the right of voting an address. The debates in the Chambers were to be published in extenso in the official papers. In 1861 the Emperor renounced the right of raising extra loans during the intervals between the sessions of the legislative body. In 1867 Napoleon III., under the pressure of serious circum¬ stances, produced by errors in his foreign policy, advanced a step further ; he sent the ministers themselves to defend their actions before the Chambers, and replaced the right of address by that of interpellation. In 1868 a law re-placed the press under the authority of the tribunals, and another regulated the right of meeting. Although slow, the evolution was real. It continued until 1869, and reached the climax on the 2nd of January, 1870, in parliamentary government, restored with the responsibility of the ministers, the right of initiative, of interpellation, and of amend¬ ment granted to the deputies. The Senate afterwards lost its con¬ stituent power, and a third plebiscite sanctioned these important modifications, which brought the same mechanism employed in the monarchy of July into the imperial government. These curious changes proved that the sovereign was free from prejudice, and sufficiently compliant to yield to the lessons given by experience. But the empire was a military monarchy ; it could only last by adding to the national glory and prosperity. It was utopian to believe that freedom could save it after a defeat. Napoleon I. had also published the additional Act before Waterloo. Napoleon HI. could not be saved, even by his constitutional rule, after the terrible disaster of Sedan. He had allowed, or, at least, had not resisted, the growth of another monarchy, far more military than his own, beyond the Rhine—that of Prussia. The invasion of 1870 led to the fall of the imperial throne, and France herself issued from that terrible war vanquished, seriously weak¬ ened, and, moreover, mutilated by the loss of part of her territory. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 421 The National Assembly , 1871; the Third Republic; the Consti¬ tution of 1875.—In 1871, after the capitulation of Paris, and during an armistice, France found herself free, under the most painful circumstances, to choose a government. A National Assembly met at Bordeaux on the 18th of February, 1871, and afterwards at Versailles. Peace was made, February 26, with Germany by the cession of Lorraine and Alsace, and the payment of £200,000,000. The Government had to contend against an insurrection which obliged the army to take Paris from the Commune after a two months’ siege. When the Assembly had succeeded in pacifying and liberating the country, it occupied itself in once more forming a Constitution. Now, so many different governments following in rapid succession had neces¬ sarily left as marks of their passage many waifs and strays, and many partisans. The Assembly of 1871 might have been taken as a summary of the internal history of France since 1789. Some members demanded the Constitution of 1791 or that of 1848 ; others even recalled souvenirs of the Convention and the Mountain ; others, again, would have been delighted with a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of Ancients; and, lastly, the partisans of imperial traditions remained faithful to them, whilst the friends of the Restoration or of the Govern¬ ment of July were still more numerous. The Assembly of 1871 was obliged to trace its own path in the midst of all these ephemeral constitutions, to choose between these experiments which had all failed, and to struggle in the midst of all these parties, each embittered against the other. After many conflicts, the details of which we have no space to dwell upon here, it at last succeeded in formulating the Constitution of the 25th of February, 1875. This Constitution, although provisional in the eyes of the monar¬ chical party, which supported it, was in some degree iufluenced by the character of each of the Constitutions which had preceded it. It retained the universal suffrage of 1848 and of the imperial Constitutions, and also the imperial title of Senate for the second Chamber. It also revived the title of Chamber of Deputies, em- \Z2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. ployed under the Government of July. It attempted a reaction against universal suffrage by making election to the Senate depend upon a restricted suffrage of two degrees. The laws were sub¬ mitted to the ordeal of three readings, as in the Constitution of 1848 and in the Constitutions of the epoch of the Revolution. . The executive power was coDfided to a President, elected for seven years by the Chambers, in the same way that Louis Philippe had been elected; and, moreover, he was irresponsible, in point of fact a constitutional monarch. And, lastly, the responsibility of the ministers rendered the new Government a parliamentary govern¬ ment, modelled on that of 1880. But institutions are only valuable according to the men who carry them into effect. The National Assembly was dissolved at the close of the year 1875, and the elections that took place to form the new Chambers gave a large majority to the Repub¬ lican side in the Chamber of Deputies. The Constitution of 1S75, although elaborately devised under the influence of the monarchical party, became the Constitution of a Republican government. Political Results of the Contemporary Epoch in France .—The task of France since 1789 has been to establish the balance between order and liberty, both equally necessary. Nothing could have been more variable, more uncertain than her political system. The Constitution of 1791, created by a monarchy, ended in a republic. The Republican constitution of the year- III led to a return to despotism with the empire. The empire brought back the old monarchy established under the Bourbons. The Restora¬ tion perished through an attempt to revive the ancient govern¬ ment. The Government of Julv foundered, because it did not know how to use its authority, nor to satisfy liberal aspirations. The republic of 1848 fell a victim to the socialistic anarchy by which it was menaced, and which seconded the ambition of a nephew of Napoleon. Lastly, after a new empire, which lasted eighteen years, during which period the lovers of public order were the only ones satisfied, but which was marked by a vast increase of material prosperity, France is seeking, under a third GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES . 4 2 3 republic, to consolidate the nation, seriously disturbed by so many shocks. She is pursuing a very difficult work in a country still so divided ; the reconciliation between the rival traditions of authority and liberty, which we have seen perpetually in conflict in every epoch of history. The European Powers since 1815; Conflict between Modern Ideas and the Old Regime .—The struggle between modern principles and the old regime was continued in Europe as well as in France after 1815. After the wars of the Empire, the old monarchies imagined that they could return to their legislative traditions. A European, as well as a French Restoration took place. But from 1830 disturbances recommenced ; revolutions broke out in Naples, Turin, and Spain, they were suppressed by the armies of the Holy Alliance, and the sovereigns of Prussia, Austria, and Russia cemented their union at the Congresses of Troppau, 1820, Laybach, 1821, and Verona, 1822, entering into an agreement to regulate the policy of Europe. The Revolution in Spain hastened the emanci¬ pation of the Spanish Colonies. America, between 1810 and 1826, * became independent in the South as well as in the North, and was divided into Republics. Brazil only, although free, remained a monarchy. The disorder which had reigned in Europe during the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire had not affected those countries that were still under Turkish rule. But these nations had thrilled with sympathy, hoping for their own liberty. Greece, above all, proud of its glorious history, groaned beneath the yoke of Turkey. The Greeks rebelled in 1821, and the European Powers found themselves obliged to assist them. In the battle of Navarino, 1827, the naval power of Turkey was destroyed. Greek freedom was completely "won in 1829, and in 1832 the Kingdom of Greece was established. In 1830 the July Revolution became the signal for a new European revolution. Poland roused itself, and the Polish levies at first successfully resisted the Russian troops sent against them. Belgium, which had been forcibly united to Holland, separated from the Dutch rule (August, 1830). The German and Italian TABLE SUMMARIZING THE VARIOUS CONSTITUTIONS OE FRANCE SINCE 1789. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 425 populations demanded the constitutions that had been promised to them ; oppressed nationalities all turned their eyes towards France, and Louis Philippe’s government interfered with effect in estab¬ lishing the Kingdom of Belgium. Poland, left to itself, was soon crushed (1881), and the Czar, breaking the articles of the treaties of 1815, declared that Poland was an integral part of the Russian Empire. Belgium alone recovered its independence and formed a new kingdom (1881). These disturbances led to serious conse¬ quences in many countries, where, as in Spain, the constitutions became liberal. In 1848 the crisis was renewed with greater force ; every throne trembled at the fall of Louis Philippe. Insurrections broke out in Vienna, the capital of Austria ; Lombardy, with the aid of Charles Albert, King of Piedmont, attempted to throw off the Austrian yoke. The Germanic Confederation was overthrown by the partisans of German unity. Even Berlin was disturbed by riots. It was the most important break-up of society that had yet been seen in Europe, but since neither France nor England would intervene in favour of the revolted populations, the speedy re¬ establishment of the ancient governments was foreseen. Italy again fell under Austrian rule, and Russia, by supporting Austria, enabled her to suppress the uprising in Hungary. Germany was restored to its former state, and Europe remained in the same con¬ dition as the treaties of 1815 had left it. But, nevertheless, the whole political continent was shaken, and the consequence of all these disturbances was soon apparent, for the reforms demanded by the people were granted to them soon afterwards. The great Wars since 1848 ; Europe as it now is. — But another and more serious question followed these internal dis¬ orders : the question of the balance of power. The rivalries between the powers that had been restrained since 1815 now broke out. Russia was the first to unmask her ambition; France and England united their forces to save Turkey, and succeeded in the Crimean War (1854—185G). Napoleon III., blending questions of nationalities with those of balance of power, freed Lombardy in 426 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 1859, but not Yenetia, which remained subject to Austria. This war led eventually to the establishment of Italian unity, and the kingdom of Italy was founded in 1861. Italian unity led to German unity. Count Bismarck, imitating Count de Cavour, undertook to create this unity for the advantage of Prussia, just as the Italian minister had realised it for the advantage of Piedmont. He first excited an unjust war against Denmark, which he robbed of two Duchies, with the consent of Austria. Then turning against his former ally, he exclude! Austria from Germany by the war of 1866, ruptured the Germanic Confederation and established Prussian rule throughout Northern Germany. The defeat of France in 1870 enabled him to complete German unity and to re-establish the German Empire for the advantage of the King of Prussia (1871), who was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles, 18th January, 1871. The ter¬ rible war of 1870 considerably modified the balance of power in Europe. Russia, by maintaining a neutrality, greatly to Prussia’s advantage, felt free to continue her aggressive policy in the East. After a new war (1877—1873) a congress met at Berlin, and ratified the further dismemberment of Turkey. Some independent States were added to the list of European States ; Roumania, the former Danubian Principalities, acknowledged independent by the Treaty of Berlin (1878), raised to a Kingdom (1881), the Kingdom of Servia (1882), the Principality of Montenegro, and the Principality of Bulgaria, (enlarged by Eastern Roumelia, 18th September, 1885). Turkey is therefore almost effaced from the map of Europe, and the three powerful Empires of Germany, Russia, and Austria are sole masters of the whole centre and east of Europe. Progress of Liberal Ideas ; Parliamentary Government .—But in the midst of the anxieties aroused by the new political divi¬ sions of Europe, and the development of the Germanic and Slav races, the internal constitutions of the states of modern Europe are almost universally based upon the new principles. Liberal ideas have borne fruit, and the oldest monarchies have established Parliamentary government. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 427 England: Progress of Liberal Ideas since 1815; the Catholic Emancipation (1829).—England had given Europe the first example of a free government, but the Parliamentary reforms of Pitt (1782), Catholic Emancipation (1780—1804), and other mea¬ sures, were checked by the excesses of the French Revolution, and the wars provoked by it. The progress of reform was retarded for nearly half a century. But after the fall of Napoleon, and the peace which ensued, these measures were slowly resumed. The celebrated George Canning allied himself with the Whigs in their demand for political reforms, whilst Huskisson commenced economic reforms. The Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo, obstinately defended the old constitution of England, but after his appointment as Prime Minister, in 1828, he was forced to yield to the move¬ ment started by Canning, which the premature death of the generous minister had failed to arrest. He accepted the repeal of the Test Act (9th May, 1828), which had prevented Noncon¬ formist Protestants from entering the municipal corporations or the magistracy. The serious question of Catholic Emancipation was next solved. Toleration was triumphing in Europe, and England could not retain, in the nineteenth century, the severe laws that had been passed in the seventeenth, particularly since a large part of the United Kingdom—Ireland—was still Roman Catholic, and a powerful agitator, O’Connell, was stirring up the people. Robert Peel, member of a Tory Cabinet, accepted the Liberal demand ; thanks to his efforts, the Ministry agreed to pass the Emancipation Bill, and persuaded the King and the Lords to accept it. The Commons passed it on the 80th March, 1829—an important Act, which ended a great injustice by granting the rights of citizenship to Roman Catholics.* The Parliamentary Preform Bill (1831—1832).—The July Revo¬ lution in France led to the fall of the Tories and the triumph of * English Sovereigns in the Nineteenth Century'. George III. (1760—1820), George IV. (1820—1830), William IV., brother to George IV. (1830—1837), Victoria, niece to George IV. (1837). 428 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the Whigs. The Whig leader, Lord Grey, formed a Ministry which included Lords Holland, Althorp, John Russell, and the celebrated Brougham. On March 1st, 1881, the new Cabinet laid the Reform Bill before the House of Commons. Every one knows how the system by which the House of Com¬ mons was formed gradually developed. In the Middle Ages the deputies of the towns and boroughs assembled with the knights of the counties, who represented the le3S wealthy portion of the aristocracy. But the kings had not granted the right of electing deputies to every city, and as time added to the importance of many of them, the inequality became more striking. Some for¬ merly obscure towns had become the centres of the great industrial movement, but were still unrepresented in Parliament; others fallen from their greatness had retained this privilege. A few hovels, the ruins of ancient boroughs, sent members to Parliament, whilst Manchester had no representative there. The right of election had thus passed into the hands of the poor inhabitants of the old boroughs, who sold their votes freely ; or into the power of a wealthy landowner, who, thanks to a rotten borough situated on his estate, could either give the seat to any one he pleased or keep it himself. The Bill of March 1st, 1881, bore the character which distinguishes all English reforms, it modified the system of election without destroying it: A property qualification, £10 in the towns, £50 in the counties, became the basis of the franchise. Fifty-six rotten boroughs lost their privileges ; thirty-one others, less utterly fallen, were only allowed to send one member to Parliament. Liverpool, Manchester, and a few important cities obtained a representative in the House of Commons. London and some new counties nominated a few extra members. By lowering the franchise the Bill extended the right of election to a larger number of citizens than the French laws at the same date. The Tories struggled for a whole year to prevent it from passing. The Ministers appealed to the country, Parliament was dissolved, the elections were favourable to the Whigs, and the new House adopted the Reform Bill. The Tories then rejected it in the House of Lords ; the Whigs obtained permission from the King to create GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 4 2 9 a sufficient number of new Peers to change the majority, and after some sharp debates which aroused the indignation of the popu¬ lace, the Whigs forced the Upper House to pass the Reform Bill (June 4th, 1832). Abolition of Negro Slavery (1834) ; the Poor Laws. —Two years after the Parliamentary Reform Bill, England abolished Negro slavery throughout her Colonies. Lord Melbourne, the Whig leader, who had succeeded Lord Grey, had the honour of passing the Negro Emancipation Bill (28th August, 1833). Another and equally important reform distinguished Lord Melbourne’s administration, the settlement of the poor laws. Pau¬ perism is one of wealthy England’s open sores. In the sixteenth century cruel laws against beggars and vagabonds were passed with the hope of checking it. In the commencement of the seven¬ teenth century Elizabeth published laws which made the parishes responsible for the maintenance of the poor, and established a poor-rate for their relief. This assistance frequently rendered the pauper’s lot preferable to that of the labourer, and it thus became an encouragement to idleness. A new law, passed on April 14th, 1834, retained the poor-rate, but regulated the collection of it, and confided its distribution to local councils (boards of guardians). The administration of the poor laws was directed and controlled by three superior officials. Outdoor relief was suppressed almost entirely; paupers unable to work were received, and capable paupers were compelled to work, in the workhouses. Sir Robert Peel’s great Economic Reforms : The Income Tax, Abolition of the Corn Laws (1846).—The reign of Queen Victoria, who succeeded her uncle, William IV., in 1837, has accentuated the progress of reform. Financial difficulties attracted Sir Robert Peel’s attention, and to meet the deficit he took up one of the measures of Pitt and established the income-tax (1842).* Although an unpopular measure, it added considerably to the resources of the treasury, and restored the equilibrium between receipts and expenditure. * This tax was at first settled at sevenpence in the pcmnd for all incomes abo^e £150. In 1842 it produced £5,191,597, and in 1888 £14,440,000. 430 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The protective system was one cause of the people’s suffering. It was supported by the great landowners, and considerably enhanced the price of foreign imports for food. The land certainly produced more corn, but the population paid a very high price for bread. The reaction, which had commenced during Huskisson’s Ministry, advanced with new energy under the guidance of a distinguished economist, Richard Cobden, a Manchester manufac¬ turer. He united his disciples in the so-called Manchester school, which devoted itself to the defence of free trade, political liberty, and peace. Public agitation soon increased so much that the English aristocracy became alarmed, and Sir Robert Peel, in spite of his Conservative tendencies, thought that he must yield to the torrent. In spite of the opposition of the most eminent leaders of his party, he adopted the ideas of his adversaries, the Whigs, resolved to lead them to victory, and.to ruin the formidable league which had been formed under the name of the Anti-Corn Law League. He passed a Bill for free trade during the session of 1846, removed all duty from imports for food, and as a compensa¬ tion freed the landed proprietors from certain road charges which weighed upon them ; he also authorised State loans to the agricul¬ turists. Sir Robert Peel could not break the ties which bound him to his own party without damaging his credit, and after passing the repeal of the corn laws he retired from office. “ I shall leave my name,” he said, “ a by-word to every monopolist and to many men who egotistically sympathize with monopolies. But perhaps my name will also he repeated, coupled with expressions of good-will, in modest dwellings, the habitations of those who labour, gaining their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. When they rest from work and sit down to a plentiful meal unembittered by the injustice of legislation, they may some¬ times remember me with kindness.” Sir Robert Peel was right, and the results of this policy have rendered his name one of the most justly honoured and most popular in England. Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849); Liberty granted to the Colonies .—When England had once adopted these principles, little governments and modern liberties. 43 1 time was lost before one of the last vestiges of protection was re¬ moved. Through the development of its maritime power, it no longer feared competition, and, during the premiership of Lord John Russell, one of the Whig leaders, repealed the Navigation Laws (June, 1849), which dated from the time of Cromwell (1650). Foreign vessels were admitted to the same privileges as English ones for the importation and exportation of every kind of merchan¬ dise, either colonial or European, and in 1854 the coasting trade was thrown open to foreign vessels. Lord John Russell’s Whig Cabinet also undertook the reform of the Colonial Governments. By the Australian Colonies Act (1850) he substituted autonomy for the old system. Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick already possessed a practi¬ cally representative government; Cape Colony had two Cham¬ bers ; there was only one at first in the Australian colonies, where the electors nominated two-thirds of the members and the governor the other. This was only a beginning, and the Parlia¬ mentary system has since developed in all the chief colonies. There are two Chambers at Sydney as well as at Melbourne. In 1867 Parliament passed the Bill which united the British provinces of North America under the title of Dominion of Canada, placing them under a Governor-General appointed by the Queen, who governs the Dominion with the aid of a Parliament sitting at Ottawa. Parliamentary Reforms in 1867 and 1884.—The disturbances in Europe in 1848 added greatly to the liberal aspirations of the lower classes in England. Monster meetings were held in the capi¬ tal, a spectacle only seen in that country, where hundreds of thousands make a noisy demonstration without provoking a revo¬ lution, as a rule, dispersing quietly before the representatives of the law. But these agitators, who were called Chartists, influenced Statesmen, and four out of their six demands have been subsequently granted. The Reform Bill of 1882 was developed by that of 1867 (under the Tory Ministry led by Lord Derl-y and Mr. Disraeli), which granted a vote to every freeholder, and extended the franchise to every tenant and lodger paying a 432 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. yearly rent of £12. The number of rotten boroughs was again diminished, and the number of electors rose to two millions. In 1872 the secret vote or ballot was adopted, to obviate the inconvenience of the hustings, the old method of public elec¬ tion, and to guard against attempts at corruption. Mr. Glad¬ stone, one of the most prominent Whig statesmen, was still bolder, and after a year’s struggle passed a third Reform Bill in 1884,* which, by again lowering the franchise, added another two millions to the list of voters. It was almost universal suffrage. The election districts, which had been very irregular, were completely re-arranged, in order to divide the representation more equitably amongst the different divisions ; and these modifi¬ cations, which were particularly favourable to the cities, increased the number of Members of the House of Commons to 670. England and Ireland .—The Irish peasantry, being chiefly Roman Catholics a.nd Celts, disliked and distrusted the English, who were Protestants and Saxons ; being defeated, they hated their con¬ querors, whom they learned, not without reason, to regard as their oppressors. As the Castle was considered the centre of English mis-government and jobbery, the State Church in Ireland was con¬ sidered the symbol of English and Protestant oppression. The land system was disliked by the people, partly because the landowners were chiefly Protestants and almost all supporters of the English connection, and partly because keen competition between the tenants forced the rents sometimes beyond the real value. Except in the North of Ireland, where the tenant-right system prevailed, there was no security of tenure. Rents could be raised at the landlord’s will, and compensation for unexhausted improvements was not compul¬ sory. The political union between Ireland and Great Britain had been carried through in 1800, but the majority of the Irish Mem¬ bers of the House of Commons have, of late years, proved an embarrassment, prolonging useless debates by a systematic policy of obstruction. * This Bill was laid before the Commons on the 28th February, 1884, and passed on the 9th of June. It was rejected by the House of Lords on the 17th July, and finally passed on the 5th of December, 1884. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 433 Irish discontent has rapidly increased, during this century, and Ireland is still a perpetual sore in English politics. A movement to free Ireland in 1848 was nipped in the bud ; and the more serious Fenian insurrection of 1866-67, though it partook of the nature of an organized rebellion, was quelled easily, though not without bloodshed. The Fenian movement was on the whole remarkable for its freedom from cowardly outrage, and probably led to remedial legislation. England has since endeavoured to remove all grievances. In 1868, the Liberal party in Parliament, led by Mr. Gladstone, disestablished the State Church in Ireland. In 1870, Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to relieve the tenant farmers by passing the Irish Land Bill. The distress and the agitation were not diminished by these measures, and in 1879, a great league, called the Land League, was formed under the leadership of Mr. Parnell, whose keen political insight had perceived that to gain autonomy for Ireland he must enlist on his side the forces of agrarian dis¬ content. A serious struggle began, and under Mr. Gladstone’s administration (3rd March, 1881), a Coercion Bill was passed for the protection of life and property. Mr. Gladstone also introduced a new Land Bill, and established an Agrarian Court (1881), in¬ tended to regulate the difficulties between the tenants and their landlords; but the turbulent minority of the tenantry established a reign of terror to compel the peaceable majority to resist the landlords, and successive administrations have dealt with this by coercion. At last, finding the eighty-six votes of the Parnellite members necessary to bring him back to office, Mr. Gladstone in 1886 pro¬ posed to restore autonomy to Ireland, and to purchase the land from the landlords for the benefit of the tenants ; but his proposal was rejected, owing to the conscientious action of a number of his followers, who voted against him, unable to sacrifice their principles to their desire for office. The present Conservative Government (1890) have perceived that in extended facilities for land purchase and the creation thereby of peasant proprietors, lies the way of deliverance for Ireland. 434 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The English Constitution; the Government; Parliament .—The courage and foresight of the English Ministers as well as the practical freedom of the people, explain why the United Kingdom of Great Britain has escaped all revolutions since 1688. England accomplishes her reforms slowly, one by one, after long and bitter discussions. She advances regularly, not by sudden leaps, modifies instead of upsetting, improves without destroying, retains her traditions without checking progress. The Government remains nominally monarchical. In all solemn ceremonials the ancient etiquette is observed with minute care. The Ministry, or Cabinet, is only a fraction of the Privy Council which still exists, and the Cabinet itself is composed of the Minis¬ ters, the Secretaries of State, the Presidents of the more im¬ portant departments, and others.* Defeated, its fall entails a change in certain great dignitaries of the Court. The House of Peers, being hereditary, is still the highest form of the national representation ; at the opening of the Sessions the Members of the Commons assemble at its bar to hear the royal speech, and in some degree to perform an act of respect towards it, a remnant of the old vassalage. It is composed of lay Peers and spiritual Peers. The consent of the House of Peers is necessary in passing the Bills, but the initiative for the Budget and the real power belong to the House of Commons. It would be a mis¬ take to suppose that the House of Commons represents only the people. It also includes a large number of members belonging by birth to the nobility. In short, the English Government, in spite of the increasing share in it granted to the democracy, is still largely aristocratic. The Aristocracy; the Gentry .—The English aristocracy is not exclusive. It bears taxation and all other burdens equally with * The first Lord of the Treasury, the Lord High Chancellor, the Lord Presi¬ dent of the Council, the Lord of the Privy Seal, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretaries of State for War, of the Home Department, Foreign Affairs, India Department, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Postmaster General, &c., numbering altogether, in 1889, twenty-one members. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 435 the rest of the people. It is not numerous, and does not form a caste, but is perpetually rejuvenated by the addition of some of the most illustrious and wealthy men of the country. Besides, the right of primogeniture compels the younger sons to make their own positions, and the fact that they have entered upon a mercantile career is not considered derogatory to the honour of the family. A more real aristocracy than that of the nobles is that of the gentry, who hold the most honourable and durable positions. Many of the families which form this gentry are extremely wealthy, and their pedigrees are of older date than the titles of the nobility. The latter is frequently recruited from the younger branches of the old county families, who have made their way in the army or the public services. The feudal character of the tenure of land had not in England the same degrading effect as on the Continent, for the nobles had not the power of life and death over their vassals, the king’s justice was supreme, and in reality there were no serfs. Macaulay has observed on this point, that amongst all the medley of English laws there is not one found relating to serfdom, not even to abolish it. There does not either appear to have been any land which a “ villain ” could not acquire. At the same time the land in Great Britain is concentrated in very few hands. Two-thirds of England and Wales belong to 10,200 per¬ sons, two-thirds of Scotland to 330 persons, and two-thirds of Ireland to less than 2,000 persons, whilst the owners of the land on which London stands could fit without much inconvenience on the inside and outside of an omnibus. But the leases are granted for a long period, and the tenants’ families sometimes continue on the estates for generations. The landlord, who lives amongst them during some portion of each year, himself cultivating part of the estate, takes an interest in every improvement, contributes to the erection of churches, schools, or hospitals, exciting no jealousy in a country where ancient rights are always respected, and provoking no resent¬ ment amongst a population where the richest landlord will greet the humblest peasant with the kindly familiarity which results 43 6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. from old acquaintance with the individual, his circumstances and surroundings. Local Administration; the Parishes , Counties; Justice .—The landlords, moreover, discharge the duties of nearly every gratuitous and elective function in the counties, towns, villages, and parishes. The parish is the first administrative unity, it is regulated by a council or vestry. These parishes are grouped in unions of parishes (instituted by the law of 1834) for the collection of the poor-rates and the organization of the workhouses. Above them are found the historical and unequal divisions of the counties, in which the county of York is forty times larger than that of Rut¬ land. In the counties the towns have their own administration, the county magistrates and Justices of the Peace administer justice in the county gratuitously, and the Lord-Lieutenant partially exer¬ cises military authority in it. The Sheriff superintends the police, gives judgment in minor law suits, presides over the County Courts, draws out the lists of the jury, and conducts the elections. The Magistrates, who are also called Justices of the Peace, unite administrative and judicial functions. Chosen from amongst the rich landowners, they settle in their quarter-sessions the general business of the county, and they are also invested with very extensive judicial powers. Here, also, is found the old con¬ fusion of power ; but in England this confusion, although logically discordant, works extremely well, because the action of the admi¬ nistrative body is very limited. The principle of the jury has always been held in honour in the country, and the juries decide civil as well as criminal cases. The assizes, which deal with criminal cases and with the most important civil causes, are held twice a year by judges from the three High Courts in West¬ minster. The lesser civil cases are decided in the New County Courts, of which there are sixty, each ruled by a single jud^e. These courts are permanent in all the great cities, but the County Judge travels to the various localities where the population have accumulated. Lastly, the County Magistrates, who, unlike the other judges, receive no salaries, try the petty offences and the crimes which are not sent to the assizes. But GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 437 this does not interfere with the maintenance of the old county town and village justices. Historical rights are always respected. Our space is too limited for us to dwell in detail upon the complicated yet simple Constitution of England, where centralization has not yet been adopted. The army is recruited by voluntary enlistment and is composed, besides the provincial militia, of an important reserve of volunteers. Railways, conceded by Parliament to com¬ peting companies, have multiplied in some districts and are quite lacking in others. By the side of the State Church, administered by bishops and supported chiefly by the local benefactions of former generations as far back as pre-Norman times, we find a number of sects supported by the voluntary contributions of their members. Education is concentrated in the two great universities —Oxford and Cambridge*—which govern themselves, are main¬ tained by their own endowments, and some of them have repre¬ sentatives in Parliament. They still, particularly Oxford and Cambridge, retain, to some extent, the characteristics of the Anglican Church. Scotland has four universities, Edinburgh and St. Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen, returning two members to Parliament. Every Church has also its educational establish¬ ments, its schools, and charitable institutions ; and England con¬ tains the most infinite variety and the fullest development of the principle of free association. On every side we find vast edifices, built and supported by voluntary contributions, due chiefly to pri¬ vate enterprise and energy. However, the State, on the one hand, is gradually interfering more and more in popular education, by inspection and subsidies, following the example set on the Continent, where education is considered one of the most im¬ portant branches of the public service ; on the other, by the establishment of County Councils, &c., she is extending local ad¬ ministration. Character of the English Nation .—The Englishman is therefore free, and as proud of his liberty as of his country, its wealth, its naval, industrial, and colonial power. His individual safety is protected * To these add Dublin, Durham, and London Universities, and Victoria University, Manchester. 43^ THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. by the Habeas Corpus Act and by the system of trial by jury ; bis right of intervention in public affairs is guaranteed by the elections, the freedom of debate, and the thousand voices of a press that makes no pretence of sparing the men in power; the right of meeting, which the people push occasionally, but only occasionally, even to abuse, for in 1886 these meetings were followed by acts of pillage. But in return for the guarantees which the Englishman has acquired he accepts the duties of citizenship and the obligations which his wealth imposes upon him. He contributes not only to the expenses of the State, but to those of his parish and Church, presides over or supports numerous beneficial and charitable works, gratuitously discharges the magisterial or municipal functions, gives up his quiet home life for the annoyances of lengthy inter¬ views and meetings for the examination of accounts. England has conceded a good deal to the general tendency towards unity without destroying local spirit or individual energy. The an¬ tique traditions have been transformed through necessity rather than through theory, and by the side of extensive political free¬ dom, the country has retained a number of restrictions, the legacy of the past, and of customs which have the strength of laws. In England the government is free and society is tyrannical. In France society has always been more liberal than the government; the Englishman is shocked by the social freedom that exists in France, whilst the Frenchman could never reconcile himself to the stiffness of English life. Under any circumstances, it cannot be denied that England, in spite of herself, is being drawn into a new phase through the development of industrial cities. The serious problem of the relations between labour and capital is as formidable here as else¬ where in spite of the patient, unexcitable character of the race. Whatever prestige may still cling to the aristocracy, democracy is gaining the ascendency, restrained by intelligent Ministers who endeavour to guide in order that they may not appear to follow. The chief power has successively passed from the Crown to the aristocracy, from the aristocracy to the House of Commons, which GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 439 seems to be losing its power under the pressure of an irrespon¬ sible public opinion outside parliament. Like other countries, England is obeying the law of perpetual evolution, which urges nations to strive after the greatest possible good for the largest number. Belgium and its Constitution (1831).—The National Congress of Brussels endowed Belgium with a constitution based upon French principles (1831).* The modern freedom of the press, of public worship, of education and free combination were inscribed at the head of the Belgian Constitution, and have always been retained in spite of the difficulties which have arisen through abuse of these liberties, even more than in England, where the National Church is in the hands of the State. Thus in Belgium the clergy, although paid by the State, are quite independent of the govern¬ ment, which has no control over the nomination of bishops and country clergy, nor over the relations between the clergy and the Holy See. The right of free combination is absolute, the freedom of education is unlimited as well as the liberty of the press, for any one can establish a printing-press or publish a newspaper if he likes, without requiring any licence, authorisation, or security. Although these great liberties have been used by the two parties which divide Belgium —the Liberal party and the Catholic party— entirely for their own purposes, they have been alternately criti¬ cised and threatened according to the advantages they offered to either of the conflicting adversaries ; but the even balance that exists between the two parties prevents the triumph of one over the other, and consequently the freedom, to which the country has become accustomed, has been saved until now. The geographical position of Belgium has caused its neutrality to be guaranteed by * The Belgian constitution is dated the 7th of February, 1831. The legislative power is exercised by the king, the Chamber of Representatives, and the Senate. The king, as well as the members of the two chambers, can initiate the laws. The Chamber is elected for four years, but one half of it is*renewed every two years. The Senate is elected for eight years, but one half of it is renewed every four years. At least forty-two francs mu,t be paid in direct taxes before a man has a right to vote. 440 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the European powers, and this circumstance has prevented it from joining in any of the European wars, and has enabled it to develop tranquilly all the elements of its industrial and commer¬ cial prosperity. Since 1880 the population has increased by more than one-third (more than 1,200,000), and it now numbers nearly six millions, rendering Belgium the most densely populated country in Europe. Constitutional Monarchy in Sj)ain (1837).—An absolute mo¬ narchy, re-established in Spain in 1814, broken only by an interval of two years, 1821-3, lasted until the death of Ferdinand VII. in 1833. Then a long period of disturbance commenced, com¬ plicated by a civil war undertaken by the followers of Don Carlos, the brother of Ferdinand, against the succession of his infant daughter. The conflict between the partisans of Don Carlos and those of Queen Isabella w r as not only a dynastic struggle, but one of principles. Modern ideas and the old monarchical rights were in continual opposition until the Regent Maria Christina succeeded in binding the Liberal party to her daughter Isabella’s cause, by granting the Constitution of 1837. This Constitution established equality in the eyes of the law, and the right of every citizen to enter the public service; it guaranteed individual liberty and the liberty of the press, sup¬ pressed all private jurisdictions, and lastly divided the government between the Cortes (composed of two chambers) and the sovereign. The two chambers had the same right of initiating laws as the king. But the franchise was still restricted.* The reign of Isabella II. was disturbed by continual storms until 1868, when a revolution drove her from the throne. Spain * The Spanish Constitution was modified in 1871, and it now divides the legislative power between the king and the Cortes, which is composed of two bodies, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate is formed by an assemblage of senators by right, princes, high officials, senators for life, chosen by the king, and senators elected by the State corporations and the most important citizens. The Chamber of Deputies is composed of members elected for five years, by the electoral colleges. The king and the two Chambers have the right of proposing Bills. A provincial deputation is established in every province. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 44 1 endeavoured from 1868 to 1874 to form a republican government, but in vain. From 1872 to 1876 she bad to struggle against a second Carlist war. From December, 1870, to February, 1873, Amadeo, Duke d’Aosta, was King of Spain, but in 1874 Alfonso, the son of Isabella, mounted the throne. He died in 1885, and was succeeded by his Queen as Regent, and their posthumous son, born May 17, 1886. The progress of democratic ideas has been so rapid that the country may be said to vacillate between the monarchy and the republic. Portugal .—After 1830 Portugal passed through the same vicissi¬ tudes as Spain. Don Pedro, who defended the rights of his daughter, Doha Maria, against Don Miguel, granted a charter to the country in 1826, which established a constitutional govern¬ ment, and in 1836 the triumph of the liberal party carried the principles contained in this charter into further effect. In 1852, and again in 1884, the constitutional form of govern¬ ment received another development by the substitution of direct instead of indirect elections, the intervention of Parliament for the sanction of treaties, and the abolition of capital punishment for political offences. Qualifications for the franchise were still retained. The king nominated the members of the House of Peers, con¬ voked and prorogued the Cortes (the name used for the two Houses of Parliament in Portugal as well as in Spain); he retained the right to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, usually elected for four years, and to choose the ministers; in short, he enjoys all the prerogatives conceded to the sovereign in constitutional monarchies. The House of Braganza is so popular in Portugal that the members of the royal family can enjoy a freedom which almost effaces the distance between the king and his subjects. The Prince can walk about Lisbon, like the King of the Belgians in Brussels, as a private individual.* * Portuguese Sovereigns : Dona Maria (1826), Don Miguel (1827—1834), Dona Maria (1834—1853), Pedro V. (1853—1361), Louis I. (186L—1889), Carlos I. (1889). 442 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Holland: Constitution of 1848.—The Dutch Constitution granted in 1814 left most of the power in the hands of the crown ; the ministers were not responsible; the States-General was com¬ posed of two chambers (one of which was nominated by the king), and they voted the budget for ten years. In 1848 King William II. completely modified this state of things. He established the responsibility of the ministers, and created a Council of State, charged to study the bills proposed. The States-General are always composed of two chambers, but the members of the Upper House are chosen for nine years by the States Provincial; the members of the Lower are elected for four years by qualified electors, and have a salary of £166 with travelling expenses. The States Provincial are elected by the same voters, but the qualifica¬ tion is lowered for the election of Municipal Councils. The free¬ dom of public worship is recognised, with educational liberty and the freedom of the press. But the most serious political questions which agitate the Hague relate almost exclusively to the colonial empire which Holland possesses beyond the seas. The Constitu¬ tion was further revised in 1887. The Swiss Confederation ; the Federal Constitution. —Switzerland, although isolated in her mountains, although guaranteed by her neutrality, has not found Europe indifferent to the changes intro¬ duced into her Constitution, particularly since these changes tended to increase the military power of Switzerland, and to react upon the ideas of the neighbouring populations. A new Constitution was drawn up in 1848 by the Diet of Berne, and remodelled in 1874. The federal legislation is entrusted to two chambers : the National Council, a direct representation of the people in the proportion of one deputy for every 20,000 inhabitants, the deputies being elected for three years; the States Council, representing the cantons, by two deputies for each canton, and one deputy for every half canton. The executive power belongs to a Federal Council, con¬ sisting of seven members, elected by ballot by the two united chambers and renewed every three years, although eligible for re-election. The Federal Council chooses the president and the vice-president of the Confederation from amongst its own mem- GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 443 bers ; they are nominated for one year. There is also a Federal Tribunal to settle disputes in matters of civil law between the Confederation and the cantons, or between two cantons, &c. The cantons retain their special institutions and their autonomy, but this autonomy has been perpetually attacked and diminished since 1848. The partisans and the opponents of the revision of the Constitution have engaged in continual strife in the assemblies and elections, particularly from 1864 to 1866, and in 1871, when the serious question of military centralization arose. As the poli¬ tical and moral conditions of Europe change, Switzerland is affected by the current; the cantonal currencies, customs, and armies have ceased to exist. The central power has charge of the posts and telegraphs, and it exercises supervision of the weights and measures as well as over the manufacture of explosives and weapons. Switzerland is gradually advancing towards unity. The party in favour of revising the Constitution wish that the finances should be centralized as well as the army, that the Federal Council should superintend the construction and working of railways, secure free¬ dom of trade and commerce, intervene in educational questions, placing the superior courses of education under the direction of the federal legislation ; in fact, they wish to create a Swiss nationality. Until now, each canton has been a separate state ; there are no Swiss, every one is either Bernois or Yaudois, from Friburg, St. Gall, Zug, &c. Each canton forbade not only foreigners, but Swiss from other cantons, to settle in its territory. The commune enjoyed the same semi-independence in the canton as the canton in the Confederation, and the cantons made it very difficult for a stranger to enter the ranks of their members ; they formed con¬ federations, anxious to prevent outsiders from sharing the land belonging to them, and not to acquire new burdens by welcoming their neighbours, for every commune has to provide for its own poor. The revisionists also endeavoured to secure to every Swiss the right which has been granted to him by the act of mediation, of removing his domicile from one canton to the other, of plying his trade freely in his new home, and of enjoying all his political 444 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. rights there ; they also wish to pass the law, that marriage legally contracted in one canton should be held legal throughout the country. These reforms are not all accomplished yet, but the centralization of the army has made great progress. Models of every form of government (except that of a monarchy) exist in Switzerland, where the small size of the cantons has enabled democracy to develop under every form. In the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Lucerne, Friburg, Argovia, Basle (town), Schaffhausen, Neuchatel and Tessin, the government is parlia¬ mentary— i.e. the people are governed by their representatives. Councils are chosen in the cantons of Grisons, Berne, Thergovia, Yalais, Basle (country), and Saint Gall, but questions of import¬ ance are laid before popular assemblies ; the people have a share in the legislation. In Uri, the two cantons of Appenzell, Unter- walden, Glarus, Schwyz, and Zug the people rule everything; the citizens meet annually in the open air to appoint their magistrates, settle disputes, vote for the taxes, condemn criminals, and pass new laws. This is quite the primitive, patriarchal form of government, and Zurich, with a population of 284,000 inhabitants, has since 1849 been a perfect model of this triumph of absolute democracy. The people appoints its administrators, chooses its judges, and (with the aid of the Cantonal Council elected by itself) exercises the legislative power. One great difficulty in Switzerland is the shelter given to political refugees. It has lately passed letters for the expulsion of Anar¬ chists and those engaged in plots of political assassination. Denmark. —Denmark, which heroically resisted two great powers in 1864, is still, in spite of the serious diminution of territory and power which then ensued, one of the most vigorous of the secon¬ dary states. The government is both traditional and liberal, and it has been frequently improved since the fundamental law of the 5th of June, 1849, which established, besides the Provincial Assemblies created in 1881, a General Representation. After the unfortunate war of 1864, King Christian IX. continued his internal reforms, and Denmark is now ruled by institutions defined by a law passed on the 28th of July, 1866. The king is irresponsible, GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 445 and there are two chambers (Thing)—the Chamber of Deputies, or of the people (Folksthing), which includes one hundred and two members elected by direct suffrage and renewed every three years ; the Territorial Chamber (Landsthing), numbering sixty-six mem¬ bers, of whom twelve are appointed for life by the king, seven elected by Copenhagen, and forty-five by electors (franchise of two kinds). The meeting of the two chambers forms the Rigsdad, which must not be confused with the Rigsrad, the high court of law. The National Church is Evangelical Lutheran, but every creed enjoys equal freedom. Sweden : Constitution of 1866.—Sweden lost Finland, but gained Norway, in 1815. It is still governed by the dynasty founded by Bernadotte, who was elected heir-apparent in 1810, mounted the throne in 1818 as Carl XIV., and reigned until 1844 ; and although he proved by his conduct how faithfully he had adopted his new country, he retained many French ideas in his relations with his new subjects, although these ideas sometimes created difficulties for him. His son, Oscar I., displayed both wisdom and tact. Instead of thwarting the Norwegians, he granted certain of their demands and conceded the use of a distinctive flag for their commerce and navy, a national cockade. In Sweden he abolished the old trade corpora¬ tions, and endeavoured to establish freedom of commerce and industry. Through these measures Sweden was very little affected by the reaction produced by the European disturbances in 1848. In 1861 King Charles XV. proposed a new communal organiza¬ tion (provincial assemblies resembling French general councils), and paved the way for a legislative reform, adopted on the 7th of December, 1865, and welcomed with transports of joy throughout Sweden. The Diet is now composed of two chambers, equal in power and authority on all points ; it meets without convocation on the 15th of January every year for a four months’ session. The members of the Upper Chamber (a kind of Senate) are elected for nine years by the provincial assemblies ; the members of the Lower Chamber, who are granted a salary of £67 for each session, with travelling expenses, for three years by electors who have a certain qualification. In order to compensate the privileged orders 446 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . for their loss of influence under the new organization, the clergy were granted the right of holding a synod, and the nobility that of a private assembly, both of which meet every four or five years. The laws protect the Swedish Evangelical Church with extreme harshness, but Charles XV., adopting the bills prepared under Oscar I., published the ordinance of 1860, which secures more liberty to those who wished to leave the official Church, but retained the penalties of a fine, prison, or exile for any one endeavouring to propagate other doctrines. These penalties were considerably softened in 1869, and that of exile was remitted. Norway has been represented by the annual Storthings since 1871. The Kingdom of Italy (1861).—The Kingdom of Italy, created in 1861, is governed by the statute which the King of Piedmont intro¬ duced into his own small state in 1849, and which was Extended to the other provinces as they were annexed to it. This statute re¬ produces the most important articles contained in the French Charter of 1830. The king governs with the assistance of the two chambers, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies ; the latter is elected by a restricted suffrage of qualified electors. But provincial life is far from stifled, and the introduction of uniform institutions has been most carefully managed and restricted. Political life has always been concentrated in the municipalities; the country which in antiquity created the first model of municipal administration, and which throughout the Middle Ages retained this great source of both life and dissensions, jealously guards this primordial liberty, the best and most useful school for nations which have yet to learn how to maintain general freedom. But in Italy the nobility has always shown itself in favour of progress, and has always been found at the head of the liberal movement. The Italian revolution led to a similar change to that produced in France after 1789, which has spread over the greater part of Europe : the State has suppressed (by the law passed July, 1866) most of the religious orders, but it granted life annuities to the existing members of them ; it united the estates of the corporations and bishoprics to the royal domain, and these estates (by a law passed in 1867) were successively sold and converted into revenue. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 447 It would take too long to study this new State in all the details of its organization ; the army and navy are far in excess of the actual requirements of the country, and are a heavy burden on the revenue. The annual deficit is great; and the relations between the Government of Italy and the Pope, and consequently the clergy, are in a constant state of irritation. Public works are carried on with great activity, for the Italians were our teachers in the art of engineering ; commerce has developed with the increase of railways, through the opening of the Suez Canal, which brings Italy into closer contact with India, and above all through the St. Gothard Tunnel. The Holy See. —The formation of Italian unity led to the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes. The new king¬ dom endeavoured to respect the independence of the spiritual power by leaving to the Holy See a quasi-sovereignty in that part of Rome which has been left to it, and by facilitating its relations with the other powers by laws passed expressly for the purpose. But until now the Holy See has refused to profit by the pecuniary advantages secured to it. The Pope has never ceased to protest against the spoliation of the Holy See, and he remains a voluntary prisoner in the Vatican, retaining the prerogative of a sovereign, receiving the ambassadors of foreign states, and exercising through¬ out the Roman Catholic world very great, though purely moral, influence. The reconciliation of Italy’s interests with those of the head of the Catholic religion is another of the problems which the contemporary epoch has yet to solve. Constitutional Austria (1860—1867); the Austrian and Hun¬ garian Parliaments. —The Austrian Monarchy, which, under the guidance of Prince Metternich, had been the bulwark of ancient ideas after 1815, has at last yielded to modern influences like other countries. After the Italian War in 1860, the Emperor Francis Joseph II. made some advance in the direction of constitutional reform, and established a parliament in Vienna in 1861. After the war in 1866 had forced him to accept the preponderance of the Hohenzollerns in Germany, the heir to the Habsburgs determined to consolidate his monarchy by uniting it to Hungary. In 1867 he was crowned at Buda-Pesth with all the ancient ceremonial dear to 44S THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the Hungarians. The Empire then found itself composed of two distinct parts, and it became the Austria-Hungarian Monarchy. Emperor at Vienna and king at Buda-Pesth, Francis Joseph has two parliaments, one Austrian and one Hungarian ; two cabinets, two budgets, besides one united parliament and an united cabinet, which transacts all business that interests the two parts of the States, only separated by the small river of the Leitha.* The other States and Provinces of Austria are far from forming a com¬ plete nation. There is a constant jealousy between the Czech, Slav, Magyar, and German population, which threatens the stability of the Empire. Constitutional Pule in Prussia (1S50—1857).—The revolution of 1848 profoundly agitated Prussia, and King Frederick William IV. conceded some important reforms. The Prussian Constitution decreed, by a statute, on the 31st January, 1850, was modified several times before 1857. It established two chambers, the House of Lords, composed of hereditary members belonging to the higher nobility, and members appointed for life ; the Chamber of Deputies, composed of 433 members elected by the whole nation, and a franchise of two kinds. But, following the counsels given by Bismarck, King William I. unhesitatingly dispensed with the assistance of the Chambers in modifying the military organization of the country and preparing the army for the great conflicts he was contemplating. The Government was constitutional in theory, absolute in fact. The striking victories won by the Prussian troops justified the king in the eyes of the nation, and patriotism silenced freedom, as it had done in France under Napoleon. It must not be forgotten that the nobility still retains the first place in the Prussian State, which, with regard to its social organization, preserves the appearance of the feudal era. The nobles form a class of warriors devoting itself to the army and * The parliament at Vienna is composed of the House of Lords (princes, nobles, bishops, and life members), and the House of Representatives, elected by direct Iranchise from the ranks of the electors (great landowners, cities, commerce, rural districts]. The Hungarian Parliament includes 1st, The Table of Magnates (princes, magnates, apd bishops, palatines, counts, and barons j; 2nd, the Table of Deputies of the counties, districts, cities. See. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES . 449 filling nearly all the grades of officers. These positions are only attained by assiduous work and are only won by merit, but the nobles are aware of this, and they all exert themselves with great energy in the pursuit of their military studies. The nobility thus rules the army. It has also a virtual mono¬ poly of the diplomatic service, of the central departmental admi¬ nistration, and of the superior offices in the tribunals. It has also an hereditary jurisdiction, the superintendence of the country police, the patronage of Church livings, and it claims rights which are based on the feudal laws. The Prussian State is aristocratic and military, but still more bureaucratic : the State interferes in the smallest detail of civil, almost of domestic life. The Imperial Parliament of Germany (1871).—In spite of his personal distaste for constitutional theories, the King of Prussia in 1871 formed the new German Empire with a representative constitution. The Empire has a legislative power. It has a Bundesrath or federal council, composed of representatives of the princely vassals of the empire, then the Reichstag, the diet of the empire, composed of deputies elected by universal suffrage and ballot (1 deputy for every 100,000 inhabitants, for three years). In the federal Council Prussia possesses 17 votes out of 59, and it requires very little pressure put upon the smaller States to paralyse the opposi¬ tion which might be encountered from Bavaria and Wurtemberg. The Bundesrath must give its consent before war can be declared in the name of the Empire, unless there should be a sudden inva¬ sion of German territory. The Emperor must convoke it, whenever one-third of its members, or rather their votes (for one person can represent many votes), demand a meeting.* The foreign policy is directed by the Chancellor of the Empire. * The German Empire includes: 1st, the Kingdom of Prussia, of which the sovereign is the Emperor, the head of the Confederation ; 2nd, the Kingdoms of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony; 3rd, the Grand Duchies of Baden, Hesse, Saxe-"Weimar Eisenach, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenbvra:- Strelitz, and Oldenburg; the Duchies of Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg- Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen Brunswick, and Anhalt; the principalities of the two Schwarzburg, the two Reuss, Lippe, Waldeck, and Schaumburg Lippe; the G G 450 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. General supervision is exercised by the Home Office of the Empire, to which are joined an Imperial Educational Commission, a Naval Commission, a Court of Discipline, and some Imperial Chambers of Discipline. The offices of the Imperial Admiralty and a Law Court are placed in Berlin, but the Tribunal of the Empire is at Leipzig. Lastly, the Empire has its Treasury, its Bail way Administration, its Court of Accounts (Potsdam), its Post Office and Bank (Berlin). The Military Power of the German Empire .—The German Empire includes more than forty-six millions of men, and its rulers have devoted themselves to perfecting the army, that formidable instru¬ ment of aggression. Having provoked the other powers to increase their armaments, it has been forced to augment its own. The Empire now possesses a permanent army of over four hundred thousand men. The twelve years’ service exacted from all Germans (seven in active service and the reserve, and five in the landwehr) enables it to place 1,456,677 men, 312,732 horses, and 2,080 cannons upon a war footing without including the Land- sturm or the special services. This formidable organization is a source of danger to all the neighbouring powers, and it forces them to augment their military expenses and to impose crushing sacrifices on their peoples. Russia, the Emancipation of the Serfs (1861).—Only Russia and Turkey have remained uninfluenced by the modern changes in other governments. But Turkey no longer counts in Europe, and Russia was obliged to complete her social reformation before she could undertake political reforms. Alexander II. first applied himself to obliterating the disasters of the Crimean War by encouraging the development of the internal prosperity of Russia, and he rendered his reign illustrious by the emancipation of the serfs. During several years this peaceful and beneficent revolution had been carefully prepared, and its accom¬ plishment, not altogether free from difficulties, was chiefly due to the energetic influence of the enlightened Emperor. The decree towns of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck; and, lastly, the conquered provinces, Alsace and Lorraine. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES. 45i was promulgated on the 19th February (8rd of March by our calendar), 1861. The upper classes hoped for some concessions of political liber¬ ties in return : they were disappointed, for the Czar restricted himself to a series of ukases from 1852 to 1865, which introduced some Western improvements into the judicial organization by securing the publicity of trials, the intervention of a jury in criminal cases, and the regularity of appeal. Corporal punishment was abolished in the army, but is still retained in the tribunals of the peasantry and savagely abused in the prisons and in Siberia. The periodical press, at least in St. Petersburg and Moscow, was allowed a semblance of liberty and developed rapidly. Yet the Czar’s Government has found itself confronted by grave internal difficulties, chiefly arising from the conspiracies and murderous attempts organized by a party which styles itself revo¬ lutionary, democratic, socialistic, but is really Nihilist, because its sole aim is the destruction of the existing social system. An immense number of the middle classes have joined it, and it has produced serious troubles, culminating in the murder of the Em peror Alexander II. (13th March 1881). The country is thus in a state of fermentation, where order still opposes itself to liberty.* But Russia hasgreatly extended her territories in Asia and the East. The Caucasian and Caspian Provinces are now a source of wealth, and she is yearly advancing more and more to the complete conquest and development of Central Asia. Territory of the Principal States; Population .—In order to appreciate the position of the various European States, we must also consider the elements of power at the command of their governments. Russia, although in arrear with regard to modern institutions, possesses an immense area and the largest population. The German Empire ranks next, then Austria-Hungary, France in * Russian Sovereigns: Alexander I. (1S01—1825); Nicholas I. 1825— 1855) ; Alexander II. (1855—1881) ; Alexander III. (1881). The Czar governs with the aid of an Imperial Council and a Senate, which, divided into departments, promulgates and registers the laws, ukases, &c. ; confers titles of nobility, is the final court of appeal for political crimes, revises the judgments given by the provincial tribunals, &c. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the fourth rank, then follow Great Britain, Italy, Spain, without counting the secondary powers.* But if, instead of the mere numbers of the various populations, w T e consider their density, i.e. their relative proportions to the extent of territory they occupy, we find the position completely reversed : small countries take the first rank, like Belgium, with 520 inhabitants to the square mile ; then Holland, with 352 ; Great Britain and Ireland, 310; Italy, 264: Germany, 221; France, 187; Switzerland, 186; Austria-Hungary, 167; Denmark, 140; Portugal, 131 ; Spain, 90; and Prussia, 42 only. We must add that the population of Russia is rapidly increasing; in a few years the proportion will change to its advantage. In Germany and England the increase is still more rapid in spite of emigration. On the other hand, the population of France increases with ominous slowness. It is calculated that in Germany the number of the population will have doubled in 66 years, whilst it will take 224 years for France. And this is a serious point for the latter ; the number of the population is not the only source of strength in a nation, we must also remember the characteristics of the race ; still no one can forget that at the present time numbers constitute the chief military strength of a people. Military Power. —Russia can place the greatest number of men in the field. France has made an immense effort, since the law of 1872, which rendered military service compulsory, and prolonged * Russia in Europe: area 2j million square miles, including the conquests made between the Black and Caspian Seas; population 88,976,812, in all 109,000,000, including colonies. German Empire : area, 211,000 square miles, population, 40,000,000. Austria-Hungary: area, 240,000 square miles; population, 40,000,000. Fiance: area, 203,000 square miles; population, 38,000,000. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: area, 120,495 square miles; population, 35,000,000, including colonies, 307,000,000. Italy : area, 113,000 square miles, including the islands ; population, 28,000,000. Spain, area, 179,000 square miles ; population, 17,000,000. Portugal: area, 37,000 square miles ; population, 4,000,000. Belgium: area, 11,400 squaie miles; population, 5,000,000. Holland: area, 13,600 square miles ; popula¬ tion, 4,000,000. Switzerland: area, 16,000 square miles; population 3,000,000. Sweden and Norway: area, 293,000 square miles; population 6,300,000. Denmark : area, 14,000 square miles ; populaiif n, 2,000,000. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES . 453 it until the age of forty. In case of war it can place 1,500,000 men in the field. Germany can do the same, and has also carried the art of methodical organization of the various arms employed to a rare state of perfection. Since the passing of recent laws the Austria-Hungarian army is equally effective. Italy has extended its military organization to its utmost limit. England itself, in spite of its girdle of fleets, has endeavoured to place the army on the same level and can dispose of about 600,000 men.* Can any one imagine the result of an encounter between all these millions of men, provided with the newest, most perfect fire¬ arms, carrying considerable distances and multiplying their shots without cessation, with cannons that throw their projectiles over many miles, and can effect a breach in a wall at a range of more than two miles ? These armies have also the assistance of electric tele¬ graphy, of optical telegraphy, and of railways that enable numbers of men to be accumulated at one point, and of all the appliances of ad¬ vancing science. Modern war is an experiment with unknown forces. Is this then the end of our civilization ? Have men laboured so hard only to invent new methods of killing each other, displayed so much intelligence only to return to a scientific barbarism that is more formidable than primitive barbarism itself? We must hope not, but that all these armaments will equalise and neutralise one another. By advancing the science of war, by forcing whole nations to arm themselves, it will be realised at last that such extremities cannot be resorted to for the gratification of vain ambitions, and that these organizations should be used solely for the defence of national territory and national honour. Meanwhile the cost of the armaments themselves is producing calamities only less disastrous than those of actual war. * Itussia has 2,151,000 men on a war footing, which could be much more than doubled in time of need. France, 1,567,000 men. Germany, 1,456,677, independent of reserves. Austiia-Hangary, 1,039,536 (number augmented by the new organization of the reserve). Italy, 1,080,000 men, besides a territorial militia of 1,021,000 men. Great Britain has a regular army of 199,273 men, besides the yeomanry and militia 151,798, the volunteers 246,180 and lastly, the Indian impeiial native army of 127,000 men, and that of the feudatory or independent states, 350,000. 454 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Naval Power .—On sea as on land the infernal art of destruction has attained such results that no one can now form a just estimate of the naval power of European nations. England is always at the head, with 75 ironclads, protected by immense iron plates, for we may say that man has succeeded in making iron float; in all, the United Kingdom possesses 360 steamships, as well as a number of sailing vessels. Ignoring other vessels (such as cruisers, trans¬ port-ships, despatch-boats, gunboats, and torpedo-boats), and only reckoning the new armour-plated vessels, we find France next with 59 ironclads ; Russia with 31 ; Holland with 23 ; Italy with 21 : Germany with 27 ; and Spain with 7. And now these iron mon¬ sters are threatened by torpedoes—light, almost invisible, costing only a few pounds, whilst the ironclads are worth thousands. The introduction of this new weapon may transform the art of naval warfare as completely as the use of steam, and it will be difficult to predict what the relative power of each nation will be if the tor¬ pedoes succeed in blowing up the floating citadels which human genius now contemplates as its most terrible creation. Financial Power .—These unsolved conditions of modern warfare, both on land and sea, weigh heavily on the budgets of European nations. The first place belongs to the nation which can support the largest armaments. In this respect England, which has not been exposed to any invasion for many centuries, and which by its commerce attracts the money of the whole universe, is certainly the greatest financial power. No one can state the exact figures, for no one can measure this power by the budget, which is smaller than that of France by 1 milliard (2^ milliards against 3^ milliards). England supports the weight of a debt of nearly £600,000,000 without flinching, and its credit is perhaps the highest in Europe. France, in spite of the crises through which it has passed, has given startling proofs of its resources. It also bears a heavy debt of over £1,000,000,000, and faces a budget of £120,000,000, whilst its credit is firmly based and universal. On May 10th, 1866, when a loan of £20,000,000 was required (and met twenty-one times), the 247,000 subscribers supplied the sum of 80 millions as deposit money, in a single day. GOVERNMENTS AND MODERN LIBERTIES . 455 The Empire of Germany, in spite of the immense ransom exacted from France in 1871, is far from possessing the same resources; it has, however, a budget of over 61 millions. Austria-Hungary pays one of 80 millions ; Italy of 61 millions. In Russia the wealth is unequal to the area and population, and its budget only amounts to 90 millions. If these figures give some idea of the financial power which the European nations have attained, they inspire quite as much sad¬ ness as pride, for the greater part of these immense sums is destined to maintain the rival armaments. Europe, as we shall presently see, is enriched by commerce, but is ruining itself by military expenses. Political Europe at the Present Time .—Remarkable financial elasticity, extraordinary development of naval architecture and mili¬ tary strength, considerable increase of the population, and at the same time real and universal progress in political liberty, these are the results of the work accomplished in Europe since the com¬ mencement of the century. Although Russia still possesses a government which recalls the old rhjime, and feudalism is still visible in the caste formed by the German nobility, though the English plutocracy is striving to defend its position, yet all these countries feel the force of modern ideas. Russia has emancipated the serfs ; Spain, Germany, Austria have entered constitutional paths. Although Poland is still in servitude, Greece, Roumania, Servia and Bulgaria have freed themselves from the Turkish yoke, leaving the Turks scarcely a footing in Europe. Italy is united and free, and Belgium has become a prosperous kingdom. In the north, as in the south, classes have drawn nearer to each other, governments have improved : the press, more or less free, more or less daring, ren¬ ders a return to the old system of oppression almost impossible; orators speak, ministers rise or fall according to the expression of public opinion. In France, Switzerland, Belgium, England, and even in Spain, democracy has made great progress. Europe of the present day is scarcely recognisable when compared with Europe in the last century. So complete a transformation was never before accomplished in so short a timo. Political progress 45 ^ THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. has followed the impetus given by the discovery of steam power, which has worked a revolution in industry and commerce ; but this rapid advance is also due to the mental activity which has suddenly quickened into practical observation and application of the secrets of nature, and has consequently produced more wonderful results than in any of the preceding ages. There is a great deal in the political situation that awakens anxiety and gives food for reflec¬ tion, social discontent keeps pace with political freedom, but the dangers that are to be dreaded may probably be averted by the rapid movement of intellectual and economic progress. Peace and freedom must benefit by the diffusion of science and comfort. Reason will at last triumph over unworthy ambitions as it has already triumphed over tyranny. As tyranny has given way to liberty, as asistocracy has given way to democracy, so plutocracy, the tyranny of the capitalist over the labourer, must give way soon or late to a more equal distribution of wealth; and to more equal opportunities of development for both men and women. CHAPTER XVIII. LITERATURE AND ART IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Summary : Renovation of Literature ; Revival of Religious and Poetic Feeling; Chateaubriand—Madame de Stael—The Literary Movement under the Restoration ; Influence of Foreign Literatures—Lyrical Poetry ; Lamartine (1790—1869)—Victor Hugo (1802—1885)—Dispute between the Classics and Romanticism—Victor Hugo and the Drama— Victor Hugo’s last Works—Casimir Delavigne ; B* ranger—Poetry since 1830; Alfred de Musset (1810—1857)—The Theatre since 1830—Novels —The Historical Movement ; Augustin Thierry ; Guizot—Thiers— Mignet, Michelet — Erudition, learned Societies — The Philosophical Movement; Royer-Collard ; Cousin ; the various Schools—The Religious Movement—Political Economy—Parliamentary Eloquence—The Press —Literary Criticism—English Literature ; Poetry ; the Lake School— Byron, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne—Walter Scott—The Historical Novel—Charles Dickens—History and Philosophy—Mac¬ aulay—German Literature—Italian Literature—Art : David and his School — Gros ; Gerard — The Classics and the Romantics; Ingres: Idealism—Gericault—Eugene Delacroix—Paul Delaroclie ; Ary Scheffer —Artists since 1830 ; Horace Vernet—Meissonier—Hippolyte Flandrin ; Cabanel—Painting in Germany, England, Belgium, &c.—Sculpture— Architecture—Music, the Classical School—The Great Operas: Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Auber, &c.—Comic Operas; Bo'ieldieu, Adam, Auber, Herold, &c. Renovation of Literature; Revival of Religious and Poetic Feeling; Chateaubriand. —A new world arose in the nineteenth century. This Society, born in the midst of pain and terror, violently torn from the traditions of the past, uncertain of its future, timid yet confident, proud of the independence of its reason, yet ashamed of its perpetual doubts, enjoying its liberty, yet troubled by the unsatisfied need of its soul, required a literature that would both express its uneasiness and strengthen its hopes. A number of young men left the schools, eager for movement, thirsting for a creed, anxious for scientific progress; they strove to understand the world which 458 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. they were entering, and searched for an explanation in the records of history. In France this movement is the expression of our century. Disturbed by the agitation produced in men’s souls by the shocks of the Revolution, the younger men threw themselves into the study of philosophy, which, freed from all trammels, attempted to solve every problem. The vague desires, the secret anxieties of the soul, the necessity of leading men back to the eternal truths, excited the poets. Inspiration springing from the heart burst in its upward flight the fetters of a literature previously enchained by close imitation. Poetry was regenerated as well as philosophy and history, and thus a literary revival issued from a social renovation. Two distinct schools were distinguished from the commencement of the century, but they were not really separate until the Restora¬ tion. The classical school could not admit anything but an imitation of Racine, Corneille, and Voltaire. It included the fashionable authors, who delighted the salons ; but a new school founded itself upon Bernardin de St. Pierre and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and aimed at regenerating literature by studying and copying nature. Chateaubriand (1768—1848), who had travelled in America during the Revolution, had been deeply impressed by that magni¬ ficent country, at that time scarcely cleared, where the luxuriance of vegetation, and the immensity of the forests charmed his dreamy, melancholy nature ; to these travels we owe the delicious novel of “ Atala,” which attracts us by the novelty of its images, the deli¬ cacy of its sentiments, and the strange colouring of its language. The confusion produced by the Revolution, the denial of the ancient creeds, the spiritual anxiety which he found in Europe, incited him to respond to this anxiety, and to combat this denial by a book, the “ Genie du Cliristianisme,” in which he eloquently de¬ monstrates that the Christian religion is the most poetical of creeds, the most favourable to literary and artistic inspiration. This apo- logy, published at the same time as the Concordat, won for him the favour of the First Consul, but before long Chateaubriand found himself in opposition to the Emperor, and left France to travel about the world, observing, studying, and writing, first his ( NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 459 “ Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem,” which touched on every sou-' venir of Pagan and Christian antiquity, and then his touching “ Les Martyrs.” We no longer admire the sonorous, inflated style used by Chateaubriand, the creations of his imagination, the sound of his words; but he understood the mysterious beauties of nature, and awakens our sympathy by his marvellous study of the emotions. The gentle figure of Atala, the sensitive naivete of Chactas, Rene’s gloomy reveries, Eudore’s courage, and Cymodocee's devotion win our admiration as much as the glowing descriptions of the forests of America and Gaul, the landscapes of Greece, the battles of the Franks, or the grand scenes in the Coli¬ seum. Chateaubriand was a direct disciple of Rousseau. He has the same sentimental selfishness, the same morbid vanity, a style which cloys in its pompous affectation ; but he exercised immense in¬ fluence over the literary, and still more over the religious, world of his day. Madame de Stael.— Madame de Stael (1766—1817), a daughter of Necker, who by her liberal ideas drew Napoleon’s enmity upon herself, opened a new field to criticism by her writings on litera¬ ture, but she won a rank amongst higher writers by her two novels, “ Delphine ” and “ Corinne ” (1807), the latter chiefly inspired by the enchanting sky of Italy, and animated by warm love of nature, of antiquity and art. J. De Maistre, the chief of the Ultramontane School, author of “ Le Pape,” should be noticed among the writers of this period. TIlc Literary Movement under the Restoration; the Influence of Foreign Literature. —The rising generation hurried eagerly along the new path opened by Chateaubriand, and a powerful impetus was given in the same direction by the great German poets, Goethe and Schiller. The freedom of their conceptions, the fire and passion of their dramas, their elevation of thought, their bold flights of imagination, made these two poets the teachers of the age. Historical information, admiration of the Middle Ages, and love of nature, which characterize the works of these great poets, are also found in French poetry during the nineteenth century, as well as in the works of Sir Walter Scott, of the Lake poets, of 460 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Byron, of Shelley, of Keats, and other English poets of the century. Schiller, Goethe, and Byron assisted in destroying old prejudices in France, and prepared the cultivated public for the literary revival which took place soon afterwards. This remarkable revival occurred under the Restoration, that is, at the moment when society was gradually settling down, after the great reverses of the Revolution, but before these reverses had been obliterated by time. It is generally so after a storm ; the brilliant reign of Louis XIV. developed only after the Fronde. The literary movement, which is the glory of the nineteenth century, is still more important than that of the seventeenth. Not that it has produced more works deserving the rank of classics, but it has produced finished works of art, and it has also diffused a great number of new ideas. Poets, historians, philosophers, orators, critics, are all brilliant, and the world was astonished at the fecundity of the French people, which at a moment when it appeared exhausted, produced men of the most varied genius, besides a number of talented writers whom we have not space even to enumerate. Lyrical Poetry: Lamartine (1790—1869).—A modest collection of verses, entiled “ Meditations Poetiques,” was published in 1820. Keen appreciation of nature, eloquence, and the beauties of some of the elegies, sparkling imagery, purity, harmony of language rarely to be found now : these qualities revealed in France a great lyric poet, Alphonse de Lamartine, who was then thirty years of age. His education, commenced at home, was continued in Italy and in Rome. He read Italian, English, and German, and was much influenced by the study of Ossian. From this source the poet im¬ bibed the love of vagueness, which has spoilt some of his finest poems. Lamartine returned to his beloved Italy as a diplomatist, and whilst there wrote a new volume of “ Meditations ” (1823). Byron’s influence showed itself in “ Le Dernier Chant de Childe- Harold.” In 1829 Lamartine published “ Les Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses, full a of Christian inspiration and plaintive reverie. After the Restoration he published only one poem, “Jocelyn,” which, in spite of its many beauties, can scarcely be reckoned NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 461 among the classics. His historical work brought him into political notice, and for a moment he was at the head of the Revolution of 1848. His last years, like those of Sir Walter Scott, were a struggle with pecuniary difficulties, nobly borne. Victor Hugo (1802—1885).—Victor Hugo, born in 1802, was the son of an officer in the French army, and as a young child had accompanied his father in his marches over Europe ; he afterwards lived quietly with his mother in the old convent of the Feuillantines at Paris. At ten years old he wrote poetry, at fifteen he offered some poems to the Academy, at twenty he published his first collection, the “ Odeset Ballades” (1822). The “ Odeset Ballades ” (1826) showed that a more powerful poet, and one of far greater originality than Lamartine, had arisen to dispute his place. The thoughts were bolder, the colour more brilliant, the imagination of far wider range, than was to be found in the works of his great contemporary. In 1828 Victor Hugo published a new collection, the “ Orientales,” which is full of Eastern brilliancy, and after the Restoration he wrote the “ Feuilles d’Automne ” (1881) and the “ Chants du Crepuscule ” (1885). Dispute between the Classicalism and Bomcinticism; Victor Hugo and the Drama. —The new poems were warmly defended against the criticism of the imitators who belonged to the eighteenth cen¬ tury. In former times the literary world had been divided between the Ancients and Moderns ; now it was divided between the Clas¬ sicists and Romanticists. The former were certainly right to uphold the glory of the immortal writers of the Louis XIV. century, but the latter were laying down the principle of progress when they asserted the right of every mind to dispense with the use of arbitary rules. Victor Hugo wrote the manifesto of his party in his preface to “ Cromwell ” (1827). He rejected classical tragedy, and recognised only the drama ; that is to say a complicated plot, freed from all rule, which unfolded itself without any conditions save those of growing interest and a moral basis. An attempt was made to introduce Shakespeare’s plays into France. Count Alfred de Vigny (1799— 1863)—already known by his poems and by the historical novel, 462 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. “Cinq Mars”—gave a translation of “Othello” to the Theatre Franeais. Ent the public taste, through false ideas of dramatic art, was unable to appreciate the matchless powers of Shake¬ speare. Nevertheless Victor Hugo continued to write in the Romantic manner. The performances of “ Hernani ” (1830) became absolute conflicts, which did not always end in favour of the innovators ; but time was their ally, and the poet added to these brilliant dramas, “ Le Roi s’amuse ” (1832), “ Lucrece Borgia ” (1833), “ Marie Tudor ” (1833), “Marion Delorme ” (1831), “ Ruy Bias ” (1838), “ Les Burgraves ” (1843). The later Works of Victor Hugo. —So prolific a genius had never appeared before in France. His great prose romances, like “ Notre- Dame de Paris” (1831), his later prose epics in a more modern style, as “ Les Miserables,” “ Les Travailleurs de la Mer ” (1866), and others, had a vogue equal to that of his poems and his dramas, yet, like Lamartine, Victor Hugo brought poetry into politics, and became one of the most vehement orators of the Chamber of Peers and of the Legislative Assembly. But he was no politician. His name is associated with no practical measure. He was exiled under the second Empire, and in his solitude in Jersey he returned to poetry, and published the great poems of the “ Legende des Siecles ” and the “ Contemplations,” where he loses himself in the glow of inspira¬ tion. Those terrible satires, “Les Chatiments,” show the poet supreme in another branch of poetry, the province of a Juvenal; while “Religions et Religion” (1880), “ Le Pape” (1878), “ Tor- quemada” (1882), etc., show the poet as a lofty, if somewhat vague, religious thinker. No poet ever exercised more influence or enjoyed more popu¬ larity. At his death in 1885, after an old age surrounded by homage of every description, the whole of France hastened to his funeral, which resembled an apotheosis, and the Arc de Triomphe, which in his youth he had praised as the symbol of French military glory, was transformed into a mortuary chapel worthy of his great genius. Casimir Delavigne; Beranger. —Two other poets were also, under the Restoration, inspired by memories of the Empire and by liberal NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 463 ideas—Casimir Delavigne* and Beranger.f The “ Messeniennes,” published in 1818, recalled the sorrows of the invasion, but as a rule the works of Casimir Delavigne are deficient in true poetry ; they are too studied, although a few of his historical tragedies have survived. Beranger’s songs have something of the power and vigour of those of Burns, but are deficient in moral purpose. He was a printer and clerk, and completed his education alone. Whilst his wit and biting epigrams won great popularity amongst the classes that opposed the Bourbons, they also brought him into trouble with the latter. Echoing the grievances of the people, he expressed them with truly Gallic irony; at other times, changing his tone, he aroused the feeling of patriotism in the hearts of his readers. Poetry since 1830 ; Alfred de Musset (1810—1857).—Alfred de Musset ranks after Victor Hugo and above Lamartine. His life was shorter and his work inconsiderable in quantity. Like Byron writing in the couplet of Pope, he joined the liberty and capricious¬ ness of the romantics to the pure form of the classics, strength to grace, wit to imagination, archness to inspiration. His short poems are exquisite, when they are not marred by the free life which proved fatal to this great genius, who promised to unite the charm of both Ptacine and Corneille. Alfred de Musset excelled in prose as well as in verse, and the Theatre Franqais still retains in its repertoire a number of his bright, witty, lively comedies, written in the purest French. It is impossible for us to enumerate all the poets who have dis¬ tinguished themselves contemporaneously with and after those we have been alluding to. Henri Murger, Hegesippe Moreau, Hous- saye, Banville, and many others deserve to be mentioned. Theo- phile Gautier was exquisite in prose as in verse (1811—72); while Jasmin, a Gascon (1798—1864), and Mistral, a Provencal still living, have shown that the older dialects of France can still produce true poetry. Leconte de Lisle (born 1818), Sully Prudhomme (born 1839), Francois Coppee (born 1842), may be named among a host of distinguished French poets of our own time. * Casimir Delavigne, bom at Havre (1795—1843). f B^ranger (1780—1857). 464 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The Theatre since 1830.—Dramas in prose gradually replaced tragedies in verse, and Alexandre Dumas* the elder almost trans¬ ferred history to the stage, just as he had transferred it to his novels. But tragedy retained its rank ; the classics have never been more appreciated or better interpreted than by the great tragedian Talma, under the Empire and the Restoration. He was followed after 1830 by the famous Rachel, and both of them excited the enthusi¬ asm of the public by them personification of Corneille’s and Racine’s heroes and heroines. Ponsardf, encouraged by the public taste, made a few successful attempts at tragedy (“Lucrece,” 1843,) and dramas (“Charlotte Corday”), but he succeeded better in a comedy in verse (“ L’Honneur et l’argent,” 1853). And, in truth, comedy is most suited to our practical century. Eugene Scribe]: has rendered it most interesting by his inexhaustible invention of amusing plots and effective situations. Emile Augier,§ although a poet, has written several of his plaj's in easy prose. He is a painter of character. Octave Feuillet|| was an imaginative and delicate prose writer. Alex¬ andre Dumas the youngerll has added new lustre to an already glorious name. He is one of the boldest and most prolific dramatic authors, and has often made his plays the vehicle for discussing the social questions of the day, without diminishing their interest and emotion. Victorien Sardou ** excels in witty comedy and the drama. We must also add the names of Ernest Legouve,ff equally remarkable as critic and writer of the purest French prose; and Ludovic Halevy,]] among many others. Novels .—But the nineteenth century has been chiefly remark¬ able for the production of a new class of literature, which,, although not unknown to the Greeks, and to former ages, never before even aimed at the place in literature which it has assumed in the nineteenth century, a form of fiction which history, philo¬ sophy, art, satire, and the sciences, all aid and adorn. This is * Alexandre DuiUas the elder (1803—1870). t Ponsard (1814—1867). % Eugene Scribe (1791—1861). § Emile Augier, bom in 1820. f| Octave Feuillet, 1812—1890. H Alexandre Dumas the younger, bom 1824. ** Victorien Sardou, born 1831. ft Ernest Legouve, bom 1807. Ludovic Halevy, born 1834. NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 465 the novel, which, through its imaginative creations, often presents a faithful picture of the time. Its practical influence is probably wider than that of any other form of literature; it exercises a deep social influence, healthy or injurious, as authors seek simply to amuse or instruct, or to excite unhealthy passions. At the commencement of the century Xavier de Maistre.* brother of the religious writer, charmed Europe with brief novel¬ ettes, full of sentiment and grace. Alexandre Dumas the elder, the most prolific and popular of French novelists, has chiefly endeavoured to revive historical romance ; he has certainly made free use of his imagination, but his novels, full of colour and interest, are irresistibly attractive through his vivacity of style and dialogue, though a little spoilt by pro¬ lixity. He is the greatest creator of circumstances in French literature. George Sand,f a woman of real genius, almost, if not altogether, the first of all female novelists, concentrated her efforts upon scenes of domestic and personal interest, too often powerfully depicting her own early life with its storms and fierce passions. Her pastorals, like “La Mare au diable,” “ La Petite Fadette,” &c., are among her most perfect works. Honore de Balzac, J the greatest novelist in France in our century, reproduced in his novels, with inimitable truth and insight, the French of the Bour¬ geois reign of Louis Philippe ; as a student of real life and character he remains unsurpassed, the most powerful novelist of his time. Flaubert § carried the analysis of character farther even than Balzac, and is the brilliant link between his writings and the realistic school of Zola ; Prosper Merimee was a master of the short story or eonte ; Alphonse Daudet || has great popularity with the general reader as well as with the critics ; these writers have raised novel writing into the domain of art. The works of Edmond About,H are full of wit, while his style recalls that of Voltaire. Cherbuliez, E. and J. de Goncourt deserve notice. We cannot find * Xavier de Maistre (1763—1852). “Voyage autour de ma chambre,” “ Lea Prisonniers du Cauease.” t Aurore Dudevant (1804—1876). J Honore de Balzac (1799—1850). § Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880). || Alphonse Daudet, born in 1840. If Edmond Abuut (1828—1884). H II 466 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. space to refer to the chief contemporary novelists, but must name De Maupassant and Bourget, two of the ablest of the younger men. The Historical Movement: Augustin Thierry. —A brilliant re¬ vival of historical study is one of the least-disputed glories of the Restoration. Augustin Thierry (1795—1856), with his brother Amedee, was the earliest of the school of what may be called the picturesque historians. Guizot. —Guizot (1787—1874) was an historian of greater depth. A statesman and practical politician, history was to him no mere matter of books and records, but a school of politics and state-craft. The “ Essay on the History of France,” “ History of Civilization in Europe,” and that of “Civilization in France,” are of lasting value. His works on the Revolution in England have been superseded only by the recent labours of Carlyle, Gardiner, and the German historians. Thiers , Mignet , Michelet. —Adolphe Thiers (1797—1877), greater, perhaps, in practical politics than his rival, Guizot, is far less trust¬ worthy as an historian ; but for a time his “ Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire ” enjoyed greater popularity. He was the reviver of the Napoleonic legend, which the irony of events forced him to oppose in later life. Mignet (1796—1884), a friend of Thiers, restricted himself to questions of the Middle Ages and modern history, but he was a reliable investigator and critic. History inspired so many authors that we cannot enumerate all the names here. Michelet ,* Amedee Thierry,! de Barante,! the historian of Burgundy, Edgar Quinet,§ the companion of Michelet, Louis Blanc, the revolutionary historian of the reign of Louis Philippe and of 1848, Henri Martin,|| who compiled the most popular general History of France, Victor Duruy,H who has written a masterly History of the Romans, and an equally valuable History of the Greeks, Fustel de Coulanges, etc. * Michelet (1798—1874). Besides his “ Histoire de France,” and his too-enthnsiastic “ Histoire de la Revolution,” Michelet wrote some charming works of descriptive fancy : “ L’oiseau,” “ L'insect,” “La Mer.” t Amedee Thierry, brother to Augustin (1797—1873). X De Barante (1782—1866). § Edgar Quinet (1803—1875). || Henri Martin (1810—1883). If Victor Duruy, horn 1811. NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 467 Erudition: Learned Societies .—History has greatly enlarged its sphere by availing itself of the immense resources placed at its disposal by archaeology and palaeography. Egyptian antiquities have been admirably interpreted by a pleiad of learned men, who have pursued the path opened by Champollion, de Rouge, Mariette, Ampere, Maspero, &c. Greek and Roman antiquities have been the subject of memoirs and books, chiefly due to the pupils of the French School in Athens. The Ecole des Chartes is a nursery of indefatigible archivists, who are classifying and studying the innumerable documents, which contain the history of the Middle Ages in France. The Academie des Inscriptions has continued the patient labours of the Benedictines. The Academie des Sciences Morales has aided history as well as philosophy by a considerable amount of information published in its valuable Memoires. The Comite des Travaux Historiques, instituted by Guizot, in connection with the Ministry of Public Instruction, has published an important col¬ lection of new documents, and has presided over the work of the learned societies, the result of which has changed the method of writing history. The Philosophical Movement ; Royer-Collar d ; Cousin ; the Various Schools .—The influence of England and Germany, which we have already encountered in the poetical movement, acted still more directly upon philosophical regeneration. Royer-Collard (1768—1845) was guided in his campaign against the sensual philosophy of the eighteenth century, by study of the Scotchman, Reid ; and Cousin, a brilliant but somewhat shallow eclectic, was formed by perusal of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Kant. De Ronald,* who wrote in the form of maxims, devoted his dogmatic severity and vigorous style to the service of religious philosophy, and the monarchical political party. Victor Cousin f at first wavered amongst all the systems. Under the Restoration, at the height of his popularity, he lectured on the German systems, confirming and illustrating them by his lucid words. He adopted eclecticism, i.e. the system which consists * De Bonald (1754—1840). t Victor Cousin (1792—1867). 4 68 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. in selecting whatever appears to be truth, from every system. Jouffroy,* a more abstract, severe, original, yet less popular philosopher, endeavoured to restrict philosophy to psychology and morality. In reality Cousin was more of an eloquent professor than a serious thinker, and the philosophy he advocated was spiritualistic and Cartesian. It found some learned disciples in Jules Simon, f who chiefly devoted himself to the study of social questions, and the search for some method of improving the condition of the lower classes. Caro,J a brilliant professor and polemist, ardently defended the spiritual philosophy against the attacks of the later schools. The most important of these schools, the Positivist School, the only one which has had real influence outside France, was founded by Auguste Comte,§ who claimed, whilst denying the Divinity, that he was founding the religion of humanity. Auguste Comte found a sensible and talented disciple in Littre, || who besides his philosophical works, compiled a large dictionary, a work of immense learning and of marvellous patience, and a real advance on all that had preceded it in France or elsewhere. Taine,H without losing himself in positivist doctrines, exerted his wit against Cousin’s university philosophy, and proposed psychological problems with extraordinary depth of insight, but with fatalist and somewhat materialist tendencies. The Religious Movement .—Religious questions liberally treated have occupied an important place in the thoughts of the century. Joseph de Maistre had opened up the subject by adopting, with rare vigour, the theocratic ideas of the Middle Ages in his works : “ Soirees de Saint Petersbourg,” “ Le Pape,” and “ L’Eglise Gallicane.” ** Between 1817 and 1828 the Abbe de Lamennais f f published his “Essai sur lTndiflerence,” in which he demonstrated the social importance of religion. Lamennais was the first of those writers who endeavoured to unite ultra-liberal and ultra- * Jouffroy (1796—1842). t Jules Simon, born in 1814. X Caro, born in 1826. § Auguste Comte (1798—1857). || Emile Littre (1801—1881). H Hippolyte Taine, born in lo28. ** Joseph de Maistre (1754—1821). ft Lamennais (1782—1854). NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 469 montane ideas. When condemned by the Pope, he followed out his liberal principles to their logical conclusion, and died hostile to Catholicism. His followers, a band of earnest and eloquent men—Dupanloup,* Lacordaire,t Gratry,J and amongst laymen, Montalembert, §—made their subm : ssion to the Pope. In the opposite camp Ernest Renan, j| intended for the priesthood, has employed his rare ability and learning as an author, to disprove the divine origin of Christianity, which he yet professes to admire. His position in France, though with more learning, is somewhat like that of Matthew Arnold in England ; but of course vastly more influential. Political Economy. — Questions of political economy, first started in England by Adam Smith, were eagerly taken up in France by Jean Baptiste Say,U who separated this science more clearly from politics, with which until then it had been con¬ fused. Frederic Bastiat,** *** Rossi,ft Louis Reybaud,Jj Alexis de Tocqueville,§§ Wolowski,|| || Michel Chevalier,Baudrillart,**'* and others studied the industrial, commercial, and financial ques¬ tions, which have become so important in our eminently practical century. We must also include the celebrated Proudhon in this category, for in spite of his paradoxes he threw much light upon the organization of society at the present time. Parliamentary Eloquence. — Eloquence was of necessity en¬ couraged by political liberty, and already, under the Revolution, Mirabeau had recalled the famous oratory of the Roman tri¬ bunes. Under the Restoration and the Government of July, parliamentary eloquence became a great source of public influence, * Dupanloup (1802—1878). t Lacordaire (1802—1861). I Gratry (1805—1872). § Montalembert (1810—1870). || Ernest Renan, born in 1823. H J. B. Say (1767—1832). His most important work was the “ Treatise on Political Economy” (1803). ** Frederick Bastiat (1801—1850). ft Rossi, an Italian who taught and wrote in French (1787—1848).’ ++ Louis Reyhaud (1799—1879). $§ A. de Tocqueville (1805—1859). UK Wolowski (1810—1876). HIT Michel Chevalier (1806—1879). *** Baudrillart, born in 1821. 4?o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . and we may mention General Foy * and Casimir Perier’s f fiery improvisations, Benjamin Constant’s J witty speeches, Royer- Collard’s grave, imperious voice, Chateaubriand’s language glowing with images. Under the Government of July Guizot and Thiers were the two most important rivals for fame and power. The former was distin¬ guished by the clear purpose of his speeches, his concise elocution, and the elevation of his thoughts and language, which, however, smacked too much of the professorial chair to attain the highest place in parliamentary eloquence; the latter was an easy speaker, with a lucid elegant style, and in spite of a great flow of words, his speeches were compact and brief. Berryer,§ by the elevation of his views, and the magnificence and warmth of his phrases, deserved the rank of a prince of eloquence. Later on the assemblies were adorned by Jules Favre,|] always academic in his style, Emile 011ivier,1F an incisive, polished orator, Rouher,** who excelled in economic debates, and Gambetta,! f the powerful tribune, who could sway both the parliament and the people. The orators of the pulpit distinguished for their eloquence were Lacordaire, Ravignan, Pere Felix, Pere Didon, Pere'Mon¬ sabre, &c. And even the professors of the Sorbonne enjoyed great renown in this respect, for, under the Restoration, the public crowded to hear the historical lectures of Guizot, the literary courses of Villemain, and the philosophical lectures of Cousin. The Press .—As a political writer Paul Louis Courier \ J was also distinguished by his eloquence, and his attacks against the Res¬ toration sparkled with humour and malice. But the press has been the great tribunal, the real director of contemporary society, ren¬ dering politics and public interests a subject of daily and universal discussion. It is impossible for us to name all the remarkable men who engaged in this incessant conflict of opinions, from Armand * General Foy (1775—1825). t Casimir Perier (1777—1832). f Benjamin Constant (1767—1830). § Berrver (1790—1868). || Jules Favre (1809—1880). ^ Emile Ollivier, born in 1825. ** Rouher (1814—1884). ft Gambetta (1838—1882). XX Paul Louis Courier, born in 1772, assassinated in 1825. NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 471 Carrel,* one of the most intrepid champions of liberal opinions under the Restoration and the July Government, to the incisive Prevost-Paradol,f the indefatigable Emile de Girardin,J the fiery ultramontane, Louis Veuillot.§ Newspapers are counted by hun¬ dreds. The Revue des Deux Mondes , under Buloz, attained a greater influence and renown outside France than any other similar Review in any other country ; but it has now many rivals. Literary Criticism. —Journals are also the echo of literary criticism, and many men who have since assisted in forming the public taste by their analysis of ancient or modern works, first made a reputation in their columns. Literary criticism in the eighteenth century was still too heavy and emphatic under the guidance of La Harpe |j, but it has now become a separate branch of literature in which great men have excelled, such as Yillemain,1[ the talented author of some animated pictures of the various periods of literary history. Desire Nisard,** the author of a most profound and deli cate “ History of French Literature”; Sainte-Beuve, ft the prince of critics, the witty sarcastic talker, who has as it were ransacked every corner of French literary and even political history ; Saint-Marc Girardin, ft the kindly critic, Jules Janin,§§ Geruzez,|||| Ampere,W About, lively and sarcastic, Francisque Sarcey,*** who, like Janin, has become an authority on theatrical criticism. Taine, as pro¬ found in his criticism as in his philosophy, has written especially on England, but has more lately turned his attention to the History of the Revolution, which he has written from a scientific standpoint. Edmond Scherer Iff and A. de Pontmartin have continued the work of Sainte-Beuve in contemporary criticism. * Armand Carrel, born in 1800, killed in a duel in 1836. f Prevost Paradol (1829—1870). f Emile de Girardin (1802—1881). § Louis Veuillot, born 1813. || La Harpe (1739—1803). 11 Villemain (1790—1870). ** D. Nisard, born in 1806. ft Sainte-Beuve (1804—1869). XX Saint Marc Girardin (1801—1873). §§ Jules Janin (1804—1874). |||| Geruzez (1799—1865). 1JU Jean Jacques Ampere (1800—1864). *** Sarcey, born in 1828. fff Edmond Scherer (1815—1889). XXX A. de Pontmartin (1811 —1890). 472 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. English Literature; Poetry; the Lake School. —English litera¬ ture in the nineteenth century has, except in the drama, equalled if not surpassed the brilliancy which distinguished it in the seven¬ teenth. From the end of the last century the poets called the Lake School—Wordsworth,* Coleridge, t and, in a much lesser degree, Southey and Wilson, were possessed by a feeling for nature which they carried to passionate adoration. Deeply penetrated by the beauty of the picturesque lake scenery in Westmoreland and Cumberland, these poets, especially the first-named, wrote the most exquisite poems, filled with animated pictures of all the delightful scenery that surrounded them, and enlivened with deli¬ cate touches of human sentiment and experience. Byron , Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne. —Byron J is one of those poets who have had a deeper and more lasting influence abroad than at home. A poet of the Romantic school, uncon¬ sciously under the influence of Rousseau and of Schiller, he returned it with interest to France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. His power of rhetorical description, and of morbid self-portraiture, fix his images on the memory more easily than those of much greater poets. His friend Shelley, § a far deeper thinker and revolutionist than himself, caught in the nineteenth century the exquisite harmony of the sixteenth. No other modern poet has a melody like his; in music and poetic form he stands unrivalled. Tennyson,|| with far less power than Shelley in pure poetry, is more practical in purpose and in moral. His verse is exquisitely wrought and polished. His choice of words is unerring, his eye for nature keen. His passion is always self-restrained, his doubt is not too harassing, and slides into an easy optimism ; he drapes legends which seemed out-worn so well, that they look better in their new than in their original dress. Mrs. Browning** (died 1861), the greatest of women poets—at any rate if we except Sappho—has left, among much work occasion- * Wordsworth (1770—1850). t Coleridge (1772—1834). + Byron (1788—1824). § Shelley (1792—1822). || Tennyson, born in 1809. ** Mrs. Browning (1809—1861). NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 473 ally of somewhat faulty technique , a noble modern poem, “ Aurora Leigh ” (1856), showing not only true poetic genius, but an in¬ sight into the problems of the life of her own time and of the immediate future that is really extraordinary. She is the highest expression of the soul of woman in England ; as George Sand is in France. “ Poetry has been to me as serious a thing as life itself,” was her view of her work, and the result justifies the view. Browning * has not Tennyson’s polish, but deeper thought and a wider range. His verse is often rough and his power of ex¬ pressing himself inadequate. His thoughts take a dramatic form, his insight is profound, yet it is always Browning who speaks, and we are always reminded of the writer. Swinburne,! who made his mark with “Atalanta in Calydon,” (1864) a close reproduction of Greek form and feeling, holds a special place among the poets of the day as a lyrist of great fire and power. He is less a creator than a musician who uses language as his instrument, and in mere mastery of his instrument has few rivals. Walter Scott; the Historical Novel .—Walter ScottJ was also a poet, but in his love of the past he revived it chiefly in his historical novels, which delighted England and Europe. He was a true painter and almost an historian, and he thoroughly understood the epochs in which he placed the scenes that he described, and reproduced the circumstances and ideas peculiar to them. He is one of the few creators in fiction, creating character with unerring truth and untiring fertility. His influence was immense and the historical school embraced the style of faithful reproduction, which had been opened to it by the creative imagination of this great novelist. Jane Austen (1775—1817), within the narrow range of well- to-do social life, has never been surpassed in the truth and pre¬ cision of her portraits. She gives a vivid and kindly picture of the society in which she lived, sparing no weakness, but touching on no vice. * Browning (1812—1889). + Swinburne, bom in 1837. + Walter Scott, bom in Edinburgh (1771—1832). His principal works are, “ Waverley,” “The Antiquary,” “Ivanhoe,” “Kenilworth,” “Quentin Lurward,” &c. 474 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION , Charles Dickens .—Charles Dickens* has also won an European reputation by his novels of modern English society of the lower and middle classes. An attentive and minute observer, omitting no detail in his descriptions, dwelling even on an insect or a blade of grass, he yet knows how to touch and affect his readers, and in this lies his great skill. No one ever penetrated more deeply into the miseries of English society, or excited more sympathy for the suffering classes. He also knew how to laugh, and his comic humour is superior to his pathos, which is sometimes strained and theatrical. Thackeray f rose to the first rank by the charm of his criticisms, novels and sketches of manners. He was a keen observer and a biting satirist. His chief work, “ Vanity Fair,” is filled with pictures of life and varied characters, rendered doubly attractive by the ease and elegance of his style. The statesman, Disraeli, J afterwards Lord Beaconsfield, won renown as a novelist, but of a less enduring kind. Quite equal to, if not higher than any of these, stands Marian Evans (George Eliot, 1819—1880) ; in style, in humour, in force, and delineation of character, only one female novelist can be com¬ pared to her, and that is George Sand. She is more than the equal of Jane Austen in England. In the United States three novelists may be mentioned, E. Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and, for the important consequences of one of her works, Mrs. Beecher Stowe. To these we may add Henry James, Howells, and others. History and Philosophy: Macaulay .—England also possesses an historian of high rank, Macaulay,§ who, in his “ Critical and Historical Essays,” and also in his “ History of England from the Accession of James II. to the Death of William III.” has given us * Charles Dickens (1812—1870). His principal works are : “ Pickwick,” “Oliver Twist,” the “Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,” “Christmas Stories,” “ David Copperfield,” etc. Dickens is buried in Westminster Abbey. f Thackeray (1811—1863). I Disraeli or d’lsraeli, son of a literary man (1805—1881). § Thomas Babingtou, Baron Macaulay (1800—1859). NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 475 a splendid model of historical narrative, in which he conceals his great learning under the most perfect art, weaves a plot, enlivened with abundant and well-chosen incidents, draws portraits full of vigour, and relieves history by the reflections of a philosopher and humorist. But history has inspired as brilliant writers and even greater thinkers, such as Thomas Carlyle,* whose forceful style, vigorous common-sense, and imaginative insight do not always keep his judgments free from prejudice ; Hallam f ; Milman, who wrote the “History of Latin Christianity; ” Grote, the celebrated historian of Greece, and Buckle, who wrote an original history of “ Civiliza¬ tion in Europe.” These have been worthily followed by Freeman, Stubbs, and Green on the History of England ; by Gardiner, who has written the history of the early Stuarts ; by the American historians, Prescott and Motley. But the greatest boon to history has been the collection and publishing of materials by the Record Office, &c. In philosophy England has produced some disciples of Reid’s Scottish school, Sir W. Hamilton]; and Ferrier§ being the most important, whilst David Hume’s traditions have been carried on by John Stuart Mill, || philosopher and economist, greatly influenced by Comte; we must mention also Alexander Bain, and especially Herbert Spencer, who has mapped out a system of the world founded on the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin, the celebrated naturalist, worked out this theory in natural history, refusing to recognise any immutable types of species, but asserting that all types were con¬ verted through natural selection, and under the influence of the uni¬ versal struggle for life. His theories have had a greater effect on all the natural sciences than any since the discovery of gravitation by Sir Is.iac Newton. They modify the whole range of modern thou. ht. German Literature. —Goethe and Schiller, the two great German * Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881). His chief works are a “History of the French Revolution,” “Life of Frederick the Great,” “Past and Present,” &c. t Hallam (1777—1859) wrote “ Europe in the Middle Ages,” and a “ Con¬ stitutional History of England.” J Sir W. Hamilton (1788—1850). || John Stuart Mill (1806—1872). § Ferrier (1808—1864). 476 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. authors, also belonged to the first half of the nineteenth centuiy, when their undisputed genius exercised the greatest influence. Schiller is undoubtedly a true poet and dramatist, but Goethe is not only a great poet, but also one of the great thinkers of all time. More completely than any other man he carried out his own ideal of the full culture of all the intellectual and artistic faculties of his nature. The literary awakening thus given to German mind has proved durable, and Germany has produced remarkable men in nearly every branch of literature and learning. At the commencement of the century, German patriotism, awak¬ ened by the rule of Napoleon, inspired the patriotic war-songs of Koerner and Moritz Arndt,* which re-echoed throughout Germany, and excited not only the national sentiment, but also its ambition. Although hostile to France, many of the German writers preferred living there, including Henri Heine,f a satirical poet and prose writer, whose gayest poems always hide a sob, whose loveliest and purest are often marred by cynical banter at their own beauty. Jean-Paul Richter,| first of German humorists, Louis Tieck,§ Brentano,|| and Charles Gutzkow,H &c., were amongst the first poets, and there were many distinguished dramatic authors ; the assassination of Kotzebue, one of them, in 1819, created great excitement, and produced serious political consequences. Romance and fancy were cultivated with most success by Hoffmann,** the author of “Fantastic Stories,” La Motte-Fouque,ff the favourite author of the Pre-Raphaelite Romantic school, Chamisso,.}'j still more fantastic, and Auerbach,§§ whose pastoral tales are of singular beauty, &c. The serious, patient character of the Germans could not fail to * Arndt lived ninety-one years (1769—1860). He died on the eve of seeing his dream of the German country, which he extended far beyond the Rhine, realised by the War of 1870. f Henri Heine (1799—1856). He wrote the “Reisebilder,” the “Buch dor Lieder,” &c. X Richter (1763—1825). § Louis Tieck (1773—1853). || Brentano (1777—1812). If Gutzkow (1811—1878). ** Hoffmann (1776—1822). ft La Motte-Fouque (1777—1843). XX Ghe.misso (1781—1838). §§ Auerbach, born 1812. NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 477 be attracted by the study of history, and they had already com¬ menced it in the preceding century ; Germany, has taken an immense share in the great archaeological and historical movement of the nineteenth century. Lepsius followed the path opened by Champoliion. Niebuhr * * * § compiled one of the first works on Roman history, but he substituted too many creations of his own fancy for the legends which he destroyed. Heeren f wrote a manual of ancient history, and a book on the politics and commerce of antiquity, that are still useful for reference in spite of the discoveries that have revived the knowledge of the ancients. Of higher grade are the historians RankeJ and Mommsen,§ and Gervinus, who wrote the history of the nineteenth century; Curtius, who studied that of Greece ; Ottfried Muller,|| the historian of Greek literature; George Henry Pertz, the founder of German History; the geographers, Kiepert and Augustus Petermann ; the literary critics, A. and F. Schlegel; the brothers Grimm (Jacob and William), the founders of the study of folk-lore. Philosophy, already greatly advanced in the eighteenth century, continued its progress with Jacobi, who opposed the philosophy of faith to that of criticism. Kant’s transcendental theories were con¬ tinued by his disciples ; Fichte, Schelling,^ and Hegel ,** mark the successive developments of this philosophy, and prepared the way for the doctrine of Pantheism. Hegel, the most famous of these philoso¬ phers, sacrificed too much to ideality ; according to his system the universe is only the development, the evolution of the idea. The idea issuing from itself becomes nature, and returning to itself becomes spirit. Schopenhauer ft founded the Pessimist school. Tennemann, Schleiermacher, Ritter, Zeller, &c., carefully ex¬ amined the history of philosophy, above all of ancient philosophy. * Niebuhr (1776—1831). t Heeren (1760—1842). X Ranke (1795—1886) has published important works on the history of Germany, Prussia, and the history of the Popes. § Mommsen, born in 1817, has compiled a noble Roman History. || Ottfried Muller (1797—1840). U Schelling (1775—1844). ** Hegel (1770—1831). ft Schopenhauer (1788—1860). 478 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Rationalist theology was represented by the celebrated Strauss * and Bauer ; but Germany has likewise produced a long roll of theologians of the more orthodox schools. Italian Literature .*—Italy revived at the end of the last century with Alfieri, and this revival has been continued in our century by the dramatic poems and novels of Manzoni,+ while Silvio Pellico| related in touching prose the sorrows of his long captivity. Ferrari was both a statesman and historian. To these names we must add those of Leopardi, || the poet of pessimism, Rosmini, the philosophic theologian, and of the Chevalier Massimo d’Azeglio,1f a skilful novelist and one of the most active workers for Italian independence. Art; David and his School .—In France the glory of art dates from the Imperial epoch. David ** raised painting from the weak¬ ness of the eighteenth century, and revived the study of the antique in the French school. Already celebrated by his “ Belisaire ” and “ Horaces ” when the Revolution broke out, he was not only a painter of its great scenes, but one of the most impassioned actors in them. The “ Serment de Jeu de paume,” “ L’Assassinat de Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau,” and the “ Mort de Marat ” are his most important works of this epoch. Imprisoned after the 9th Thermidor, he was speedily set at liberty, and renounc¬ ing all political action from that time, he devoted himself to his studio. He was drawn from his solitary labour by the extraordi¬ nary man who attracted everything into his own sphere of activity, Bonaparte. David, appointed first painter to the Empire, com¬ pleted the celebrated pictures of the “ Enlevement des Sabines,” “ Bonaparte au Mont St. Bernard,” the “ Couronnement,” “ Leon¬ idas aux Thermopyles,” &c. As so frequently happens, David’s pupils exaggerated the defects of their master, and painted as they would have carved in marble. But some few commenced a re- * Strauss (1808—1874). + Manzoni (1784—1873). + Silvio Pellico (1789—1854). || Leopardi (1798—1837). Massimo d’Azeglio (1801—1866) wrote the novel of ‘ ‘ Hector Fieramosca.’’ ** David (1748—1825). NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 479 action against this cold academic style, and joined the worship of nature to that of the rules of art. Gros; Gerard .—Antoine Gros* distinguished himself at the head of these innovators, and his picture of the “ Pestiferes de Jaffa ” was rewarded at the Exhibition of 1806. He after¬ wards painted the “ Batailles d’Aboukir,” “ des Pyramides,” “ Le Champ de Bataille d’Eylau;” and, continuing his immense works under the Restoration, he decorated the dome of the Pan¬ theon. But although he received the title of baron he was deeply affected by the excesses of the new school, which broke through all tradition. Gerard f entered David’s studio in 1784. Until 1806 he painted principally portraits. The Emperor then gave him a commission for the “ Bataille d’Austerlitz,” and the remainder of the State Council-room in the Tuilleries (now destroyed). Contemporary with Gros, he was still distinguished under the Restoration. Guerin \ and Prud’hon§ remained aloof from this historical school, and only painted antique or imaginative subjects; but they have won as much celebrity as their fellow artists, and Prud’hon’s fine picture of “ Crime poursuivi par la Justice et la Vengeance celestes ” is preserved in the Louvre. The Classic School and the Romantic; Ingres; Idealism. —Litera¬ ture is so near to art that the dispute between the Classic and the Romantic School could not fail to affect the fine arts ; and it divided the painters as it had divided the poets. Ingres (1780—1867) brilliantly maintained the traditions of the great masters, and endeavoured chiefly to imitate Raphael, whom he studied in Italy during twenty-five years. He was the leader of the idealist school, and remained faithful to the worship of beauty and harmonious lines. In the “ Apotheose d’Homere ” (1827) he grouped around the divine poet all the men, poets, musicians, and sculptors who had drawn their subjects from his immortal poems. In the “ Martyre de St. Symphorien ” he proved that he knew how to unite grandeur and force. * A. Gros (1771—1835). f Gerard (1770—1837). I Pierre-N arcisse Guerin 1758—1833). § Pierre Prud’hon (1758—1823). 4 »o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Gericault (1791—1824).—Gericault was the first painter who sympathised with the Romantic School, and this gave originality to his compositions. He had been already distinguished by two pictures which had no connection with the school of David or that of Guerin his master—the “ Chasseur de la Garde ” and the “ Cuir¬ assier blesse”—which are still two of the finest ornaments of the salon carre in the Louvre. In Italy, while Ingres studied Raphael, Gericault fell in love with Michael Angelo, whose chief character¬ istic is the knowledge and power of drawing. After his return, Gericault painted the celebrated picture of the “ Naufrage de la Meduse," in which he forcibly portrays the horrors of the sad scene. Eugbie Delacroix (1798—1868), who, at the death of Gericault, became the leader of the new school, had already distinguished himself by his fine picture of “ Dante et Yirgile.” He carried on the war against classical theories in'the “Massacre de Chio ” (1824), the “ Mort du Doge Marino Faliero,” and “ Grece sur les ruines de Missolonghi” (1826). His bold touch was not content with delicacy in the shades, he loved contrasts, seizing effects of vivid colour ; the result is very striking, and the power of the painter impresses all who see his work. Eugene Delacroix, whose fertility of invention was inexhaustible, is one of the masters who have made the glory of the French school ; his works were all collected in a triumphal exhibition in 1885. Paul Delaroche (1797—1856); Ary Scheffer (1795—1858).— Between the two rival schools of Ingres and E. Delacroix another artist, Paul Delaroche, distinguished himself by his clever paintings of exquisite taste and unusually correct drawing, where his love of exactness extended to the smallest details of historical costume. By his love of fidelity he approached the romantic, while his purity of line and harmony of colour brought him nearer to the classics. Ary Scheffer’s reputation was made at the same time. He is more akin to the romantic and religious schools of Germany than to French Art. At an early age he left Holland for France, but he was already known by his historical pictures, the “ Mort de Saint Louis” (1817), “ Devouement de six bourgeois de Calais,” and the NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 481 “ Mort de Gaston de Foix ” (1824). But from that time he endeavoured to poetise in painting, and began to study Goethe’s “Faust,” from which he drew many of the subjects of his most charming works. He also painted some religious subjects, the “ Bergers conduits par l’Ange,” the “ Rois Mages,” and above all, “ Saint Augustin et Sainte Monique.” Artists since 1830; Horace Vernet. —Under the July government the fine arts flourished quite as much as they had done under the Restoration. Horace Vernet,*' the son and grandson of distin¬ guished artists, upheld the glory of the family name, and even added to its lustre. Under the Restoration he was impressed by the story of Napoleon, and had painted the “ Adieux de Fon¬ tainebleau,” “Napoleon le soire de Waterloo,” the “ Rocher de Sainte Helene,” &c. But during the reign of Louis Philippe he became, as it were, the official painter of military subjects, and embellished the museum at Versailles with his immense pictures. Meissonier. —Another great artist went to the opposite extreme from Horace Vernet; and whilst the latter covered a whole wall with one picture, Meissonier endeavoured to compress his subject into microscopic compass. All must admire the precision and deli¬ cacy, combined with perfect truthfulness, with which the artist renders the most trifling details of his subjects and of his often numerous figures. Meissonier does not confine himself always to these small canvases ; admirable in all his work, he is one of the most active masters of the modern school, as well as one of the most highly appreciated.! Hippolyte Flan dr in ; Cabanel. —Hippolyte Flandrin J represented the old religious traditions, and he covered the walls of several * Horace Vernet (1789—1863). t Meissonier, born in 1813, first made himself known by his “ Bourgeois Flamands” (1834), his “ Joueurs d’echecs ” (1836), and afterwards by a number of pictures in the same style, amongst them the “ Partie de boulcs.” He also excels in military subjects : “ Napoleon III. a Solferino,” “ Corps de Garde,” “ L’Ordonnance,” “ Desaix a l’armee du Rhin,” “ Une charge de cuirassiers,” &c. X Flandrin (1809—1864). 482 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. churches (Saint Severin, Saint Germain des Pres, and some others in Nismes and Lyons) with his idealistic compositions of Christian subjects. He also excelled in portraits. Cabanel* followed the traditions of the Renaissance, and is as remarkable for the beauty of his religious works as for the charm of his mythological pictures. He is chiefly known as a clever portrait painter. Decamps f is distinguished for his vigorous colouring and bold effects of light. He is chiefly noted for his landscapes and animals. We should require a volume if we were to enumerate all the names of remarkable painters who have worthily maintained the glory of the French school : Robert Fleury, G6rome, Cabat, Yvon, Henri Regnault, snatched away in the full vigour of his genius, a victim to his patriotism in 1871, Paul Baudry, who decorated the new opera-house, Jules Breton, Bouguereau, Henner, Puvis de Chavannes, Jules Lefebre, de Neuville, the painter of military scenes, Millet, whose “ Angelus ” has fetched the highest price yet given for a French picture, Fran^ais, Rousseau, Troy on, Diaz, Corot, Charles Daubigny, Courbet, Rosa Bonheur, &c. Gustave Dore devoted his genius to illustration rather than to painting, and he achieved some masterpieces. We must also mention the painters in water colours, who daily became more numerous and more honoured ; and it may be said without exaggera¬ tion that no previous epoch has been so fertile. Pictures by French artists are eagerly sought, and the prices they command show their superiority. Painting in Germany , England , Belgium, de .—But the neigh¬ bouring countries have also continued their artistic labours. Amongst the Germans, Overbeck founded a colony of artists in Rome about 1810, of whom Cornelius was the most distinguished. Almost all the painters of Munich have been pupils of Cornelius, whilst the school of Dusseldorf has been chiefly inspired by the romantic and religious idealism of Overbeck. Kaulbach, who belonged to the school of Cornelius, excelled in historical and alle¬ gorical pictures. The school of Dusseldorf has also produced t Decamps (1803—1860). * Cabanel (1824—1889). NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 483 Knaus and the school of Munich, Piloty, Adam, Horschelt, Lier, and Lembach, who have gradually drawn nearer to picturesque realism. In England there are no masters whose teaching is followed by a school of imitators or disciples. There is absolute freedom. Painters group themselves after their own ideals. The school of Turner in landscape, the pre-Raphaelite School in historical and religious subjects, approach the nearest to a following of a leader. There are few buildings decorated with pictures, with the exception of the Houses of Parliament, and the Government makes no attempt to encourage historical painting. For this reason pictures of family life predominate. The artists celebrate the poem of labour, the pleasures and sorrows of domestic life, the rural traditions and customs of old England. Amongst the most notable artists must be named : Turner,* * * § the first of landscape painters, Edward Matthew Ward,! Mulready,| Maclise,§ Webster, Rossetti, Millais, and Holman Hunt, who were formerly called pre-Raphaelites, because they endeavoured, under the influence of John Ruskin, the first of English critics of art, to lead painting back to the traditions that existed before Raphael; Leighton, Alma Tadema, Holl, Long, Burne Jones, J. B. Burgess, and many others, whose work, although unequal in many respects to the French school, is not inferior to that of any of the other schools of Europe. The Italian school is, like the country itself, in a state of transition. The Italians study Italy, the scenery and picturesque customs of their fertile country. In Spain we have the impressionist school of Fortuny, and a band of promising artists, who do not, however, yet reach the height of her earlier painters. The Flemish school declined in the eighteenth century, but revived in the nineteenth, and like the French school has had both its * Turner (1775—1851). The number of his works was immense, and they are well represented at the National Gallery. t Edward Matthew Ward (1 8 1G—1879), } Mulready (1786—1863). § Maclise (1811—1870). 484 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. classical and its romantic schools. Francois Navez*was a disciple of David, but after the Revolution of 1880, romanticism triumphed with Gustave Wappers f and Antoine Wiertz Louis Gallait § stamped a more original and individual mark on Belgian art. We must also name Biefve,|| the genre painter, Madou,H Henri Leys,** Alfred Stevens, Emile Wauters, &c. Since the separation between Holland and Belgium Dutch art has returned to its originality. The Dutch, casting off the tra¬ ditions of David, sought for fresh inspirations in their damp meadows and domestic life. Austria has a predilection for pictures of genre, but Hungary has produced an historical painter, Munkaczy.ff Denmark has possessed an academy of painting since 1756, but the Danish artists have only recently abandoned the imitation of the Italians. They are now acquiring more national feeling, and depicting scenes of their domestic life. Sweden too, especially in landscape, is producing work of real value. Lastly, art has even penetrated to Russia. The Empress Elizabeth founded an academy in 1758, and Catherine II. en¬ couraged it, but for a long time it only produced painters to the court. Our century has witnessed the formation of a more inde¬ pendent school, which portrays Russian life in a natural manner. The names of Verestchagin and Gay are known for peculiarly Russian art by all lovers of art in Europe. Sculpture .—The Italian Canova, at the end of the last and com¬ mencement of the present century, re-introduced the purity and delicacy of the antique in sculpture. Thorwaldsen, a Dane, his greatest rival, was a peasant’s son, whose stronger genius was cultivated in Italy, and he has won a place among the few great sculptors of modern times, Jf * Francois Navez (1787—1869). f Gustave Wappers (1803—1874). \ Antoine Wiertz (1806—1865). § His principal pictures are the < : L’Abdication de Charles Quint,” the “ Tetes coupees,” and the “ Demiers moments du Comte d'Egmond.” || Biefve (1808—1882). 1 Madou (1796—1887). ** Leys (1815—1869). ft Munkaczy, horn in 1844. ++ Thorwaldsen (1770—1814). His chief works are the statues of Christ NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART 485 In Germany sculpture was restricted for a long time by Protest¬ antism, but it has also produced some fine statues. Dannecker,* the sculptor of the Ariadne at Frankfort, Kiss,f whose “ Amazon and Panther ” stands in Berlin, Christian Rauch,| who carved the mau¬ soleum statue of Louisa of Prussia, Rietschel,§ &c. The brilliant French school of sculpture continued to maintain its reputation, and Houdon prolonged his career until 1828. At the same time it boasted of Bosio,|| Barye,^I Foyatier,** the author of the “Spartacus” in the Tuilleries; Pradier,f f and above all of the celebrated David D’Angers, JJ who carved the facade of the Pan¬ theon, and a great number of statues of famous persons ; of Rude,§§ who created the bold figures in high relief on the Triumphal Arch, called “ Le Depart ” or “ La Marseillaise ; ” of Preault,||jj Falguiere, Clesinger,1i1i Guillaume, Carpeaux,*** Paul Dubois, Mercie, Chapu, and Bartholdi, who lately modelled a gigantic figure of Liberty, intended for the Port of New York. Architecture .—Contemporary architecture is too learned to be original. Pierre Vignon copied the antique temples when he designed the Madeleine; Brongniart and Labarre did the same for the Bourse, the temple of wealth. Then columns were erected in Paris in imitation of the Roman columns (du Vendome et de Juillet), and triumphal arches (du Carrousel et de l’etoile). The latter surpasses the Roman arches in height and width, and its admir¬ able situation enhances its grandeur. Amongst contemporary architects we must also name Lesueur, Questel, Ballu, who designed the Hotel de Ville, after the destruction of the old building in 1871 ; Gamier, who constructed a large ornamental building for the new Opera House ; Abadie, Bailly, &c. But and his Apostles at Copenhagen; the “Tomb of Pius VII.” in Rome ; the Btatue of “ Poniatowski,” at Warsaw, * Dannecker (1759—1841). X Rauch (1777—1857). || Bosio (1768—1845). ** Foyatier (1793—1863). David d’Angers (1789—1856). DU Preault (1810—1879). *** Carpeaux (1825—1875). and of “ Gutenberg ” at Mayence. t Kiss (1802—1865). § Rietschel (1804 — 1861). It Barye (1795—1875). ft Pradier (1792—1862). §§ Francois Rude (1784—1855). Hit Clesinger (1814—1883). 4 86 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION\ modern architects have applied themselves chiefly to the new buildings necessitated by the progress of industry, in which more science than art is required—viaducts, railway stations, and exhi¬ bition buildings. In an artistic sense architecture has yet to learn how to mould its new materials into shapes of beauty. Music: the Classical School. —Music, which made rapid strides in the eighteenth century, became one of the principal arts in the nineteenth, and has attained noble harmony with the German masters of the classic school—Beethoven,* * * § whose sonatas, fanta¬ sias, preludes, rondos, and varied airs display profound knowledge and genius; Mendelssohn,! not less harmonious, but lighter and more melodious; Schubert;! Weber,§ the author of “ Der Frey- schiitz,” and Schumann. Italy produced Clementi.j| The Great Operas; Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Aaber, etc .— Italy was also the birthplace (at Pesaro) of one of the most extra¬ ordinary modern composers, Rossini, 1l author of “ II Barbiere de Seviglia,” “ Guglielmo Tell,” &c., whose marvellous facility aston¬ ished the world; he was followed by Donizetti,** * * §§ Bellini,!f Verdi,!! and Cherubini. Although born in Berlin, Meyer beer,§§ like the * Beethoven, born in Bonn (1770—1827). t Mendelssohn, horn at Hamburg (1809—1847). X Schubert, bom at Vienna (1797—1828). § Weber (1786—182o). || Clementi. born in Borne (1752 —1832). IT Rossini (1792— 1868). ** Donizetti, born in Bergamo (1798—1848), wrote “Lucia di Lammer- moor,” first performed in Naples (1835), and among other pieces a comic opera, “La Figlia del Reggimento.” ft Bellini, born at Catana (1802—1835), is chiefly remarkable for his scores of “ S' nnambula,” “Norma,” and “I Puritani.” !! Verdi, bom in the ancient duchy of Parma in 1814, has written a great number of operas for the Italian stage. The most popular of his works in Europe are “ Rigoletto,” taken from Victor Hugo’s “ Le Roi s’amuse.” “ II Trovatore ” distinguished by its pathetic airs, “ La Traviata ” and “ Aida.” §§ Meyerbeer (1794—1864) has composed some masterpieces, “Robert le Diable” (1831), “ Les Huguenots ” (1836), “ Le Prophete ” (1849), “L’Afri- caine,” first performed after his death. He also wrote two charming comic operas, “Le Pardon de Ploermel ” and “ L’Et >ile du Nord.” NINETEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE AND ART. 487 Italian Rossini, lived at Paris, where they both produced their masterpieces at the same time as Halevy* * * § wrote “ La Juive,” and Auberf “ Fra Diavolo ” and “ Le Domino Noir.” These illustrious masters, whose works must always delight true lovers of music, developed the opera so that it not only delighted the ear, but even rivalled tragedy in moving the passions and stirring the emotions of the audience. Gounod, | Ambroise Thomas, and Massenet have continued the traditions of the great masters and rank with them. We must also mention amongst the composers of a more serious, elevated style, Saint-Saens,§ Berlioz,|| Chopin,H who composed for the piano, Liszt,** * * §§ the first of performers on it, &c. Comic Operas: Boieldieu , Adam, Auber, Herold, dc. —But music is an amusement as well as an art, and comic opera has become an infinite source of delicate enjoyment. Rossini rendered the gaiety of Figaro, in the “ Barbiere de Seviglia,” with brilliant spirit; Doni¬ zetti could also bend to familiar gaiety. Boieldieuf f and Adolphe Adam|| have given models of this style in the easy, charming melodies of the “ Dame Blanche,” &c. Herold §§ has also attained success in the “ Pre-aux-Clercs.” Auber was the most fertile and most French of composers: his clear, elegant, correct, and witty music has won popularity for the “ Domino Noir,” “ Fra Dia- * Halevy (1799—1862). f Auber, born at Caen (1782—1871). J Gounod, born in Paris, 1818, was first noticed for his religious com¬ positions. He then wrote a lyrical drama, “ Sapho,” followed by the opera “ Faust,” which placed him amongst the masters. § Saint-Saens, born in Paris, 1835. || Berlioz, born in Cote Saint Andre (Isere) (1803—1869). U Chopin, born near Warsaw (1810—1849). He introduced mazurkas into France. ** Liszt, born in Reeding (Hungary) in 1811, died in 1886. + t Boieldieu, born in Rouen (1775—1834). His two masterpieces are the “ Chaperon Rouge” and the “ Dame Blanche ” (1825). X+ Adolphe Adam, born in Paris (1803—1856). His most popular works are the “ Chalet ” (1834), the “ Postilion de Lonjumeau ” (1836), the “Toreador” (1849), “ Giralda ” (1850), etc. §§ Herold, born in Paris of a German father (1791—1833). His chief works are the “ Muleteer,” “ Marie,” “Zampa,” and the “ Pre-aux-Clercs.” 4 88 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. volo,” “ Haydee,” tlie “ Part du Diable,” &c. We must not omit “ Jeannette ” and “ Galatea ” by Victor Masse,* the melodies of Felicien David,f G. Bizet, | Leo Delibes, § &c., nor forget the really comic genius of Offenbach, || Lecocq, Audran, and Herve, who have made operetta a special branch of art. Music is the characteristic art of the nineteenth century, and the School of Wagner H is now endeavouring to advance its claims, and to make other arts subservient to it. * Victor Masse, born at Lorient in 1822, composed the “ Noces de Jean¬ nette” (1853), “ Galatee ” (1853), “Paul et Virginie ” (1876). f Felicien David, born at Cadenet (Vaucluse) (1810—1876), author of the symphony of the “Desert,” the comic opira, “ Lalla Rookh ” (1862), and the opera of “ Herculaneum” (1859). X Georges Bizet, born in Paris (1838—1875), composer of “ Carmen.” § Leo Delibes, born in 1836, author of “ Lakme.” || Offenbach, born in Cologne (1819—1880), wrote more than sixty works. Many of them are very popular. IT Richard Wagner, born in Leipzig (1813—1883), formed an original and truly powerful conception of the lyric drama, which may be said to have revolutionised music; he wrote “ The Flying Dutchman,” “ Tannhaiiser,” “Lohengrin,” “Tristan and Yseult,” “The Niebelungen Lied,” “The Master Singer,” &c. CHAPTER XIX. THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATION TO INDUSTRY. Summary : The Scientific Movement ; Natural Sciences : Cuvier; Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire—Alexander von Humboldt—Elie de Beaumont; Flourens —Evolution—Darwin ; Wallace—Mathematical and Physical Sciences : Ampere; Arago; Biot—Oerstedt; Bunsen ; Faraday ; Humphry Davy — Gay-Lussac—Dumas; Balard—Astronomy: Arago; Le Yerrier—Me¬ teorological Observations—Medicine—Physiology: Claude Bernard—Ap¬ plication of the Physical Sciences; Navigation by Steam—Locomotives. Railways; Stephenson ; Seguin—Electro-magnetism and the Telegraph —Wheatstone and Morse’s System of Telegraphy—Electricity as an Industrial Agent, Ruhmkorff's System—Artificial Light: Lighthouses —Gas Light—The Electric Light—Air Balloons—Artesian Wells—Sus¬ pension Bridges—Photography—The Telephone—The Phonograph— Application of Chemistry—Pasteur’s Discoveries—The Scientific Move¬ ments of the Nineteenth Century. The Scientific Movement ; Natural Sciences ; G. Cuvier ; Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. —The scientific movement, which commenced in the seventeenth century and continued in the eighteenth, has de¬ veloped with extraordinary strength and activity during the nine¬ teenth century. Cuvier * already celebrated under the Empire, astonished scien¬ tific men by his discoveries relating to the antediluvian world and his revelations of the changes which have taken place in the globe which we inhabit. With the aid of a few bones only, he recon¬ structed the different species of gigantic animals which preceded man on the earth. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, f who emulated Cuvier, but restricted his studies to living species, established the anatomical principle of f Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772—1844). * Cuvier (1769—1832). 490 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. unity of the organic composition of all animal bodies. Geoffroy formulated laws, and discovered the fundamental fact that the materials found in one family exist in every other; he first announced that unity of organic composition was a law of nature. Alexander von Humboldt .—One of the most famous names of our century is that of Alexander von Humboldt; born in Berlin, 17t9, he died in the same city in 1859; but he lived many years in Paris, and having travelled over nearly the whole world made it and its inhabitants the subject of his comprehensive studies. Humboldt, in his youth, studied the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, mineralogy, and astronomy. After travelling through Holland, France, and England, he, with the botanist A. Bonpland, obtained permission Irom the Court of Spain to visit the Spanish colonies, and from 1799 to 1801 he explored America in every direction. He returned to Europe with rich collections. He published the results of his travels, in Paris, in an immense work, which the most celebrated scientific men of the day aided him to arrange. In 1828, .Humboldt reluctantly quitted this congenial society and went to Berlin, where he held a professorship, and was the favourite scientific attendant of the Prussian Court. In 1829 he started on a new journey, in which he explored Siberia and central Asia. Humboldt published the results of his long studies in a magnificent work, the “ Cosmos,” a real panorama of the world and of science. Elie de Beaumont; Flourens .-—Elie de Beaumont* distinguished himself by his geological studies, and continued the preparation of a geological map of France, commenced under the Restoration. Sir R. Murchison, Sir R. Owen, the anatomist, Sir Charles Lyeli, and other Englishmen have also won a prominent position. By their labours geology now ranks as the first of the natural sciences; linked through palaeontology with biology and prehistoric archae¬ ology, its domain is ever widening in value and interest. Flourens f applied himself to the study of man; by careful and delicate experiments he discovered the connection between the organs of the brain and intellectual phenomena, and disclosed the * Elie de Beaumont (1798—1874). t Flourens (1794—1867). THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. 491 mysteries of the nervous system. Combining great ability as an author with profound scientific knowledge, Flourens was appointed perpetual secretary of the Academie des Sciences, and was elected member of the Academie Frangaise in 1840. Brongniart* attained an important position by bis knowledge of the natural sciences and of ceramics, as director of the manufactory at Sevres. The botanist Pyrame de Candolle t reformed the classifications of plants. But all previous systems of botany, as well as biology in general, have been most profoundly modified by the theories and discoveries of Charles Darwin, | Wallace, A. Gray, and others, on the origin of species and the doctrines of evolution and of natural selection. They have changed the whole study, not only of natural but of nearly all science and history. No more fruitful conception has taken place since the discovery of gravitation by Sir Isaac Newton. Among the chief disciples of Darwin we may mention Sir C. Lyell§ in geology, Huxley in biology, Sir J. Lubbock in natural history, Tylor in prehistoric archaeology, and the Germans Haeckel and Virchow. Mathematical and Physical Sciences: Ampbre, Arago , Biot .— Three men at this epoch made great strides in mathematics, astronomy, and physics by their private work and the ultimate combination of the results. They were Ampere.|| Frangois Arago,IT and Biot.** Under the Empire Biot and Arago had travelled together in Spain, where they measured an arc of the terrestrial meridian. Biot was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences in 1803, when he was only twenty-eight, and Arago enjoyed the same distinction in 1809, at the age of twenty-three. Biot is known for his studies of the astronomy of the ancients and the polarization of light; Arago for his discoveries in electro¬ magnetism, and the phenomena of the Aurora Borealis. He con¬ tinued his experiments with Ampere, and they then made one of the most important discoveries of the century, that of electro¬ dynamics. * Brongniart (1770—1847). t Pyrame de Candolle (1778—1811). X C. Darwin (1809—1882). $ Sir C. Lyell (1797—1875). || Ampere (1775—1836). II Frangois Arago (1786— 1853). ** Biot (1774—1862). 492 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Oersted; Bunsen; Faraday. —Scientific men in other countries made rapid progress. The Dane, Oersted,* professor of physics at Copenhagen, made the first steps in electro-magnetism, Bunsen,t a professor at the Heidelberg University, invented the carbon pile (1848) which is now generally used, the magnesium light, and dis¬ covered above all the spectrum analysis. The Englishman, Faraday, J discovered the laws of electric induction, which have been applied in the construction of machines for induction, and the magneto-electric machines, which are now used in so many ingenious ways. Electric light, the working of quarries, the piercing of tunnels, the deflagration of highly-charged mines, have been considerably assisted by the use of inductive cylinders. By his labours for the liquefaction of gases, Faraday also contributed to the progress of chemistry. Humphry Davy. —All the sciences are connected wdth each other, and chemistry rapidly followed in the track of physics, supported by them and aiding them in its turn. Humphry Davy§ studied the protoxyde of azote, invented the miner’s safety lamp, and dis¬ covered potassium and iodine. The Swede, Berzelius,|| revealed the power exercised by the voltaic pile upon composite bodies. Gay-Lussac. —Gay-Lussac IT is also classed amongst the masters of chemistry, although he was equally learned in other subjects. He made some celebrated ascensions by balloon, accompanied by Biot (1804), and voyages of exploration with Humboldt; he was distinguished not only as a professor, but also by his numerous applications of chemistry to practical life. Dumas; Balard. —J. B. Dumas** pursued the science of chemis¬ try still further. Between 1828 and 1848 he published his fine work of “ Chemistry applied to the Arts.” His studies were chiefly directed towards organic matters; he made important observations upon the alkalis, ether and its combinations, nitric acid, &c. Balard ff replaced Thenard at the Faculte des Sciences, and dis- * Hans Christian Oersted (1777—1851). f Bunsen, horn in 1811. f Michael Faraday (1791—1867). § Humphry Davy, horn in Cornwall (1778—1829). || Berzelius (1779—1848). U Gay-Lussac (1778—1850). ** J. B. Dumas (1800—1884). ft Balard (1802—1876). THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS . 493 tinguished himself by his experiments upon bromine and its compo¬ sites. He rendered great service to industry by discovering how to extract from sea-water the sulphate of soda, with which manu¬ factured soda and potass salts are prepared. We must also mention the names of the Englishmen, Wollaston,* Thomas Graham,! Dalton,! and the German Liebig, professor at the University of Munich, § who was the first to apply chemistry to agriculture. Astronomy : Arcigo; Le Verrier .—We have seen that Francois Arago and Biot continued the labours of the astronomers of the eighteenth century. Arago was a distinguished writer, and his works added greatly to the popularity of science. When director of the Paris Observatory he constructed the equatorial of Paris, an instrument capable of being successively turned to every star in the firmament, and of following them in their daily course ; his observations w r ere facilitated by the improvements which Leon Foucault had introduced into telescopes. Simultaneously with Professor Adams, at Cambridge, but quite independently, by a calculation of the perturbation noticed in the orbit of Uranus, Le Verrier|| discovered the existence of a then unknown planet, which caused these deviations. By his calculations he determined the bulk, orbit, and position of the new planet, and in 1846 he told the Acaffemie des Sciences in what position the star would be visible on the 1st of January in the following year. Astronomers eagerly searched in the direction indicated, and the German, Galle, found the new planet, on the 23rd of Septem¬ ber, at a longitude that only differed by two degrees from the longitude indicated. The precision of these astronomical calcula¬ tions and the wonderful power of abstraction required for such labour were much admired, and the French public called the new planet Le Verrier, although science has given it the name of Neptune to preserve the uniformity of the solar system. Astro¬ nomy continued to advance, with Delaunay, who explained the * Wollaston (1766—1828). f Thomas Graham (1805—1869). % Dalton (1760—1844). § Liebig (1803—1873). (1 Le Verrier (1811—1877). 494 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. variation of the sidereal day, and distinguished himself by his theories of the course and movements of the earth; a great im¬ pulse has also been given to astronomy by the use of the spectrum analysis and celestial photography, especially during eclipses of the sun. With the aid of photography the whole heavens are now being accurately mapped out from all parts of the globe. Meteorological Observations .—Astronomy has extended its range of study and experiment. Le Terrier established, in conjunction with Admiral Fitzroy, a complete network of posts intended for the observation of the barometrical and thermometrical variations in France, the changes of wind, the rainfall, and the course of the storms. Lieutenant Maury, of the United States, Janssen, Scott, and others have successfully extended these stations ; which now exist in most countries of the civilized world. These observations are centralised in each country by an office now rendered distinct from the astronomical observatory, and completed by observations from abroad; they enable the path of atmospheric disturbances to be carefully studied. Storm signals are issued over the whole districts the disturbances will cross, for the rate they travel at is surpassed by the telegraph ; ships are warned when about to leave ports ; and besides this, the serious, daily, and almost universal study directed to the movements of the air currents will no doubt eventually give some solid basis to meteorology, a new science which will yet reveal many unknown facts to mankind. Medicine, Physiology : Claude Bernard. —Medicine, which had made decided progress in the last century, now advanced as rapidly as the other sciences. Bichat,'- 1 who died at the commencement of this century, aged only thirty-two, was one of the leaders in the new paths, by coupling in his admirable lessons all that was then known of organization and life. His statue has been suitably placed in the court of honour of the School of Medicine in Paris. Broussais,! one of his pupils, an eloquent professor and ardent polemist, led clinical medicine to careful observation and attentive examination of the organs of life. GallJ particularly studied the * Bichat (1771—1802). f Broussais (1772—1838). + Gall, a German, naturalised as a Frenchman (1738—1828). TIIE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. 405 brain ; Corvisart* the lungs and heart. Laennecf rendered great service by discovering the system of auscultation, now in general use. To these names we must add those of Magendie,^: Bouillaud, Trousseau, Tardieu, Yulpian, &c., the surgeons Dupuytren,§ Yelpeau, Nelaton, and a number of others, who have carried medi¬ cine and surgery to a high state of science and skill. To Sir J. Simpson is due the discovery of chloroform, which, with other anaesthetics, has done so much to lessen human pain. Physiology, a new science which examines the organs of life in the exercise of their functions, owes its development to Claude Bernard.j| It has since been immensely advanced by the studies of Huxley, Hasckel, Yirchow, and others. Application of the Physical Sciences: Navigation by Steam .— The application of science to industry has produced a series of wonders. One of the first miracles worked by steam was, speaking comparatively, the annihilation of distance. Fulton,an engineer, repulsed in France and little understood in England, had returned to his native country, the United States, where he first attempted navigation by steam in 1806. Before he died, in 1815, the world had realised the immense advantages of his discovery, and the rivers of the United States were already covered with rapid boats, recognised from afar by their plume of smoke. In England (1818) Dawson established a steam boat for the river service between Gravesend and London. In France, on August 20th, 1816, during the fetes celebrated in honour of the marriage of the Due de Berri, Jouffroy launched a steam-boat at Petit-Bercy for the navigation of the Seine. Several companies were formed, and Captain Audriel was sent by one of them to England, where he bought a steam¬ boat and attempted to cross the Channel in it. A severe gale met him, but the steam power withstood the waves and winds, and Captain Audriel successfully moored his boat to the Quai du Louvre. * Corvisart (175 5 —1821). f Laennec, born at Quimper (1781—1826). Plis name has bef'n given to one of the hospitals in Paris. J Magendie (1783—1855) § Dupuytren (1777—1835). || Claude Bernard (1813—lv.78). II Pulton, boru in Pennsylvania (1765—1815). 496 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Steam then could replace sails. An American ship confirmed the fact by successfully crossing from Savannah to Liverpool in 26 days (1819). In 1825, an English steamer, the Enterprise, made the voyage to India. Between 1825 and 1830 our rivers and sea¬ ports were served by regular services of steam-boats. Frederic Sauvage * improved the system of navigation by the introduction of the screw, which had been the first idea of Watts, first prac¬ tically applied by Ericsson and F. Pettit Smith in 1837—8. Locomotives , Railways : Stephenson , Seguin .—The use made of steam in industrial work had, in 1770, suggested to Joseph Cugnot the idea of applying it to the traction of carriages. In America, Oliver Evans, the inventor of high pressure machines, constructed, in 1790, some steam carriages for use on ordinary roads, but they were unsuccessful. Trevethick and Yivianf and W. Hedley in 1813, employed a locomotive on roads prepared with iron rails in their mines, and the day on which they first substituted steam for horse¬ power was the real date of the invention of railways. In 1814 George StephensonJ constructed the first large machines, which were used on the railroad in the mines of Killingworth. These first locomotives travelled twenty-one miles in four hours : they simply replaced waggoning. In 1813 an English engineer, Blackett, noticed that by adding considerable weight to the loco¬ motive the sliding was diminished and the wheels no longer turned on the same spot. The Colliery Company of Saint Etienne et de Bive-de-Gier introduced the first railway into France in 1827, and as an im¬ provement on the original machines an engineer, Seguin § of Annonay, invented (1829) the tubular boiler; then in order to quicken the flame he placed a ventilator in front of the furnace. Robert Stephenson, brother to George, added another improve¬ ment ; he threw a jet of steam into the pipe of the chimney, which, after producing its action upon the piston, served to increase the draught power. At an open competition held in England, Robert * Frederic Sauvage, born at Boulogne-Sur-Mer, 1785, died in 1857. f Trevethick and Vivian, contractors in Cornwall. X George Stephenson (1781—1848). § Seguin (1786—1875). THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS . 4^7 and George Stephenson exhibited the Rocket, constructed upo 1 the Seguin system. On October 6th, 1829, the Rocket drew a weight of 18 tons at the rate of 19 miles an hour. Without any weight attached it travelled six miles in fourteen minutes. The problem of traction was solved ! The Stockton and Darlington Railway was opened to passengers in 1825, the Manchester and Liverpool line in 1830. From 1830 improvements have been continually effected, and railways have now attained marvellous development, and as we shall see further on, have produced the most extra¬ ordinary transformation of the world. Man travels with marvellous rapidity, triumphant to every point of his vast domain. Space and time are annihilated. Electro-magnetism and the Telegrajih .—The idea of rapid trans¬ mission of news is very ancient. At every epoch men varied the signals given by fire or other devices. At the time of the Revolu¬ tion Claude Chappe invented a system of signals indicated by movable bars, placed at different angles, and installed upon towers or high buildings. The Convention adopted his system, and the first line was established as far as the Northern frontier ; the words corresponded to numbers. At noon, on the 1st of September, 1794, a message left the tower of Saint Catherine, at Lille, and passed from station to station until it reached the dome of the Louvre, in Paris. The Convention was then assembling. Carnot ascended the tribune, and announced that he had received the * following news by telegram : “ Conde is restored to the Republic. The surrender took place at six o’clock this morning.” The infor¬ mation was greeted with frantic applause, and from that time aerial telegraphs were established in every direction, although now they appear dilatory in comparison to the electric telegraph. Volta, in 1800, had by his pile procured an electric current that could be easily conducted. In 1811 Soemmering had already invented a system of telegraphy by conducting currents of elec¬ tricity into different vases of water representing the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. In 1820 Oerstedt observed the great fact of electro-magnetism. If a voltaic current is made to circulate round a magnetized needle, the needle is seen to deviate, oscillate, K K 498 THE HISTORY O* CIVILIZATION. and abandon its direction towards the north. Ampere repeated the experiment, and at once realized its applicability to the tele¬ graph. “Take,” he said, “as many magnetized needles as you have letters of the alphabet, put them in movement by conductors already in communication with the pile, and you have a system of correspondence that will pass over any distance.” Arago dis¬ covered the fundamental fact that electricity circulating round a blade of soft iron, magnetises it. Interrupt the current, the magnetism ceases. In this way an alternate movement is obtained by magnetising and demagnetising a bar of iron, which in its turn attracts or repels a second bar of iron. This is the principle of all the systems of electric telegraphy, although their mechanism is infinitely varied. Wheatstone and Morse's System of Telegraphy .—In England Professor Wheatstone, in 1837, invented the needle telegraph. His alphabetical printing telegraph was patented in 1841, and soon used throughout the country in spite of its complications. He also invented the telegraph dial, particularly adapted to the use of railways. An American, Samuel Morse, invented the system now used in America and throughout Europe. The electric current moves a steel style which marks a series of dots or small lines upon a strong paper. With these points and lines, which are elongated or diminished according to the duration of the current, which is interrupted by blank spaces to separate the words, a kind of hieroglyphic language has been arranged, which is afterwards translated by the Morse alphabet. The first telegraph line was instituted in the United States in 1844. In France, at the same epoch, the Foy-Breguet telegraph was established the whole length of the railway from Paris to Rouen, where it reproduced the signals of the aerial telegraph at every station on the line. In 1850 the first submarine telegraph was laid between Dover and Calais. This was but the infancy of the art. Ingenious systems have succeeded each other, such as those of the American Blain, the Englishman Blackwell, and the Hughes * Samuel Morse, died .u 1812. 499 THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS . apparatus. The Abbe Caselli, of Florence, invented the pan¬ telegraph, where the style follows the letters drawn upon the paper. Bonelli discovered the printing telegraph. Further appli¬ cations are constantly being made by voice (telephone), automatic writing and registration and reproduction of sounds, by the spoken or singing voice or by musical apparatus (phonograph). Electricity as an Industrial Agent; Ruhmkorff's Apparatus .— Electricity is also a power and an instrument, a real implement of labour. In 1837 Spencer, an Englishman, observed that the current of Volta’s pile could fuse metal and render it fit to be moulded in any shape required; this is the principle of galvano- plastic art, or electro-metallurgy. Medals were speedily ob¬ tained, and then the new process was used for gilding and silvering metals by Ruolz and Elkington in 1840. In 1841 Ruolz* read an account of his methods of applying gold and silver to metals before the Academie des Sciences. A grand discovery that has been made since that time is that of Ruhmkorff,t a manufacturer of physical instruments in Paris, who constructed an admirable machine for utilising electricity by induc¬ tion. This machine, very easy to use and therefore popular, has enabled electricity to be applied to a number of mechanisms. Another manufacturer, named Froment, employed electricity in moving complicated machines, which are used in making instru¬ ments of wonderful delicacy. Electricity has given new power to Jacquard’s ingenious loom, and the electric apparatus invented by Bonelli advantageously replaced the cards and their accessories. Marcel Deprez, in 1885, proved that through electricity force could be transmitted for a great distance. From Creil, he put machinery in action that was erected at the Gare du Nord. Motors for the storage and transmission of electrical force are coming rapidly into more general use. Electric clockwork has added another service to the many * Ruolz, chemist, born 1808. t Ruhmkorff, horn in Germany, but settled in Paris (1803—1877). Ruhm- korff received the grand prize of 50,000 francs from the French Government in 1864. 5 oo THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . received from electricity. By means of a single regulating pen¬ dulum, the hour, minute, and second can be indicated upon different dials at great distances. In the United States, England, and Germany, this system of clockwork is already adopted for private use. In the town of Ghent, in Belgium, the time is indicated by means of electricity upon more than a hundred dials placed upon the gas lamps. Artificial Light: Lighthouses. —Fresnel, under the Kestoration, directed his studies upon light to the perfecting, or rather inven¬ tion, of lighthouses. For reflectors he substituted lenses of glass, arranged so as to refract horizontally the rays of light issuing from their centre. Eight lenses are used in this apparatus. This system had the advantage of transmitting nine-tenths of the incidental rays, whilst the ordinary reflectors only gave one-half. Still one inconvenience remained; the light was only directed to one point. Fresnel remedied this defect by introducing a rotatory movement, which prevented the lighthouse beacon from being mistaken for any other. The modern lighthouse was created. Gas Light .—In 1786, Philippe Lebon, a French engineer,* first thought of using the gas that arose from burning wood for the purpose of giving artificial light. At Havre in 1789 Lebon first attempted to establish the thermo-lamps , but with little success. An English engineer, Murdoch, who knew of Lebon’s experiments, lighted first his own house (1792), and then James Watts’ manufactory by means of gas taken from coal (1798). In 1804 Winsor formed a company in England for the manufacture of gas light, and in 1816 he went to Paris, where he met with great difficulties in the establishment of his new system of light, of which the first specimen was given in the Passage des Panoramas. Towards 1820 a gasometer was built for lighting the Luxembourg Palace and the neighbourhood around it. Meanwhile gas had been used in London from 1807 to 1810, when the first Gas Company was formed. The government under Louis XVIII. having taken the new invention under its protection, a company, * Philippe LeV'ii, born towards 1765 at Bruchet (Haute Marne) ; died, assassinated, in 1804. THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. 5ci placed under the patronage of the king, was founded in 1822, with the assistance of Chaptal and other scientific notabilities ; and from that time the frightful oil lamps, drawn up and down by cords, have disappeared even from the smallest towns ; but the reign of gas is now threatened by that of the electric light. The Electric Light .—Through an electric current, established between the two disconnected extremities of a conducting wire, a luminous arch is produced between these extremities, the intensity of the light given depending upon the pile used. This is the principle, though new variations are continually appearing in the systems used. Duboscq’s electric lamp appeared in the Paris Exhibition of 1855. The magneto-electric light was used for light¬ houses in 1858. In 1876 a Russian engineer, Jablochkoff, invented the electric candle, composed of two pieces of parallel carbon separated by plaster, a fusible, non-conducting substance. Between the two pieces of carbon that receive the current from the pile, the luminous arch is produced and maintained because the plaster becomes volatilised in proportion to the combustion of the carbon ; these candles have enabled electricity to be used for lighting halls and apartments. The voltaic pile has been sup¬ pressed and a steam-engine is now used, which by its movement produces the electric current. This simple arrangement has caused the electric light to be tried on a large scale for lighting public squares, and the cities of London, Paris, New York, and Madrid have partially adopted this new light, which, concentrated in a few dazzling centres, throws a strong light, much resembling that of the moon, over an immense surface. At last the American, Thomas Edison, and the Englishman, Swan, in 1878 perfected the incandescent lamps, that is to say, lamps in which the light is produced by a metallic conductor sufficiently heated by the electric current to be at white heat, and thus give a strong steady light. Constant improvements have since been made by these inventors, and by others, and the use of the electric light is spreading fast. Air Balloons .—We have noticed that towards the end of the last century scientific men had found means of expanding balloons and 50: THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. rising into the air. After the experiments made by Montgolfier, Pilatre de Rozier. Charles, Robert, and de Blanchard, it was realised that this discovery could be utilised for military observa¬ tions, and balloons belonging to the company of aeronauts floated over the battle-field of Fleurns i -June 26th, 1794). These balloons were retained captive, and are no longer used. However, in 1804. Biot and Gav-Lussac availed themselves of them in order to * m make some most interesting scientific observations upon the upper strata of the atmosphere. The balloon was afterwards used only as a means of amusement, and no public festivals took place without the services of aeronauts. But scientific men continued the study of this difficult ques¬ tion, which involves so many others, with more energy than ever. In 1S74 Croce-Spinelli and Sivel rose to a height of 26,160 feet, and brought back with them exact information upon the rarefaction of the atmosphere at that elevation. In 1S75 they attempted to ascend yet higher, accompanied by M. Tissandier. but the two former perished, victims of their devotion to science. Great attention is now being paid to the problem of steering balloons, chiefly for war purposes, and for survey, and in the military establishment of Chalais-Meudon experiments are being made with the view of adapting the motive powers used on land and water to the currents of the atmosphere. Man endeavours to conquer the air and the winds as he has already conquered the waves, but small addition to scientific knowledge has hitherto been made bv this means. * Artesian Wells. —Earth, at least, opens more and more her se¬ crets to man. He knows how to fathom the depths, where to find springs of water, and how to bring the water to its surface ; and this art has been known for a long time, judging by the wells dug in Italy in the Middle Ages, and by the wells bored in Artois, the oldest of which (at Lillers) dates from the reign of Louis le Gros. Bernard Palissy describes an instrument which he had invented, and which is analogous to our boring instrument or drill. But it is chiefly in the nineteenth century that, with more exact knowledge of the laws of the equilibrium of liquids, the number THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. ; c 3 of artesian wells has been increased. Hericart de Thury arid Degousee developed the theory and perfected the art of boring. The well of Grenelle in Paris 1638—1844) brings water from a depth of 1,798 feet, and gives 1,000 gallons per minute. At Pesth water rises from a depth of 3,182 feet, and at St. Louis, in Missouri, of 3,843 feet. Artesian wells have also rendered the greatest service in Algeria and in the Sahara regions, for wa*er, the source of life in those burning regions, has thus been obtained in every direction. Suspension Bridges .—The progress of mathematics, mechanics, and industry has enabled the two banks of a stream, or the two extremities of a valley, to be united by bridges, far more wonder¬ ful than any of the works bequeathed to us by the Romans. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the theory of suspension bridges was already known, but it was Findley, in America, who built the first permanent suspension bridge for the use of carriages. England and France followed this example, and we may men¬ tion the famous tubular bridge over the Menai Straits in England, the suspension bridge at Friburg, in Switzerland, and in France those of Cubzac and Garabit. In America a fine bridge connects the two shores of Niagara over the fall itself; it is built in two stories, one for the railway, and the other for carriages and foot passengers. The Brooklyn bridge, between New York and its suburb, is still longer and wider. The piles are placed at distances of 5454 yards, and rise 92f yards out of the water; the span is 43|, and the highest clippers can pass underneath it without lowering their masts ; but all these have been surpassed by the Forth Bridge, recently constructed on principles similar to those on which the Eifiel Tower at the Paris Exhibition of 1689 was built. Photography .—The discovery of photography by Niepce and Daguerre has been one of the most popular achievements of this century. Niepce* first succeeded in reproducing, by the chemical action of light, the images of external objects. He commenced his labours in 1813, and afterwards became acquainted with Daguerre, * Niepce, b m at Chalons-on- Sa ne 1762—1S33). 504 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the inventor of the diorama. The latter perfected the discovery of Niepce, who died in 1833, without enjoying any of the fruits of his successful labours. Daguerre* continued his studies alone, and succeeded in obtain¬ ing photographic pictures in 1839. In the same year Mr. Fox Talbot succeeded in producing a negative photograph, from which copies could be printed. At that time only stationary objects could be photographed, but through later improvements moving objects can now be instantaneously reproduced. In 1817 Blanquart- Evrard discovered the method of fixing photographs on paper. Photography, in addition to its pleasant and important work of reproducing the features of individuals, is daily becoming of greater service in scientific observations and in art. Meteorological photo¬ graphic instruments themselves inscribe the atmospherical changes that affect them, and microscopical objects can be reproduced in enlarged size by this means, an immense advantage in the study of natural history. Celestial photography is a great help to astron¬ omy, especially in mapping out the heavens. The Telephone .—CEesar relates that the Gauls in their campaigns placed men at intervals, who shouted news and orders from post to post. The massacre of the Romans at Genabum was thus known on the same day to the inhabitants of Gergovia, in spite of the two places being eighty leagues apart. In our century we have surpassed these methods by means of electricity. Electric vibrators were constructed first (1847 —1852), and in 1861 Philippe Reiss established the first telephone, which only transmitted iso¬ lated or musical sounds. An American of English origin, Graham Bell, first transmitted words. His apparatus was noticed in the Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, and with its aid, Graham Bell engaged in a conversation at a distance of thirteen miles ; this apparatus is particularly convenient because the wires of the ordi¬ nary telegraph are available for the transmission of its sounds. Other machines have been invented by Gower Bell and Edison, and the use of the telephone has gradually spread both in Europe and America, not only for messages in the precincts of the * Daguerre, bom in Paris (1789—1851). He died at Petit-Biy (Seine). THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. 5°5 same town, but between distant cities. Another modern method of annihilating space and time. The Phonograph .—But yet more has been accomplished. A simple printer’s reader, Leon Scott, discovered, in France, a method of making words inscribe themselves. The first patent for it was taken out by Mr. Fenby in 18G3. The celebrated mechanician, Edison, completed the solution of the problem, and caused metal to reproduce the words stored up in itself. This instrument, the phonograph (1877), registers, preserves, and then emits the sounds that have been confided to it ; of little practical importance at present, it has probably a vast future before it. Applications of Chemistry; Pasteur's Discoveries .—The applica¬ tions of chemistry to industry, which Chaptal had commenced under the Consulate and the Empire, were continued by Thenard, Chevreul, Dumas, and Balard, and are becoming yearly of greater importance to art, and moreover they have given great impetus to the industries of dyeing, oil manufactures, and chemical produc¬ tions, &c. Sainte-Claire Deville, aided by Debray, discovered the means of making a new metal, aluminium, which can be used instead of silver for many purposes. By means of the use of symbols, and the correspondence of facts, ratios and relations with them, chemistry is now becoming almost a mathematical science. Lastly, Pasteur,* by dint of patient, methodical studies of the microscopic world, guided by extraordinary genius, succeeded in. wresting from nature some unsuspected secrets, some of which have proved, and some of which may perhaps prove, practically useful. In his laboratory, in the Ilicole Normale Superieure, he first devoted himself, from 1857, to an examination of the warmly disputed question of spontaneous generation; he denied this doc¬ trine, and was led to inquire into the influence exercised by the atoms contained in the atmosphere over the putrefaction of matter and liquids. He carefully studied the manufactures of vinegar and beer, and the causes of the wine diseases. Proving that these diseases came from a vegetation which was generated in them, he found that to preserve wine from deteriorating, it only needed to * Louis Pasteur, born at Dolf3 (Ju-a), 1822. 5o6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . be raised for some instants to a temperature of 55 deg. to 60 deg. This theory of atmospheric germs has been carried out in England by Tyndall and others. Pasteur’s attention was then directed to the silk-worm disease, which ruined the industry of several departments. Pasteur defined it, recognised it in the butterflies’ eggs, and pointed out a practical method of discerning the good or bad eggs. Wealth was restored to the Basses-Alpes, Ardeche, Gard, Drome, and all the districts where silkworms are cultivated. The indefatigable chemist, without allowing illness to interfere with his work, then discovered and fostered the microbes which produce fermentation, and at last manufactured a vaccine against virulent illnesses, even trying conclusions against cliarbon in sheep, and with very doubt¬ ful success, if not with absolute failure, against hydrophobia in men. The Scientific Movement of the Nineteenth Century .—The imagi¬ nation is overwhelmed by the spectacle of the marvellous material successes accomplished by science. Our century certainly inhe¬ rited the systems and discoveries of former ages, but what fruits have been produced of late by chemists, physicians, engineers, mathematicians, and astronomers! Nature reveals her secrets one by one, and each aids in unravelling the mysteries yet unsolved. Steam, now disciplined, gives incalculable force to industry; elec¬ tricity transmits the thoughts and words of man, gives him light, and moreover serves as a powerful motor. Scientific men have analysed nearly every substance, decomposed almost every body, extricated and utilised the gases. The sun is forced to print pic¬ tures of men and countries upon paper, and even life has been prolonged. Peaceful victories have been won, more glorious than military conquests, for they are rendering man the master of that nature which had made him its victim and plaything for so long. Fruitful victories are these which contribute by the mutual increase of comfort to the union of nations, and in a word to civilization : victories, which enable us to measure the value of the human intelligence, and prove that it is derived from a principle superior to matter, which it commands, bends, and directs at its will. The more science enlarges its domain the higher man rises, and his THE SCIENCES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS. 5°7 reason proves his close connection with the sovereign infinite reason which governs the world. One peculiarity of the present condition of science is that in many cases, such as that of elec¬ tricity and its applications, practice has outstripped theory. Man now makes use of forces of whose composition he is ignorant. When this is known, science may again be revolutionized, and all our previous knowledge seem comparatively small. CHAPTER XX. ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS AND MORAL PROGRESS. Summary : Agriculture—Agricultural Shows and Societies—Agriculture in Europe—Industry; Mechanical Processes ; First Experiments in the Eighteenth Century; Arkwright (1732 — 1792); Cotton Spinning; the Spinning-Jenny—Flax and Hemp Spinning; Philippe de Girard — Silk Spinning and AVeaving; Jacquard—Manufacture of Paper by Machinery—Printing; Lithography—Porcelain in Saxony and France in the Eighteenth Century—Glass—Various Industries—Manufacture of Beetroot Sugar—Importance of the Metal Industry—Industrial Ac¬ tivity of the Different Nations—Industrial Associations: Co-operative Societies—Triumphs of Engineering Art; the Mont Cenis and St. Gothard Tunnels — The Revolution produced by Railways — The Post ; the Universal Postal Union—The Telegraph—Sub-marine Telegraphs —Transatlantic Navigation—Piercing of the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama — Ferdinand de Lesseps — Universal Exhibitions (1851, 1855, 1862, 1867, 1873, 1876, 1878, 1889) —International Commissions; Pro¬ pagation of the Metric System—Unity of Coinage—Credit; Institutions of Credit; Insurances—Free Trade and Commercial Treaties—Com¬ mercial Activity of the Various Nations—Results of the Economic Revolution; Prolongation of the Average of Life—Moral Progress; Public Education in France—Public Education in Europe—Progress of Legislation—Diminution of Crime—Provident Institutions — Charity; Benevolent Institutions. Agriculture .— Science has changed the conditions of agriculture, industry, and trade. Agriculture, formerly traditional, has become experimental and deductive. It has even become a science with Matthew de Dombasle, Liebig, Sir J. Lawes, Gasparin, and a number of others, who have created special schools, analysed the soil, studied the rotation of crops and the value of manures, and taught men how to produce excellent harvests even from poor land. The so-called artificial and chemical manures aud guano TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 509 have been used to increase the fertility of the land. The breeding of cattle has been greatly improved by the labours of Bates, Booth, and other Englishmen. The progress of machinery has enabled steam-power to supple¬ ment manual labour. At the end of the eighteenth century threshing machines, drills, and weeding hoes were already known. In the vast plains of North America the scarcity of labour stimu¬ lated inventive genius, and mowing and reaping machines were constructed. The steam-engine has come to the farmer’s assist¬ ance. It is either stationary in the farms, or is taken from village to village to give the necessary aid ; in many countries it replaces the labour of oxen and horses. Machines now plough the fields, cut the corn,* bind the sheaves, thresh out the grain, separate the straw, and winnow the chaff, thus saving labour and enabling agriculture to be successfully carried on under more adverse con¬ ditions. Agricultural Shows and Societies .—Agriculture received great impetus from the shows, or exhibitions, long established in England, and organized in France since 1844. They are now annual in many places, and a peaceable contest takes place between the finest breeds of cattle, and the most perfect instruments, imple¬ ments, and apparatus. Besides this, free associations and agri¬ cultural societies discuss the best process of cultivation, organize the competitions, and by means of prizes reward the most suc¬ cessful exhibitors. Agriculture in Europe .—In England agriculture is greatly honoured. Seconded by capital, which no one fears to invest in this way, the English have succeeded in obtaining a yield per acre almost double that obtained in France. Publications relating to husbandry abound, agricultural colleges are opened, and the countries least dowered by nature pay the most attention to agricultural studies. Sweden has a number of schools, farms, and model sheep-farms. A Royal Academy of Agriculture was founded there in 1811. The Dutch have succeeded wonder- * In America, 1831, MacCormick first invented the method of giving’ a to- and-fro movement to the sc\the that cut the wheat stems. 5 10 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. tully in protecting their land from invasion by the sea; and by draining the lake at Haarlem and the polders, they have now vast plains for cultivation situated from four to six yards below the level of the sea. They have thus acquired 35,550 acres. Denmark set the example of rural education at the commence¬ ment of the nineteenth century, and her progress of late years, owing to state-aided education, has been very rapid, particularly in dairy farming. Belgium had only to persevere in the rules of old Flemish traditions, their superiority was recognised in the Middle Ages, and the Flemings have successfully maintained their reputation, Belgium is still the best-cultivated and most productive country in Europe. Life in Switzerland is chiefly pastoral, and agiicultural education is adopted and highly valued there. In the centre of Europe, in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, the pea¬ sants’ inferior, dependent position and the seigniorial rights re¬ mained unchanged until 1848, but since that time rapid progress has been made. Russia has entered the same path, and the immense corn-fields of the tchernozoum (black land) form with the Hungarian plains the chief granaries of Europe. We cannot but echo Button's exclamation, “ How beautiful cultivated nature is ! ” as we admire the vineyards on every side of the hills, wherever the sun can ripen the giapes, the seas ot harvests in Beauce, Brie, Limagne, in France, Hungary, Russia, &c., the pastures of Normandy, England, and Holland. No large tract of European land can now be found, capable of cultivation, which is not used for cereals, dyeing plants, the vine, hops, or pasturage. The immense tracts of waste land that existed in France during the last century are now cultivated, and agricultural life is everywhere recognised as the primitive source of a nation’s wealth. In barbarous times Europe was only a forest intersected by a few fields here and there. Now that the forests have been only too completely removed, it is a field intersected by a few woods, and in some parts may be described as a fertile garden. Industry; Mechanical Processes; First Experiments in the Eighteenth Century; Arkwright (1732—1792); Cotton Spinning; the Spin - rung Jenny.—Man formerly possessed only his two hands and TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 5*i a few rough tools; he has now a thousand implements, each more ingenious than the other, an infinite variety of powerful machines and delicate mechanisms, by the aid of which he can transform raw materials with a rapidity which gives him infinite power of production. Until the eighteenth century the distaff and wheel were still the only means of spinning, and, in fact, the latter appears to have been introduced about the fifteenth century. In 1767, Hargreaves, a mechanic, near Blackburn, invented the first spinning machine; this was improved by Arkwright * * * § in 1769. In 1769 he established a first cotton mill at Nottingham, in 1771 a second at Cromfort, Derbyshire, and in a short time he became one of the richest manufacturers in England. In 1779 Samuel Crompton f invented some new machines, which he called mule- jennies, and which first became general in France after 1784, and then in Europe. After some interval they were again improved, and became the self-acting mule-jenny, which automati¬ cally effect the various operations required in the manufacture of cotton goods. A skilful French mechanic, Yaucanson,J endeavoured to add a weaving machine to his numerous ingenious inventions. But he was discouraged by the manufacturers’ reluctance to change the routine of their mills, and his fruitless attempts were perfected in England, where the success of the Arkwright looms acted as an incentive to other inventors. Between 1785 and 1787 Edmund Cartwright § succeeded in making the first weaving loom. His loom was soon improved, and from that time rapid progress was made. In 1820 England and Scotland had already 160,000 looms. They now employ more than 500,000. Richard and Lenoir-Dufresne introduced the English machines into France during the reign of Napoleon I., and in 1814 more than 7,589 tons of cotton were already spun. * Richard Arkwright, horn at Preston, in Lancashire (1732—1792). t Samuel Crompton, horn in Lancashire (1763—1827). f Jacques de Vaucanson, born at Grenoble (1709—1782). § Edmund Cartwright, born at Marnham, Nottingham (1743—1823). 5'2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Ficix and Hemp Spinning ; Philippe de Girard. —Richard, who had assumed the name of Lenoir, was ruined by the foreign inva¬ sion of 1814, and at the same time an inventive genius of the first order, Philippe de Girard,* 1 who had succeeded in 1810 in making looms for spinning hemp and flax, failed in business and left France for Austria and Poland, whence he returned the year before his death. The French were afterwards obliged to go to Fmgland for the machines invented by Philippe de Girard (1838), w T hom his native country learnt to appreciate too late. Silk Spinning and Weaving; Jacquard .f—The mechanical pro¬ cess formerly used in silk weaving dates from the later half of the fifteenth century. It is attributed to a workman of Bologna, named Borghesano Lucchesi, but was very imperfect. In the eighteenth century, Yaucanson discovered a new system, and made models of his machines. He bequeathed these models to Louis XVI., and this bequest formed the nucleus of the collections of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, organized by the Conven¬ tion. A workman in Lyons, named Jacquard, who hal passed his childhood in the midst of the looms, adopted the trade of a mechanic, and in 1801 received a reward from the Exhibition of products of French national industry. He succeeded in the construction of a machine for making fishing-nets, and was sent to Paris (1803) to exhibit his machine at the Conservatoire. “You are, then, the man,” said Carnot, as he greeted him, “ who claims to have succeeded in a work no man can do, making a knot with a tight string.” The mechanism was shown to Bonaparte, who greatly admired it, and it justified Jacquard’s pretensions. He was appointed to the Conservatoire, where he was emplojmd in repairing machines ; here he invented a loom for weaving double- piled velvets, and others for •weaving cotton with two or three shuttles. He put Vaucanson’s famous loom in -working order, and then returned to Lyons, where he was employed to establish a workshop for making figured materials and Gobelins tapestries by a * Philippe de Girard, born at Lourmarin, Yaucluse (1775—1845). t Jacquard, born at Lyons (1752—1834). TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS, 5 T 3 process which he had invented. A decree dated from Berlin in IMs} , 1 '! foM Its Ilfn) y ■ 1 ‘ j I j ■km By mm. 1806, authorised the municipal administration of Lyons to buy Interior of a Cotton-Spinning 1 Mill 514 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the patent of Jacquard’s inventions. The old weaving looms were cumbered with ropes and pedals, which rendered it necessary for the weaver to have assistance in working them. Thanks to Jacquard, this labour, which was very heavy, was dispensed with, and each loom was worked entirely by the weaver, thus releasing the poor children and young girls who had been usually employed in the work, to the great detriment of their health. The workmen, believing that this new invention would ruin them by employing less workers, broke the looms and tried to throw the inventor into the Rhone. The truth that all machinery by accelerating labour, far from diminishing the number of workers, increases it by lowering the price of produce and thus doubling the consumption, was not realised until some years afterwards. Jacquard died at Oulins, near Lyons, aged eighty-two (1834), and in 1840 a statue was raised in his honour by the sons of those workmen who, in their ignorance, had destroyed his first machines. Manufacture of Paper by Machinery .—The manufacture of paper was particularly affected by the progress of steam machinery. In 1799 the first machine was used at Essonnes, at the paper mills belonging to Franyois Didot ; it was improved in England, taken back to France in 1814, and afterwards established at Annonay. An immense number of materials have been found suitable for con¬ version into paper. In 1772 a learned German, Jean Charles Schceffer, published a volume at Ratisbon containing eiglity-one specimens of paper obtained with different substances. But now the progress has been so rapid that in the fine paper-mills at Essonnes (belonging to Messrs. Darblay) one may see the trunk of a tree seized by a machine, split into several pieces, reduced to shavings, then to pulp, and at last to paste, gradually dried and made thinner until it becomes a sheet of paper. The applications of paper to other uses than those of printing and writing are con¬ stantly becoming more numerous. Printing ; Lithography .—Until our century printing had made very slow progress since Gutenberg’s discovery. At the end of the last century an iron press and font were substituted by Stan¬ hope for the old wooden ones. The brothers Didot introduced it TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 5*5 into France in 1818. Bauer and Koenig succeeded in constructing a mechanical press in Germany, which was bought by the pro¬ prietor of the English Times newspaper. On December 28th, 1814, a notice placed at the head of the paper informed the world that the number had been printed by a steam press. In 1823 the steam press was established in France, and from that time printing made rapid progress. Type-composing machines were introduced in 1842. At last the perfection of the Marinoni machines enabled 36,000 sheets to be printed in one hour, and daily newspapers to satisfy public curiosity with marvellous rapidity. This has since been far surpassed, and improvements are being continually made in these machines, especially in colour printing. In 1798 Alois Senefelder, a poor actor in Munich, discovered lithography, which was soon introduced into France (1814) and then into Europe. Between 1830 and 1837 the superior process of chromo-lithography was discovered, which has since been greatly improved and extended. Porcelain in Saxony and France in the Eighteenth Century .— The potter’s industry, one of the most ancient as well as the most necessary, has gradually developed, improving, as we have already noticed, through all the centuries. The Renaissance produced some beautiful specimens of ceramics, but common pottery was never really manufactured in France until the seventeenth century, when a gentleman belonging to the court of the Duke de Nivernais, named Conrad, established, with the aid of Italian workmen, a factory for pottery, imitated from that made in Faenza in Italy. These potteries were called faiences in France (a corruption of the word fayances), and became very popular ; but in the eighteenth century they met with great competition from the fine earthenware invented in England, although the application of this manufacture was largely developed in France after 1820. But both were eclipsed by porcelain. This name had been given to mother-of-pearl in the Middle Ages because of the resemblance between its whiteness and that of Chinese pottery. But no clay could be found at all resembling the Chinese kaolin. In 1709 Johann Frederic Bottcher succeeded in making a white trans- THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 5i6 lucid porcelain in Saxony, and he was charged by the Elector to organize a large porcelain manufacture in the castle of Albert, at Meissen, where he was strictly watched to prevent the secret of its fabrication being divulged. But nevertheless the secret was soon carried into Russia, Switzerland, Holland, England, and France. But it was not easy to find suitable clay; a lady, named Darnet, wife of a surgeon of Saint-Yrieix, in Limousin, discovered kaolin there in 1768. It has since been found in other parts of France, and in America. A new porcelain, which excited great enthusiasm, was produced at the royal factory at Sevres, and the fine delicate porcelain and vitreous porcelain called old Sevres is still eagerly competed for by the china lovers of all nations. In 1773 this factory was established at Limoges, where it developed the manufacture of useful articles. The Sevres factory has main¬ tained its artistic reputation; its chemists, designers, painters, gilders, modellers, and even its bakers are scientists. In England the manufacturers of porcelain were far behind their foreign rivals until 1759, when Wedgewood, with Flaxman as his designer, introduced the beauty of outline and rich colour that had distinguished the Greek ceramics. He also invented terra-cotta, which could be made to resemble porphyry, granite, and other beautiful stones, and produced fine biscuit porcelain, black, white, cane-coloured, &c. After his death Minton, Boulton, and others devoted their energies to the improvement of ceramics, and our English porcelain has competed successfully with foreign productions. Glass .—The nineteenth century only continued the ancient tra¬ ditions in glass-making prevalent in Bohemia and Venice, and in the manufacture of plate-glass and mirrors at Saint Gobain. Crystal (a silicate of potass and lead) dates only from the last century. It was first made in the glass-works of Saint Louis (Lorraine), but was greatly developed in the crystal factory at Baccarat, and the old glass-works of Saint Anne, where a com¬ pany, formed in 1822, disposed of a vast amount of material. Baccarat* crystal has become famous throughout Europe. Tem- * Baccarat, near Luneville (Meurthe-et-Moselle). TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 517 pered or toughened glass, invented by De la Bastie in 1875, may yet have a future before it. Various Industries .—We should wander too far if we endeavoured to point out the numerous improvements that have been made in every branch of industry. Horology, that in the Middle Ages could only be applied to stationary clocks, is now used for portable apparatus. In the seventeenth century the invention of a spiral regulator led to the manufacture of watches, and then to repeating watches ; in the eighteenth century this manufacture was carried to great perfection by the Englishmen, Graham and Harrison, and the Swiss, Louis Breguet. Chronometers are now relied upon for navigation. The application of machinery to watchmaking has given an immense impulse to the production of watches in America. The nineteenth century has also developed the beautiful industry of art bronzes, which enables the masterpieces of sculpture to be reproduced and multiplied. It has perfected the manufacture of toys, fancy goods, and that which sends artistic furniture even to remote country districts, and thus perpetuates the traditions of art and the wonders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We must also mention the manufacture of musical instruments, jewelry, &c. Art is now allied to industry, and every day new ingenious combinations are produced which satisfy the require¬ ments and fancies of mankind, placing comfort within the reach of the majority. The Manufacture of Beet-root Sugar .—Industry has also improved the production of food, and at the commencement of the century a complete revolution took place in the manufacture of sugar. Until then sugar had been made from the sugar-cane only, and the attempts of a German chemist, Margraff,* to extract sugar from beet-root in 1747, attracted little attention, except from a few scientific men. The wars of the Revolution and of the Empire, added to the continental blockade, deprived France of cane-sugar, and it became necessary to continue the experiments commenced in the last century. They at last succeeded, and a factory was established at Passy by Benjamin Delessert, where Napoleon * IMargraff, born in Berlin (1709—1780). 5‘8 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. himself went and decorated the inventor in his workshop (1812). Crespel Delisse on his side obtained magnificent results at Lille, and he endowed the northern departments of France with the sugar industry. It is the most successful example of an industry fostered and established by State-protection. The production of beet-root sugar in France now amounts to more than 225,051 tons per annum, whilst the consumption is so great that the colonial sugar would never suffice if the imports were not supplemented by the beet-root sugar. It is also largely grown in Germany and Austria, and the quantity of beet-root sugar made in Europe is far in excess of that made elsewhere from the sugar-cane. Germany sends over £6,000,000 worth of sugar to Great Britain, and over 50,000 tons to the United States. Importance of the Metal Industry .—But the mind is most im¬ pressed with the success now reached by the metal industry in the construction of machines, of iron bridges and frame-works of the im¬ mense mass of railway material, cannons, and iron and steel-built and armour-plated ships. Considerable numbers of workmen are now concentrated in large establishments, and monster engines have been invented to cope with these enormous works. Creusot,* in France, was only a wild uninhabited village in 1782. The factory established at that date first began to develop in 1837. Now the place is a town of fire and smoke, capped by high chimneys, one of which is 260 feet high. A thousand furnaces light up the night: all the outbuildings are connected by railway, and a population of more than 20,000 workmen labour in the enormous workshops, rolling and turning the iron to make tools, which afterwards serve to roll, turn, shape, file, construct, and fit the various parts of the heavy locomotives, the boilers, pistons, wheels, rails, rings, spans of bridges, &c. In Rhenish Prussia, near Essen, the Krupp factory, which in 1810 commenced modestly with a small forge, has now become one of the most extraordinary establishments in the whole world. It contains 39 boilers, and 450 steam machines, equal to 1,558 horse-power. There are 1,553 furnaces, 1,662 mechanical tools, and 82 steam hammers. It * Creusot is about 19 miles S.E. of Autun (Saone-et-Loire!. TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 5 1 9 daily consumes 3,100 tons of coal. Establishments almost equal to these are to be found in Great Britain, Belgium, the United States, and other countries. To form any idea of the industrial power that has now been at¬ tained we ought to describe each of the machines used in these city factories, and follow all their operations. The steam hammer invented by a Scotchman, Nasmyth, in 1838, is an apparatus for striking, composed of a mass of cast iron, weighing from 40 lbs. to 80 tons, which slides between two vertical columns. Moved by steam this mass can crush the hardest materials, yet regulated in its descent, it can cork a glass bottle without breaking it. This is one of the most wonderful creations of industrial invention, and it is now generally used in large factories. The ready conversion of iron into steel, by the Bessemer process, 1856, since improved by Krupp, Siemens, and others, has doubled the utility of iron ores. Industrial Activity of Different Nations .—England gave the first impetus to this industrial activity, and in spite of the progress accomplished by other nations still holds the first place. It is impossible to do more than mention the existence of the immense factories in London and Manchester, the cotton-cities’ queen surrounded by towns which have sprung up round her, as though built by magic—Oldham, Bolton, Preston, Rochdale, &c. ;* Birmingham and Sheffield are the centres of the iron and steel manufactures ; Nottingham, Leeds Bradford, &c., are the seats of the woollen industries, Glasgow in Scotland of ship-building, and Belfast in Ireland of the linen trade. England is a mass of coal and iron, and its inhabitants have used them with wonderful results. France, without attaining the industrial power of her neigh * London . . 4,350,000 inhab. Sheffield . 327,000 inhab. Manchester 378,000 Nottingham . 237,000 „ Oldham 142,000 „ Leeds .... 357,000 „ Bolton • . • 114,000 „ Bradford . . . 235,000 „ Preston . . 104,000 „ Glasgow . 528,000 „ Rochdale . . 68,866 Belfast . . . 230,000 „ Birmingham . 454,000 „ $30 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. born, } ot boasts of coal mines which employ 110,000 men, and produce annually 20 million tons of coal. Her iron mines produce ° million tons, only two-thirds of the quantity she manufactures at Lille, le Creusot, St. Etienne, &c. Her textile factories employ over a million hands. Silk is chiefly manufactured in the hand and power-looms at Lyons, paper at Angouleme, and all kinds of fancy products at Paris. Belgium is one immense manufactory : Brus¬ sels, Ghent, Liege, Yerviers, Mons, Charleroi, Tournai, Courtrai, Namur, Malines, &c., are all hives of industry. The portion of the Blrine valley which belongs to Prussia pos¬ sesses a number of active cities, where iron and stuffs are manu¬ factured, Elberfeld, Crefeld, and Essen (famous for the Ivrupp foundries). Silesia is rich in mines, and the kingdom and duchies ot Saxony possess many important manufacturing centres. Austria-Hungary, already rich in agriculture and forestry, develops its manufactures in Moravia, Bohemia, Lower Austria, Galicia, and Hungary. Mines are worked, brass, iron, and steel are produced in the vast foundries of Styria, Carinthia and Tran¬ sylvania. Switzerland, in spite of the agricultural tendencies of its population, competes with its neighbours in industrial productions. Sweden and Russia follow the general movement. Moscow is the industrial capital of the empire, drawing into its orbit the cities of Vladimir, Toula, Kalouga, Nijni-Novgorod, &c., and the dis¬ coveries of mineral oils on the Caspian have added immensely to its resources. Spain, rich in mines of iron and copper, especially toe unrivalled Rio Tioto copper mine, follows more slowly, except in Catalonia ; Italy is developing her manufactures in Milan, Genoa, Udine, and Florence. Industrial Associations: Co-operative Societies .—This continual extension of the industrial movement has produced many problems which are daily becoming more difficult to solve; this accumula¬ tion of workmen in mines, founderies, and factories, the extinc¬ tion of so many private and local industries, forcing the artisans to flock to the large founderies and factories, has greatly changed the conditions of social life for a large portion of the popu¬ lation. Some of the heads of the great industries have interested TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. S2i themselves in these questions, and have tried to improve the position of the workmen, either by admitting them to a small share of the profits of the business, or by building small houses near the factories, which can be acquired on easy terms. In Eng¬ land and Alsace, particularly in Mulhouse, workmen’s cities have been thus formed, where the workman, who forms part of a machine during many hours, may find on his return from labour a pleasant home, sometimes a garden, and that family life which is so necessary to morality. The workmen (particularly in England) have on their side, by their own initiation, discovered means of diminishing their expenses and encouraging thrift. They have formed associations, of which the Co-operative Societies are the most remarkable. In 1844 the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers, to diminish the daily expenses of each household, united to supply their own provisions, buying their merchandise wholesale, and thus profiting by the difference in price of wholesale and retail goods. Their society prospered, and their modest capital made such returns that for forty years they have paid very hi- h dividends. Their example has been imitated, co-ope¬ rative societies have been formed by hundreds all over England, and the problem of cheap provisions has been solved at the same time that the stores became practical savings banks. Other societies, called trades unions, have also been formed with another object. Workmen associate in order to prevent the lowering of wages in individual cases. Their means of resistance are often detrimental to industry by the advantage they give to the industry in other countries or places not on strike. This system is Ihe most formidable weapon possessed by the workmen in the struggle between capital and labour, which is steadily becoming the pressing problem of the age. In Germany loan societies were started in 1850, in Prussian Saxony. With small contributions the workmen succeeded in forming a capital which enables them to make advances to the members. In France the co-operation and loan systems have both failed. The workmen apparently prefer co-operative societies for production, that is to say, joining together and working a trade for THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. £22 v their own benefit. But this system would be very difficult to manage if applied to large numbers. Triumphs of Engineering Art: the Mont Cenis and Saint Gothard Tunnels .—The Greek historian Polybius tells of the works that Plannibal undertook in order to enable his elephants to pass the Rhone as a marvel of skill. But even this feat was much less Railway Viaduct. difficult than the transport of locomotives and tr ins of immense weight, and yet the latter has been accomplished by the aid of iron bridges of imperishable strength. Viaducts are used to overcome differences of level, and whole valleys are spanned by works of greater beauty than anything made since the great aqueducts bequeathed to us by the Romans. The locomotives pierce through mountains by the aid of tunnels, and even the mass of the Alps has not deterred the energy of modern en?ineers. Mont Cenis was entered under the Col de Frejus, and this tunnel is one of the finest TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 5 2 3 illustrations of the triumph of the science of mechanics. The rock was pierced by compressed-air perforators, which prepared the blasting mines. The length of the tunnel from Modana to Bardon- eche is more than seven miles, and fourteen years were occupied in excavating it (1857—1871). The Alps have been pierced a second time, and the Saint Gothard, in spite of its enormous size, is now traversed by a tunnel nearly nine miles long. It was opened in 1882. The Revolution produced by Railways. —Railways have produced a greater revolution in industry and commerce than even the dis¬ coveries of the fifteenth century. Yet they scarcely existed fifty years ago ! Distance is diminished and mountains are, as it were, removed, the extremities of a country are in rapid communication with each other, millions of tons of merchandise are carried from one end of Europe to the other, entire populations are occupied in constructing and working the lines, new openings are made for every industry and every commerce ; an inconceivable mingling of men and of ideas, of the interests of nations inextricably affected by the exchange of productions, different countries perpetually visited by merchants and tourists, costumes and customs modified by these daily communications, ought to produce some degree of neighbourly feeling amongst all the peoples of Europe. The Post , the Universal Postal Union. —We are also far in ad¬ vance of the time when Madame de Sovigne pitied the poor courriers who, over mountains and valleys, through winter and summer, carried her letters to Provence.* Now letters circulate as quickly as travellers, and newspapers are delivered at different parts of the country almost at the same moment. The nations of Europe * Posts and Telegraphs : Great Britain has 1,550 millions of letters, more than 32,000 miles of telegraph lines, and 53,000,000 telegrams ; Germany, 891 millions of letters, 55,400 miles of lines, 18,362,000 telegrams; France, 628 millions of letters, 55,858 miles of lines. 24,260,000 telegrams ; Austria- Hungary, 410 millions of letters. 28,400 miles of lines, 9,495,000 telegrams ; Italy, 149 millions of letters, 20,580 miles of lines, 6.455,000 telegrams ; Russia, 148 millions of letters, 70,100 miles of lines, 9,800,000 telegrams; Belgium, 117 millions of letters, 4,361 miles of lines, 6,896,000 telegrams; Spain, 95 millions of letters, 12,370 miles of lines, 2,524,000 telegrams. 524 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. realising the advantages of easy communication adopted a Universal Postal Union. This Union, regulating the price of postage and equalising it all over Europe, was concluded at Berne, October 9th, 1874, and extended by the treaty of Paris, June 1st, 1878. The principal States of Asia, Africa, and America have now joined it. The Telegraph .—The telegraph completes the railway by con¬ veying information. Europe now resembles one immense city. No event of importance can take place in any part of it without the fact being at once communicated to the whole continent. The construction of telegraph lines is very simple and much less diffi¬ cult and expensive than that of railways, so that they have been extended to the most remote districts. Submarine Telegraphs. — The railway passes under moun¬ tains and the telegraph under seas. In 1849 a cable was con¬ structed of gutta percha, formed from the sap of a tree grown in the Malay Peninsula, which is found to be an excellent isolator, and this cable was successfully laid between Dover and Calais in 1851. It was speedily followed by a cable under the North Sea, another under the Irish Sea, and at last one was laid under the Atlantic Ocean, 1858. With the aid of the Great Eastern , which carried the Transatlantic cable, it was renewed in 1865 between Ireland (Yalentia) and Newfoundland. Europe was con¬ nected with America. Other lines were added between 1866 and 1872, and England is now linked with America by several cables; she is also united by cable with Africa, India, Australia, and South America. France in 1869 established direct communication with the new world by a cable between Brest and the small island of St. Pierre, near Newfoundland, afterwards joining the mainland at Plymouth, Massachusetts; two other lines now connect France with the Antilles and South America. The differences of longitude cause changes in time, which pro¬ duce the curious result that cablegrams dispatched from Europe reach North America six hours before the time they started. Sent off at 10 a.m., the message is received almost immediately, and this hour corresponds with 4 a.m. in America. A new measure of international time, and of longitude, is fast becoming a necessity, TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 525 and is under consideration. Asia also is connected with Europe, and ere long telegraphic lines will surround the whole world. Transatlantic Navigation. —The necessities of trade and the spirit of enterprise have produced an immense amount of steam naviga¬ tion across the Atlantic. The old boats were not sufficiently large or fast; it became necessary to increase their size, and in spite of the added weight, their rate of travelling. The problem has been successfully solved, and now immense vessels of 4,000, 6,000, and even 10,000 tons are built, propelled by enormously-powerful engines. Steam has been used to obtain power, and screws sub¬ stituted for paddles to increase the speed. Now steamers cross the Atlantic in six days, and all the great ports of Europe, Lon¬ don, Liverpool, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Havre, Bordeaux, Mar¬ seilles, &c., are in rapid and direct communication with all parts of the world. The ocean is a great highway, traversed by an n- creasing throng of vessels of all sizes. These magnificent steamers, used for passenger traffic, resemble floating hotels. No expense is spared to supply them with every modern luxury; gilded saloons, decorated with mirrors, hangings, carpets, and handsome furniture ; large and elegant dining-rooms, bedrooms, and kitchens, all lighted by electricity; nothing is omitted, and these vessels are fitted up like palaces in which men may relieve the tedium of a voyage by every amuseme/it. Piercing of the Isthmuses of Suez and Panama ; Ferdinand de Lesseps. —As mountains have been cut and tunnelled for railways so isthmuses have been pierced for the passage of steamers. A Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, succeeded in removing the barrier which separated the Mediterranean from the Red Sea and thus greatly lengthened the journey between India and Europe. M. de Lesseps succeeded, after many years of travels and negotia¬ tions, in forming the Isthmus of Suez Company (15th December, 1858). In the month of March the first spade was thrust into the desert sands, and the work never ceased until the waves of the Red Sea and of the Mediterranean had celebrated their difficult but use¬ ful union in 1869. The Port Said Canal at Suez is 92 miles long, and passes by the Menzalah, Timsah, and Bitter Lakes. A canal 526 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of soft water at Ismailia brings the Nile water to the isthmus, and thus enables it to be cultivated. The whole country is now habit¬ able, and towns are springing up. More than 3,000 vessels annu¬ ally pass through the canal. The success of this w T onderful enterprise suggested another, also headed by M. de Lesseps. He has undertaken to cut through the isthmus of Panama. The canal will be nearly forty-seven miles long, from Aspinwall to Panama. It runs by the Rio Chagres, and by the tributaries of that stream, the Obispo, pierces the ridge of the Culebra in the Cordilleras, and follows the Rio Grande, another stream, as far as the Pacific. This canal has proved far more difficult to make than that of Suez. In 1889 the Company became bankrupt, and the works have been suspended. A rival scheme, the Nicaraguan Canal, commenced by Americans in 1889, is more likely to be completed. Universal Exhibitions (1851, 1855, 1862, 1867, 1873, 1876, 1878, 1889).—The improvement in the means of intercommuni¬ cation facilitated the introduction of universal exhibitions, in which each nation displayed the results of its own progress and studied that of other peoples. Prince Albert, Consort of Queen Victoria of England, first initiated these peaceful rivalries, and in 1851 the first Exhibition was opened in London in the Crystal Palace, built expressly for this international display. In 1855 France followed the example, and with the exception of Russia, the nations of Europe sent their productions to Paris, where, in the Champs-Elysees, a building, more remarkable for size than for beauty, had been constructed. In 1862 another large Exhi¬ bition was held in London, at Kensington ; more than six million visitors were registered at its entrance gates. France, unwilling to be surpassed, then undertook the fine Exhibition of 1867. This exhibition has been surpassed by that of 1889, the centenary year of the commencement of the French Revolution. The advances in industry were not so striking as in some previous decades, but the buildings themselves, and the Eiffel Tower, were triumphs of French engineering skill. As a spectacular festival it surpassed all its predecessors. International, national, and TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 5 2 7 universal exhibitions are the means whereby the world now takes stock of its progress in material industry, in science, and in art. International Commissions; Propagation of the Metric System .— In London, 1851, the first International Congress of Statistics was proposed, and in 1853 it met at Brussels, in 1855 at Paris, in Vienna in 1857, in London in 1860, &c. To these must be added the numerous Congress meetings for the study of scientific, medical, and economic questions, now so frequently held, which unite scientific men of all nations into one vast community, in which nationalities only rival each other in the ardour of their zeal, and the merit of their discoveries. An association was also formed in 1855 for the propagation of the metric system. Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have adopted this rational and easy system. In England, in 1864, a Bill, repealed in 1878, was passed which allows it to be quoted non-officially. In 1869 the French Government, in answer to a wish expressed by the Academie des Sciences, invited the Govern¬ ments of the different countries to send representatives to a com¬ mission charged to construct a metre, which could be adopted as an international prototype. This proposition was accepted, and the delegates of the various powers met in Paris (1870, 1872, and 1884), nominated a permanent committee, and a diplomatic conference regulated the installation of an International Office of Weights and Measures. England unhappily is still the great obstacle to the adoption of a uniform and universal system of weights and measures. Unity of Coinage. —The relations between the different countries have become so closely connected that unity of coinage becomes more and more necessary. Every people praises the decimal system, which is as clear and simple for large sums as for small ones. But tradition is so strong that the monetary union has only been arranged in Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, France, and partially in Spain. A monetary convention was concluded with these coun¬ tries in 1866, and seventy millions of men use the same system of coinage in all commercial dealings. The decimal system has also been adopted in the Danubian Principalities (1867), now the King- 528 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. dom of Roumania, in Germany, and in the United States. The fluctuating relative value of gold and silver forms the chief difficulty in the way of a uniform coinage. Credit; Institutions of Credit; Insurances. — Commerce exists through credit, and therefore banks, the institutions of credit, have developed on a very large scale. In England, besides the national bank, there are more than 2,250 private banks, which have also the privilege of issuing paper money.^ In France this privilege is confined to the Banque de France. But at the same time numerous credit societies have been formed under different names, with the object of receiving deposits from private individuals, of discounting commercial effects, and of arranging loans, &c. The number of State loans, of shares in companies, and of different bonds have entailed the development of financial markets or bourses, which correspond with each other, and are in a measure responsible for each other. In the enormous circulation of commercial values troubles sometimes arise owing to political or economic causes, and produce catastrophes, or a “ crash,” to use a familiar term. Under normal circumstances, these crashes seem to return at stated periods, after times of greater prosperity. Insurances are made either against fire or against other risks ; life insurances are very common in England, hut are less commo in France. Savings’ Banks for smaller sums have greatly ex¬ tended in France and England, and now hold large deposits made by the poorer and the working classes. They are now managed in both countries in connection with the Post Offices. Free Trade and Commercial Treaties. —England, by a bold re- * A few numbers will suffice to give an approximate idea of the circulation of the notes. Notes to the amount of £114,000,000 are circulated from the Banque de France, to the value of £37,000,000 from the Bank of England. We must not forget that the Bank of England has no monopoly of the issue of notes, and we must add to thtse numbers the notes issued by private banks. The Bank of the German Empire had notes in circulation worth 1,007,94S,750 francs, and the Bank of Austria-Hungary for 918 millions of francs. The values of the other notes, bonds, &c., circulated through all ihe financial markets of the globe, cannot be even approxi¬ mately computed. TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 529 action against the prejudices of former centuries, inaugurated her commercial reforms in 1846, by throwing all her ports open to cereals and foreign cattle, and by abandoning a prohibitive system. Belgium had also accomplished an economic reform. France, in 1860, was too violently urged in this direction by the deter¬ mination of the Emperor Napoleon in., and the commercial treaty arranged with England was forced upon French industry at a time when it was quite unable to bear English competition. France, however, only advanced from prohibition to protection, and high duties were still retained upon English importations, although England accepted French wines and agricultural productions almost free from duty. Similar commercial treaties were arranged successively from 1860 to 1866 between France and Belgium, the Zollverein, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, Spain, the Low Countries and Austria. Now the treaties which assisted the southern departments, chiefly agricultural in their products, led to very serious crises in the industrial departments of the north, which, through the expenses connected with their machinery, the pressure caused by the high price of labour, and the burden of taxation, were unable to bear the competition. Prussia, victorious in 1870, forced France to accept an onerous clause in the Treaty of Frankfort, which bound the French Government to grant 4o Germany the tariffs of the most-favoured nation, and German industry has bene¬ fited largely by this concession. The economic laws have given rise to warm discussions in the French Chambers, and Protectionist theories have regained their ascendency without triumphing com¬ pletely. Commercial treaties have been considerably modified, and France like the rest of Europe still hesitates between free trade and protection. America, in its turn, has adopted protection, and defends itself by high duties against the invasion of European productions, even of works of art, as though these works had a market price, or could be produced by the power of protective tariffs, which are constantly being increased. Nations have certainly the right and the duty of watching over the legitimate interests of their industries, but are there no other M M 530 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. means of doing so than by establishing fictitious walls, just when men have succeeded in levelling all natural walls ? It is really not worth while to tunnel mountains or to pierce through isthmuses, to double the speed of locomotives and steamers, to multiply tele¬ graphs and telephones, if international commerce is to be hampered at every frontier by lines of custom-houses, which stop its advance and paralyse its efforts. Scientific progress and the continual mixture of peoples necessitate a reform of economic laws and a general agreement between the nations. This is one of the pro¬ blems of the future. At present there is a strong reaction in many governments against the principles of free trade. Commercial Activity of Various Nations .—In spite of the restric¬ tions which still exist, the commercial activity of the different nations is a marvellous spectacle. No one can conceive the amount of business transacted in a single year, or the immense quantity of merchandise exchanged. England is greatly in advance of other nations through the size and wealth of her colonies in Africa, Asia, Australia, and America, and through her numerous rela¬ tions with every country. Her commerce extends over the whole surface of the Globe, and London is the centre of it. This city, which contains over 4,000,000 inhabitants, warehouses—in the immense docks built on the banks of the Thames (itself black with vessels)—the produce of both East and West, which is thence dis¬ tributed to Great Britain and to all other countries. All the towns on the estuary of the Thames are merely suburbs of the great city and of its port, which extends to Gravesend. We must also mention the port of Liverpool, with 606,000 inhabitants, its docks, which rival those of London, and the immense business which it transacts with America ; the equally densely populated port of Glasgow, on the Clyde, with its quays more than a mile long; the ports of Hull (208,000), Newcastle (160,000), Bristol (229,000), Portsmouth (141,000), &c. Belgium has its magnificent port of Antwerp (210,000), Holland, its active hives of Amsterdam (403,000), the Venice of the North, and Rotterdam (197,000). France has the ports of the Havre (112,000), Nantes (127,000), TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 53 1 and Saint-Nazaire, Bordeaux (240,000), and Marseilles, the Queen of the Mediterranean (876,000), &c. Paris is not in connection with the sea, although a project of bringing it up to the capital has been discussed. But placed in the centre of a vast network of rail¬ ways, its importance is daily increasing, and its population now numbers 2,800,000 inhabitants. Lyons is the commercial capital of the valley of the Rhone (400,000), Toulouse that of the valley of the Garonne (147,000). Italy has not lost the commercial tastes which created and still preserve the wealth of Naples (494,000), Genoa (180,000), and Venice (154,000). Austria possesses a valuable port in Trieste, on the Adriatic (144,000). And we must enumerate the Northern ports : Hamburg, the usual port for the embarkation of emigrants for America (289,000), Copenhagen (307,000), Stockholm (228,000), Dantzic (108,000), &c. ; in the South the numerous ports of Greece, and on the Bosphorus the magnificent port of Constanti¬ nople (875,000), still the commercial link between Europe and Asia, &c. We must also consider the commercial traffic on the canals, roads, and railways, where the carriage of goods never ceases by night or by day, and we shall attain figures which appal us by their immensity, and which no longer represent anything to our imagination, incapable of really grasping them. Results of the Economic Revolution; Prolongation of the Average of Life .—The development of agricultural, industrial, and commer¬ cial life is visible in the improvement of the social conditions of the peoples, now extended to the lowest classes, which in former times were in the most wretched state. In France, and in all the chief countries in Europe, the development of industry has placed com¬ fortable clothing within the reach of even the poorest, and above all the working classes are better fed. We may hope that a recurrence of the frightful famines of the eighteenth century are impossible in the future with the increased and increasing facilities of exchange and transport. In 1815 France consumed 85 million hectolitres of wheat; it now consumes 120 millions. The consumption of meat has doubled. In Paris, where the largest amount is used, every inhabitant is 5. J2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. computed to consume 84 kilogrammes annually (about 132 lbs.). The consumption of wine has increased in the same proportion, and that of beer 70 per 100. The consumption of salt, one of the first necessities of life, was in 1788, 3 lbs. 2| oz. per head; it now exceeds 18 pounds ; that of sugar is sixteen times greater than in 1812. Before 1820 coffee was little used for food, and scarcely \ lb. was consumed per person, now more than 1£ lbs. are used, and in Paris nearly 7 lbs. per person are annually consumed. The average length of life has increased in the same proportion since the commencement of the century. In 1801, 28 out of every 1,000 died annually, and in 1883, 22. In the last century the average length of life was scarcely 28 years, now it is 89 or 40. But in France the decrease of the birth rate (from 26 per 1,000 in 1873 to 24 in 1882) now attracts the attention of economists and the anxiety of politicians. Moral Progress; Public Education in France .—The nineteenth century has also seen great moral improvements, and has declared war upon ignorance. In our century the education of the people has greatly progressed, and has become a part of the business of the State in England, in France, and elsewhere. Some progress had been made in the two preceding centuries, which should not be depreciated, but that progress was only due to isolated attempts. The Assemblies of the Revolution, particularly the Convention, had projected vast schemes of national education. As we have already mentioned, Napoleon I. partially realised these plans by organizing secondary instruction and the superior courses of education, and by founding the University. The July Government established primary educa¬ tion by the law of 1833, due to M. Guizot, then Minister, and the Educational Budget was raised from three millions to seventeen. The laws of March 15, 1850, and 1875, established free education — i.e. the right to everyone, under conditions of character and capacity, to open private schools in competition with the State schools. The number of pupils in the State schools is about 4| millions, in free schools, a little over one million. The budget for education costs the State over £5,000,000. TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 533 The Bill passed on the 22nd of March, 1882, rendered primary instruction compulsory and gratuitous. Public Education in Europe .—Primary education in England is merely aided by the State. Private societies and institutions develop it and receive subsidies, if they fulfil the conditions im¬ posed and satisfy the Government Inspector. The subsidies increase considerably; the Education Grant in 1889 amounted to £5,917,891. Since 1870 a great movement of public opinion has led the House of Commons to interfere more directly in the superintendence of education. In England primary education is carried on partly in Board schools, supported by a special rate, and partly in voluntary schools, of which the Church of England schools form the vast majority. In Germany education has been compulsory for a very long time, and severe laws enforce its continuance up to the age of fourteen. * Classical education is given in the gymnasiums or public schools, and technical education in the Gewerbschulen, whilst the higher branches of education are obtained in Universities, as celebrated as those of England. In Austria the imperial scholastic law of May 14th, 1869, enforced attendance at school ; in Hungary the same law had been adopted since 1868. Denmark, Sweden, and * Education in Germany and Switzerland. — Education, as we have al¬ ready noticed, has been carefully attended to in Germany since the com¬ mencement of modern times. Under the influence of religious ideas, the German Protestants, particularly the Pietists, amongst others Francke (1663 —1727), greatly aided the work of education. Francke founded two important establishments at Ilalle, and his disciples created the first real 8' hools in Germany. Several states had rendered primary education com¬ pulsory, and Frederic II. imposed it upon Prussia in 1763, immediately after the severe trials of the Seven Years’ War. A Prussian noble, Rochow (1734—1805) founded some village schools. At the close of the eighteenth century a true apostle of public education appeared, named Pestalozzi (1746—1827). He was horn in Switzerland, at Zurich, and died at Brugg, in Argovia. With the rarest disinterestedness, he consecrated his life to an often ungrateful task, seeking out even the most backward intellects in order to aid and enlighten them. Pestalozzi opened the Refuge for poor children at Neuhof (1775—17*0), the Orphan Asylum at Stanz (1798—1799), the primary schools, the Institution at Berthoud, and lastly the Institution at Yverdun (1805—1825). lie defined intuitive 531 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Norway had enforced this law for a long time, and it is now one of the usual customs. We must notice that Protestant States do not separate the Church from the school, and the period of com¬ pulsory attendance ends with the age for confirmation in Lutheran States. Switzerland, which rivalled Germany in its zeal for the development of education, and where most of the cantonal legislations have for a long time adopted compulsory education, inserted it in the Federal Act of 1874. Spain proclaimed the same principle in 1857, but has never applied it. Italy accepted it in the law of the 15th July, 1877 ; Portugal in that of May 2nd, 1878. In Belgium and Holland the liberal parties have not yet succeeded in passing it, although in the former gratuitous education is provided. Progress of Legislation .—Progress in legislation corresponds with progress of education, which produces softening of manners. In France a law in 1832 abolished the penalty of death for offences against property, and coiners were no longer subject to this terrible punishment. The same law gave to juries Hie means of alleviating the extreme harshness of the penal code by giving the culprit the benefit of extenuating circumstances ; the jury, whilst acknow¬ ledging the prisoner’s guilt, can soften the penalty and thus diminish the number of capital sentences. The pillory, brand, and the loss of a hand for parricides, were also effaced from the code. The Republic of 1848 abolished the sentence of death for political offences, and suppressed slavery in the colonies. Under the Second Empire, in 1852, a law of rehabilitation, which was extended in 1864, gave convicts the hope of regaining their forfeited rights and dignity. A law, May 31, 1854, abolished civil death, education, that which appeals to the intelligence through the senses, which suppresses abstract study as much as possible, and hy stimulating the curiosity awakens the desire to learn. This is the true method, and primary instruction is seeking to apply it in the nineteenth century. Froehel’s system (1802—1852) applied in Germany in 1849 and introduced into England in 1851, named the Kindergarten, aims at developing the intelligence of children chiefly through the senses. An extension of the principle, confined to manual education, is the Swedish Slojd system, more lately introduced. This may be considered as yet only on its trial. TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 535 which took from the condemned man all power of possessing property and all his hereditary rights. From 1854 penal servitude was to be passed in a colony, and no longer in the galleys or the bagnio, with their terrible traditions. A law passed on the 13th May, 1863, modified sixty-five Articles of the Penal Code, and removed petty offences from the list of crimes. Another, in 1865, authorized the juges d'instruction to grant the accused, in matters of offences and crimes, the benefits of provisional liberty with or without bail. The law, so called, of coalitions, brought forward by Emile Ollivier, modified three Articles of the Penal Code (414, 415, 416) to secure free discussion of wages between masters and workmen. In 1867 the abolition of imprisonment for debt (22nd July, 1867) ended the ancient legislation which made the debtor’s person forfeit to his creditor. Lastly, the code of military justice was altered in accordance with the progress of civilization, and its severity was mitigated without interfering with discipline. Since 1871 many improvements have been made in civil law. Diminution of Crime .—These improvements in the legislation correspond with a diminution of crime. Not that offences against the person have diminished, for they are often prompted by violent passions, which never change, but respect for property has in¬ creased considerably. Between 1826 and 1830 the average of offences against property in France amounted to 5,306. In 1882 there were not more than 1,978 condemnations, and 2,911 accu¬ sations. The number of accused has fallen in a few years, from 7,317 to 4,814 (about 13 per 100,000 inhabitants). In 1863 there were only 20 capital sentences, and only 11 executions. In 1864 there were only 9 sentences and only 5 executions. It must be admitted, however, that crimes against the person have led of late to a larger number of capital sentences, i.e., 35 in 1882 ; and on the other hand the spirit of the times has diminished the number of executions (4 in 1882). Out of 148 sentenced to death from 1881-5, only 27 were executed. When we remember in relation to crime the education of the accused, we find, in 1882, 1,265 utterly illiterate (or 26 per 100); 3,353 able to read or write (or 70 per 100), and only 196 (or 4 5 3& THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. per 100) who had received a good education. Unfortunately second convictions increase, from 47 per 100 they have risen to 52, and in 1885 it became necessary to arrest these relapses into crime by a severe law punishing second offences by banishment. Provident Institutions .—As society becomes more truly civilized the interests of the majority are daily better protected. The best means of destroying socialism is by depriving men and women of any cause of complaint, and diminishing as far as possible the misery which leads to social crises. Providence and thrift are the best and surest methods of doing this, and since 1848 great attention has been given to the creation of numerous institutions, formed to aid the people and to enable the working classes to provide for old age and mis¬ fortune. Savings banks, first established in Switzerland in 1787, are now common throughout France and Europe. In France alone, in 1883, there were 4,585,431 deposits, representing a sum of nearly £70,000,000. In England the deposits exceed £50,000,000. By the law of the 18th June, 1850, a superannuation fund for old age was opened, which now manages more than £20,000,000 besides the insurance offices in case of accident or death, without counting the numerous private insurance companies to which we have alluded. The most interesting of these modern institutions is the Society for Mutual Help, and this is also the most popular and the most useful. It was authorised by the Government, in 1850 and 1852, and in 1882 there were 5,188 recognised branches of it. These branches are composed of workmen and clerks, and distribute relief in case of sickness, and secure annuities in old age. Their capital, which scarcely exceeded £400,000 in 1852, had reached the sum of more than £4,500,000 in 1882. England and other countries have also a great number of these societies, the benefits of which are continually extending. Charity , Benevolent Institutions .—Charity endeavours to relieve all the misery which the provident institutions have been unable to avert. Since the Revolution in France the municipalities have undertaken to assist the porr and to organize the work of benevo¬ lence. There are now more ihan 14,000 offices devoted to this TRANSFORMATIONS AND PROGRESS. 537 department, which distribute aid to 1,500,000 persons (the pro¬ portion is rather more than 8 per 100 of the population), and the normal resources amount to nearly £2,000,000. This, no doubt, is very little for a great country like France, but it must be remem¬ bered that the poor assisted by public benevolence are, as a rule, also profiting by private charity. There are 1636 hospitals in France, which contain 166,381 beds, and in 1881 more than 462,000 patients were treated in them, whilst more than 63,000 infirm and incurable old people were cared for in the retreats for old age. If all these resources are estimated their value amounts to £4,800,000. We must also mention the idiot asylums (61 asylums in the departments, and 14 partial asylums), the orphanages, creches, and infant asylums, the institution of cantonal dispensaries, that is to say, the gratuitous distribution of medicine to the needy, organized since 1854, the convalescent homes, &c. The Assistance Publique, in Paris, with its magnificent hospitals, and its asylums of every kind, dis¬ poses of a revenue of more than £1,700,000, exceeding the whole income of more than one large city. It is impossible to estimate the whole revenue devoted to charity throughout France, besides public relief, the assistance given by numerous bene¬ volent societies, by religious congregations anxious to retain in modern society the privileges of that charity, of which they had formerly a monopoly ; it is impossible to ascertain all that the well- to-do classes give every year, whether they are asked for subscrip¬ tions or through fetes and bazaars, the sums collected for providing for foundlings, for instructing, educating, and apprenticing them to a trade ; for relieving the sufferings of victims of work, or the yet more frequent victims of vice ; for the shelter of the despairing (workhouses, night refuges, &c.) ; for watching over the aged and infirm. What delicate feet daily ascend the winding staircases which lead to the garrets of the poor, what gentle hands have cared for sick children and deserted women ! If the nineteenth century has given a marvellous impetus to industry and commerce, if it has created infinite sources of wealth, it has also opened infinite paths of mercy. The upper classes in France, England, and most 538 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . of the countries of Europe, have never been more sympathetic to misery and sorrow, which a sound political economy will gradually diminish, but which no social system can ever completely abolish. The nineteenth century, whatever pessimists may say, has triumphed in the field of benevolence, as well as in every other quarter. It has revealed the compassionate character of modern society, so far penetrated by Christian principles that it practises them even by the hands of those who reject all religions. Yet still the great problem remains unsolved; pauperism outstrips all measures instituted for its relief, and its extinction is even now simply a dream of the future; for in many countries, and in England in particular, those physically, morally, and economically most unfit, marry early and increase the population to a far greater ex¬ tent than do the fittest, and thus ensure the survival of poverty, vice, and disease in the nation. CHAPTER XXI. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. Summary : — Efforts made by European civilization to extend over the world—America; rapid progress of the United States—Government: Federal Constitution of the United States : Freedom of Individual States —Army; Navy; Federal Finances—The North and South: Slavery: The War of Secession (1861—1865)—Abolition of Slavery (1865)—Agri¬ cultural Wealth of the United States—Mineral Wealth: Coal, Iron, Petroleum, &c.—Californian Gold Mines—Industry and Commerce— Railways in the United States—Education — Literature—American Society—British America ; the Dominion of Canada—The North-West Passage—South America ; the Emancipation of the Spanish Colonies— Brazil—The Republics of South and Central America—Mexico—Africa : British Possessions—France in Africa ; Senegal—Algeria—Tunis—The Exploration of Africa ; the Niger ; the Sources of the Nile—Livingstone ; Southern and Central Africa—Cameron ; Stanley—The Congo Free State — Ogowe : French Colony of the Congo—Schweinfurth ; Nachtigal— Portuguese Colonies—German Colonies—The Colonial Empire of Holland —The English in Australia—European Powers in Asia ; the British Em¬ pire of India—The Material Condition of India : Population ; Railways —The Productions of India—Industry and Art—Moral Condition ; Castes; Religions—The Russian Empire in Asia ; Siberia—The Caucasian Provinces and Turkestan—China—Chinese Civilization ; Population ; Government—Religion ; Legislation—Agriculture—Industry—Progress of China—Japan—Government and Progress of Japan—The World as it now is. Efforts made by European Civilization to extend over the World .— The Old World was confined within very narrow limits. But the nominally Christian civilization of Europe has constantly ex¬ tended its boundaries, and since the sixteenth century has endea¬ voured to gain possession of the whole earth. The world, excepting the interior of Africa, was fully explored by the opening of the nineteenth century. English, Portuguese, 540 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Spaniards, Dutch, and French had founded prosperous colonies in every part of the globe. But the nations of Europe have expanded with greater rapidity during the present century, and have spread into every country, with an energy and perseverance which have completely modified the aspect of the other continents. America ; Rapid Progress of the United States. —America, four times larger than Europe, and in its length of 9,000 miles, con¬ taining a range of every climate, is almost entirely civilized at the present date. In the north the Anglo-Saxons, and in the south and central provinces the Spaniards have overwhelmed and almost destroyed the native populations. The formation of the United States, upon their rupture with the mother country, and the famous declaration of independence on the 4th July, 1776, are matters of modern history. The articles of federation were drawn up in 1777, and the present constitution was adopted in 1787. The federation then included thirteen States only. It now comprises forty-three,* and the flag of the union, which represents the number of the States by its stars, will pro¬ bably soon receive additions to that brilliant constellation. The population of the United States at the time of the first census in 1790 was under four million inhabitants ; it now exceeds sixty millions. European emigration has greatly contributed to this rapid increase, and Germany and Ireland have furnished the * The thirteen original States are : Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary¬ land, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. Vermont separated from the State of New York (1791), Kentucky from Virginia (1792), Tennessee from North Carolina (1796), Maine from Massa¬ chusetts (1820). The Confederation was then enlarged by Ohio (1802), Louisiana, bought from France in 1803 and admitted into the Union in 1812, Florida, bought from Spain in 1819 and admitted into the Union in 1845, Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Missouri (1821), Arkansas (1836;, Michigan (1837), Texas (1845), Iowa (1846), "Wis¬ consin (1848), California (1850), Minnesota (1857b Oregon (1859), Kansas (1861), Western Virginia (1863), Nevada (1864), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), Columbia (1890), Montana (1889), Washington (1889), Dakota (1889), Wyoming (1890). A State is not admitted into the Union unless its European population exceeds 50,000 inhabitants. There are five terri¬ tories, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho. Alaska. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 54* largest contingents, whilst the number of European emigrants, far from decreasing, still amounts annually to from 500,000 to 700,000 persons. Government: Federal Constitution of the United States : Freedom of Individual States. —The United States are a number of inde¬ pendent States, only united by the necessities of mutual defence and prosperity. The citizens of the individual States do not allow the Government to act for them. Individual freedom in the heart of the State, liberty of the States in the heart of the Union, is the principle of the federal constitution, and of the constitution of each of the States. There are three distinct powers in the government of the Union : the legislative power, the executive power, and the judicial power. The legislative power is the most important, and is exercised by two chambers, one nominated for two years by universal and direct suffrage, this is the House of Representatives; the other, formed of two senators from each State, elected by the local legislatures, is called the Senate ; every two years one-third of the senators are changed. These two Houses form the Congress. The Congress governs ; it has the sole initiative of the laws, regulates taxes and imports, contracts loans, makes commercial treaties, has the right to direct the movements of the army and to levy troops. The Senate has the right of adding amendments to the bills proposed by the House of Representatives, and intervenes in most of the decisions of the executive power. The latter is confided to a President, who has no legislative initiative, and whose ministers do not sit in Con¬ gress ; but he has a veto, which can only be set aside by a two-thirds vote of both houses, and he can always secure a fresh debate on the bills which do not please him. He is the head of the army and navy of the Union, but he cannot nominate ambassa¬ dors, ministers, councillors, or judges of the Supreme Court, without the consent of the Senate. The President is elected for four years by a college of electors chosen from each State ; he can offer himself for re-election. The judicial power is very simple, and is composed of a Supreme Court, and of Circuit Courts established by the Congress. These 542 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. courts only try political cases, questions of maritime jurisprudence, actions relative to treaties, and conflicts between two or more States, or any difficult cases which may arise. The Supreme Court is only the tribunal of the Union, just as the President is only the arm of the Union, and the Congress represents the ideas and wishes of all the combined States. The powers not given to Congress are reserved to the individual States. The Union does not interfere with the liberty of the States, any more than the State interferes with that of the citizens, who are pro¬ tected by the Habeas Corpus Act, which cannot be suspended except in the most serious emergency ; they have also the right of meeting and of petition. Nothing is required from the Union for their material or moral interests ; each town has power to enact municipal laws, has its own budget, its educational establishments, hospitals, prisons, control of public works, &c. The whole system is based on complete decentralization. Army; Navy, Federal Finances. —The United States have nothing to fear from abroad, and can therefore dispense with the immense armies which overwhelm European budgets. The law provides for an army of 25,000 men, but this is only a nucleus which, as in the case of the terrible War of Secession of 1861 to 1865, can be readily augmented by the militia in case of need. The navy is more necessary and more important. It includes 63 men-of-war, &c., which carry more than 374 guns; this does not include torpedoes, &c. The budget does not exceed seventy-eight millions sterling, but to this we must add the budgets of each State. The public debt, although swollen by the civil war, has been diminished by a per¬ severing system of reductions to about £213,000,000, and the United States can boast of being the only power which seriously aims at the extinction of its national debt. The North and the South : Slavery: the War of Secession (1861 —1865).—This great and prosperous Union was, not many years ago, nearly destroyed. The geographical position of the United States, their different productions, the difference between the occu¬ pations, character and customs of the inhabitants of the North and DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 543 South, help us to realize why the latter wished to dissolve the old Union. The plebeian origin of the majority of the Northern Ame¬ ricans, their religious and philosophical spirit, and their feverish activity in pursuit of the dollar, sharply contrasted with the aris¬ tocratic origin and pride of the Southern planters, who were less blustering, more careful about the elegancies of life, and less de¬ voted to mere money-making ; an agricultural aristocracy in the South was opposed to an industrial population, or one composed of small farmers in the North. The South, which produced all the cotton of the United States, but which possessed neither industry nor commerce, wished to free itself from the control of the North, its interests were opposed to the protectionist tariffs forced on it by the Northern Government. But the question of slavery was ostensibly the vital point, and affected the nation more than any details of tariffs, industry, commerce, or even characteristic anti¬ pathies. In the Northern States, where the Puritan spirit predominated, and where slavery could not, owing to the temperate climate, contribute to the necessities of agriculture, most of the Americans rejected this shameful custom. It was retained in the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, etc., in short, wherever the hot climate rendered it impossible for Europeans to work in the plantations, and where the slaves were regarded as neces¬ sary instruments in the production of rice, indigo, and cotton. In 1820 the Missouri compromise decided that slavery should not be tolerated north of the thirty-sixth degree of latitude. Now the Union was extending itself towards the South, and in 1850 there were sixteen free and fifteen slave States. Between 1801 and 1850 the number of slaves was tripled, and in 1869 there were nearly four million slaves. The Southerners in 1850 had obtained another compromise which enabled them to pursue and arrest fugitive slaves throughout the whole territory of the United States, and ordered the authorities to assist the slave- hunters. This agreement produced dramatic scenes in which the best sentiments of humanity were outraged. The South retained the political direction of the Union for a long time, 544 THE HISTORY OF Cl VILIZ A TIOA. and the Slave States took advantage of the arrangement, not only to maintain but even to extend what they called their special insti¬ tution. John Brown, an old enthusiast, who headed an abortive rising against the slave-owners’ government, was hanged as a rebel by them, December 2, 1S59 ; and his death, celebrated as that of a martyr throughout the North, reanimated the abolitionist move¬ ment. At the same time the balance of parties was disturbed, and the republican party in the Northern States gained the ascendency. The words Republican and Democrat must not be understood in the sense they bear in Europe, for in America the Republican party is in favour of greater centralization, whilst, on the contrary, the Demo¬ crats wish for an extension of the freedom of individual States ; they formed the majority in the South, for decentralization facilitated the maintenance of slavery. The Southern Democrats were irritated and annoyed when the Republicans elected Lincoln as President, and re¬ sumed the campaign in favour of the abolition of slavery. In 1861 the Union was broken by the States of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, etc., which formed a separate Confederation. They were known as the Confederates. The States that remained faithful to the Union, besides possessing a larger population, had also much more of the sinews of war—money and supplies. They were known as the Federals. The planters of the South had no resources beyond them estates and the produce of the labour of their slaves ; but, educated as gentlemen, they were better trained in the art of warfare than the merchants and artizans of the Northern cities: the Federal army and navy had been officered chiefly by them, and most of these officers now abandoned their regiments to rally round the flag of their States. The South improvised a navy, and they also gave letters of marque and organized privateers to prey on the Northern merchantmen—a system of warfare which is now illegal, and un¬ recognised in the international code of Europe. The struggle con¬ tinued four years through many painful vicissitudes, and battles between immense armies sometimes lasted three or four days. The Northern States were at first completely worsted in many great battles, and were forced to increase their fleet, and to acquire DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 545- a real army. They had at last a regular army of 600,000 men in the field, and the loss on their side alone amounted to 860,000 men. It has been calculated that more than 2,600,000 volunteers joined the Federal army. The debt increased from £102,000,000 to £556,000,000, and the issue of a large amount of paper money led to great trouble in the commercial world. But the sources of prosperity are so vast in the United States that the losses caused by the war were quickly repaired. Even the South has regained much of its old prosperity, and has become more industrial and commercial. Abolition of Slavery (1865).—Humanity has fortunately reaped the chief benefit of this terrible war. On the 22nd September, 1862, Lincoln pronounced the enfranchisement of all the slaves in the States or fractions of the States that had rebelled against the Union. The Federal government recognised the negro republics of Liberia and Haiti. On the 81st January, 1865, the Congress enthusiastically voted an amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, and the legislatures of the Confederate States gave in their adherence to the amendment one after the other. The right of voting was given to all citizens, irrespective of race or colour. But the reality is far different to what appears on the surface, the rapid increase of the negro population, which will soon outnumber the whites in the Southern States, threatens serious damage to the United States ; and already the whites have forcibly prevented the negro from exercising the right of franchise, and in the North, even more rigidly than the South, the negro is treated as an inferior being, not as a citizen of the Union'. Agricultural Wealth of the United States .—The prosperity of the country, arrested for an instant by the terrible crisis of the Con¬ federate war, advanced rapidly as soon as peace was concluded, and no country in the world ever developed as quickly in agricultural, industrial and commercial wealth. The immense prairies of the west, formerly covered by coarse grass, are now changed into seas of wheat. They resemble a huge chessboard of cultivation, for in these new countries the colonists have used geometrical lines ex¬ clusively. A straight line marks the boundaries of every farm, which N N 546 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. as a rule averages 160 acres (this is the amount of land granted to settlers, who receive the same grant for every adult member of the family). The United States now produce 240,000,000 quarters of cereals, and so much of this is exported to Europe that the latter, amply provided for in years of scarcity, is now anxious about the pressure of this competition on her own agriculture in years of plenty. The United States also supply the European cotton in¬ dustry, and their harvest amounted to 7,425,000 bales in 1887. They also provide most of the tobacco, of which they export to the value of T6,000,000. The supply of beef sent to Europe from the prairies of the West is enormous, and immense and superb forests add still more to the agricultural wealth of the country, where, far from land being wanted for man’s use, men are still wanting to cultivate the land. The vine is yearly becoming of more importance, especially in California. Mineral Wealth : Coal , Iron , Petroleum , <&c .—The fertile soil hides immense mineral wealth: coal, iron, copper, silver, oil, and in California, gold. The coal-beds have an area of 200,000 square miles, eighty-three times that of England. There are also wells communicating with subterranean lakes of petroleum. These lakes were only discovered in 1859, and they led to a steady flow of population into the oil districts. Cities like Oil-City sprang from the earth to disappear again almost immediately when the springs were exhausted ; others then arose wherever boring revealed the presence of this valuable but dangerous combustible. Iron is found in immense quantities. At present the United States only produces one-half as much as England, but it will probably double our annual production in a few years. At the commencement of the century only a few hundred tons of coal had been extracted from the mines; now more than 100,000,000 tons are annually raised. This quantity is inferior to that raised in England (163.000,000), but the mines are almost unlimited; and in this respect also the United States, with the rapidity which characterises each step of its progress, will ere long take the first place. Californian Gold Mines .—In 1848 a rumour arose that gold had DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 547 been discovered in the allotment belonging to a Californian colonist, and that little labour was required in excavating the soil before the veins of gold could be reached. Americans and Europeans crowded to this hitherto unknown territory. The richest deposits were found in the sand of the rivers in the Sacramento valley. Besides these “ diggings,” the mountains are full of auriferous quartz. The gold- seekers threw themselves upon the “ diggings,” which were easier to work, and men frequently found three or four ounces of gold per diem, worth fifty or sixty dollars. But these deposits were soon comparatively exhausted, and no longer yielded such rich profits; it was then necessary to sink mines, and to extract the gold from the quartz, which had to be crushed by powerful machines. Adventurers were forced to withdraw from a field which could no t be worked without capital and serious attention. The production, although less considerable, became at least regular ; and California, which from 1848 to 1882 produced £237,000,000, still annually yields more than £4,000,000 sterling. The discovery of other mines in Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Mon¬ tana, and particularly in Australia, diverted the most adventurous spirits from California. The gold fever decreased, but it had brought the population out West with a rapidity otherwise unattain¬ able ; and the Americans soon understood that they could do better than wrest fragments of gold from the rocks, by cultivating the fertile soil, clearing the forests and building cities. The popula¬ tion of California has already risen to more than 864,000 inhabi¬ tants. San Francisco, the capital, contains more than 233,000 inhabitants. Since the land has been cultivated it produces more wheat than it can consume, and more barley than the whole of the United States together. It also sells building timber, the produce of its quicksilver mines, wool, skins, &c. The agricultural wealth in cattle, cereals, wine, fruits, woods, &c., already far exceeds the mineral wealth, and is constantly increasing. The State of Nevada and the territory of Utah produce an immense quantity of silver ; the mines have only been worked since 1870. The United States annually produce more than the value of twenty millions of precious metals. 548 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. The immense amount of specie thus thrown into circulation has led to an economic revolution, resembling that of the sixteenth century. But the transition has been less abrupt, and instead of the sudden change from extreme scarcity to abundance of specie, there has only been a more rapid advance in monetary wealth. The chief disturbance has been in the relative value of silver in regard to gold : and in the greater cheapness of money, affecting incomes from funded capital. Industrial and commercial progress have certainly benefited, since 1850, by the facility with which capital has been obtained. Industry and Commerce .—Besides an abundance of iron, gold and silver, the United States possesses remarkable beds of copper near the great lakes, and this valuable metal is also found in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, &c. The metal industries have therefore developed enormously particularly in the Northern States. Immense foundries and factories have been built in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pitts¬ burg, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, Milwaukee, &c. The Americans have not only adopted all the latest European methods, but with the energy and inventive genius peculiar to the nation, under the pressure of a greater scarcity of manual labour, they have equalled, and in many ways surpassed Europeans in the variety of their machines, and the application of natural and mechanical forces to the saving of manual labour. America, the rich market for raw materials, has now become a manufacturing country. The United States manufactures its own materials, and, to encourage its industries and fill the pockets of its millionaires, has adopted protection, so that Europe now finds this important country to a great extent closed to its productions, whilst America is paying off its heavy debt by the proceeds of the duties on foreign goods. Commercial activity is feverish at New York, the most important city in the Union, which possesses a population of 1,206,000, without the suburban towns of Brooklyn and Jersey City. The city rivals London and Paris, and is one of the capitals of the world. Philadelphia has more than 847,000 inhabitants ; Chicago, DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 549 which increases wuth marvellous rapidity, has more than 500,000, and her western rival, Saint Louis, has already 350,000. The United States also contain a number of cities of more than 300,000, 200,000, and 150,000 inhabitants. The extraordinary facility of natural communications, the navi¬ gation of the great lakes and immense rivers, is most favourable to the development of commerce, and next to the English the Americans are perhaps the most active of nations. They are found all over the world; their merchant fleet, of over 100 tons burden, is estimated at 3,573 vessels, with a tonnage of 1,918,175 tons. On the rivers saloon-decked steamboats, and on the seas gigantic steamers, carry travellers and merchandise, and this activity, far from diminishing, is perpetually increasing. The total commerce of the United States amounts to over £300,000,000. Railways in the United States .—With their practical genius the Americans at once realized the advantages of railways, and in 1831 the first passenger trains were started on the banks of the Hudson, the river that had borne the first steamboat. Pausing neither for the formalities nor the extreme precautions which delayed and complicated the construction of railways in Europe, the Americans quickly laid them all over the country. Accidents never alarmed them, and they have advanced so rapidly that they now possess about 150,000 miles of railways. In seven years, between 1862 and 1869, they have constructed an iron road between the Atlantic and the Pacific 3,000 miles long, which connects New York with San Francisco, through Chicago, Omaha, the immense prairies of the west, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada. Steep declivities, abrupt curves, and wide rivers have not deterred them, and the Pacific Railway enables travellers to cross the American continent in a week. The success of this great undertaking led to the construction of similar lines in other districts, such as the Northern Pacific, which runs towards Oregon. The posts and telegraphs have developed in the same proportion, and we must not forget that America is the birthplace of the telephone and phonograph. Education ; Literature .—The Puritans wTio founded the colony 550 TIIE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, of Massachusetts proclaimed in 1685 the principle that “ the educa¬ tion of the children of the whole nation should be at the expense of the whole nation.” From 1642 they established compulsory An American Steamer. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVjLIZATION. 55 1 education. No country ever made or is now making greater sacri¬ fices for primary education, and to this is probably due the great intelligence and energy of the working classes. The American cities rival each other in the number of their scholastic establish¬ ments of every kind, and the most important of them annually publish special reports, in which the progress made is shown by statistics. In 1867 an act of Congress established a National Education Office at Washington, which, without restricting the freedom of the towns, centralizes all the information that relates to the schools and methods of teaching. It has been calculated that the expenses of the public schools throughout the States amount to more than £16,000,000 (80,732,838 dollars). Although the natural bent of the national genius tends to practical education, the Americans have not despised intellectual culture, and can boast of some rather celebrated authors and scientists. Europe has gladly welcomed the imaginative works of Fenimore Cooper,* Edgar Poe,f and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the poems of Longfellow,| Whittier, Lowell, and the advent of the poetic prose of Whitman. The novels of Henry James, W. D. Howells, and others are able to hold a place in the keen competition of popular literature in England. The prose works of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, and the verse of poets like Mrs. Moulton, Joaquin Miller, Edgar Fawcett, and others also deserve mention. Boston is the Athens of the States, a centre of literary culture and refinement; but California and the West have already made themselves felt in literature. Historians are numerous: William Prescott § wrote a fine his¬ tory of “ The Conquest of Mexico and Peru;” Washington Irving|| “ The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” and “ The Conquest of Granada ; ” George Bancroft,U a learned “ History * Fenimore Cooper (1789—1851) has given us a vivid picture of the original population and the early years of the colonies in his works, “ The Spy,” “The Pioneers,” “ The Pathfinder,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” &c. f Edgar Poe (1811—1849). X Longfellow (1807—188 2). § William Prescott (1796—1859). || Washington living (1783—1859). H G. Bancroft, born in 1800. 552 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of the United States.” We must also name Motley,* Channing,f the philosopher and poet Emerson,; &c. American Society .—American society, original and strong in spite of its youth, has been formed ■with marvellous rapidity, because it inherited much of the attainments of civilization, which Europe had developed with so much time and effort. It had no traditions, but then its progress was njt impeded by obstacles in the past. It could develop all the aptitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race, and has given the world an example of a successfully-organised democracy. The task of the Americans has been to extend freely over vast tracts of land, to clear them, build, cultivate or trade, without troubling themselves about anything but the maintenance of order. The energy of individuals is left free without restraint of irritating laws. An American relies upon himself only, and cities follow the same rule as individuals. Neither the city nor the individual claims anything from the central government, except external protection. Under these circumstances, the faculties of man develop rapidly, and the humble pioneer, the petty shopman, may reach the highest positions ; many millionaires, statesmen, and even presidents have risen from humble stations. But their rise does not destroy the equality which exists even more in the habits than in the laws. The President returns after office to his profession, and exercises it again as if he had never been the ruler of his countrymen. There are no political castes in the United States, only inequalities of fortune, yet nowhere is the distinction of blood and race-hatred more marked than between the white, the negro, and the Chinese in the United States. Philanthropy is one of the most honourable distinctions of American society, sincerely religious in the midst of many varieties of creed, which are all free. Protestantism with its many sects predominates, but Catholicism has more churches, as well as bishops and archbishops than any other single sect. Religion is taught in all * Motley (1804—1877), author of the “History of the Netherlands,” and the “ History of the Dutch Republic.” f Channing (1780—1842). J Emerson (1803—1882). DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 553 the schools, and the only conflicts arise from the peaceful rivalries of the various denominations. The religious spirit is particularly powerful in the Northern States, where the Biblical traditions of the Puritans still survive. Still the United States cannot be considered superior to the old countries of Europe in morality. Excessive freedom leads to licence, the thirst for gold, the excessive love of luxury, intem¬ perance, and the rough manners which are perceptible in spite of some surface refinement, all prevent this society from being set up as a model in spite of its ostentation. There is, moreover, such a mixture of various elements and races—Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Dutch, French, and German—that the aspect of the society changes, so to speak, in each state. This new world, of course, emanates from Europe, but it has all the virtues and all the faults of youth ; lively, ardent, devoted to work and to material pleasures, rough in manner, bold even to temerity, admirable in its struggle with nature through its fertile inventions and its powerful enterprises, it cannot yet aspire to rival either in literature or art the older European societies, who have behind them the traditions of antiquity, the results of the civilization of a thousand years. America, too, has not, during the last few years, escaped the social troubles of the older world. Anarchism, Socialism, and the difficulties that are perpetually arising between capital and labour, now awaken a growing anxiety. Neither there, any more than in Europe, are these great problems yet solved. British America ; the Dominion of Canada. —France, which had colonized the shores of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi Rivers, has been forced to allow England to take its place, and the latter has developed a colonial empire to the north of the great lakes, between the Atlantic and the Pacific, which, if it cannot compensate for the loss of the United States, is still one of the finest regions in the world. The absurd restrictions of the old colonial system have been abandoned, and the colonies of Columbia and Canada have been gradually emancipated until they now form a quasi¬ independent state, called the Dominion of Canada. The French race still predominates on the shores of the St. Lawrence 554 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. at Quebec and Montreal. The prevalent civilization and customs are thoroughly French, and the costumes and language of the eighteenth century are still in use. The English have settled in Ottawa, in north Canada, and the west, and carry, if not their settlements, at all events their expeditions, as far as the icy banks of Hudson’s Bay and the Mackenzie River. The population of these vast regions, which are fertile and habitable in certain districts only, is not more than 5,000,000 inhabitants, but the progress of modern industry is shown by the development of the railways, which already exceed 12,000 miles. One line alone with its branches, the Canadian Pacific, from Halifax to Vancouver, covers 4,319 miles. The North-West Postage .— In the eighteenth century the English and Americans resumed the exploration of the icebound territories which connect North America with the Pole. They were searching for a North-West passage, not because it could be serviceable to commerce, but in order to prove that the Atlantic Ocean communicated in the North as well as in the South wfith the Pacific. Captain Ross, an Englishman (1818, 1819), discovered Melville Island, and in 1829 the peninsula of Boothia. Parry penetrated to the Barrow Straits (1819, 1820). Sir John Frank¬ lin, after some bold voyages in the midst of the ice, disappeared in 1845, with his two ships, the Erebus and Terror. His courageous wife continued to send out expeditions in search of him, but no traces of the devoted party were found until 1859, when Captain, now Admiral Sir Leopold, MacClintock found a tin box in King William’s Island, which contained a report written by some of Franklin’s sailors. They stated that Franklin had died in 1847, and it was ascertained that all the sailors who survived him hal perished of hunger. Fresh efforts were made to discover the North-West passage by way of Baffin’s Bay. MacClure solved the problem by starting from Behring’s Straits and bringing home his crew by Davis Straits (1850—1854). He had proved that it was possible to go from one sea to the other—a great result, but one which really only con¬ cerned science. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 555 In 1861 Doctor Hayes reached 81° 35' of north latitude ; and in 1886 Captain Lockwood reached 83° 24'. This was the highest latitude then reached, but Nansen, who has already crossed Green¬ land on snow-shoes, purposes shortly to attempt to reach the North Pole. South America: the Emancipation of the Spanish Colonips (1808 —1826).—At the commencement of the nineteenth century Spain possessed the largest part of the American continent: Mexico, Central America, and South America, except Brazil. But it held fast to the old system and to monopolies, and endeavoured to isolate its colonies from the rest of the world, although their extent was quite out of proportion to the power of the mother country. The Spaniards treated not only the indigenous population, but even the Creoles and Spaniards born in America, with the greatest contempt, and the latter found themselves excluded from the public offices. The cultivation of the vine and olive were prohi¬ bited in Mexico, and it was forced to receive all its imports from Spain. Taught by the example of the United States, and excited by rumours of European revolutions, the populations of Spanish America exerted themselves to secure their commercial and poli¬ tical emancipation. The French usurpation in Spain in 1808, and the accession of a new dynasty, provided the opportunity for the first attempt, and in 1809 the revolt began in Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador, followed in 1810 by Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Mexico. The struggle continued till 1826, by which date all the Spanish- American colonies had become independent, and republican ; but some can hardly yet be said to have attained permanent and regular government. Brazil .—Brazil peacefully separated from the Portuguese mo¬ narchy, and established an empire under the dynasty of Braganza (1822). There were two Emperors only, Dom Pedro I. and Dom Pedro II.,* whose reign lasted till November, 1889, when a republic was established, and the whole of America south of Canada became * Dom Pedro T. (1822—1831) abdicated in 1831 in favour of bis son, Dum Pedio II. (1831—1889). 556 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. entirely republican. Slavery in Brazil had been finally abolished in 1888. The Brazilian empire alone represents two-fifths of the South American continent. Its coasts are nearly 4,000 miles long, its breadth more than 2,500 miles, and its whole area over 3,000,000 square miles (about fourteen times as large as France). But the population is scanty and scattered, for Brazil has only fourteen million inhabitants,* a number quite inadequate to cultivate the magnificent basins of the Amazon and the Parana. The progress of Brazil is hampered by the wealth of its exube¬ rant vegetation, its immense forests, where the trees and creepers form an impenetrable thicket, where the rivers overflow and the great heat develops life in a multitude of plants and insects, but also produces miasma from the masses of verdure, with their accu¬ mulating and decaying refuse. Colonization is more difficult there than anywhere else, and the flow of emigration is very weak. Still the population is increasing, railways are being made (there are about 5,200 miles already, and 800 under construction) and Brazil, thanks to the excellence of its productions (coffee, sugar, tobacco, etc.), seems likely to realise, by its prosperity and its active trade, the hopes which have been raised by the fertility of its soil, watered by grand navigable rivers under a most varied climate. The Republics of South and Central America .—The Brazilian empire is surrounded by the republics which have been established in the pampas of the Rio de la Plata, or upon the sides of the chain of the Andes, enclosed between the Cordilleras and the Pacific Ocean. The fine watercourses of the Parana and the Paraguay, which both spring from the Central Plateau of Brazil and flow towards the south-west, enclose the State of Paraguay and part of the Argentine Confederation. They meet at 270 leagues from the ocean, at Corrientes, and then water the immense pampas of the Argentine Republic. Above Buenos Ayres this river, already doubled, is tripled by the Uruguay, which also comes from Brazil * Brazil has a few important cities. The capital, Rio de Janeiro, with its eight suburbs, numbers 350,000 inhabitants; Bahia has 128,000 : Pernambuco, 116,000, &c. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 557 and forms the western boundary of the republic to which it gives its name. This reunion of the three great waterways forms the Rio de la Plata, which pours its abundant waters into the Atlantic Ocean by a magnificent estuary 35 leagues wide. The Argentine Con¬ federation to the west of these rivers has an area of 1,000,000 square miles, and yet numbers scarcely more than four million inhabitants. Emigration into these countries is chiefly from the south of Europe, Basques, Spaniards, Italians, and men from the Canary Islands, Irish and Welsh from Great Britain. Paraguay is rising quickly from the heroic struggle it maintained against the Argen¬ tine Confederation and Brazil. The progress of Uruguay has been arrested by the wars it has perpetually waged against its ambitious neighbours, and by internal disorders. Chili, Peru, and the other republics of the Andes have never ceased to fight against each other, and consequently to impede each other’s prosperity. Yet since the commencement of the century the total population of the old Spanish colonies has far more than doubled ; from eleven millions it has risen to thirty-one millions. Railways have been constructed. The immense herds of cattle of the Argentine Con¬ federation, the copper and silver mines of Chili, and the guano of Peru, the coffee, tobacco, and quinine of Colombia, &c., supply a very active trade. Buenos Ayres contains 300,000 inhabitants. The ports of Santiago and of Valparaiso, in Chili, contain 190,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. Intellectual and moral progress follow material prosperity. Education is becoming more general; news¬ papers are published by thousands, and enjoy perfect liberty; and libraries and schools are rapidly increasing in numbers. The future of South America is very great, and a federal commercial union with the United States will probably give greater stability and a quicker rate of increase to these republics.* * The States of South America are : The Argentine Confederation, com¬ prising 14 provinces, the chief of which are, Buenos Ayres, C rrientes, Entre Rios, Sante Fe, Cordova, &c. It has 5,000 miles of railway ; its climate is the best in South America, and in spite of the temporary check caused by the present financial crisis (1890-1) its commerce and immigration may be said to be steadily increasing. Uruguay, or Banda Oriental, of which Montevideo is the capital, is a 553 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION\ Mexico .—The government in Mexico was organized as a federal republic after the short reign of Iturbide. The new constitution, based on that of the United States, was completed in 1824, but from that time the two parties of Federalists and Monarchists have perpetually disputed for power, and nearly all the Presi¬ dents have been overthrown after a time by rivals. The United States profited by these revolutions, and took possession of the two provinces of California and New Mexico (1848). Europe interfered several times, and Spain, England, and France joined in a military expedition in 1861, but the two former retired in 1862, when the French Government, under Napoleon III., endeavoured to establish a monarchy under the Austrian Archduke Maximilian, but the French troops could not remain to support it, the home government finding itself obliged to recall them owing to the determined opposition to European interference shown by the smaller state on the North of the La Plata; extent, 72,000 square miles; population, 700,000. The soil and climate are excellent for agricultural and pastoral purposes. Paraguay, the only state in which Indian and European blood seemed to have mingled on equal terms, has had an unfortunate history. Through over¬ loyalty to its dictators Francia and Lopez it has been involved in quarrels with its powerful neighbours, the Argentine Confederation and Brazil, and was almost annihilated 1854—1870. It is, however, fast recovering, and has a population of 476,000. Chili, the most uniformly prosperous of these republics, is on the western slope of the Andes. It has come victorious from its contest with Peru, and its prosperity is yearly increasing. Population over 3,000,000. Peru is at present crippled by her disastrous struggle with Chili. It is very rich in minerals. Population a little under 3,000,000. Bolivia, an inland state, is very rich in minerals, especially silver at Potosi. Its area is only 472 000 square miles ; population, 2,300,000. Colombia, the most northerly state of South America, includes the Isthmus of Panama. Its area is 331,000 square miles ; population, 3,500,000, half Indian. Formerly called New Granada. Ecuador, in the Andes ; area, 248,000 square miles ; population, 1,100,000. Venezuela, on the Carrihean Sea : area, 566,000 square miles ; population, 2,100,000; and British (population, 252,000), Dutch (65,000), and Fren. h Guiana (28,000), complete the civilized states of South America. The Central American republics, between Colombia and Mexico, are C< sta Pica (population, 200,000), Nicaragua (300,000), Honduras (400,000), San Salvador (650,000), Guatemala (1,400,000), British Honduras (27,000). DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 559 United States. A revolution soon followed, and after a reign of three years the Emperor Maximilian was taken prisoner and shot at Queretaro, June 19, 1867. After the troubles and losses of this long war, Mexico endea¬ voured to inaugurate internal improvements, and to commence a new era of progress. The country, which is three times larger than France, contains only 10 million inhabitants. In 1862 there was not a single railway, but during the French expedition an attempt was made to construct a line from Vera Cruz to Mexico, and there are now about 4,600 miles open. Africa : British Possessions .—Until the present century, the continent of Africa had been almost entirely neglected. The Por¬ tuguese had only touched the coasts, but other European powers have since extended their influence over vast tracts of country, and travellers from all nations have revealed the riches of the interior. England possesses the best portions of the whole Continent, important settlements on the Western Coast, the River Gambia, the magnificent Niger Territories, and the coast of the Gulf of Guinea ; and chiefly on the south the Cape Colony, the extreme point of Africa, taken from the Dutch in 1806, and its offshoots Natal, Zululand, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and the new region which is the realm of the British South Africa Company. This company will probably be the great success in colonization of the nineteenth century, a success due to the far-reaching plans and extraordinary energy of its founder and master-spirit, the statesman Mr. Cecil Rhodes, now the Cape Premier, and to the wealth in gold and the magnificent climate and soil of its immense territories, which include Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Manica, &c. Here, on a cool and well-watered plateau, the British race can thrive and increase, and will probably attain a very high development. The working of the goldfields of Mashonaland has already begun, and, attracting a large and rapid influx of Englishmen, will make the work of colonization swift and easy. The Company has already begun its work north of the Zambezi, and reaches up almost to the head-waters of the Congo ; portions of this country, for instance 560 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. the land of the Barotse, are reported to be as healthy and habitable for white men as Mashonaland itself. The Cape Colony has a free constitution and a Parliamentary government, based upon the English model. The mineral resources of the country, gold, coal, copper, and the wonderful De Beers diamond mines discovered at Kimberley in 1871, are its most remarkable features. From this colony the English have spread northwards to the Zambezi, and beyond the Zambezi to Nyasaland with its great lakes, Nyasa and Tanganyika ; they rule the natives, but the Boers, the descendants of the Dutch, and the French Huguenots, have maintained their independence in the Orange State and the Transvaal.* The federation of the various states south of the Zambezi into a United South Africa is the one great political work necessary to British expansion in this region of Africa. The newly explored territories of Central and East Africa have lately been partitioned among the English, Germans, Italians, French, and Portuguese. The British East Africa Company is the chief power in East Africa an 1 is beginning to develop the commerce of extensive territories and thus to introduce civilization. France in Africa ; Senegal. —France, in addition to Reunion and Nossi Be, has devoted itself to colonising two points, Senegal and Algeria. The late treaty of partition unites Senegal with Algeria and the whole of the Sahara to Lake Tchad, and gives to France a large share of the African continent. Algeria .—The conquest of Algeria has been one of the most useful works that the French have accomplished during our century. Com¬ menced by Charles X., who wished to avenge the continual insults of the Dey of Algiers and to destroy piracy, it was continued under Louis Philippe and the governments which succeeded him. The town of Algiers was taken on July 4th, 1880. The French then seized the ports of Oran (1881) and Bona (1832). From these three points they have gained possession of the interior. * Orange Free State, independent of Cape Colony since 1854 ; population, 133,000 inhabitants; capital, Bloemfontein. Transvaal State, for a short time under the British flag, recovered its inde¬ pendence in 1880. Total population (black and while), 815,000 inhabitants ; capital, Pretoria DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 5 61 In 1834 they declared war against a famous Emir, revered both as a general and a prophet, Abd-el-Kader, Bey of Mascara, and the struggle lasted thirteen years. The French have moved farther towards the south than the Romans ever ventured to do, and are gradually advancing beyond the limits of the Sahara towards Burnou and Sokoto. Tunis .—The presence of the French in Tunis must also be a great advantage to Algeria, for the Regency of Tunis, over which France assumed a protectorate in 1881, covers Algeria to the east, and, in fact, forms part of the same country. It contains more than 2,000,000 inhabitants. The administration of the Bey has been re-organized, and Tunis is now able to profit by the im¬ provements already established in Algeria. The total commerce amounts to nearly £2,000,000, and the railways already workiug are 258 miles long. The Exploration of Africa ; the Niger ; the Sources of the Nile .— In the sixteenth century the Portuguese had made the circuit of Africa, and had mapped out its coast line. But they were unable to maintain effective occupation even in the few places where they attempted it. And their Colonies have decayed so that at Mozam¬ bique and on the East Coast they are merely tolerated by the natives, while in the interior their occupation is altogether imagi¬ nary. They habitually encourage slavery, set an example of de¬ generacy and vice, and are obstacles not aids to the development of civilization. The map of inner Africa remained a blank until fifty years ago ; it is now being gradually filled up by intrepid explorers, who have penetrated into the unknown country and are opening the continent of Africa to European activity, formerly confined to the coasts. The most dangerous enemy that man encounters is man himself. The history of the first explorations of the interior of Africa is there¬ fore a long list of martyrs, most of them victims of the ferocity of the natives. Mungo Park (1795—1803) commmenced this histoiy by exploring the Soudan and the Niger. He was followed by Clapperton (1823); Laing (1825); Lander (1830); Barth (1850— 1855) ; Richardson (1849—1851) ; Yogel (1856). Thanks to o o 562 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. these travellers, whose skill equalled their courage, the Soudan, Senegambia, the course of the Niger, and the basin of Lake Tchad were discovered, and the native populations are being yearly brought more into contact with the commerce and civilization of Europe. Europe was more deeply interested when the mysterious region of the sources of the Nile was at last penetrated. Since the last century many travellers had endeavoured to reach it, but their attempts to ascend the valley were frustrated by the hostility of the population and the dangerous climate. Speke and Burton attacked the problem more scientifically (1858). Leaving the eastern coast, they crossed the chain of which the summits, Kenia and Kilimanjaro, exceed 20,000 feet, and reached the African pla¬ teau, where they discovered an inland sea, Lake Tanganyika. They felt assured that other lakes existed to the north, and Speke in a second journey, accompanied by Grant instead of Burton, resolved to reach these lakes, which there was reason to believe were the sources of the Nile. Between 1860 and 1863 Speke and Grant accomplished this important expedition, and discovered a lake, which they named Victoria Nyanza. They proved that a large river issued from it, and hearing of another lake through which the same river flowed, they continued their journey towards the north, ulti¬ mately reaching the Nile. Sir Samuel Baker met them, having started in search of the party in 1861, accompanied by his courage¬ ous wife. Baker had followed the old route and ascended the Nile. Furnished with valuable information and maps drawn by Speke, he travelled towards the lakes which were to be explored, but it required three years of fatigue and peril before he reached the second lake, which he named Albert Nyanza (March 14th, 1864). Livingstone : Southern and Central Africa .—The most original and celebrated African traveller was a simple Protestant missionary, the Scotch doctor, David Livingstone. Urged, first by evangelical zeal, and then by love of science, he undertook immense explora¬ tions, and, travelling alone, confronted the difficulties of a deadly climate, venturing into the midst of savage populations without any protection save that of calm courage, and a gentle, persuasive DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION . 5^3 treatment of the people he met. Livingstone never used his firearms except against wild beasts. He left the Cape in 1840, and extended his travels into Southern Africa, and the shores of Lake Ngami, finally descending into the valley of the Zam¬ bezi. In 1852 he ascended the valley and penetrated as far as the Portuguese possessions in the kingdom of Angola, and reached St. Paul de Loanda. He then returned to the valley of the Zambezi and descended it, determined to follow it to the end. He discovered the cataracts (to which he gave the name Victoria), where the river, 1,900 yards wide, falls into an abyss twice as deep as that of Niagara. At last he reached Quilimane on the western side, after a journey of more than 2,400 miles (1852— 1856). Livingstone afterwards explored the basin of the Zambezi, and discovered lakes Shirwa and Nyasa (1859) ; then, ascending to the equatorial regions, he found a number of lakes (Bangweolo, Moero, &c.), and finally reached the great Lualabu River—the upper waters of the Congo, which he, however, believed to be the Nile. He remained amongst the tribes of Africa so long that he was believed to be dead. The editor of the New York Herald then asked Stanley, one of the special correspondents of that paper, to go in search of Livingstone. Stanley accepted the mission and started by the route traced out by Speke and Grant. He reached Tanganyika, and at Ujiji had the satisfaction of meeting a white man almost exhausted by illness—who proved to be Livingstone. Stanley supplied him with provisions and endeavoured to persuade him to return home with him (1871). Livingstone refused, and two years later he succumbed to fatigue and hardships, in Ilala (1878). Cameron, who had been sent to the relief of Living¬ stone in 1872, met his followers carrying his corpse to the sea (Unyanyembe, August, 1878), and brought it back to England, where it was buried in Westminster Abbey, amongst the most illustrious men of whom Great Britain boasts. Livingstone was one of the greatest pioneers of civilization the world has known, and the warrior exploits of the heroes of antiquity pale before the pacific heroism of this simple missionary, who, by the weapons 564 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of patience, kindness, and courage, overcame all obstacles and passed safely through the fastnesses of barbarism. Cameron; Stanley. —Cameron, after taking the necessary pre¬ cautions for the safe transport of Livingstone’s remains, between 1873 and 1875 drifted across the continent of Africa to the south of the basin of the Congo, and reached Benguela. Stanley, in his turn, in a great expedition which lasted three years (1874—1877), proved the separation of the basins of the Nile and the Congo, and practically discovered and explored the latter river, which makes a curve up to three degrees north of the equator. He called the upper portion of the river after Livingstone. Stanley, during this wonderful journey, fought thirty-two battles against the warlike natives. He returned with only 111 men of 347 who left Zanzibar with him. Congo Free State .— Stanley then entered the service of the “ Association Internationale du Congo,” under the patronage of Leopold II., King of the Belgians. Aided by committees in each country, the African Association dispatched expeditions equipped with every modern accessory. Stanley established many stations in the basin of the Congo. A conference assembled at Berlin (1885) recognised the existence and independence of the Congo Free State, and the commercial freedom of the river, which is open to the shipping of all nations. In 1886 an expedition was formed for the relief of Emin Pacha, who had been left isolated in the Egyptian province of Equatorial Africa since the taking of Khartoum and death of Gordon, Janu¬ ary, 1885. The command was given to Stanley, who selected the Congo State for his point of departure. He reached the Aru- wimi Falls, June, 1887; for nearly two years nothing was heard of him; the leader of the rear column, left at Yambuya, Major Barttelot, was murdered in June, 1888. Stanley, meanwhile, after great difficulties in marching through a vast equatorial forest, had reached the Albert Nyanza, December, 1887 ; but Emin refused to leave his province. Stanley returned to the Aruwimi, reformed his expedition, and again pressed forward to rescue Emin. He reached the Albert Nyanza for the second time, January, 1889, after a DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 5 6 5 march of even greater difficulty than the former one. Emin Pacha, against whom a rebellion had broken out in 1888, reluctantly yielded to Stanley’s pressure, and with five hundred of his fol¬ lowers they started together for the East coast, April, 1889, and on December 5, 1889, sighted the Indian Ocean at Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar. After a short stay in Egypt Stanley returned to Europe, April, 1890, while Emin remained in Africa, and headed a new expedition in the service of Germany. Among the numerous English travellers who have done good work in exploring and opening up the interior of Africa may be mentioned Mr. H. H. Johnston, of Cross River and Kilima-njaro and Tanganyika fame, perhaps the most successful follower of Livingstone in his method of peacefully influencing the native races; Mr. Selous, the cele¬ brated South African hunter; and Mr. Joseph Thomson, the Massai-land and Sokoto explorer. The Ogowe; French Colony of the Congo .—The French, stimu¬ lated by these discoveries, had since 1872 endeavoured to penetrate into the interior of Equatorial Africa by the Gaboon and the Ogowe. Alfred Marche and the Marquis de Compiegne studied this country (1872—1874). In 1876 di Brazza, an officer in the French navy, commenced his expeditions, and with a handful of men advanced into the basin of the Ogowe and its tributaries, and into that of the tributaries of the Congo (1876—1879). He started on a second journey, succeeded in exploring a large terri¬ tory and in signing treaties with one of the most powerful kings of these countries—King Makoko. He founded stations at France- ville and Brazzaville, on the northern shore of Stanley Pool, placing all the tribes under the protection of the French flag (1882). Finally, supported by the French Government, he was able to occupy new positions and establish a new French colony, of which the limits on the left bank of the Congo were defined by a treaty in 1885. Schweinfurth ; Nachtigal. — A learned Russian botanist — Schweinfurth—advancing towards the western side of the Nile basin, visited the country of the Niams-Niams and that of the Akkas, a race of dwarfs (1868—1871). The German, Nachtigal, 566 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. accomplished another very difficult journey. He left Tripoli in 1869, and visited the districts round Lake Tchad, the countries of Bagirmi and Wada'i, returning in 1874, by Darfur and Kordofan, to Khartum, at the junction of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The upper courses of the Senegal and the Niger have lately been explored by French travellers. Portuguese Colonies .—The Portuguese, who had first explored and conquered the coasts of Africa, roused themselves at the tidings of the discoveries of others, which showed all that they might have gained during their long possession of the country. In 1877 the Government dispatched an expedition, commanded by Major Serpa Pinto, who traced the tributaries of the Zambezi, descended towards the south through the Desert of Kalahari, and crossing Southern Africa reached Durban, in the colony of Natal. The Portuguese at first claimed the basins of the Congo and of the Zambezi as part of their possessions, but their pretensions were rejected by the conference at Berlin, and the boundaries of the Portuguese colonies are not yet clearly defined ; for except at points on the coast they have no effective occupation whatever in East Africa, though they have accomplished something in West Africa. German Colonies .—Germany held a'oof from this movement of colonial expansion until the last few years, but now seems anxious to carry its flag into the most distant countries, and has established settlements at the Cameroons, on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It has also obtained possession of the west coast of Africa, from Care Frio to the Orange Biver. More recently (1886) it has assumed a protectorate on the East Coast opposite Zanzibar, from the river Rovumo to the south end of the Victoria Nyanza. The Colonial Empire of Holland .—The Dutch have retained and developed the colonial empire which they conquered during the seventeenth century in Oceania, that world of fertile islands be¬ tween Asia and America. This empire extends over Java, Sumatra, and the Sunda Islands. They contain more than twenty millions of inhabitants. The State governs the colonies, but a part of the government is left in the hands of the natives, the old DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 567 chieftains being merely reduced to the rank of tributary princes. Slavery was abolished in the Dutch Indies by the law passed on May 7th, 1859; but the old Mahomedan system is still in force in Java. The State owns the land and regulates all the details of labour; it is agricultural and commercial, and claims a right to the labour of the natives, selling the produce of the land for the supply of the budget of Holland. The Dutch endeavour to enlighten the natives, and improve them. They provide numerous schools, and a central committee of public instruction sits at Batavia. These islands have enjoyed and enjoy great prosperity under the Dutch rule. Coffee, sugar, rice, indigo, tea, cochineal, and cinnamon are the chief exports. Java has an active trade with Holland, England, France, Belgium, the Cape, Arabia, and Japan. The Dutch seek to acclimatize trees in all their possessions, particularly the cocoa and clove trees. The island of Java has more than 380 miles of railway. In Sumatra the Dutch were engaged in severe wars with the native chiefs from 1873 to 1882. The English in Australia .—Australia has been colonized by the English. Towards the end of the last century they founded convict stations, first at Botany Bay, then near to the magnificent harbour of Port Jackson. Each convict received a grant of land ; and if their moral standard was not very high, they became hard workers and bold pioneers. In 1864 the Australian colonies refused to receive convicts. In 1851 the discovery of the gold mines gave fresh impetus to emigration. The first “ diggings ” were at Summerhill Creek, and gold was also found on the banks of the Turon, a tributary of the Macquarie, about thirty miles from Bathurst. Successful searches were then made over a vast space of 12° latitude and 11° of longitude. The immense plains of Australia feed great numbers of sheep of very fine breeds, and their wool forms the chief export of the colony, providing a source of wealth that surpasses the pro¬ duce of the gold mines. The total yield of gold from 1851 to the end of 1885, was over £267,000,000. The other mineral wealth, especially in copper and silver, is very great. The total value 568 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. of exports in 1888 was over £57,000,000; of imports, over £65,000,000. There are now five distinct colonies in Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia. Tasmania, a large island to the south-west, separated by Bass’s Straits, is often reckoned with Australia. Twelve hundred miles to the east are the islands of New Zealand, little less in size than Great Britain and Ireland They will probably prove to be the England of the South Pacific. The European population is 600,000; the Maories, gradually declining, about 41,000. The exports are over £7,000,000. In Australia and New Zealand, railways, telegraphs, and every appliance of civilized life are to be found. Since 1872 a telegraph crosses Australia from north to south, and all the colonies are in telegraphic communication with Europe. A new civilized quarter has been added to the globe during the nineteenth century. The population of New South Wales has increased since 1886 from 65,000 to more than a million, and the total population of the Australian continent amounts to 2,838,608. Melbourne and Sydney contain nearly 300,000 inhabitants, and resemble European cities in their appearance. The European Powers in Asia ; the British Empire of India .—In spite of the importance which the colonization of Oceania and Africa has acquired, Asia, the largest of the five quarters of the globe, with its rich productions and its 800 millions of inhabitants, still offers the widest field for European rivalries. The English secured their footing in Hindostan in the eighteenth century, and assured their conquest by taking possession of Delhi, the ancient capital of the Mogul emperors (1803). They extended tbeir power through the valley of the Indus, and conquered Sindh (1843), the Kingdom of Lahore (1846), and the Punjab (1849), and entered Indo-China through Aracan and Assam (1824), Lower Burmah (1852), Upper Burmah (1885). They then attempted to penetrate into Afghanistan, but the expedition ended in a disaster (1841—1842). The English, how¬ ever, were not discouraged but recommenced their enterprise in 1879 and 1881, when they at least secured their influence in Cabul. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 569 The English rule in India was, however, seriously endangered by the terrible mutiny of 1857. India was the theatre of massacre and arson, and afterwards of the severe measures adopted by the English to quell the rebellion and avenge their murdered countrymen. They were entirely successful, owing partly to the loyalty of some of the native princes, but Great Britain had learnt a terrible lesson. The East India Company was abolished, England now assumed the direct government of India (1858), and instituted a Secretary of State for India, assisted by a council of fifteen members. In 1876, Mr. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, passed a bill investing the Queen with the title of Empress of India, January 1, 1877. The policy of England is now gradually to train the natives, and admit them to the highest offices, to govern India for the benefit of the natives as well as for that of the home government. The Material Condition of India; the Population, Railways .— The Indian empire is magnificent with its area of more than 1,600,000 square miles and its population of 252,660,550 inhab¬ itants, amongst whom are counted only 80,000 English. No greater proof could be given of the superiority of the Europeans, who have thus established their rule, w r ith the aid of small numbers, over such masses of human beings, and no greater proof could be given too of British genius and skill. Great Britain has realised how she could best consolidate her rule over India, and has busied herself with material improvements. A vast network of railways has been constructed through jungles, over mountains and rocks, through impenetrable forests, over¬ coming almost insuperable difficulties. These railways have placed the cities of the valley of the Ganges an ! the Indus in communication with those of the Deccan ; they cross from one sea to the other, from the coasts of Malabar to that of Coromandel, from north to south. During the last thirty years, 15,000 miles of railway have been constructed, for the first iron road dates only from 1858.* The Productions of India. —Amongst the most useful public * India, thanks to its active commerce, now contains many cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants. Amongst them Calcutta, 7o0,000 ; Bombay, 570 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. works is the system of irrigation, intended to avert the droughts w 7 hich prevail in that burning climate, and which produce frightful famines. Since 1771 twenty-one great famines and several smaller ones have cost tens of thousands of lives. They are caused by the droughts, by the limited extent of arable land (for scarcely one-third of India is cultivated), and by a culture too much restricted to certain crops. Their effects are aggravated by the superstitions of the inhabitants, who prefer to die rather than to eat the flesh of certain animals, prohibited by their religion. Oxen and cows are considered sacred by the Hindoos, wiio, on this account, are almost exclusively vegetarians. India produces besides cereals a large quantity of opium, which is exported into China (value about £5,000,000) ; cotton, which rivals that of America ; jute, a textile plant, very useful in industry ; rice, tea since 1884, coffee, spices, sugar, and perfumes. Industry and Art .—Manufactures are as yet undeveloped in India, although coal is very plentiful, the area of the deposits being estimated at about 40,000 squ ire n iles. But India has always excelled in the production of artistic and textile industries. The Hindoos also excel in embr idering, and, like most orientals, are endued with the sense of colour, and so attain harmonies unknown to us. Cashmere shawls are still of undiminished value and fame. Nothing can surpass the luxury of the Rajabs of India, and their palaces, gardens, terraces, and mausoleums astonish and delight travellers from Europe. The original architecture of these palaces, of the Buddhist temples and Mussulman mosques, their carved balconies of lace-like marble, all prove the vivid imagina¬ tion of these races that, after being the ancestors of our civili¬ zation, have remained for so long in a state of decadence. If Hindoo and Buddhist architecture is almost always grotesque in details, the Arabic art of India is superb. The Taj Mahal at Agra (1620) is a dream of beauty in stone. The Hindoos manufacture jewelry of infinite variety. Their lacquerwork, their 773,000 ; Madras, 406,000 ; Hyderabad, 354,000 ; Lucknow, 261,000 ; Benares, 200,000; Delhi, 173,000; Patna, 170,000; Agra, 160,000; Lahore, 150,000, &c. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 57* carving in sandal-wood, and incrustation of ivory are of remarkable delicacy. Calcutta and Bombay produce iron and wooden furniture Window of Man Munder, Benares. carved like lace-work. To these industries, the ancient inheritance of India, the English have added every modern industry which can 572 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. be acclimatized on the banks of the Ganges. India commences to manufacture not only for herself, but for other countries. Her commerce at present amounts to about £120,000,000 ; this seems little in proportion to the population, but it is steadily increasing. O Moral Condition: Castes, Religions .—The Hindoos are still divided into castes. Four groups are recognised—the Brahmins, the country people, the merchants, and the artisans or labourers. But the number of castes is very variable, for trades are frequently regarded as castes. There are also millions of individuals without race or rights—unclean, as they are called, and not pariahs, as they are wrongly termed, for this word has a special meaning and designates a group of thirteen castes. Brahminism predominates, and is the religion of 187,000,000 of Hindoos. There are only 8,500,000 of Buddhists. There is a considerable increase in the number of Mussulmans and Christians—50,000,000 of Mahomedans and 1,862,084 Christians (Protestants and Catholics). There are 26 Catholic archbishops or bishops and 1,200 priests. There are also about 6,000,000 who worship nature, and 5,000,000 members of eccentric sects. Still European ideas are visibly spreading, and suttee—the sacrifice of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres —has been abolished by law. Child-marriage, a cause of name¬ less cruelties and a fruitful source of the degeneration of the race, is already sentenced by public opinion in England, and will, like suttee, shortly be done away by law. Schools are opened, and the number of pupils has increased a hundredfold in fifty years. Colleges have been founded in Calcutta, Poonah, Delhi, Agra, Benares, &c., and the young Hindoos are easily taught every branch of modern science, whose cradle, we must remember, was India itself. It was there the Arabs learnt the astronomv, algebra, and all the other sciences which they introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages. Learned societies have been formed on the plan of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, and museums have been founded like that of Allahabad. India, where for many centuries men of the same race as Europeans have been quietly vegetating, is now returning to life. The work, though rapidly DIFFUSION OF FUR OFF AN CIVILIZATION. 573 advancing, is little more than begun, for it must act upon a popula¬ tion of 252,000,000. The Russian Empire in Asia : Siberia. —Russia has been attack¬ ing Asia on the north and western frontiers for many years. In the north it possesses the Province of Siberia (5,500,000 square miles). It forms the northern boundary of China, and has already encroached upon the Chinese territory by taking possession of the coast beyond the river Amur between its tributary the Usuri and the coast of the Gulf of Tartary. This area of more than 1,000,000 square miles now forms the provinces of Amur and the Maritime Region. The axe is laid to the forests of Southern Siberia, and steamboats plough the great waterway of the Amur. The mines near Lake Baikal are being worked, and the Russians derive great profit from these countries in spite of their northern latitude. The Caucasian Provinces .•—Since the opening of this century the Russians have passed the Caucasus, and have acquired the fine country situated in the southern watershed. These magnificent terraces and valleys are sheltered from the north winds, and now form the Transcaucasian Provinces (350,000 square miles and 6,290,000 inhabitants), which Russia uses every effort to extend to the detriment of Persia and Turkey. An immense source of wealth has lately been opened in the petroleum springs at Baku on the Caspian; besides the commercial value, this renders the Black Sea and river navy of Russia independent of foreign coal. The Russians and Turkestan. —By crossing the Caucasus, the Russians approached the Caspian Sea on the south: they already surrounded it on the north. Passing the Sea of Aral, which sepa¬ rated them from Turkestan, they entered into relations with the nomad hordes of the Kirghiz, who wander over the immense steppes of this country, covered by deep snow in winter and dried up by the extreme heat in summer. After reiterated and unsuc¬ cessful attempts against the oasis of Khiva, Russia has succeeded in conquering Turkestan. It first extended its influence over the Khanate of Khokand (1860—1864), which it annexed in 1875 with its principal cities—Tashkend, Khojend (the latter founded by the 574 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Macedonian conqueror), and lastly Bokhara. In 1868 the Russians occupied the ancient city of Samarcand, so celebrated in the Middle Ages, and obliged the Emir of Bokhara to surrender the Khanate of Samarcand. Russian armies were then dispatched to punish the Khan of Khiva, still only partly subdued (1872—1873). The Khan was conquered, obliged to acknowledge himself the vassal of the Czar, and to cede a portion of his territory on the right bank of the Oxus. The Russians also endeavoured to annex Zungaria (1871); the Chinese protested, and Russia only retained the southern portion and the passages through the Celestial Mountains, which gave them access to the basin of the Tarim. The Russians thus found themselves masters of an area of about 450,000 square miles, partly sterile, and occupied by a scattered population of 6 , 000 , 000 . But the Russians were not tempted by the intrinsic value of these vast steppes : they require a road to India, or to the Indian Ocean. The Russians have no seaport for the commerce of these vast regions. The English therefore endeavoured to balance their progress by advancing into Afghanistan. The Russians made the English expedition a pretext for penetrating still farther into the south of Turkestan. In 1881 General Skobeleff took possession of Geok-Tepe, and in 1884 the Russians occupied Merv, an impor¬ tant point on the road to Balkh and Herat. They are thus quite near to Afghanistan, and its mountains only separate them from the valley of the Indus. The English are therefore compelled to establish a strong line of defence against this new foe, and to bring it into communication with their Indian forces. With the double object of facilitating commerce with these countries, and of preparing for what seems to be an inevitable conflict, the Russians have constructed the Transcaspian railway. The difficulties were very great, for terrible deserts had to be crossed. They have been overcome : companies of soldiers were lodged in well-furnished railway carriages, and advanced with their house-train as fast as they laid the rails (1886). The line to Merv is now finished, and the Russian troops can no longer be stopped by the desert. With all the harshness of her rule, and her DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 575 imperfect civilization, the advance of Russia in Central Asia is of benefit to the native populations. China. —China, the oldest empire in the world, is also attracting the attention of the European powers, which, joined together, do not equal it in extent or population. China obstinately closed its ports to all commerce, and the English could only succeed in the introduction of opium, of which the Chinese are passionately fond. The Chinese Government wished to prohibit this importation, and their attempt led to the Opium War (1889— 1842). British men of war blockaded the coasts, and British troops occupied the large towns, such as Amoy, Ning-po, and Shang-hai. British vessels ascended the Yang-Tse, the largest river and principal artery of China. They appeared in front of Nanking. The imperial canal, which connects the provinces of the north and south, was closed, and then the Chinese decided to come to terms. China opened five ports to all foreigners, and ceded the island of Hong Kong, in the bay of Canton, to England. The French Government, under Louis Philippe, profited by this opportunity to arrange a treaty with China, but it was only a blind. In 1859 the French and English became persuaded that the country would not be opened without a serious expedition. 12,000 French under the command of General Cousin Montauban, and 28,000 English under General Grant, were sent to China. The ports of Pe'i-ho were taken (August, 1860). The two victories of Tchang-Kia and of Palikiao opened the road to Pekin, and the burning of the summer palace (for which the English are respon¬ sible) decided the Chinese Government to treat with the invaders. From 1861 to 1870 China was disturbed by successive revolts, the most important of which, that of the Taepings, was put down with the aid of General Gordon and other European officers. The French and Chinese came into collision in 1884, on the northern frontier of Tonquin, but peace was made in 1886. The treaties of Pekin opened sixteen ports to Europeans. Chinese Civilization ; Population ; Government .—China is the largest reservoir of men in the whole world. The exact number is unknown, but the population is estimated at 378 millions of in- 5:6 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. habitants, dwelling in an area of 4,500,000 square miles.* Nearly all this mass are crowded into China proper, yet the density of population is only moderate (95 to the square mile). Europeans naturally sought to penetrate into this country, and to open up a trade with this vast mass of human beings. It is not astonishing that this large and populous empire, which had prospered during hundreds of centuries, should have refused to enter into communi¬ cation with Europeans, who appeared to it like barbarians, an inferior race greedy for pillage. The celestial empire is now modifying its prejudices, and Europe is changing its ideas. The political and social organization of the empire is better understood ; the religious character of the monarchy results in the traditional despotism of the Emperor, who is so completely hidden from the eyes of his subjects that the streets must be deserted and the houses closed when he crosses Peking ; the religious character of paternal authority renders it equally absolute; and the people worship their ancestors, whose tombs become altars. We have witnessed the same thing at the commencement of the history of the Greeks and Romans. Woman is still in an inferior position; she lives secluded and under restraint, and polygamy, which is legally authorised, maintains this inferiority. The Government is highly centralised. The provinces are usually governed by two officials — a governor-general and a governor, w T ith a strictly regulated body of officials under them. The mandarins or officials are all learned men, who have studied deeply, and have been chosen by competitive tests. They are held by their superiors in a state of terror, which they also inspire in their subordinates. It is an application of the old despotic system of the ancient Asiatic empires. Religion; Legislation .—There are no castes in China, for com¬ plete equality prevails in the country, only there is a profound * China has a total area of 4,500,000 square miles, really peopled. Of this China proper has an area of 1,500,000 square miles, and a population of about 350 millions of inhabitants (95 to the square mile). The other parts of the Empire, Manchuria, Mongolia, Thibet, Corea, &c., only contain 28,000,000 inhabitants for an area of 3,000,000 square miles (9 to the square mil e) DIFFUSION OF FUR OFF AN CIVILIZATION. 577 difference between learned men and the ignorant masses. The religion of the educated classes is that of Confucius (550—479 b.c.), a system of ethics rather than a mythology, which regulated the State as well as religion, and which proposed an ideal hierarchy of scientists and philosophers, who should fill the various offices, with the Emperor as their head. Buddhism and Taouism have also many followers,* whilst the worship of ancestors usually accompanies these various doctrines. Although many of these doctrines are inspired by philosophy, they have not softened the punishments inflicted by the legislation, which are still very cruel. In refinement of torture and studied cruelty they surpass those of Europe during the Middle Ages. The least and most common penalty is the bastinado, from which no one can feel safe, for dignitaries as well as others are liable to this degradation. Agriculture .—China is cultivated with extreme care, in spite of the imperfection of the implements used. Agriculture resembles gardening. A complete system of irrigation has been formed for the cultivation of the rice plant, which occupies one-eighth of the cleared land. Besides vegetables and fruit, China produces cotton, Indian millet, sugar, oranges, mulberries, pulse, sweet potato, &c. The forests have been cleared to extend the area of cultivation, particularly of the tea plant. Agriculture has always been venerated in China as the chief support of life. The Emperor is himself regarded as the first cultivator, and not long ago he was still obliged, at the opening of the year, to dress in a peasant’s costume, and to plough three furrows in the sacred field. The Chinese have little pasturage, and raise few cattle. Oxen are used only for labour. The people’s food consists principally of rice, vegetables, fish, and poultry, and pork is the most popular meat. Tea is in universal use and is the chief article of export. Industry .—Industry as well as agriculture in China is tradi¬ tional. From the most remote ages the Chinese excelled in the * Taou is one of tne names given to the Supreme Being amongst the Chinese. The worship of Taou practised by the sect of Taou-tsee was probably older than that of Confucius. P P 578 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. manufacture of stuffs, and in the working of metals. Very intelligent and patient, father and son following the same trade, they have transformed industry into art. Every production is the work of a single artist, for a division of labour is unknown. The Chinese were the first to manufacture paper from linen, and they probably invented the compass and gunpowder. They could print from wood-blocks, and at the end of the sixth century this art is alluded to as being already old. But all these inventions required to pass through the hands of Europeans in order to produce their present results. The great number of signs which the Chinese require, for their language contains as many monosyllabic signs as they have ideas, renders the use of movable types very difficult. Their books are usually printed upon silky paper. China is rich in various metals and salt, whilst the country already occupies the sixth rank among the states which produce coal. The Chinese have not ne¬ glected the metal industries, but are skilful in forming alloys of copper, lead, tin, zinc, silver, and gold. Contact with Europeans will probably aid in the development of these industries. The manufacture of silk is the national handicraft of the Chinese, who taught it to the Persians, and who probably furnished the first specimens of this fine material to the Roman patricians. The man¬ darins are distinguished by the richness of their robes, and silks are used instead of tapestry in the Imperial palace. The Chinese also excel in the art of manufacturing lacquer, caskets, porcelains, enamels, and bronzes. They make lacquer with a sticky liquid which exudes from the Rhus vernicifera , a small kind of Sumach-tree. At Canton the lacquer is black, and at Pekin it is red. With it workboxes, stands, vases, fan mounts, &c., are made. Porcelain is gradually disappearing in China. It was formerly one of the chief industries, and near Nanking a porcelain tower was erected 200 feet high; it was destroyed by the Taepings in 1863. Old vases and plates are becoming very rare, and are sold for extravagant prices, but modern, common china is very abundant. As a rule, the Chinese have no perception of form in art. In their porcelains the colours may be inimitable, the paste and the glaze DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 579 may be of peculiar quality and whiteness, and thus excite the admi- Porcelain Tower at Nankin (destroyed), ration of collectors, but a cup of Sevres china, a tiny figure of 5?o THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. Dresden manufacture, will possess an artistic design and a graceful outline which the Chinese productions never attain. Progress of China .—In spite of the resistance of the Govern¬ ment, the relations now established between Europe and China must open a new future to this vast country. The trade with foreigners amounts to about £50,000,000, and in 1882 there were 440 European merchants’ offices in the twenty-two open ports,* of which more than half are English. The Chinese, who have been accused of immobility, have now started on the path of progress. They have commenced railways, and have ordered war-ships in Europe ; already ironclads built in England are to be seen in Chi¬ nese waters, armed with the newest and most perfect weapons, and if their vessels dare not yet engage with the French men-of-war under Courbet, who destroyed the arsenal of Foo-chou, the Chinese troops proved in the Tonquin War that they are the undisciplined troops of Palikaio no longer. The Catholic and other Christian missions have already dimin¬ ished the distance which separates the races ; they now, in spite of long persecutions, number 1,094,000 converts, with 41 bishops, 664 European priests, and 559 native priests. The number of Protestant Chinese is increasing. Japan .—Japan was even more obstinate than China in resisting the entrance of Europeans. Japan is composed of four large islands and a group of smaller ones, forming altogether an area of 147,000 square miles. Two centuries ago these countries were opened to missionaries, who converted great numbers of the people. But in 1687 frightful massacres exterminated the Christians, and for a long time Japan opposed an insurmountable barrier to Europeans. The Dutch only were allowed to communicate with the Japanese, and they were confined to a small island near Nagasaki, and ham- * Principal ports open to foreigners : Canton (1,600,000 inhabitants). Tien-tsin (950,000), Hankou (750,000), Foo-chou (630,000), Shanghai (350,000), Ning-po (260,000), Takao and Taiwan (235,000), Amoy (95,000), &c. It is unnecessary to add that these figures are merely approximate, for the statistics are very uncertain. Even for Peking, the capital, they vary between 500,000 and 1,650,000 inhabitants. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 58i Japanese Vase. pered by a number of severe restrictions. In March, 1854, the United States first succeeded in signing a treaty with Japan ; the 5-S2 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION . other nations then forced an entry into the breach opened by the Americans. On the 14th October, of the same year, the English Admiral Sterling concluded a similar treaty at Nagasaki. The Dutch and the Russians obtained the same advantages by the treaties of the 9th November, 1855, and August, 1858. By trading on the rumours, which had reached Japan, of the opera¬ tions against the Chinese, in 1858, France and England obtained still greater concessions. In August, 1858, Lord Elgin appeared before Yedo with three men-of-war, and the Japanese Government dared not refuse to sign the treaty he presented, 26th August. One month later the French Ambassador, Baron Gros, concluded a similar treaty, whilst the American Consul and the Russian Admiral Poutiakine exacted new concessions in their own favour. The French, English, Russians, &c., were allowed to establish them¬ selves freely in the open p orts of Kanagawa, Hiogo, and Naga¬ saki. Since 1862 foreigners have been allowed to establish themselves at Yedo (or . oki'>) and Osaka. The bombardment of Shimonoseki in 1864 finally convinced the Japanese that resistance to European armies was impossible. In 1865 the Mikado gave his official sanction to the treaties, and a curious revolution soon took place in Japan. Government and Progress of Japan .—The Tycoon, the temporal sovereign with whom the Europeans had treated, was in reality only an agent of the Mikado. For a long time the Tycoon had illegally assumed the sovereign power, he had placed himself at the head of the eighteen great daimios, who divided the country between them, and played the part of mayor of the palace. After foreigners had been admitted to Japan, the Tycoon endeavoured to establish absolute authority over the daimios ; those of the south rebelled, left Jeddo and advanced on Kioto, the residence of the Mikado. The Tycoon’s troops were defeated, but the Mikado pardoned the Tycoon, who then returned to his original rank as a noble. The Mikado entered Jeddo on the 25th November, 1868. The daimios of the north then rose against the Mikado, but being defeated, they soon submitted to the sovereign. The Mikado then applied himself to centralising the administration of a country DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 5*3 which still lived under almost feudal laws; he overthrew all the feudal power of the Daimios, or nobles, and made them simple tenants at will on their own estates. For a time the Mikado was absolute, but in 1875 he decreed a new constitution, with a parlia¬ ment of two chambers. In 1884 a new order of hereditary nobility was established, and the constitution enlarged in 1889, when religious toleration and abolition of slavery were proclaimed. The Mikado has encouraged the study of foreign languages, ordered railways to be constructed, opened a maritime arsenal at Yo- koska, and a mint at Osaka. Formerly hidden from all his sub¬ jects, he now shows himself in public as freely as European sovereigns, speaks to the ambassadors accredited to him, reviews his troops in the uniform of a French general, and also visits the provinces of his empire. The city of Yokohama is lighted with gas, Japan took part in the Universal Exhibitions of 1878, 1879, &c., where she occupied an important position, and she has held exhibitions of her own. Besides great agricultural wealth, Japan possesses original industry, and weaves magnificent stuffs of the most brilliant colours ; she also excels in lacquer-ware, caskets, painted porcelain vases, ornaments in mother-of-pearl, tortoise¬ shell, ivory, &c. There is at present even a movement towards the adoption of Christianity as the official religion, though not so much on religious as on political grounds. Japan seems in all respects to be, with extraordinary rapidity, assimilating European civilization. The population of Japan almost equals that of France— viz : 89,000,000 inhabitants ; its fleet consists of thirty-one men-of- war, and its army exceeds 100,000 men. Its commerce is over 20 millions annually. The World as it now is .—The civilized world, w. ich once con¬ sisted of the nations round the Mediterranean and its eastern shores, has greatly enlarged its boundaries. In the forefront of material civilization and practical scientific invention, stands now the world unknown to the ancients—the United States of North America, in resources probably the most powerful of all existing States, and the only one which no enemy threatens. The white race has there 5^4 THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, for ever dispossessed the red; but to the South the problem of the races is still unsolved. No monarchy has yet permanently main¬ tained itself on the American continent. Democracy rules there, and the form of government is republican. In Oceania and Australia similar states are growing up. The Asiatic races, one by one, are becoming more open to civilization. Asia Minor, Persia, and Arabia are still oppressed by Moslem rule, which alone makes the African slave trade profitable. Equatorial Africa is disputed by, or divided between, four nations, and presents a virgin field for colonization. Civilization advances with rapid strides, and its appliances are useful to millions who benefit by them without understanding them. The whole world lies open to the commerce of to-day, and news is transmitted from distant towns to the centres of civilization before it is known to the neighbouring villages. This is the spectacle reserved for posterity : Asia covered with roads and telegraphs ; trains of travellers and merchandise directed towards the Indian Ocean by the Trans-Caspian railways, and later on, no doubt, by Siberia towards Pekin ; the great cities of the land which cradled humanity reconstructed, embellished, improved by every modern comfort, without losing their originality or the customs which vary with every climate ; the mountains tunnelled, and the locomotive, perhaps, penetrating into the untravelled regions which Asiatics named “ the roof of the world ; ” Africa, with its millions of black men, its magnificent regions of the Zam¬ bezi, the Congo, and the Niger, cleared, occupied, and developed into another England, France, Belgium, or Germany. And the fulfilment of this dream is not so improbable as was that of the first conquerors of America. Yet America has become, in less than four centuries, one of the most prosperous and progressive quarters of the world. Its great English dominion of Canada in the north, its vast Anglo-Saxon republic of the United States, its fifteen Spanish republics in the centre, and its Portuguese republic of Brazil in the south, render its map one of the most varied in the world, whilst the energy of its populations, which seem to have renewed their vigour on the soil of a New World, has enabled them to rise, and to rank amongst the boldest pioneers of civilization. DIFFUSION OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION. 585 Do not such results justify every hope ? Who knows whether, in Africa as well as in Asia, the wonderful transformations which have taken place in America may not be repeated ? Who knows whether Europeans may not be animated by the magnitude of the enterprise and rear up mighty states where now wild animals and wild vegetation have the land almost to themselves ? whether the native populations, so long degraded or asleep, may not awaken at their touch ? whether civilization may not, at last, shine from the islands of Japan to the borders of Mongolia; from Siberia to Indo-China; from Annam to Afghanistan; from Algiers to the Cape, from the Congo to the Nile, as it now shines from Canada to the Rio de la Plata ? European civilization evidently contains a force which urges it to encircle the globe. And foremost among all Europeans as colonizers and civilizers are the men of Great Britain. In America, in Australia, in New Zealand, they have established a Greater Britain ; and now having acquired the better part of habitable Africa, that is of those parts of Africa where, as in Mashonaland, Europeans can live in health and propagate a healthy race—another Britain may be developed by British energy and enterprise, and British Africa become as truly the home of the Anglo-Saxon race as British America. SYNOPTIC TABLE OF THE CONTEMPORARY EPOCH. Fh £ « £ O a I I © I 0> A ©.3 3 -3 Ops _j fc. O M C M o u o a? g o 0 ) ^ _ © a; ^ ^ O ** -G *" rS Si Eh 'E. — S tf § s -ts $ uW a s “ ^ © © © 3 £ — *3 -S «C oi § Ed £pi w rr, OC : -< ° - 4 -> ^M G .£ © ■—■ 3 © -m ^ 02 -4— 1 • r\ G* 02 ^ GO .— g © - 3 £ «M o GO 02 © u be O u. G* ' CO © jg 2 20 - J 5 G- .5 rH c> *h — / l, ,-rf-s w -2 £ •- -^ c *- 1 .*• © lO a >» b. O "slip G .o .JL # o ’.m G *G s— GO •+-> G rj P-S .© 3 ^ • fl3 © © .2 -fl •1 • r- H " 02 M O © O G © _ c h> G 02 S* G 3 d a 6 s’ 02 rd ~z m ii S~ C Cj-H ^© ^ ^ G CG w r- O J ^ w 02 n is c +s o 5 cih G © ►. G G © ^ S L* G "" o OG O) G d S o « la 88 2 -s|j 3 — © o •'--5 c 02 s ™ o S d s © © +- S Q “-a- c s | ^ 1 ^ ^ G c > © C m 1 G "G c p 9 • •*. qi © lo &S .3 -2 oi ©A _ © _c -© 3 o > ® o o o W d c -e 01 fl M 01 > o P >>£ 'p .2 *“5 01 oi 8 — H *■ oc 01 cc G <» E ^ «g 01 31 .-! >, cS K .~ p tg .£ s ■ 4 ^ r Q ° G a; .G 4-2 o © u JG G-G 3 G fcX) G CM O G © £ a. o be c ■ « •— lo JD P 1 - 1 CN J ’S.^ 2 ' 31 31 J 1 'S § 02 G ^ CL' 02 _k 02 O . Q> ^ T3 © 02 o ® ■£ JG CL o G E CO •M O o 02 -o JD G ■ 4 -» 02 02 C 02 g.g | H a 31 * D © o bi a. © CO © © r- 31 » "» I fl) •4-4 JZ G - 4 -J ' t - i x G _G e s S S O 3 D. o ft aj « © © > © ^© 3 G t- G S © PC £ T 3 G "4 *rr © G © G. a £ O. -- ■ g • #S y 8*3 S « ©» © *E £r-.S d aS ® ^ Sst: S H COrt s ^ a « -u kg ^3 G 3 o <» N © ! m 2 w •E — cr- © ^ 3 .© oi §lEeo=E .S©'c.a> J A- 2 S ^ 2 -S 3 ^ o d S -C o KCh G G © 2 © Z 3 ■§ 'E ■p ‘o © ai 'be S be S 3 E i— O 4 -» O 02 J © O 'G c 3 © M M -M © (-4 C £> G Jz S G §\> EPS 2 w ■Si’S 3 .■§ •£ g - © u G «H p G D ^ • O H © G G *02 G 02 CL. G G Ph ^ © 7 Cj © ^ cS Cl. © S £ ■G ^ G _ © /-N ? p ^th bo © © _ Sm CM 2 'G g G .2 G °G 0 §-Sling’S fl ts a | *c © 3 3 ^ Q.H v ^ .E 3 .2 ^5 - ® « J) s o © S.E^ u f r © CL o o E © d S 0 *cc .2 to - ^ ^ M C, 31 S .2 8 E 15 © o ««« 43 o CS a 1 o l. 3 W , w _ s S 3 3 *> — o p O 3 J© c_| o > w © ^ ° 3 © G o G g S © 4-> -M 02 CO G *** © ©4 o M w ‘ 4 —( ^G-C O C S 5 d Pi C Id- I 00 02 G 5 tt. G *13 © _ IS G Q?- o CO O ao 'S'E < J © cX) G u H © GC 1 i- pz a; 02 Ci > ^G 4-1 k> ^ O •«* ^ O'n r! n O tH ^§»Wa^ Cl 00 t P2 E © 03 03 Q) (M u, o 3- r— -C> H K «H w s o fl .5 • © G ^ © •« • CL M C P 4 r j< _, 4 -» ^G 02 G 02 Mh '. © G Sh g- « © G a a G © d- r—t ^G ° cq f_i „ . . rv—' -S © 3 Cl © • 3 crtC. P^.£ £ © © l“1 p© d O ••“ C*H .«g £ 3 fc « 0 *S|f a 5§ 0 ^ PS Ld « I • I • I M £cT2 3 S 3 03 "S C 3 W C e- £ « 3 3 ^ - © d _ 1 _ 3 ^ > , 5 >Om 03 o £oi>>OhPh fl «>• ^ 00 r H 1. 1—1 © w cS . | JO ’ o s LW 02 © G „ O' G © O -G © ^ © CM .G o ( fe ‘1 • © hH G G x 43 H ^ ^ Lj <» ^ © ©H 3 > £ ^ o 1 r . O © © o 0 a CS .— - ■ P •£ « © JS H- c •■= r £ cS d :,S ©J= 0 3 ° -&*E .5 © -= p ? 3 ’bJ ^ d © - 4 -> G 02 Gj e 3 .. a be—• ^ © «*i • £>0 op 3 ‘-d P 3 -e cs d c © a 3 . bc-a/ © © a o a S S W > 1.0 c o © -C *1 60 d E > o "" A °© ci K 100 ^ 3 S 3 © d © © d (ZJ 03 Pi © m 3 £ © © '43 t> a o o 03 Ph .sS's’g te» 0 - nC® — M © cd ■ ^ d a £ G © - ^-1 © r E 35 pq ^ £ W a ^ 'g ^ © 3: a .•p o ©‘'O *43 « 3 £ S cS 3 © ., is o « 'S.SS^ 3 G - © CO »r- 02 ^ £ § Ci^> © -G 4 -> . 02 ' CM 4 -> o G ^©•s § S £'SP°>2 go. 2.2 a -S S HOcsHflO”«o © 60 be^ © > © *43 > tj c d 02 02 w S’bho c .2 "43 ct_, C O © £ 1-1 60 .G ED 3 (-H © © d S 0 B ^3 C © £ & ,' 3 *g ^ £ © ^ 0 5 S G G 2 G 00 a - 2 3 > c © 0 | d £Co.S *■’ o o © g 5®5 «s 2 d- a *G 02 CO G O 050 2 02 G O © © W © 10 C-f-H o 00 E- G 1° 02 G G 02 C - o G O . *-< —» M rTt pw ^§^' 3 M r3 £W £ 3 = 3 3 d c -a ? ^ cs 0 o © A-d s - uCO C m G rt kj OO • r > X bobco u k c © .2 © >>d_a 3 .£ E © ^ C 4-* 4-» G hP « 3 © •• •—'•£© Pi © o © 3 3 .2 S -2 © ■§ 3 p 1 o £a^« J'SUSlg ® ©2135 2 © d © -i 3 rOO 1 d « d £ £ a X 3 . © o 3 d flemp o .£ oo *43 3 r-1 . ^ 2 S Poo o 2 © 33 OC OO 3 = © f -1 d 3 ^ 3 =£ | .£^5 3 C CN GS *1 O © iO Ot§£® £ ^ ^ ^3 ri 3 ** E o 3 fl g-g . s p Pi *a^ I -d- © © c 00 I. 33 _c rE 1-1 ©^dn w - c 3 ? oS |H o *1 © © a - b- 1X1 eS 00 a'”’ t I C rl eS GO E S2 QO. w « o © £§•£ « 00 O rH S i CM OO C rH I CM c G O cm O U o . cm P p © CO 02 £f'Pi cm j 2 0 I t —1 .G *- G x> ® s® 5® •e !dai *35 be. " c 3 p . 3 «*g^ 3 • -00 © 00 3 d Sti. W§ Q2 rH g ' 1- 3 A & o 3 •• £A —1 © « ■■ a o 3 i 00 c _ © N Q &•! cS w £ © © 60 CM o 30 £ W >“< 60 fcj CO § Q 3 7 3 CO 60 ■ I *?s s fl cS »i ©ri © ■cs £: o £ © to o *5 IIS.-S *© £ bn OO C .fl >0 * a fl £ d- 02 G as © I m m • ^ 82 U “ifl V m o) © *2 ^ 3 *© — QD fl S >- *3 © JC d S £ fl 3 © © S TJ G2 £ © c — 3 > CS , fa £ fa S fa > o S o M fa GO M u B i p 13 a CS X © c E r P -1 Q © .2 fN “ B © £ g —< a © Ol If | — #. _o a o O '— cl '!D O _, f' 0^2 « 'S O s &, 5? oo O >2 o © W t «rjo Os br^.S - e © >_ l 3 h- &3 i: > a; a rtf • • 33 3 O o!»S I 1 £>2 SS^O 5 o •'S* «- Pi « Oh PH 33 S 13 a C G ^ ^T! 02 - — 02 •—■ G • 02 «*o -+-> o «9 if' o G » i 15 O 72 a-g O G C -C h?H Tt3 r. ~ « •- 1 a“^ 3 *T fa. ® 03 03 .>■ J3 -w 33 ia 03 13 2 3-3 > . ^P3 *- a 2 -Ph -*— ci _r go > -G ? O « tT ® §J5 NOW « a> ^ ^ _T co & ^ C cr: pn = w ~ 2 c>> 1—1 03 b ►v* Cl ©PP 03 a ,-r a.2 3 § CO c £ O'- 3 © 03 G G O 02 02 02 '— s- G G a w t- .2 ’a be a o Sh pq a o a be 03 '- t_ 03 s 03 33 3 33 O 05 a a: o 03 13 13 a 03 s 02 S3 O •s s*5 §*trt Q 03 ^ a © - be^3 nr*. ©>« = #\ CD crj >* G 02 ^ H W H I a o ot £ P-i - 03 Q II I 03fi^ « a S 3 g i ! .2 a- S a"* S g to? «o c - <53 = ® O F « s .3 - “3 C bC^T's 3,3 c 2 -- “ a ® o ~ S 3 •— 'zrbHCQo' ^ S' 73 O 0- S o- O W Ph © t- 3 -*-* O 0> -t-j IS o G O ^G -*-> CD «4H o CD N S O •8 o ,*3 ^ V*-' 03 3 4 ^ O c O ^ a-a- 3 2 > £ .2 o>® o » Ocya 1 >03 W w S w >• o o l-l fa ►H H z fa (—( o OQ o < fa < p r- O fa fa fa H H t, O o 05 S-l © a o 03 ?-> a a _ 03 15 H ^ t£ - a 02 fl 11 CO cq c3 a c$ :02 G 05 © 13 Ol ^ G r . —! -4-3 S3 03 ^ a be 03 r- © a "5 •bJ - .£ § ^ G r> 02 c «§ ^ G 02 a G 'C CO ;s a oi o ‘- , 2 § pp jTo - 00 •—• •* m G J'C g 3 o a a«a 3 ^ M *C © w F i£ a -3 «2 be .2 J S'o 4 *“ VJ0 1 | i £ ctJ tT *i~ rp oT ©o.5a be n o)._ r = •— 3 03 © S55BS o * © -rP4 © be _ © .2 X > bow a -a t« a Cl, 05 o ^ © © ifa lH © 13 a cS X © oT a EC © II W J 02 -G 02 -r* 7^ -v *6 Cj t c - w >,oM -r^-SS “ ®'-3 *>£.<» I = ^ 12 SfH 4— —*• 4—< CJ«H Q2 2 G O r*.0 r5 05 ■? 3 -4-» r- cO r £ s- C II £•§ >“ 4 CO • f—* ff-S | g ofe O cq 02 G 1 £ Ho G i !—• G cS G *S u. ^ 02 O G 02 02 -G o r S3 G G 02 G co M £ S S ._r .2 S S «a of **1 I a ' § 2 Ph 3 4-3 •v a t- u- 02 02 •G G . oT o' G 2 £ ta s O O CD rr-> o #N I .18 PP£ A o' § hc2 a 33 -K © ^ .© a &, © = 03 £ a <1 31 i pq 3 © u > © jq O 03 13 3 li S3 Pq © 'S a © be cS - 03 -U -J » a _a a - - loos c,© hc^aj^ —■ ^ i « be "2 © w — . I ci a © 13 © © |s s o 02 fl CA JD >. > ai Q • © 13 -a ^ £• 3 £ pq 3 « 33 02 02 02 t-H Cl ora *> rs Ui 2 c So cl c a In G G j- 02 pq > a> G G co pq ^“4 02 Ol cO .igg 3 I d- bo ef I - - o £2 ^ o •- oo © 13 i—I “ u m -—' be a w © s —< jr _c a ^ ^ ^Cu_§ § § e -?e 2 a O 03 C °9 ^ ® 4-3 HM o 1 3 43 a be ^ a; ^ - "G fc- 72 cO e G - © © 0 ^ 02 '■""' £ © g 13 pH 2 §*rE 02 02 w O G I 0 I PQ 72 02 02 02 Tp S.2 gw t> < ^ G^ r O G .2 ^ u. G G 4-» U- -fa- HH t- ■4—3 02 O W ce 13 3 "o -3 3 3 ^ i t3 3 a sj 03 © a _ o 03 W 0 a o 02 hG G OQ 72 G Q W J 2 ^ -M ^ W © o ^ « be © C3 3 a .2 © of .2 o a p- >h g.— © 13 '3 .- © .2* © g-W be^-v a — .S .a '© o © r- q: m 54 o © - 00 «-T a a 1-1 © a 03 •- X 02 s-< a ^ ao G 02 7 ; s ^ w ^ cO £ 02 go 72 ^ 02 -—« U- 02 Cl > I ^ ^cB 3^M - c3 -“ © c— .a a, o PQ "53 ■l^o ^ S' oT^ t— GO rH 02 G 02 G o c ^ p, 02 C2 CO r *G T3 Q L W © 05 i: ^ j= a © a 0» 5 ^ S co co co 0 "jh _ © oo 00 i>. © u hOCCl-oO 02 bX) G > G G O) 02 LONDON PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO. CITY ROAD. LIMITED,