me the
organ of the age and of the country; but it was felt and recognized
in Versailles only when it was too late. How easy it would have
been then, as Marmontel had shown very clearly in his memoirs, to
fetter Voltaire, who was offensive to the people, and how important
this would have been for the state, will appear in the following
paragraphs, in which we shall show that even the Parisian theatre,
whose boards were regarded as a model by all Europe, freed itself
from the influence of the court, became dependent on the tone-giving
circles of Paris, and assumed a decidedly democratic direction.

As early as the time of Louis XIV., the court had separated itself
from the learned men of the age; and at the end of the seventeenth
century the houses and societies could be historically pointed out,
in which judgments were pronounced upon questions of literature in
the same manner as the pit became the tribunal to which plays and
play-actors must appeal; we shall not, however, go back so far, but
keep the later times always in our view. In those associations in
which the Abbe de Chaulieu and other friends of Vendome and Conti led
the conversation, literature was brought wholly under the dominion of
audacious pretension and immorality, in the time of the Regency and
during the minority of Louis XV. In reference to the leaders there
needs no proof. What could a Philip of Orleans or his Dubois take
under his protection, except what corresponded with his ideas and mode
of life?

The time of the minority of Louis XV. and that of the administration
of Cardinal Fleury was for several reasons highly favorable to the
formation of private societies, which entertained themselves with
wit and satire, and carried on a quiet but continual contest with the
persons and systems which were protected by the government and the
clergy. Fleury regarded everything as sinful which had the appearance
of worldly knowledge, or partook of the character of jests, novels,
or plays; Louis, as he grew up, showed himself quite indifferent to
everything which had no connection with religious ceremonies, hunting,
or handsome women. Fleury spoke and wrote in that ecclesiastical
phraseology which was laughed at in the world: he favored the clergy,
school learning, the tone of the times of Louis XIV.; but the spirit
of the age demanded something different from this. All that was
regarded with disfavor by Fleury assembled around those celebrated
men, who held