d with England.]

Other diplomatists took the same view of the power and resources of this
favored country. "The kingdom of France," said Chancellor Bacon, in a
speech against the policy of rendering open aid to Scotland, and thus
becoming involved in a war with the French, "is four times as large as
the realm of England, the men four times as many, and the revenue four
times as much, and it has better credit. France is full of expert
captains and old soldiers, and besides its own troops it may entertain
as many Almains as it is able to hire."[9]

[Sidenote: Assimilation of language and manners.]

Meantime France was fast becoming more homogeneous than it had ever been
since the fall of the Roman power. As often as the lines of the great
feudal families became extinct, or these families were induced or
compelled to renounce their pretensions, their fiefs were given in
appanage to younger branches of the royal house, or were more closely
united to the domains of the crown, and entrusted to governors of the
king's appointment.[10] In either case the actual control of affairs was
placed in the hands of officers whose highest ambition was to reproduce
in the provincial capital the growing elegance of the great city on the
Seine where the royal court had fixed its ordinary abode. The provinces,
consequently, began to assimilate more and more to Paris, and this not
merely in manners, but in forms of speech and even in pronunciation. The
rude _patois_, since it grated upon the cultivated ear, was banished
from polite society, and, if not consigned to oblivion, was relegated to
the more ignorant and remoter districts. Learning held its seat in
Paris, and the scholars who returned to their homes after a sojourn in
its academic halls were careful to avoid creating doubts respecting the
thoroughness of their training by the use of any dialect but that spoken
in the neighborhood of the university. As the idiom of Paris asserted
its supremacy over the rest of France, a new tie was constituted,
binding together provinces diverse in origin and history.

[Sidenote: The nobles flock to Paris.]

The spirit of obedience pervading all classes of the population
contributed much to the national strength. The great nobles had lost
their excessive privileges. They no longer attempted, in the seclusion
of their ancestral estates, to rival the magnificence or defy the
authority of the king. They began to prefer the capital to the freer
retr