se who believe that the world is governed by a living God, it may
seem strange, at first sight, that this moral anarchy was allowed to
endure; that the avenging, and yet most purifying storm of the French
Revolution, inevitable from Louis XIV.'s latter years, was not allowed to
burst two generations sooner than it did. Is not the answer--that the
question always is not of destroying the world, but of amending it? And
that amendment must always come from within, and not from without? That
men must be taught to become men, and mend their world themselves? To
educate men into self-government--that is the purpose of the government
of God; and some of the men of the eighteenth century did not learn that
lesson. As the century rolled on, the human mind arose out of the slough
in which Le Sage found it, into manifold and beautiful activity,
increasing hatred of shams and lies, increasing hunger after truth and
usefulness. With mistakes and confusions innumerable they worked: but
still they worked; planting good seed; and when the fire of the French
Revolution swept over the land, it burned up the rotten and the withered,
only to let the fresh herbage spring up from underneath.

But that purifying fire was needed. If we inquire why the many attempts
to reform the Ancien Regime, which the eighteenth century witnessed, were
failures one and all; why Pombal failed in Portugal, Aranda in Spain,
Joseph II. in Austria, Ferdinand and Caroline in Naples--for these last,
be it always remembered, began as humane and enlightened sovereigns,
patronising liberal opinions, and labouring to ameliorate the condition
of the poor, till they were driven by the murder of Marie Antoinette into
a paroxysm of rage and terror--why, above all, Louis XVI., who attempted
deeper and wiser reforms than any other sovereign, failed more
disastrously than any--is not the answer this, that all these reforms
would but have cleansed the outside of the cup and the platter, while
they left the inside full of extortion and excess? It was not merely
institutions which required to be reformed, but men and women. The
spirit of "Gil Blas" had to be cast out. The deadness, selfishness,
isolation of men's souls; their unbelief in great duties, great common
causes, great self-sacrifices--in a word, their unbelief in God, and
themselves, and mankind--all that had to be reformed; and till that was
done all outward reform would but have left them, at best, in brute e