ngland and in
Germany. But there were enough of them in France to change the destiny
of that great nation for awhile--perhaps for ever.

M. de Tocqueville has a whole chapter, and a very remarkable one, which
appears at first sight to militate against my belief--a chapter "showing
that France was the country in which men had become most alike."

"The men," he says, "of that time, especially those belonging to the
upper and middle ranks of society, who alone were at all conspicuous,
were all exactly alike."

And it must be allowed, that if this were true of the upper and middle
classes, it must have been still more true of the mass of the lowest
population, who, being most animal, are always most moulded--or rather
crushed--by their own circumstances, by public opinion, and by the wants
of five senses, common to all alike.

But when M. de Tocqueville attributes this curious fact to the
circumstances of their political state--to that "government of one man
which in the end has the inevitable effect of rendering all men alike,
and all mutually indifferent to their common fate"--we must differ, even
from him: for facts prove the impotence of that, or of any other
circumstance, in altering the hearts and souls of men, in producing in
them anything but a mere superficial and temporary resemblance.

For all the while there was, among these very French, here and there a
variety of character and purpose, sufficient to burst through that very
despotism, and to develop the nation into manifold, new, and quite
original shapes. Thus it was proved that the uniformity had been only in
their outside crust and shell. What tore the nation to pieces during the
Reign of Terror, but the boundless variety and originality of the
characters which found themselves suddenly in free rivalry? What else
gave to the undisciplined levies, the bankrupt governments, the parvenu
heroes of the Republic, a manifold force, a self-dependent audacity,
which made them the conquerors, and the teachers (for good and evil) of
the civilised world? If there was one doctrine which the French
Revolution specially proclaimed--which it caricatured till it brought it
into temporary disrepute--it was this: that no man is like another; that
in each is a God-given "individuality," an independent soul, which no
government or man has a right to crush, or can crush in the long run: but
which ought to have, and must have, a "carriere ouverte aux talents,"
freely to