tional government in accordance with those laws of progress
which form the basis of true civilization.

There was Count Joseph de Maistre,--a royalist indeed, but who
propounded great truths mixed with great paradoxes; believing all he
said, seeking to restore the authority of divine revelation in a world
distracted by scepticism, grand and eloquent in style, and astonishing
the infidels as much as he charmed the religious.

Associated with him in friendship and in letters was the Abbe de
Lamennais, a young priest of Brittany, brought up amid its wilds in
silent reverence and awe, yet with the passions of a revolutionary
orator, logical as Bossuet, invoking young men, not to the worship of
mediaeval dogmas, but to the shrine of reason allied with faith.

Of another school was Cousin, the modern Plato, combating the
materialism of the eighteenth century with mystic eloquence, and drawing
around him, in his chair of philosophy at the Sorbonne, a crowd of
enthusiastic young men, which reminded one of Abelard among his pupils
in the infant university of Paris. Cousin elevated the soul while he
intoxicated the mind, and created a spirit of inquiry which was felt
wherever philosophy was recognized as one of the most ennobling studies
that can dignify the human intellect.

In history, both Guizot and Thiers had already become distinguished
before they were engrossed in politics. Augustin Thierry described, with
romantic fascination, the exploits of the Normans; Michaud brought out
his Crusades, Barante his Chronicles, Sismondi his Italian Republics,
Michelet his lively conception of France in the Middle Ages, Capefigue
the Life of Louis XIV., and Lamartine his poetical paintings of the
Girondists. All these masterpieces gave a new interest to historical
studies, infusing into history life and originality,--not as a barren
collection of annals and names, in which pedantry passes for learning,
and uninteresting details for accuracy and scholarship. In that
inglorious period more first-class histories were produced in France
than have appeared in England during the long reign of Queen Victoria,
where only three or four historians have reached the level of any one of
those I have mentioned, in genius or eloquence.

Another set of men created journalism as the expression of public
opinion, and as a lever to overturn an obstinate despotism built up on
the superstitions and dogmas of the Middle Ages. A few young men, almost
unkn