monarchy, yet it had already accomplished immense results. The weak
and vacillating spirit of the government had convoked the Assembly of
Notables, whilst public spirit had placed its grasp on power and
convoked the States General. The States General being established, the
nation had felt its omnipotence, and from this feeling to a legal
insurrection there was but a word; that word Mirabeau had uttered. The
National Assembly had constituted itself in front of, and higher than,
the throne itself. The prodigious popularity of M. Necker was exhausted
by concessions, and utterly vanished when he no longer had any of the
spoils of monarchy to cast before the people. Minister of a monarch in
retirement, his own had been utter defeat. His last step conducted him
out of the kingdom. The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the
ancient _regime_ in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the
rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution
to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This
declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors,
and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but
it was, notwithstanding, the very essence of the new dogma.

VI

There are objects in nature, the forms of which can only be accurately
ascertained when contemplated afar off. Too near, as well as too far
off, prevents a correct view. Thus it is with great events. The hand of
God is visible in human things, but this hand itself has a shadow which
conceals what it accomplishes. All that could then be seen of the French
Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the advent of a
new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and afterwards the
democratic government.

This idea was an emanation of Christianity. Christianity finding men in
serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the
Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a
resignation. It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years
afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy--liberty, equality,
fraternity--amongst mankind. But it had for a time hidden this idea in
the recesses of the Christian heart. As yet too weak to attack civil
laws, it had said to the powers--"I leave you still for a short space of
time possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral
world. Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, deg