ve been conscious that
he was witnessing one of the most singular social phases which have
yet been presented in the history of man. And no blame attaches to him
for this. No one of his contemporaries saw deeper in this direction
than he did. It is a remarkable instance of the way in which the
widest and deepest social movements are veiled to the eyes of those
who see them, precisely because of their width and depth. Foreigners,
especially Englishmen, visited Paris in the latter half of the
eighteenth century and reported variously of their experience and
impressions. Some, like Hume and Sterne, are delighted; some, like
Gibbon, are quietly, but thoroughly pleased; some, like
Walpole--though he perhaps is a class by himself--are half pleased and
half disgusted. They all feel that there is something peculiar in what
they witness, but never seem to suspect that nothing like it was ever
seen before in the world. One is tempted to wish that they could have
seen with our eyes, or, much more, that we could have had the
privilege of enjoying their experience, of spending a few months in
that singular epoch when "society," properly so called, the assembling
of men and women in drawing-rooms for the purpose of conversation, was
the most serious as well as the most delightful business of life. Talk
and discussion in the senate, the market-place, and the schools are
cheap; even barbarians are not wholly without them. But their
refinement and concentration in the _salon_--of which the president is
a woman of tact and culture--this is a phenomenon which never appeared
but in Paris in the eighteenth century. And yet scholars, men of the
world, men of business passed through this wonderland with eyes
blindfolded. They are free to enter, they go, they come, without a
sign that they have realised the marvellous scene that they were
permitted to traverse. One does not wonder that they did not perceive
that in those graceful drawing-rooms, filled with stately company of
elaborate manners, ideas and sentiments were discussed and evolved
which would soon be more explosive than gunpowder. One does not wonder
that they did not see ahead of them--men never do. One does rather
wonder that they did not see what was before their eyes. But wonder is
useless and a mistake. People who have never seen a volcano cannot be
expected to fear the burning lava, or even to see that a volcano
differs from any other mountain.

Gibbon had brought good introdu