concerned myself in making my memoranda not only with the
more or less fugitive aspects of public action and emotion at the
present time, but with the past, which has so largely coloured and
determined these fugitive aspects. Naturally, therefore, when I sat down
to put this volume into shape, I very soon found it to be utterly out of
the question for me to try to do justice to all that had interested and
instructed me in every part of France which I had visited.

I have contented myself accordingly with formulating, in this
Introduction, my general convictions as to the present condition and
outlook of affairs in France and as to the relation which actually
exists between the Third Republic, now installed in power at Paris, and
the great historic France of the French people; and with submitting to
my readers, in support of these convictions, a certain number of digests
of my memoranda, setting forth what I saw, heard, and learned in some of
the departments which I visited with most pleasure and profit.

In doing this I have written out what I found in my note-books less
fully than the importance of the questions involved might warrant. But
what I have written, I have written out fairly and as exactly as I
could. I do not hold myself responsible for the often severe and
sometimes scornful judgments pronounced by my friends in the provinces
upon public men at Paris. But I had no right to modify or withhold
them. In the case of conversations held with friends, or with casual
acquaintances, I have used names only where I had reason to believe
that, adding weight to what was recorded, they might be used without
injury or inconvenience of any kind to my interlocutors.

The sum of my conclusions is suggested in the title of this book. I
speak of France as one thing, and of the Republic as another thing. I do
not speak of the French Republic, for the Republic as it now exists does
not seem to me to be French, and France, as I have found it, is
certainly not Republican.

II

The Third French Republic, as it exists to-day, is just ten years old.

It owes its being, not to any direct action of the French people, but to
the success of a Parliamentary revolution, chiefly organised by M.
Gambetta. The ostensible object of this revolution was to prevent the
restoration of the French Monarchy. The real object of it was to take
the life of the executive authority in France. M. Gambetta fell by the
way, but the evil he did lives