first necessary that a powerful centralization of interest, laws, manners, and ideas, should be brought about; in a word, it was necessary that a public power and public opinion should arise. We have arrived at the epoch when this great work was consummated. Its first symptoms, the state of mind and manners during the course of the fifteenth century, the tendency towards the formation of a central government, and a public opinion, will form the subiect of our next lecture.

ELEVENTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture--Special character of the fifteenth century-Progres· sive centralization of nations and governments-1st. Of France-Formation of the national French spirit-Government of Louis XI.—2nd. Of Spain-3rd. Of Germany-4th. Of England-5th. Of Italy-Origin of the external relations of states and of diplomacy-Movement in religious ideas-Attempt at aristocratical reform-Council of Constance and Basle-Attempt at popular reform--John Huss-Regeneration of literature-Admiration for antiquity-Classical school, or free-thinkers -General activity-Voyages, discoveries, inventions-Conclusion.

WE touch the threshold of modern history, properly so called the threshold of that society which is our own, of which the institutions, opinions, and manners were, forty years ago, those of France, are still those of Europe, and still exercise so powerful an influence upon us, despite the metamorphosis brought about by our revolution. It was with

the sixteenth century, as I have already said, that modern society really commenced. Before entering upon it, recal to your minds, I pray you, the roads over which we have passed. We have discovered, amidst the ruins of the Roman empire, all the essential elements of the Europe of the present day; we have seen them distinguish and aggrandize themselves, each on its own account, and independently. We recognised, during the first epoch of history, the constant tendency of these elements to separation, isolation, and a local and special existence. Scarcely was this end obtained-scarcely had feudalism, the boroughs, and the clergy each taken its distinct form and place, than we see them tending to approach each other, to reunite, and form themselves into a general society, into a nation and

a government. In order to arrive at this result, the various countries of Europe addressed themselves to all the different systems which co-existed in its bosom; they demanded the principle of social unity, the political and moral tie, from theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, and royalty. Hitherto, all these attempts had failed; no system or influence had known how to seize upon society, and by its empire to insure it a truly public destiny. We have found the cause of this ill success in the absence of universal interests and ideas. We have seen that all was, as yet, too special, individual, and local; that a long and powerful labour of centralization was necessary to enable society to extend and cement itself at the same time, to become at once great and regular-an end to which it necessarily aspired. This was the state in which we left Europe at the end of the fourteenth century.

She was far from understanding her position, such as I have endeavoured to place it before you. She did not know distinctly what she wanted or what she sought; still she applied herself to the search, as if she knew. The fourteenth cen tury closed. Europe entered naturally, and, as it were, instinctively, the path which led to centralization. It is the characteristic of the fifteenth century to have constantly tended to this result; to have laboured to create universal interests and ideas, to make the spirit of speciality and locality disappear, to reunite and elevate existences and minds; in fine, to create, what had hitherto never existed on a large scale, nations and governments. The outbreak of this fact belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it was in the fifteenth that it was preparing. It is this preparation which we have to investigate at present-this silent and concealed work of centralization, whether in social relations or ideas, a work accomplished by the natural course of events, without premeditation or design.

Thus man advances in the execution of a plan which te has not himself conceived, or which, perhaps, he does not even understand. He is the intelligent and free artificer of a work which does not belong to him. He does not recognise or comprehend it until a later period, when it mani fests itself outwardly and in realities; and even then he understands it but very incompletely. Yet it is by him, it is

by the development of his intellect and his liberty that it is accomplished. Conceive a great machine, of which the idea resides in a single mind, and of which the different pieces are confided to different workmen, who are scattered, and are strangers to one another; none of them knowing the work as a whole, or the definitive and general result to which it concurs, yet each executing with intelligence and liberty, by rational and voluntary acts, that of which he has the charge. So is the plan of Providence upon the world executed by the hand of mankind; thus do the two facts which manifest themselves in the history of civilization co-exist; on the one hand, its fatality, that which escapes science and the human will-and on the other, the part played therein by the liberty and intellect of man, that which he infuses of his own will by his own thought and inclination.

In order properly to comprehend the fifteenth century-to obtain a clear and exact idea of this prelude, as it were, of modern society-we will distinguish the different classes of facts. We will first examine the political facts, the changes which have tended to form both nations and governments. Thence we will pass to moral facts; we will observe the changes which have been produced in ideas and manners, and we will thence deduce what general opinions were in preparation. As regards political facts, in order to proceed simply and quickly, I will run over all the great countries of Europe, and show you what the fifteenth century made of them-in what state it found and left them.

I shall commence with France. The last half of the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth were, as you know, the times of great national wars-the wars against the English. It was the epoch of the struggle for the independence of France and the French name against a foreign dominion. A glance at history will show with what ardour, despite a multitude of dissensions and treasons, all classes of society in France concurred in this struggle; what patriotism took possession of the feudal nobility, the burghers, and even the peasants. If there were nothing else to show the popular character of the event than the history of Joan of Arc, it would be a more than sufficient proof. Joan of Arc sprang from the people. It was by the sentiments, creed, and passions of the people that she was inspired and sustained.

She

was looked upon with distrust, scorn, and even enmity, by the people of the court and the chiefs of the army; but she had the soldiers and the people ever on her side. It was the peasants of Lorraine who sent her to the succour of the burghers of Orleans. No event has more strikingly shown the popular character of this war, and the feeling with which the whole country regarded it.

Thus began the formation of French nationality. Up to the reign of the Valois, it was the feudal character which dominated in France; the French nation, the French mind, French patriotism, did not as yet exist. With the Valois

commenced France, properly so called. It was in the course of their wars, through the phases of their destiny, that the nobility, the burghers, and the peasants, were for the first time united by a moral tie, by the tie of a common name, a common honour, and a common desire to conquer the enemy. But expect not to find there as yet any true political spirit, nor any great purpose of unity in the government and institutions, such as we conceive them in the present day. Unity, in the France of this epoch, resided in its name, its national honour, and in the existence of a national royalty, whatever it might be, provided the foreigner did not appear therein. It is in this way that the struggle against the English powerfully contributed to the formation of the French nation, to impel it towards unity. At the same time that France was thus morally forming herself, and the national spirit was being developed, she was also forming herself materially, so to speak-that is to say, her territory was being regulated, extended, strengthened. This was the period of the incorporation of the greater part of the provinces which have become France. Under Charles VII., after the expulsion of the English, almost all the provinces which they had occupied, Normandy, Angoumois, Touraine, Poitou, Saintonge, &c., became definitively French. Under Louis XI., ten provinces, three of which were afterwards lost and regained, were united to France; namely, Roussillon and Cerdagne, Burgundy, Franche-Comté, Picardy, Artois, Provence, Maine, Anjou, and Perche. Under Charles VIII and Louis XII., the successive marriages of Anne with these two kings brought us Brittany. Thus, at the same