Francia

“ Such is the brilliant Royal House of France, so called because it is the living personification of France, and because, having in the course of ages founded, with the nation's help, the unity of France, it now appears the last and only hope of Frenchmen, in the midst of their sorrows and their disasters. Let us bring it home to ourselves, although strangers only reading of the life of others; and may it go home to the mind of Frenchmen, that the safety of France is in the Monarchy, and that elsewhere people can find nought but ruin and calamity. ”

“ England in conscious superiority smiles at a nation which has had seven political revolutions in a hundred years. Republic, then Empire, then a return to the Bourbons, then a limited Monarchy under Louis Philippe, then Republic, followed by Empire again, and now for the third time a Republic!
But France, complex, mobile, changeful as the sea, in riotous enjoyment of her newfound liberties, casts off a form of government as she would an ill-fitting garment. She knows the value of tranquillity — she had it for one thousand years! ”

“ France presented a striking contrast to England in government, in religion, in the structure of society, in habits of living, in manners, in dress, — in short, in a thousand details that make up the greater part of everyday existence. Moreover, France, taken by herself, was full of contradictory elements. Standing as she did in the forefront of civilization, boasting the most brilliant philosophers and men of letters in Europe, her life was throttled by a system of government that was daily becoming more inadequate to the demands of the time. ”

“ Five years in France!—France with its clear sun and lovely moon; its silver-grey cities, its lilac haze, its sweet, deep greenness, its atmosphere of living light!—France, the dwelling-place of God in all His myriad aspects—in all His protean forms! France, the sanctuary of Truth and all her ancient and her future liberties; France, blossoming domain of Love in Love’s million exquisite transfigurations, wherein only the eye of faith can recognise the winged god amid his camouflage! ”

“ And now, looking back on the great career of that great man, no portion of his history can, perhaps, present anything to compare with the splendor of the Consulate. A long succession of victories, the spoils of half Europe, glory to very satiety, had intoxicated the nation. A country flourishing in every element of prosperity; social order restored; a high position amid surrounding nations; and everything that could gratify national ambition obtained,—France stood at the very pinnacle of her greatness. ”

“ A new generation had been born to France since even the last of these events, but was it with a light heart that she took up the gage which Germany so haughtily threw down? Indeed, no! Never had France, the bright, the brilliant, the cheerful-hearted, shown the world a graver face. ”

“ A finer subject could not offer itself to a Frenchman than the long reign in which France, seeming, at a bound, to emerge from a base condition of manners, of public morals, of government, and of policy, stood forth resplendent in letters, arts, arms, statecraft, and social refinement. ”

“ It is France herself. Not the France of to-day—banker and bourgeois-ridden; nor the France of the Second Empire—vulgar and painted; nor the Napoleonic France—half a brothel, half a barrack. Across all these and the fumes of the Revolution, Versailles calls to us: “I am France. Before I was built I was born in the dreams of the Gallic people. ”

“ No man can look upon France, beautiful France,—her rich soil, her temperate yet maturing clime, the gallant and bold spirits which she produces, her boundaries so indicated and protected by Nature itself, her advantages of ocean and land, of commerce and agriculture,—and not wonder that her prosperity should be so bloated, and her real state so wretched and diseased. ”

“ Considering what France was under her Kings, what she now is, and how many troubles she has had to endure at the hands of intriguers, the conclusion in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, accepted by all men able to read French History, is surely that France always was, is at heart, and should remain what Great Britain is, and rightly wishes to remain, i.e., a Constitutional Monarchy. ”

“ But France is a nation in the fullest sense. Its history is therefore different from the history of Austria, of Burgundy, of Switzerland, or even of Italy. As a state which had become wholly distinct from the Empire, which was commonly the rival and enemy of the Empire, which largely grew at the expense of the Empire, above all, as a state which won for itself a most distinct national being, France fully deserves a chapter, and not a mere section. Still that chapter is in some sort an appendage to that which deals with the Imperial kingdoms of the West. ”

“ Made more appreciative, perhaps, by what France did for us when this old philosopher came to you, a stranger, bearing the burdens of our early poverty and distress, we feel that the enormous value of France to civilization should lead every lover of mankind, in whatever land, earnestly to desire the peace, the prosperity, the permanence, and the unchecked development of your national life. ”

“ France, be it remembered, is not to-day as it was a century and a half ago, when it was the fashion of English writers to condemn and revile it as a nation of degraded serfs, a degenerate aristocracy, a corrupt clergy, or as an enfeebled monarchy. ”

“ This quiet little girl, at once artless and disenchanted, pious and disillusioned, does not answer in the least to the conception that a young German artist forms of France. But we know better! The little governess personifies that France, known to few outside her boundaries, which is compact of sacrifice, of duty, of delicate conscientiousness, of rigid economy for self and generous outlay for some treasured ideal, child, or cause:—the France of Port-Royal, the France of ‘48. ”

“ This is France, and its history is the history of France even if its art takes enduring colour from a persistent quality in its people that is its own and not simply that of the Franks and{38} Normans and Celts who coalesced around the old Île de France to the building of one of the great peoples and one of the great states in history. Each gave more than it received when it became a part of a state that was slowly building itself out of assembling races and peoples, but each was like the daughter of a house ”

“ And to crown all, whereas England was as one man in her eagerness for the coming strife, France was fatally divided against herself, the king against the nobles, the nobles against each other, and the trampled people against both ”

“ The scholars, the poets, the artists have all done their part,—the nuns, the aristocrats, the working-people theirs. While England has been harassed with strikes and class recriminations, France has never known in her entire history such absolute social harmony and unity, such universal and concentrated will. ”

“ To most of this very large class of Parisians it is immaterial what form of government they live under, provided that in some way or another it furnish plenty of excitement. No other country in the civilized world, unless Spain is to be included under this head, produces this peculiar class, the unseen influence of which seems to have escaped the brilliant French writers who have recorded the turbulent history of France. ”

“ For France there may be in store new sf revolutions, and fresh overturnings. Not anchored as is England, in an historic past which she reverences, and with a singularly gifted and emotional people who are the sport of the current of the hour, who can predict her future! But whatever that future may be, no American can be indifferent to the fate of a nation to whom we owe so much. ”

“ France has a small debt and an immense army; while England has a vast debt and scanty forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will have cleared out the yeomanry of England. France has a literature surpassing England's modern literature. France is an apostle of liberty—England the turnkey of the world. France is the old friend, England, the old foe, of Ireland. ”

“ France, rushing ill-prepared, though with overweening confidence, on the great problems of the eighteenth century, shattered not her own hopes alone, but nearly at the same moment the Puritan Republic, breaking the last slight link that bound it to feudal Europe, and placing modern society firmly and tranquilly on its new foundation. ”

“ Heaven knows what it all means; France was at her lowest depth, and yet, without warning, a regeneration took place. The Blessed Jeanne d’Arc appears like a miraculous vision, Orleans is saved, the rightful king is crowned, and though the martyrdom of the saviour of France takes place in 1430, the English are driven out in 1456, and a new day begins. ”

“ France, terrified and bleeding, and half free, getting sight of its future king—rousing itself and gathering itself up to act. Italy, Austria, and the drowsy, rotten, bewildered kingdoms, turning uneasily in their sleep, and awakening, some of them never again to rest ”

“ France is the country of peculiar fruits; her soil, her climate, her unique geographical situation, the originality of her national character and her combination of enthusiasm and reflection make her a land of predilection; nature has blessed her. ”

“ Who has spoken more nobly than he of the eternal France, "the true France, that is not summed up by an epoch or by a day, neither by the day of long ago, nor the day that has just passed, but the whole of France complete in the succession of her days, of her nights, of her dawns, of her shadows, of her heights and of her depths ”

“ The tenth and eleventh centuries saw the consolidation of the provincial nationalities of France, the growing up of those strong local states which play so conspicuous a part in later mediæval French history, and which, centuries after their absorption into the royal domain, continued to be centres of keen local feeling, and are not 83crushed out of existence even by modern patriotism and the levelling-up of the Revolution. Equally important with their political influence was their influence on arts, language, and literature. ”

“ The honour of France can be saved only by the deep repentance of France, and by the serious determination never to do so again—to do the reverse of so for ever henceforth.... For the present, I must say, France looks more and more delirious, miserable, blamable, pitiable and even contemptible. ”

“ The Extension of the Market and its Results.—The fifteenth century saw the formation of the great States in Europe. France, which felt herself to be a nation when she was trampled under foot by the English, was the first to become a unity, and for several centuries drew her power and her greatness from the start which she thus gained. ”

“ The feeling is intelligible too, because Frenchmen, Germans, and even Italians, notwithstanding the many points of disparity between us, have always certain qualities well worthy of respect, if not of imitation. France has a great literature, a name glorious in history, a people abounding in intelligence, skill, and invention; in fact, all the attributes that make up a great nation. ”

“ France was not a state, but a combination of several states, connected together without amalgamation. The whole had been determined by chance and by the events of past ages. The Revolution, guided by the principle of equality, both with respect to the citizens and the different portions of the territory, destroyed all these small nations: there was no longer a Brittany, a Normandy, a Burgundy, a ChampagneChampagne, a Provence, or a Lorraine; but the whole formed a France. A division of homogeneous territory, prescribed by local circumstances, confounded the limits of all the provinces. ”

“ When the nineteenth century opened France was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later. ”

“ And France being the first among the nations on the continent, that had arrived at a civilization of manners, which they have termed the only art of living, we find was the first to throw off the yoke of her old prejudices. ”

“ What was the good of leaving France, where the sun warmed a man without scorching him up,—France with its lovely forests, its fertile plains,—for this heaven of brass, this shadeless desert, these burning plains? Did Bonaparte want to shape a kingdom for himself in the East, after the fashion of the old Roman proconsuls? ”

“ Nearest to England in point of distance was France, the leader of the fashions of Europe and the greatest rival of England in every part of the world. English commercial and colonial expansion more than once brought the two nations into conflict in the course of the century. Eighteenth-century France, just before the Revolution, occupied a slightly larger territory than the present Republic. ”

“ Victor or vanquished, will France emerge a republic? In any case—whatever the resistance Paris makes, and her ultimate fate—it will be long, I think, before France is utterly devoured. The mouthful is a large one, and it may not turn out altogether easy to break up. ”

“ Is France to be the leader of the Latin-Celtic races, to conform itself, consistently with its past history and traditions, after a century of throes, into a political form of society fitted to its present needs, its future prosperity, and the renewal of religion? ”