profligacy of Louis XV. had exhausted the resources of the kingdom, and alienated the affections of the inhabitants; and the quiet, unobtrusive, undecided character of Louis XVI. was calculated rather to encourage than to suppress the rising flame. This unhappy monarch, if endowed with few qualities which attract our admiration, was possessed of many which engage our esteem; and had he lived in an earlier era, he would have been con but we can not be always laughing. Besides, it shows a want of dignity to be everlastingly on the broad grin, the titter, the giggle, or the chuckle. We owe it to ourselves to look solemn, and to wear a serious countenance occasionally-or, if we are particularly fond of dignity, we may always have a solemn look. There is something more interesting in crying than in laughing, and it would be impertinent to ask what they are laughing at, but if you saw as many crying, your sympa-sidered the beau ideal of that patriarchal thy would lead you to ask what they were crying for. If, on inquiry, it should be found that their tears were flowing from an inadequate or unworthy cause, you would feel that the dignity of grief was much abated. What then? Why then, if there be a want of dignity in giving way to the expression of grief when the cause is trivial, there must be great dignity in not grieving when there is an abundant cause of grief-hence the pleasure they have in letting all the world know that they never complain, and in talking of their exemplary patience and unparallelled fortitude, in bearing such a burden of wo without a word of complaint. CAUSES OF THE FRENCH ONG before the advent of the revolution, the condition of France had to discriminating observers, indicated the approach of the impending storm. The monarchy was worn out, the nobility corrupt, and the clergy degenerate. A thousand years had almost elapsed since the establishment of the former under Clovis, and the system was thus hastening to that state of decay which seems inseparable from all human institutions. The vices of one king, and the virtues of another, had alike contributed to produce this result. The long and expensive wars of Louis XIV. and the system on which the government was supposed to be founded; but on the stormy era when he ascended the throne, his virtues tended only to excite the political tempest which swept him and his family from the earth. The number, the frivolity, and the viciousness of the nobles had increased to a surprising degree; and it was mainly these that gave rise to the revolution. According to Madame de Staël, there were nearly one hundred thousand of them; as not only was the head of a family noble, but likewise all his descendants; and titles of nobility were besides obtained from numberless offices, or were openly purchased by money. The nobles possessed many privileges-they contributed nothing to the support of the state, and they enjoyed a monopoly of all its higher offices. They alone could hold commissions in the army or navy, and fill the more important and lucrative posts of civil government; and to such an extent had their influence attained, that, in the very year before the revolution broke out, they had caused the feeble king to pass a decree that none but those noble for four generations should hold a military commission; while they, at the same time, declared themselves exempt from contributing in any way to the expenses of the state: and yet, at the moment when they assumed such privileges, they were themselves the very slaves of the court. A post, a pension, or some frivolous honor, was at any time sufficicnt to gain the best of them. A few, indeed, stood aloof, and were apparently exempt from this universal degeneracy; but it was either because, like the duke of Orleans, they had been disappointed at court; or, as in the instance of the smaller noblesse in La Vendée, be CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. cause their private fortunes were unfit to cope with the costly dissipation of the metropolis. And yet these alone stood by the monarchy in the hour of danger; those who now fluttered around the throne, flying on the first approach of alarm, when, in its defence, they might have been expected to die like men. A few only of all their number were free from this general character, and it must be admitted of these that they showed a spirit worthy of a better fate if not a better cause. The clergy were also a numerous body, and their conduct, as a class, had tended greatly to demoralize the country. They were upward of 80,000 in number, and consisted of two classes-one formed of the branches of the nobility, designed for the higher offices of the church, and comparative idleness; the other, comprehending the plebeian portion, destined to labor and indigence. Many of the former of these were men of the highest talent, and celebrated in Europe as statesmen; but others had no higher claim than to the rank of wits-which, however, in the French court of that period, was of no uninfluential order, as Chateaubriand, one of the stanchest supporters of the ancient dynasty, mentions, in his "Historical Studies," that a bonmot was then considered of more importance than an oration or victory. And though most of the poorer order were virtuous men, they were generally uneducated, bigoted, and swayed by the populace, to whom they owed their support. Like the nobles, the clergy contributed nothing to the maintenance of the state, except the benefit of their prayers, which they were forced to give by statute; but the writings of Voltaire and his associates had effected such a change in the once "most Christian" country, as its rulers had long been termed by the pope, that this only provoked derision. It was said to be a provision proper enough, but one that brought no relief to the exhausted treasury. The poorer clergy, however, were unable, and the superior unwilling, until it was too late, to grant any other. Hence the whole property of the church was, shortly after the revolution broke out, confiscated at a blow, and the higher clergy fled the country, while the humbler, for the most part, 289 ranged themselves on the side of the revolutionists. The people were in a state of abject slavery. All the ancient feudal usages which improved or alleviated their condition, had either been removed by violence or impaired by time. Only a third of the land belonged to them, and from this, besides supporting themselves, they were constrained to sustain the state, and uphold the church and nobles. They alone contributed to the expenditure of the state, and, besides maintaining it, they had to pay heavy dues to the nobles, and tithes to the clergy. Yet they possessed not the slightest privilege. If they entered the army or navy, they could never obtain commissions; if they devoted themselves to the civil service of the country, they could never rise above the humblest rank; if they engaged in commercial pursuits, they were fettered by restrictions; and if they devoted themselves to agriculture, their fields were ravaged by the game-privileges of the nobles. An English traveller, Arthur Young, who travelled through France a short time before the revolution, represented them as ground to the earth; and fifty years previously, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield had declared that all the germs of revolution were then to be found in the country. But the government itself appeared wholly unconscious of danger; and under the auspices of the beauteous and high-minded but unfortunate Marie Antoinette, when on the verge of destruction, basked as if in the meridian of fortune. In proportion as the country grew poorer, its rulers increased in extravagance. "Profusion was substituted for parsimony," says Mr. Alison, " in the hope of circulating money; and prodigality for economy, in the expectation of allaying discontent." But this profusion was extended only to the courtiers, and their immediate adherents alone reaped the benefit of it, while it was withdrawn from the nation at large; and this at a time when the people were oppressed by such restrictions that they could embark in few trades without a license from government, or procure even law without openly purchasing justice; for before the revolution, the chief judicial offices were either hereditary or sold to the highest bidder, who had thus no alternative but to make a trade of justice by retailing it in turn. queen was supposed to have pawned her diamonds, in order to provide for the expenses of the government. But still there was a deficiency of eight millions sterling in the revenue, and while the people groaned under imposts, the state staggered under debt. One minister after another was brought in to relieve these embarrassments, but each of them failed, and one of them, Neckar, to whom the revolution has, by Napoleon, been imputed, but ap While affairs were in this state, the American revolution broke out, and gave an impulse to the opinions of the French encyclopædists which it was found impossible to repress. "In an hour," says Burke, "more unfortunate for himself than for a neighboring monarch, Louis XVI. was induced, by his cabinet, to send assistance to the revolted colonies of Eng-parently on unreasonable grounds, publand, and by thus attempting to diminish the value of another's crown, he lost his own." He discovered this with regret, when regret was unavailing; and the measures he adopted to check the popular enthusiasm, when Lafayette and his associates returned to France from their successful assistance of the Americans, by increasing the severity of the restraints under which the people then labored, only accelerated the march of opinion which he was anxious to arrest. Even then his conduct was marked by that vacillation and inconsistency which characterized all the acts of this ill-fated monarch; for, in the very hour when he was receiving Franklin with the highest honors, as the representative of the American people, he launched the edict already mentioned against popular expectations at home; and his courtiers were encouraged to sing the praises of liberty in other countries; while not a vestige of it existed in their own. "The court," says a cotemporary writer, "freely indulged those sallies without for a moment anticipating their possible application, or surmising that what they admired for Philadelphia, could ever be desired in Paris." lished, on his dismissal from office, a famous account, named the "compte rendue," which disclosed those appalling deficiencies, and increased the general dissatisfaction that prevailed. Under these circumstances, the chief minister, Calonne, an able, though specious, plausible, and once profligate, but now patriotic man, convoked an assembly called the notables, consisting of the leading persons in the kingdom, and proposed that the privileged orders should tax themselves; but the nobles and higher clergy resisted the innovation: and when he attempted to levy a new impost, they declared that this could be done only by the authority of the states-general-a body representing all classes of the kingdom, and unheard of for almost a century before. The word states-general was no sooner pronounced, than it was reiterated by every order in the community, and all, excepting the government, concurred in desiring its convocation from which they expected relief. The court, dreading such an assemblage, attempted to supersede it, by proposing what was termed a cour plenière," or meeting of the leading nobles and clergy, with a few of the higher merchants, inBut while all these causes influenced, stead. The privileged orders resisted, it was the want of money to provide for and when a troop of dragoons were sent the national expenditure that was the im- to arrest D'Espremenil, one of their nummediate forerunner of the French revolu-ber who had made himself obnoxious to tion. The country was exhausted alike the government, they declared they "were by the victories of one war and the re- all D'Espremenils.' A struggle ensued, verses of another, the magnificent projects but the court was, in the end, obliged to of Louis XIV., and the costly profligacy submit, and, on the proposal of the nobles, a of the fifteenth prince of that name. Nor decree was issued for the convocation of was the expenditure diminished during the states-general, which was to sweep the reign of Louis XVI., though the con- both nobles and court from the land. duct of that prince was pacific, and his character comparatively pure. He had himself sent his plate to the mint, and the " 66 So long an interval had elapsed since the meeting of this body, that few were aware of its functions, or even of the form |