It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French Revolution, within the limits to which we must confine ourselves. One thing is clear. The government, the aristocracy, and the church, were rewarded after their works. They reaped that which they had sown. They found the nation such as they had made it. That the people had become possessed of irresistible power before they had attained the slightest knowledge of the art of government--that practical questions of vast moment were left to be solved by men to whom politics had been only matter of theory--that a legislature was composed of persons who were scarcely fit to compose a debating society--that the whole nation was ready to lend an ear to any flatterer who appealed to its cupidity, to its fears, or to its thirst for vengeance--all this was the effect of misrule, obstinately continued in defiance of solemn warnings, and of the visible signs of an approaching retribution. {57}Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy state, the causes of that great destruction had already begun to operate. They may be distinctly traced even under the reign of Louis the Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which the Ultra-Royalists refer as the Golden Age of France. It was in truth one of those periods which shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly followed by gloom and decay. Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would have called king-craft,--of all those arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects. Though his internal administration was bad,--though the military triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign, were not achieved by himself,--though his later years were crowded with defeats and humiliations,--though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood the Latin of his mass-book,--though he fell under the control of a cunning Jesuit, and of a more cunning old woman,--he succeeded in passing himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the more extraordinary, because he did not seclude himself from the public gaze like those Oriental despots, whose faces are never seen, and whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no man is a hero to his valet;--and all the world saw as much of Louis the Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. {58}He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence,--the ecclesiastics on their knees and the laymen with their hats before their faces.