[Sidenote: Causes that diminish Variety.] Notwithstanding the great variety that still exists in France, certain modern tendencies are steadily diminishing it. The army is silently making the peasantry more national, less local. Railways take people from one province to another, and from all provinces to Paris. Public education is the same for all France. The University is not a local institution, like Oxford or Cambridge, but ubiquitous in the nation, like the Anglican Church in England. Cheap postage and telegrams make the nation itself seem smaller, and Parisian newspapers penetrate everywhere. External habits are now almost the same in all French towns; the hotel system is the same everywhere, the cafés are all alike. Besides this, the French nature is not very tolerant of individuality in character, but tends to reduce it to one dead level of uniformity. “_Être comme tout le monde_” has long been the rule of French civilisation, and there is nothing more contrary to its spirit than to be “singular” or “original.” EPILOGUE What is called the “national character” of the French and English has never been fixed, and it is now perceptibly changing. [Sidenote: Changes in English National Character.] The English were at one time not in the least Puritanical. They afterwards became moderately Puritanical in the upper classes and intensely so in the middle classes. They are now slowly but steadily passing out of Puritanism. The English were at one time more European than insular. After that they became intensely insular, truly a peculiar people. Now, again, they are slowly becoming, chiefly through the influence of London, less insular and more European. [Sidenote: Artistic and Scientific Ideas.] The most powerful agents of change in recent times have been scientific and artistic ideas. These ideas are continuing their work unceasingly, and are even entering into the education of the young. To judge of their importance as new powers we have only to remember that artistic and scientific ideas formerly lay almost entirely outside of aristocratic and middle-class thinking, and were confined to persons specially devoted to artistic or scientific pursuits. [Sidenote: Extent of Scientific Influence.] [Sidenote: Its Result.]