again were subdivided into minuter sections, particularly with regard to the two Centres, which constituted the bulk of the assembly, and from which all the ministries were drawn. Thus, although Guizot belonged to the Centre Right, he, with Royer-Collard and some twenty-five or thirty others, formed a body apart called the Doctrinaires: a term applied to them, like most political designations, from an accidental circumstance. Previous to the Revolution, a teaching corporation had existed under the title of the Doctrinaires, in one of whose colleges Royer-Collard had been educated, whilst his brother and uncle belonged to the fraternity. His style of oratory was of a severe and logical character, proceeding always upon a foundation of fixed doctrines, and the word, moreover, was continually upon his lips. {xv} One day he was more than usually profuse of the phrase, and a royalist member, irritated at the lecture he was delivering, exclaimed aloud, 'Ah! hear the Doctrinaires! No one can ever mistake the Doctrinaires!' From that moment the epithet clung to him and his associates, who, sooth to say, accepted it willingly enough. But though the origin of the appellation is easily explained, it is far otherwise with regard to the precise principles upheld by the Doctrinaires. Agreeing generally with the Right Centre on the necessity of resisting any extension of popular franchises, they nevertheless allowed that such an extension might be advisable, and was consistent with reason and justice, but at the same time care must be taken that the real government of the country should always be vested in the men of superior information and capacity. There was nothing so very peculiar in these ideas as really to invest the Doctrinaires with a distinct political character; but in truth both Guizot and Collard were too proud and ambitious to confess the leadership of another, and they aspired to hold the balance between the two Centres, so as to render their support indispensable to the formation of a ministry.