It is therefore between these two eras that the secret is embowelled, and the distinctive character of the epoch upon which we are entering is, that it has been employed to turn primitive Europe into modern Europe; hence its importance and high historic interest. Unless we contemplate it under that aspect, and unless we seek to learn what has resulted therefrom, not only shall we be utterly at a loss to understand the epoch, but we shall also feel tired and wearied with its pursuit. In fact, viewed by itself, and apart from its consequences, it was a period without character, a time during which confusion went on increasing, without the causes being apparent, an era of movement without direction, of agitation without result; royalty, nobility, clergy, burghers, all the elements of social order, kept moving in the same circle, all equally incapable of progress and repose. Experiments of all kinds were made, and all failed; attempts were made to give stability to government, foundation to public liberty, even to introduce religious reforms, but nothing was effected, nothing grew to a head. If the human race was ever delivered over to a destiny at once agitated and stationary, to labour at once unremitting and barren, such were certainly the features of its condition from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. I know only one work in which this characteristic is truthfully portrayed--namely, 'The History of the Dukes of Burgundy,' by M. de Barante. I do not refer to the truth which sparkles in his descriptions of manners, or minute relations of events; but to that general truthfulness which renders his whole work a faithful image, a transparent mirror of the whole epoch, the restlessness and the monotony of which it so well unfolds. Considered, on the contrary, in its relation to what followed it, as the period of transition from the primitive to the modern state of Europe, the epoch in question brightens into perspicuity and animation; a uniformity in the whole, a direction and a progress, are instantly discoverable; its unity of action and its interest are contained in the heavy and obscure labour itself which worked out the accomplishment.