With the approach of the Revolution, about the commencement of the year 1785, there was a new movement, in the direction of the organization of a great number of "clubs," a word then new to the Parisian ears, but which was received with great favor. There was already in existence a _Club Politique_, which the government tolerated on the express condition that no discussions of politics or religion were to be permitted,--a condition which was quite disregarded. The Duc d'Orléans, who was very proud of being a member of the _Club Anglais_, founded the _Club de Boston_ or _des Américains_; then there was the _Club des Arcades_, the _Club des Étrangers_, the _Club de la Société Olympique_, the _Club des Artistes_, and several others. The important part played in the bloody drama of the Revolution by the various political clubs, is matter of history. The earliest of these associations, of course, bore a general resemblance to the social institutions which the Parisians now know as _Cercles_; and it may be remarked that one of the most celebrated of the many recent pessimistic publications of the day, the _Grandeur et Décadence des Français_, by M. Gaston Routier, finds one of the many signs of the social demoralization of his countrymen in the number and importance of the cercles in the cities, and especially in the high play that so many of them favor. To the extravagances and pretended miracles of the sect of the _convulsionnaires_ and those wrought on the tomb of the deacon Paris in the cemetery Saint-Médard in 1730 and 1731, succeeded the extraordinary alleged cures of the German doctor Mesmer, who came to Paris in 1778 with his theory of "animal magnetism,"--theory treated with more respect by many of the _savants_ of the present day than by those of the eighteenth century. The invention of the brothers Montgolfier, practically tested in 1783, awakened an extraordinary interest both in the scientific world and among the populace; and it is related that the American, Benjamin Franklin, being asked what he thought of these new aërial machines, replied: "It is the coming child."