Jefferson left France shortly after the taking of the Bastile. He saw the most auspicious period of the Revolution. During the session of the Estates General, the evils which afflicted France were admitted by all, but the remedies proposed were, as yet, purely speculative. The roseate theories of poets and enthusiasts had filled every mind with vague expectations of some great good in the future. Nothing had occurred to disturb these pleasing anticipations. There was no sign of the fearful disasters then impending. The delirium of possession had not seized upon the nation,--her statesmen had not learned how much easier it is to plan than to achieve,--nor had the voice of Burke carried terror throughout Europe. Even now, it is impossible to read the first acts of that drama without being moved to sympathetic enthusiasm. What emotions must it not have excited while the awful catastrophe was yet concealed! Tried by any received test, France, for centuries, had been the chief state in Europe,--inferior to none in the arts of war, superior to any in the arts of peace. Fashion and letters had given her an empire more permanent than that which the enterprise of Columbus and the fortune of Charles gave to Spain, more extended than that which Trafalgar and Waterloo have since given to England. Though her armies were resisted, her wit and grace were irresistible; every European prince was her subject, every European court a theatre for the display of her address. The peculiar spirit of her genius is not more distinctly to be seen in the verse of Boileau than in that of Pope,--in the sounding periods of Bossuet than in Addison's easy phrase. The spectacle of a nation so distinguished, which had carried tyranny to a perfection and invested it with a splendor never before seen, becoming the coryphaeus of freedom, might easily have fascinated a mind less impressible by nature, and less disposed by education for favorable impressions, than that of Jefferson. He shared the feeling of the hour. His advice was asked, and respectfully listened to. This experience, while, as he says, it strengthened his preconceived convictions, must have prevented him from carefully observing, certainly from being affected by, the influences which had been at work in his own country. He came home more assured in republicanism, and expecting to find that America had kept pace with him.