Strangely enough, the feverish unrest of the time produced, in an age which professed to have undertaken a war against superstition, a revival of the mysticism of an earlier day. On the eve of the French Revolution, the best educated classes in Europe were engrossed by secret societies and brotherhoods, like the Illuminati, the Swedenborgians, the Mesmerists, the Rosicrucians, dabbling on all sides in necromancy and occult science, and frequently the dupes of ridiculous impostors, who, catching the temper of the times, proposed to effect by charlatanism the regeneration of the world. This vague perturbation of spirit did not, it is true, penetrate to the lowest or unlettered class. But in all above that rank it was conspicuous. The years of the reign of Louis XVI were in France, as in nearly all parts of Europe, years of national expansion. The trade of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds, and the commerce of Bordeaux already exceeded, in the sober judgment of Arthur Young, that of any English port save London. At the same time the wealth of the middle classes was increasing with similar rapidity. Year after year they lent more money to the Government; and year after year, as they saw the Government wasting it with reckless profusion, and falling steadily deeper into debt, they ranged themselves more decidedly in the ranks of opposition, and became more emphatic in their discontent. The gross mismanagement of the finances became a matter in which they felt they had a right to interfere. Their stake in the game of politics made them politicians, and not only that--it made them reformers too. And thus the growing wealth of the country tended indirectly to multiply the enemies of the Court, and to throw on to the side of revolution that important financial interest, which is generally a stable, sometimes an obstructive, element in a State.