In England those who wrote on the subject of government were connected with those who governed; the latter applied new ideas to practice--the former corrected or controlled their theories by practical observation. But in France the political world remained divided into two separate provinces, with no mutual intercourse. One portion governed; the other established abstract principles on which all government ought to be founded. Here measures were taken in obedience to routine; there general laws were propounded, without even a thought as to the means of their application. These kept the direction of affairs; those guided the intelligence of the nation. Above the actual state of society--the constitution of which was still traditional, confused, and irregular, and in which the laws remained conflicting and contradictory, ranks sharply sundered, the conditions of the different classes fixed whilst their burdens were unequal--an imaginary state of society was thus springing up, in which everything appeared simple and co-ordinate, uniform, equitable, and agreeable to reason. The imagination of the people gradually deserted the former state of things in order to seek refuge in the latter. Interest was lost in what was, to foster dreams of what might be; and men thus dwelt in fancy in this ideal city, which was the work of literary invention. The French Revolution has been frequently attributed to that of America. The American Revolution had certainly considerable influence upon the French; but the latter owed less to what was actually done in the United States than to what was thought at the same time in France. Whilst to the rest of Europe the Revolution of America still only appeared a novel and strange occurrence, in France it only rendered more palpable and more striking that which was already supposed to be known. Other countries it astonished; to France it brought more complete conviction. The Americans seemed to have done no more than execute what the literary genius of France had already conceived; they gave the substance of reality to that which the French had excogitated. It was as if Fénelon had suddenly found himself in Salentum. This circumstance, so novel in history, of the whole political education of a great people being formed by its literary men, contributed more than anything perhaps to bestow upon the French Revolution its peculiar stamp, and to cause those results which are still perceptible. The writers of the time not only imparted their ideas to the people who effected the Revolution, but they gave them also their peculiar temperament and disposition. The whole nation ended, after being so long schooled by them, in the absence of all other leaders and in profound ignorance of practical affairs, by catching up the instincts, the turn of mind, the tastes, and even the humours of those who wrote; so that, when the time for action came, it transported into the arena of politics all the habits of literature.