Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The History of France, Vol. 3 of 5
In the history of France, the in?uence and working of the national mind are often so inapparent, that a monarch would have been puzzled who thought to consult it. It comes strongly in support of my theory to observe, that during such periods of syncope no great man ever made his appearance. Through long epochs, indeed, opinion in France there was none, if one will not acknowledge as such a worship of expedi ency, and a tendency to fall prostrate in despair before whatever power came forward to play the bold bully and insist on dominating. True, the nation was apt to awaken at intervals to a sense of a condition so abject, and to play the maniac in shaking off its fetters and asserting its rights. But the vigour seldom sur vived the access of rage; purpose was lost in frenzy, and the great object of humanity in the imposing sound and glitter of merely fanciful words.
Such disquisitions, however, would require not a pre face but a volume. It has been here indulged in merely to vindicate the cause and necessity of narratives of things, at least as an indispensable background to the representation of characters and persons.
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