Compare the intellectual state of the German reformers at the sixteenth century-Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, and many others-compare, I say, the development of mind which is shown in their works with the contemporaneous manners of the country. What a disparity! In the seventeenth century, place the ideas of Leibnitz, the studies of his disciples, and the German universities, by the side of the manners which prevailed, not only among the people, but also among the superior classes; read, on one side, the writings of the philosophers, and, on the other, the memoirs which paint the court of the elector of Brandenburg or Bavaria. What a contrast! When we arrive at our own times, this contrast is yet more striking. It is a common saying in the present day, that beyond the Rhine, ideas and facts, the intellectual and the real orders, are almost entirely separated. No one is ignorant of what has been the activity of spirit in Germany for the last fifty years; in all classes, in philosophy, history, general literature, or poetry, it has advanced very far. It may be said that it has not always followed the best path; one may contest part of the results at which it has arrived; yet concerning its energy and extensive development it is impossible to dispute. But assuredly the social state and public condition have not advanced at the same pace. Without doubt, there also progress and amelioration have been made; but it is impossible to draw a comparison between the two facts. Thus, the peculiar character of all works in Germany, in poetry, philosophy, or history, is a non-acquaintance with the external world, the absence of the feeling of reality. One perceives, in reading them, that life and facts have exercised but little influence upon the authors, that they have not pre-occupied their imagination; they have lived retired within themselves, by turns enthusiasts or logicians. Just as the practical genius everywhere shows itself in England, so the pure intellectual activity is the dominant feature of German civilization.

In Italy we shall find neither one nor the other of these characters. Italian civilization has been neither essentially practical as that of England, nor almost exclusively speculative as that of Germany; in Italy, neither great development of individual intelligence, nor social skill and ability have been wanting; the Italians have flourished and excelled at one and the same time in the pure sciences, the arts and philosophy, as well as in practical affairs and life. For some time, it is true, Italy seems to have stopped in both of these progres

sions; society and the human mind seem enervated and paralysed; but one feels, upon looking closely, that this is not the effect of an inward and national incapacity; it is from without that Italy is weighed down and impeded; she resembles a beautiful flower that wishes to blossom, but is compressed in every part by a cold and rude hand. Neither intellectual nor political capacity has perished in Italy; it wants that which it has always wanted, and which is everywhere one of the vital conditions of civilization,-it wants faith, the faith in truth. I wish to make myself correctly understood, and not to have attributed to my words a different sense from that which I intend to convey. I mean here, by faith, that confidence in truth, which not only causes it to be held as truth, and which satisfies the mind, but which gives men a confidence in right to reign over the world, to govern facts, and in its power to succeed. It is by this feeling that, once having possession of truth, man feels called upon to introduce it into external facts, to reform them, and to regulate them according to reason. Well, it is this which is almost universally wanted in Italy; she has been fertile in great minds, and in universal ideas; she has been thronged with men of rare practical ability, versed in the knowledge of all conditions of external life, and in the art of conducting and managing society; but these two classes of men and facts have remained strangers to each other. The men of universal ideas, the speculative spirits, have not believed in the duty, perhaps not even in the right, of influencing society; although confident in the truth of their principles, they have doubted their power. Men of action, on the other hand, the masters of society, have held small account of universal ideas; they have scarcely ever felt a desire to regulate, according to fixed principles, the facts which came under their dominion. Both have acted as if it was desirable merely to know the truth, but as if it had no further influence, and demanded nothing more. It is this, alike in the fifteenth century and in later times, that has been the weak side of civilization in Italy; it is this which has struck with a kind of barrenness both its speculative genius and its practical ability; here the two powers have not lived in reciprocal confidence, in correspondence, in continual action and reaction.

There is another great country of which, indeed, I speak more out of consideration and respect for a noble and unhappy nation, than from necessity; I mean Spain. Neither great

minds nor great events have been wanting in Spain; understanding and human society have at times appeared there in all their glory; but these are isolated facts, cast here and there throughout Spanish history, like palm-trees on a desert. The fundamental character of civilization, its continued and universal progress, seems denied in Spain, as much to the human mind as to society. There has been either solemn immobility, or fruitless revolutions. Seek one great idea, or social amelioration, one philosophical system or fertile institution, which Spain has given to Europe; there are none such: this nation has remained isolated in Europe; it has received as little from it as it has contributed to it. should have reproached myself, had I wholly omitted its name; but its civilization is of small importance in the history of the civilization of Europe.

You see that the fundamental principle, the sublime fact of general civilization, the intimate and rapid union, and the harmonious development of ideas and facts, in the intellectual and real orders, has been produced in neither of the great countries at which we have glanced. Something is essentially wanting in all of them to complete civilization; neither of them offers us the complete image, the pure type of civilization in all its conditions, and with all its great characteristics.

In France it is different. In France, the intellectual and social development have never failed each other. Here society and man have always progressed and improved, I will not say abreast and equally, but within a short distance of each other. By the side of great events, revolutions, and public ameliorations, we always find in this country universal ideas and corresponding doctrines. Nothing has passed in the real world, but the understanding has immediately seized it, and thence derived new riches; nothing within the dominion of understanding, which has not had in the real world, and that almost always immediately, its echo and result. Indeed, as a general thing, in France, ideas have preceded and impelled the progress of the social order; they have been prepared in doctrines, before being accomplished in things, and in the march of civilization mind has always taken the lead. This two-fold character of intellectual activity and practical ability, of meditation and application, is shown in all the great events of French history, and in all the great classes of French society, and gives them an aspect which we do not find elsewhere.

At the commencement of the twelfth century, for example, burst forth the great movement for the enfranchisement of the Commons, a great step in social condition; at the same time was manifested a vivid aspiration after freedom of thought. Abailard was contemporary with the citizens of Laon and Vezelay. The first great struggle of free-thought against absolute power in the intellectual order, is contemporaneous with the struggle of the citizens for public liberty. These two movements, it is true, were apparently foreign to each other; the philosophers had a very ill opinion of the insurgent citizens, whom they treated as barbarians; and the citizens, in their turn, when they heard them spoken of, regarded the philosophers as heretics. But the double progress is not the less simultaneous.

Quit the twelfth century; take one of the establishments which have played the most conspicuous part in the history of mind in France, the university of Paris. No one is ignorant of what have been its scientific labors, dating from the thirteenth century; it was the first establishment of the kind in Europe. There was no other in the same age which had so important and active a political existence. The University of Paris is associated with the policy of kings, and with all the struggles of the French clergy against the court of Rome, and those of the clergy against the temporal power; ideas developed themselves, and doctrines were established in its bosom; and it strove almost immediately to propagate them in the external world. It was the principles of the University of Paris which served as the standard of the reformers at the councils of Constance and Basle; which were the origin of, and sustained the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII.

Intellectual activity and positive influence have for centuries been inseparable in this great school. Let us pass to the sixteenth century, and glance at the history of the Reformation in France; it has here a distinguishing character; it was more learned, or, at least, as learned as elsewhere, and more moderate and reasonable. The principal struggle of erudition and doctrine against the Catholic church was sustained by the French Reformers; it was either in France or Holland, and always in French, that so many philosophical, historical, and polemical works were written in this cause; it is certain, that at this epoch, neither in Germany nor in England, was there so much spirit and learning employed;

the French Reformation, too, was a stranger to the flights of the German anabaptists and the English sectarians; it was seldom it was wanting in practical prudence, and yet one cannot doubt the energy and sincerity of its creed, since for so long a period it withstood the most severe reverses.

In modern times, in the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries, the intimate and rapid union of ideas with facts, and the development both of society and of man as an individual, are so evident, that it is needless to insist upon them.

We see, then, four or five great epochs, and four or five grand events, in which the particular character of French civilization is shown. Let us take the various classes of our society; let us regard their manners and physiognomy, and we shall be struck with the same fact. The clergy of France is both learned and active, it is connected with all intellectual works and all worldly affairs as reasoner, scholar, administrator; it is, as it were, neither exclusively devoted to religion, science, nor politics, but is constantly occupied in combining and conciliating them all. The French philosophers also present a rare mixture of speculation and practical knowledge; they meditate profoundly and boldly; they seek the pure truth, without any view to its application; but they always keep up a sympathy with the external world, and with the facts in the midst of which they live; they elevate themselves to the greatest height, but without ever losing sight of the earth. Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Bayle, almost all the great French philosophers, are neither pure logicians nor enthusiasts. Last summer, in this place, you heard their eloquent interpreter' characterize the genius of Descartes, who was at the same time a man of science and a man of the world. “Clear, firm, resolved, and daring, he thought in his study with the same intrepidity with which he fought under the walls of Prague;" having an inclination alike for the movement of life and for the activity of thought. Our philosophers have not all of them possessed the same genius, nor experienced the same adventurous destiny as Descartes; but almost all of them, at the same time that they sought truth, have comprehended the world. They were alike capable of observing and of meditating.

Finally, in the history of France, what is the particular

'M. Villemain.