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CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Among the national institutions of France,
the place of honour must undoubtedly be
given to the Académie Française; not because
of its utility, still less for the amount of respect
and admiration it deserves. My own opinion is,
that a more fantastic and ridiculous institution
was never invented; and to-day it has no connexion
between our democratic times and the
monstrous period in which it was founded.
Why forty respectable gentlemen who happen
to have written books more or less good (and
by no means always such as to justify their
election), composed tolerable operas, written
amusing or instructive plays, as the case may be,
should not have been content with the applause
and pence of their fellows, but must needs array
themselves in an absurd uniform, with triumphant
green palm-leaves embroidered over a
modern coat, and a toy sword at their side,
and play at immortality, is what I have never
been able to understand. As if the votes of his
