BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
with Latin and some knowledge of Greek. Every one who wished to shine in society spent a part of his time in London, usually gamed a little at one of the fashionable clubs, and from the men of his own class took in the opinions generally accepted on politics, morals, and religion. A man in such a circle who had not seen Paris, to say nothing of The Hague, the Rhine, and, above all, Venice and Florence and Rome, could not aspire to be a leader of fashionable society. Something provincial, some lack of savoir-faire, would inevitably betray him. Sooner or later the spell of Italy or France would be upon him, and would lead him to the places that he must himself see if he would be in a real sense a man of the world and in keeping with the society in which he moved.
III
Nearest to England in point of distance was France, the leader of the fashions of Europe and the greatest rival of England in every part of the world. English commercial and colonial expansion more than once brought the two nations into conflict in the course of the century. Eighteenth-century France, just before the Revolution, occupied a slightly larger territory than the present Republic.[1] She had not yet gained Savoy and Nice, but she had not yet lost Alsace and she had acquired Lorraine in 1766.
Of the condition of France before the Revolution there is so much that might be said that any brief generalization is hazardous, for there had come down from the Middle Ages multitudes of anomalous special privileges reserved for the upper classes, and in this rapid summary we can touch only on matters that are most typical and characteristic.[2] But a rapid glance at the main features is imperative.
France presented a striking contrast to England in government, in religion, in the structure of society, in habits of living, in manners, in dress, — in short, in a thousand details that make up the greater part of everyday existence. Moreover, France, taken by herself, was full of contradictory ele-
10
- ↑ In the middle of the century, Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 8, estimates the population of France at 20,000,000. For 1789, Levasseur estimates the population at 26,000,000. The census of 1801 makes it 26,930,756.
- ↑ "L'ancienne France était si hérissée d'exceptions, de privilèges, de contrastes, que les assertions absolues … appellent à chaque instant des explications, des atténuations ou des correctifs, suivant les circonstances de temps et de lieux." Cardinal Mathieu, L'Ancien Régime en Lorraine et Barrois, p. xiii.
