the Stuarts, and the advent of a foreign dynasty to the throne, you find everywhere its constitutive elements the same,—­modified only by such changes of time, circumstance, and fashion, as naturally, in every country, modify the superficial aspect of all society.  But in France, it is the very substratum of the social soil that is overturned, it is the constitutive elements of society that are displaced; and the consequence is a general derangement of all relative positions.

In what is still termed la vieille societe Francaise, little or nothing was left to chance, and one of its great characteristics was order and the perfectly regular play of its machinery.  Everything was set down, noted, as it were, beforehand,—­as strictly so as the ceremonies of a grand diplomatic ceremony, after some treaty, or marriage, or other occasion of solemn conference.  Under this regime, which endured till the Revolution of ’93, (and even, strangely enough, beyond that period,) politeness was, of course, the one chief quality of whosoever was well brought up,—­urbanity was the first sign of good company,—­and for the simple reason, that no one sought to infringe.  There was no cause for insolence, or for what in England is called “exclusiveness,” because there was no necessity to repel any disposition to encroach.  No one dreamed of the possibility of encroaching upon his neighbor’s grounds, or of taking, in the slightest degree, his neighbor’s place.

The first French Revolution caused no such sudden and total disruption of the old social traditions as has been generally supposed; and as far as mere social intercourse and social conventionalities were concerned, there was, even amongst the terrible popular dictators of 1793, more of the tone of the ci-devant good company than could possibly be imagined.  In later times, every one who knew Fouche remembers that he was constantly in the habit of expressing his indignation at the want of good-breeding of the young exquisites of the Empire, and used perpetually to exclaim, “In my time” this or that “would not have been allowed,” or, “In my time we were accustomed to do” so and so.  Now Fouche’s “time” was that which is regarded as the period of universal beheading and levelling.

It is certain, that, under the regime of the Revolution itself, bitter class-hatreds did not at first show themselves in the peaceful atmosphere of society,—­and that for more than one reason.  First of all, in a certain sense, “society,” it may be said, was not.  Next, what subsisted of society was fragmentary, and was formed by small isolated groups or coteries, pretty homogeneously composed, or, when not so as to rank and station, rendered homogeneous by community of suffering.  It must not be imagined that only the highest class in France paid for its opinions or its vanities with loss of life and fortune.  The victims were everywhere;