We have the journal of these states-general drawn up with precision and detail by one of the chief actors, John Masselin, canon of and deputy for Rouen, “an eminent speaker,” says a contemporary Norman chronicle, “who delivered on behalf of the common weal, in the presence of kings and princes, speeches full of elegance.”  We may agree that, compared with the pompous pedantry of most speakers of his day, the oratorical style of John Masselin is not without a certain elegance, but that is not his great and his original distinction; what marks him out and gives him so high a place in the history of the fifteenth century, is the judicious and firm political spirit displayed in his conduct as deputy and in his narrative as historian. [The Journal, written by the author in Latin, was translated into French and published, original and translation, by M. A. Bernier, in 1835, in the Collection des Documents inedits relatifs d l’Histoire de France.] And it is not John Masselin only, but the very assembly itself in which he sat, that appears to us, at the end of five centuries, seriously moved by a desire for a free government, and not far from comprehending and following out the essential conditions of it.  France had no lack of states-general, full of brilliancy and power, between 1356 and 1789, from the reign of Charles V. to that of Louis XVI.; but in the majority of these assemblies, for all the ambitious soarings of liberty, it was at one time religious party-spirit and at another the spirit of revolution that ruled and determined both acts and events.  Nothing of that kind appeared in the states-general assembled at Tours in 1484; the assembly was profoundly monarchical, not only on general principles, but in respect of the reigning house and the young king seated on the throne.  There was no fierce struggle, either, between the aristocracy and the democracy of the day, between the ecclesiastical body and the secular body; although widely differing and widely separated, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate were not at war, even in their hearts, between themselves.  One and the same idea, one and the same desire, animated the three orders; to such a degree that, as has been well pointed out by M. Picot, “in the majority of the towns they proceeded in common to the choice of deputies:  the clergy, nobles, and commons who arrived at Tours were not the representatives exclusively of the clergy, the nobles, or the third estate:  they combined in their persons a triple commission;” and when, after having examined together their different memorials, by the agency of a committee of thirty-six members taken in equal numbers from the three orders, they came to a conclusion to bring their grievances and their wishes before the government of Charles VIII., they decided that a single spokesman should be commissioned to sum up, in a speech delivered in solemn session, the report of the committee of Thirty-six; and it was the canon, Master John Masselin,