enjoyed by the Englishman of publishing anything he chose; the French writers being debarred, owing to the importunity of the clergy with Louis XV., from publishing freely their works in France, and only managing to get themselves printed by employing printers at the Hague, Amsterdam, and other towns beyond the limits of the kingdom.  To my surprise, De Tocqueville replied that this disability, so far from proving disadvantageous to the esprits forts of the period, and the encyclopaedic school, was a source of gain to them in every respect.  Every book or tract which bore the stamp of being printed at the Hague or elsewhere, out of France, was speedily caught up and devoured.  It was a passport to success.  Everyone knowing that, since it was printed there, it must be of a nature to give offence to the ruling powers, and especially to the priesthood, and as such, all who were imbued with the new opinions were sure to run after books bearing this certificate of merit.  De Tocqueville said that the savans of 1760-1789 would not have printed in France, had they been free to do so, at the period immediately preceding the accession of Louis XVI.

Talked of Lafayette:  said he was as great as pure, good intentions and noble instincts could make a man; but that he was d’un esprit mediocre, and utterly at a loss how to turn affairs to profit at critical junctures—­never knew what was coming, no political foresight.  Mistake in putting Louis Philippe on the throne sans garantie in 1830; misled by his own disinterested character to think better of public men than he ought to have done.  Great personal integrity shown by Lafayette during the Empire, and under the Restoration:  not to be cajoled by any monarch.

February 16.—­The current fallacy of Napoleon having made the important alterations in the laws of France.  All the eminent new enactments originated in the Constituent Assembly, only that they set to work in such sledgehammer fashion, that the carrying out their work became extremely troublesome and difficult.  Too abstract in their notions to estimate difficulties of detail in changing the framework of jurisprudence.  De Tocqueville said philosophers must always originate laws, but men used to active practical life ought to undertake to direct the transition from old to new arrangements.  The Constituent Assembly did prodigious things in the way of clearing the ground of past abominations.  Napoleon had the talent of making their work take effect; understood administrative science, but rendered the centralising principle far too predominant, in the view to consolidate his own power afterwards.  France has felt this, to her cost, ever since.

Habit formerly (i.e. 300 years back) as prevalent in France as it is in England of gentlemen of moderate fortune residing wholly or by far the greater part of the year on their estates.  They ceased to do so from the time when the sovereign took from them all local authority, from the fifteenth century or so.  The French country-houses were excessively thickly dotted over the land even up to the year 1600; quantities pulled down after that period.  Country life becoming flat after the gentlemen ceased to be of importance in their political relations with their districts, they gave up rural habits and took to living in the provincial towns.