each other, mixed up in the same society, and very often in the same
individuals. Everywhere the most adverse and opposite tendencies display
themselves. What an ardent struggle during that long period! and how full,
too, of emotion is its picture! Society tends to reconstitute itself in
every aspect. She wants to create, so to say, from every side, property,
authority, justice, &c., &c., in a word, everything which can establish
the basis of public life; and this new order of things must be established
by means of the elements supplied at once by the barbarian, Roman, and
Christian world--a prodigious creation, the working of which occupied the
whole of the Middle Ages. Hardly does modern society, civilised by
Christianity, reach the fullness of its power, than it divides itself to
follow different paths. Ancient art and literature resuscitates because
custom _insensibly_ takes that direction. Under that influence, everything
is modified both in private and public life. The history of the human race
does not present a subject more vast or more interesting. It is a subject
we have chosen to succeed our first book, and which will be followed by a
similar study on the various aspects of Religious and Military Life.

This work, devoted to the vivid and faithful description of the Manners
and Customs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, answers fully to the
requirements of contemporary times. We are, in fact, no longer content
with the chronological narration and simple nomenclatures which formerly
were considered sufficient for education. We no longer imagine that the
history of our institutions has less interest than that of our wars, nor
that the annals of the humbler classes are irrelevant to those of the
privileged orders. We go further still. What is above all sought for in
historical works nowadays is the physiognomy, the inmost character of past
generations. "How did our fathers live?" is a daily question. "What
institutions had they? What were their political rights? Can you not
place before us their pastimes, their hunting parties, their meals, and