[Footnote 1: It is satisfactory to have the authority of Mr. Lecky on
the same side. _England in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. iii. chap.
ix. p. 209.]

Versailles reminds us of a singular overstatement by Sir Henry Maine
of the blindness of the privileged classes in France to the approach
of the Revolution. He speaks as if Lord Chesterfield's famous passage
were the only anticipation of the coming danger. There is at least one
utterance of Louis XV. himself, which shows that he did not expect
things to last much beyond his time. D'Argenson, in the very year of
Chesterfield's prophecy, pronounced that a revolution was inevitable,
and he even went so close to the mark as to hint that it would arise
on the first occasion when it should be necessary to convoke the
States General. Rousseau, in a page of the _Confessions_, not only
divined a speedy revolution, but enumerated the operative causes of it
with real precision. There Is a striking prediction In Voltaire, and
another in Mercier de la Rivière. Other names might be quoted to
the same effect, including Maria Theresa, who described the ruined
condition of the French monarchy, and only hoped that the ruin might
not overtake her daughter. The mischief was not so much that the
privileged classes were blind as that they were selfish, stubborn,
helpless, and reckless. The point is not very important in itself,
but it is characteristic of a very questionable way of reading human
history. Sir Henry Maine's readiness to treat revolutions as due to
erroneous abstract ideas naturally inclines him to take too narrow a
view both of the preparation in circumstances, and of the preparation
in the minds of observant onlookers.

In passing, by the way, we are curious to know the writer's authority
for what he calls the odd circumstance that the Jacobins generally