with its Contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The five
unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense (of vanity);
the whole daemonic nature of man will remain,--hurled forth to rage
blindly without rule or rein; savage itself, yet with all the tools and
weapons of civilisation; a spectacle new in History.

In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now
unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis XV. lain
down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his Fleur-de-lis has been
shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas; Poverty invades
even the Royal Exchequer, and Tax-farming can squeeze out no more;
there is a quarrel of twenty-five years' standing with the Parlement;
everywhere Want, Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for
state-physicians: it is a portentous hour.

Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King Louis,
which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty years, gone
Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up what he had noted of
this same France, wrote, and sent off by post, the following words, that
have become memorable: 'In short, all the symptoms which I have ever
met with in History, previous to great Changes and Revolutions in
government, now exist and daily increase in France.' (Chesterfield's
Letters: December 25th, 1753.)



Chapter 1.1.III.

Viaticum.