whom Voltaire and Rousseau were the most eminent, who aimed at the
overthrow of all the ideas which had come to be thus abused. The one by
his caustic wit, the other by his enthusiastic simplicity, gained
willing ears, and, the writers in a great Encyclopædia then in course of
publication, contrived to attack most of the notions which had been
hitherto taken for granted, and were closely connected with faith and
with government. The king himself was dully aware that he was living on
the crust of a volcano, but he said it would last his time; and so it
did. Louis XV. died of smallpox in 1774, leaving his grandsons to reap
the harvest that generations had been sowing.




CHAPTER VII.

THE REVOLUTION.


1. Attempts at Reform.--It was evident that a change must be made.
_Louis XVI._ himself knew it, and slurred over the words in his
coronation oath that bound him to extirpate heresy; but he was a slow,
dull man, and affairs had come to such a pass that a far abler man than
he could hardly have dealt with the dead-lock above, without causing a
frightful outbreak of the pent-up masses below. His queen, Marie
Antoinette, was hated for being of Austrian birth, and, though a
spotless and noble woman, her most trivial actions gave occasion to
calumnies founded on the crimes of the last generation. Unfortunately,
the king, though an honest and well-intentioned man, was totally unfit
to guide a country through a dangerous crisis. His courage was passive,