local habitation and a name."

The mania for equality, in the first Revolution, De Tocqueville shows
was not so much the result of political aspiration as the fierce protest
against those exclusive rights once enjoyed by the nobility, (shown by
Arthur Young to have been the primary impulse to revolution,) to hunt,
keep pigeons, grind corn, press grapes, etc. For a long period, the man
of letters was never combined with the statesman, as in England. In
France, speculation in government ran wild, because the thinkers,
suddenly raised to influence in affairs, had enjoyed no ordeal of public
duty. Hence certain imaginary fruits of liberty were sought, and its
absolute worth misunderstood. And now that experience, dearly bought,
has modified visionary and moulded practical theories, how much of the
normal interest of the French character has evaporated! Even the love
of beauty and the love of glory, proverbially its distinctions, are
eclipsed by the sullen orb of Imperialism; the Bourse is more attractive
than the battle-field, material luxury than artistic distinction.

One of their own philosophers has summed up, with justice, the anomalous
elements of the versatile national character:--

"Did there ever appear on the earth another nation so fertile in
contrasts, so extreme in its acts,--more under the dominion of
feeling, less ruled by principle; always better or worse than was
anticipated,--now below the level of humanity, now far above; a people
so unchangeable in its leading features that it may be recognized by
portraits drawn two or three thousand years ago, and yet so fickle in
its daily opinions and tastes that it becomes at last a mystery to
itself, and is as much astonished as strangers at the sight of what it
has done; naturally fond of home and routine, yet, when once driven