Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe depuis la Chute de l'Empire THE lectures upon European Civilization which M. Guizot gave at the Sorbonne during the three stormy years that preluded the Revolution of July, are justly held to have marked an epoch in the study of Medieval history. In the prime of life, with an established reputation, with the enthusiastic sympathy of an impressible and brilliant auditory, the lecturer lacked no stimulus for the exercise of his finest powers. The exceptional position in which he stood added zest to his instructions. When, in the autumn of 1812, he commenced his academical career, he was young and unknown, and his hearers were few in number. His own tastes and associations at this time were almost exclusively connected with a literary calling. The Restoration opened before him a new path, and brought him into contact with new questions; yet when in 1825, VOL. XXXI. 1 after enlarged experience, he discussed the political development of Europe, with the twofold purpose of combating revolutionary theories and reconciling liberty with social order, he found his hearers little disposed to follow and still less to accept his views, and just at the moment when their prejudices began to melt, his lectures were interdicted by the Villèle ministry. This ill-timed interference with the liberty of teaching only served, however, to kindle a more lively curiosity when, three years later, M. Guizot was permitted to resume his chair. No University professor in modern times had been greeted with such a hearing. Young and old, Frenchman and foreigner, the secluded scholar and the busy politician, listened with the same delight, as the lecturer, luminously expounding the complex elements of modern civilization, and tracing the indissoluble alliance of the present with the past, constantly enforced the impressive truth that those who reject historical traditions and sever the ties which unite successive ages, are at war with one of the distinctive and sovereign instincts of human nature. Thus discussing the grandest themes, and addressed to most cultivated minds, the enthusiasm awakened by these lectures, and the lectures of MM. Villemaine and Cousin at the same time, recalled the palmy days when Abelard and Peter Lombard were followed by admiring throngs, and Nos fuimus in Galandia was a password among scholars all over Europe. After thirty years, years of such triumph and disappointment as are the lot of few, M. Guizot, in his Memoirs, vividly recalls the impressions of this period. That he should prefer to leave untouched the paragraphs which were greeted with so much applause, and which have been assigned a rank in French historical literature beside the pages of Bossuet and Montesquieu, can occasion no surprise. It would be doing the illustrious author gross injustice to attribute this reluctance to modify his work to any disposition to undervalue the result of later researches, or to the pardonable complacency in which an old man might be permitted to indulge. In the preface to the sixth edition of his lectures, of which the one before us is simply a re-issue, he uses the following language: "I have changed nothing in the work. I have not even modified certain ideas which at the present day I might present in a form more symmetrical or more complete. I have made it a duty to leave these lectures as they appeared, and as the public has been accustomed to receive them for thirty years. I might add much to such a rapid sketch of the character and progress of European civilization; I have found nothing that I ought to retract; and I dare believe to-day, as thirty years ago, that in all its essential features this sketch is true." While we have no disposition to find fault with this natural preference of the author for presenting the lectures in their original form, it must always remain a matter of profound regret that he did not take pains to indicate, in the form of notes, some of the more important, at least, of those modifications which his mature reflections had suggested. By this course the lectures would have lost none of their interesting associations, while their value to the student might have been considerably increased. We cannot help thinking that had M. Guizot devoted to this useful labor the time which he has consumed in discussing theological truths, he would have rendered a far more signal service to society. In his Preface he takes notice only of those criticisms upon his lectures which have been made by members of the Church of Rome, of which · the well kown work of Balmez is perhaps deserving of most consideration; but with regard to some other subjects than those connected with radical differences of religious thought, the conclusions of M. Guizot are open to revision, and the very general approbation given to his lectures as a text-book for historical instruction imposes upon others the task which he has not seen fit himself to undertake. It does not in the least detract from the recognized merit of these lectures, to say that the researches of an entire generation of historical scholars have added something to our knowledge. Nor can the most searching criticism ignore the debt that historical study owes to M. Guizot's labors and example. At a time when historical inquiry hesitated between wild hypothesis and juiceless compilation, he achieved a graceful union of philosophy with fact. And if others have traced relations which he overlooked, it has often been from following the path which he first pointed out with such distinctness. For the execution of the great task which, on the whole, he accomplished with such brilliant success, M. Guizot possessed . qualifications such as seldom can meet in a single person. It would be easy to give the names of more acute thinkers, of more profound scholars, of more successful statesmen. France alone might supply us with illustrations. But it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find one in whom these three characteristics were so happily combined. It is this rare union of qualities. that constitutes M. Guizot's distinctive superiority. It forms the basis of that just discernment and that excellent balance so conspicuous in all his writings. He is never misled by finespun or pedantic theories. His insight into the past is not the blurred vision of the antiquary, but the discriminating glance of one versed in affairs. His reasonings are not the reasonings of a recluse, but of a man of the world. He is an ardent politician as well as a University professor, and in studying the twelfth century never forgets the nineteenth. His lessons. are for the statesman as well as for the scholar, and have a charm for readers who seldom meddle with mere abstract speculations. Mr. Gibbon used to think that his history had been the gainer even for the short time that he sat as a silent spectator on the Treasury bench; but M. Guizot's experience of political life, at the time when these lectures were delivered, was already various and intimate. While, however, all this has unquestionably added to the interest and practical value of M. Guizot's observations, it may be questioned whether the gain has not been accompanied with corresponding loss. There is doubtless an advantage in thus surveying the past through the windows of the present, but it must be remembered that these windows are made up of "manycolored glass." There is great danger that immediate issues may tint the landscape, and distort that accurate historical perspective which alone reveals events in their right relation. Those outlines are made prominent which illustrate the problems of the day, rather than those which in each successive period were really most conspicuous. A truly scientific history must be conceived in strict accordance with the actual course of things. Such a history will doubtless prove far more dry to the general reader; its practical lessons may be far less obvious; but it will be far more symmetrical in structure, and will embrace all phenomena with far more fairness and completeness. Such an ideal of historical composition could never, perhaps, be fully reached, but it furnishes the standard by which the value of every philosophical investigation of history must be measured. Despite his studied reserve, it is impossible to read M. Guizot's lectures without being reminded of his relation to contemporary politics. He is not only a Frenchman, but a Frenchman of the Restoration, of the Charter, and of the Chamber of Deputies. Commencing public life in 1814, when the Bourbons first returned, sent the following year to Ghent as representative of the Constitutional Royalist Committee, holding office under two successive ministries of Louis XVIII, a vigorous pamphleteer, silenced as professor for his pronounced opposition to the Royalist reaction under Charles X, it would have been difficult for M. Guizot to dissever his speculations from problems in which his interest was so lively. Always carefully eschewing any direct allusion to questions of the day, there yet lurks a tacit application which the dullest reader cannot mistake. Thus, in the course of 1825, while determined, as he declares, "to restrain himself within the sphere of general ideas and by gone facts," he chose a theme, the origin of representative government, which made it hardly possible for him not to trench upon issues then agitating French society to its very foundations. In discussing the political problems of the Plantagenets, he could not avoid sifting the maxims of the Bourbons. And when he resumed his instructions in 1828, his overmastering predilections would not allow him to follow any other course. His aim, as he candidly avows, was not simply to satisfy "a scientific or literary curiosity." In all his speculations he keeps steadily in view a practical end. But is this a safe course for an historian of civilization to follow? Do not M. Guizot's own lectures reveal the limitation of such a method? Is not his survey too much confined to a special class of facts, and are not these facts considered too much with reference to a single theory? Not only is monarchy held up as the consummate flower of political development, but the particular type of monarchy which M. Guizot and his friends were just at that juncture seeking to establish. The Lectures on Civilization are in fact a vindication from history of the pet notions of the Doctrinaires. The Sorbonne professor seems seated on the famous |