Excerpt from The History of France, Vol. 3 of 5 In the history of France, the influence and working of the national mind are often so inapparent, that a monarch would have been puzzled who thought to consult it. It comes strongly in support of my theory to observe, that during such periods of syncope no great man ever made his appearance. Through long epochs, indeed, opinion in France there was none, if one will not acknowledge as such a worship of expedi ency, and a tendency to fall prostrate in despair before whatever power came forward to play the bold bully and insist on dominating. True, the nation was apt to awaken at intervals to a sense of a condition so abject, and to play the maniac in shaking off its fetters and asserting its rights. But the vigour seldom sur vived the access of rage; purpose was lost in frenzy, and the great object of humanity in the imposing sound and glitter of merely fanciful words. Such disquisitions, however, would require not a pre face but a volume. It has been here indulged in merely to vindicate the cause and necessity of narratives of things, at least as an indispensable background to the representation of characters and persons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.