General. It happened, nevertheless, that some bailiwicks named deputies for only one or two orders. In 1614, the bailiwick of Amboise did not name any for the clergy or the nobility; nor the bailiwick of Châteauneuf, in Thimerais, for the clergy or the third estate; the Puy, La Rochelle, the Lauraguais, Calais, the Upper March, Chatelleraut, failed to send any for the clergy, and Montdidier and Roy for the nobility. Still the states of 1614 were called States General. Accordingly, the old chronicles, speaking in more correct language, when they allude to our national assemblies, either call them the three estates, the notable burgesses, or the barons and bishops, as the case might be, and assign to those assemblies, thus constituted, the same legislative authority.

It frequently happened, in the several provinces, that the third estate, though convoked, did not depute, and for an obvious reason, however it may have overlooked; the third estate had usurped the magistracy, to the prejudice of military men; it exercised, in that profession, a paramount sway, in the characters of judge, counsellor, solicitor, registrar, clerk, &c. &c.; it enacted the civil and criminal laws, and, aided by the encroachment of the Parliaments, it even wielded the political power. Three-fourths of the

ministers of the crown were taken from its ranks; it frequently commanded the armies through the military dignity of marshal. The fortune, honour, and lives of the citizens were at its mercy; all bowed to its decrees; every head fell under the sword of its justice. When, therefore, it thus enjoyed undisputed possession of unlimited power, what occasion had it to avert a slender portion of that power in assemblies where it had been seen on its knees!

Metamorphosed into monks, the people had sought the shelter of cloisters, and governed society by religious opinions; metamorphosed into collectors, ministers of finance, and manufacturers, the people had fled for shelter to the financial department, and governed society by means of gold; metamorphosed into magistrates, the people had sought the public tribunals for shelter, and governed society by the arm of the law. That imposing monarchy of France, aristocratic in its parts, was democratic in its conjoint state, under the control of its sovereign, with whom it was in perfect harmony, and generally acted in concert; this is the secret of its prolonged existence.

There can now be no difficulty in understanding why, in 1789, the third estate suddenly usurped power over the whole nation; it had

VOL. I.

I

seized all the high posts, secured all employments. The people, having had but a small share in the constitution of the state, but being incorporated in the other powers, found itself in a condition to conquer the only liberty which it lacked, political liberty. In England, on the contrary, having held for many centuries an important rank in the constitution, having put to death many of its nobility and of its sovereigns, bestowed and taken away crowns, the people finds itself arrested at the moment when it claims to extend its rights: it has to wage war against itself, it stands in its own way, and is an obstacle to its own progress. This is evidently the popular liberty of England under its ancient form, which is struggling at the present day against the popular liberty under its new aspect.

Well then, might Barbour extol that liberty in the noble verses I have quoted at the end of the preceding chapter: well might he extol it at a time when it was unknown in France to the author of the Dictée, of l'Epinette amoureuse, ballades, virelais, Plaidoyer de la rose et de la violette; a liberty equally unknown, at the same time, to to Christina de Pisan, the Venitian, and to the translator of Æsop's Fables, who published them by the title of Bestiaire.

JAMES I. KING OF SCOTLAND. DUMBARD. DOUGLAS.

WORCESTER. RIVERS.

JAMES I. the most accomplished and most unfortunate of those ill-fated sovereigns who reigned in Scotland, ranked as a poet above Barbour, Occleve, and Lydgate. A captive in England during eighteen years, he composed in prison his King's Quair, a poem in six cantos, divided into stanzas of seven lines each. Lady Jane Beaufort inspired his lay.

KING'S QUAIR-CANTO II.

Bewailing in my chamber thus allone,
Despaired of all joye and remedye,
For-tirit of my lhot and wo-begone,
And to the wyndow gan I walk in hye,

the warld and folk that went forbye,

As for the tyme though I of mirthis fude
Myght have no more, to luke it did me gude.

And on the small grene twistis sat
The lytil suete nyghtingale and song
So loud and clere, the ympnis consecrat
Of luvis use now soft now loud among,
That all the gardynis and the wallis rong.

And therewith kest I down myn eye ageyne,
Quharre as I saw walkyng under the toure
Full secretely, new cumyn hir to pleyne,
The fairest or the freschest zoung floure
That ever I saw methought before that houre
For quhich sodayne abate anon astert
The blude of all my body to my hert.

The prisoner is favoured with visions; he is transported in a cloud to the planet Venus; he journeys on to Minerva's palace. Recovered from his ecstasy, he approaches the window.

In hye unto the wyndow gan I walk

Moving within my spirit of this sight,
Quhare sodeynly a turture, quhite as calk
So evinly upon my hand gan lyt,

And vnto me sche turnyt hir, full ryt,
Of quham the chere in hir birdis assort
Gave me in hert kalendis of confort,

This fayr bird ryt in hir bill gan hold

Of red jerrofleris, with their stalks grene,
A faire branch, quhare written was with gola,
On every lefe, wicht branchis bryt and schen,
In compas fair full plesandly to sene,

A plane sentence, quwhich, as I can devise
And have in mynd, said ryt on this wise.