7 82 Revicivs of Books author. "The decline of the nobility," he says, "ought not to be im- puted solely to Richelieu. If the nobility fell, it was not from any par- ticular cause, or by the act of any particular man, it fell because it was unfit to govern. . . . The privileges which it retained for ser-ices ren- dered by its ancestors, were the interest on a debt which had become onerous to the community and which ought to have been cancelled. ' ' In an age when individual valor was becoming of less value in the battlefield, and familiarity with political questions was more required at the council table, the importance of the French nobleman steadily dimin- ished. As our author says : " He gave little attention to his private af- fairs, and still less to public affairs. He was neither artistic nor scholarly. He disdained agriculture, he despised commerce." He was indeed a curious contrast to the English nobleman, who divided his time between an active interest in political questions, and a thrifty care of his own finan- ces. It is not strange that the privileges which the French nobility re- tained, became irritating to the community. The condition of public feeling in the time of Richelieu was far removed from that in the days preceding the Revolution, yet even the nobility as a body had no popular hold. And for this reason it was easy for Richelieu to diminish the un- certain and precarious power which the nobles still possessed ; by their own fault they had ceased to be an important factor in the state, and their intermittent turbulence was checked by the Cardinal. Picturesque, the French nobility certainly was, but it was frivolous to an unusual extent. The details of dress, the details of e.xtravagance, the details of folly, fill many pages of this book. As a class, the nobility were strangely devoid of true ambition. Of unimportant privileges and dignities, they were indeed most tenacious. The chronicles of the times are filled with quarrels over questions of etiquette. The right to walk first in the procession, the right to receive first the incense from the priest, were held with tenacity. But real power slipped from their list- less grasp. They were indifferent as to their political rights, because they were absorbed in the pursuits of vanity and pleasure. "The French nobility, ' ' says our author, ' ' was condemned to die from inanition a^d sterile pride." Such is the epitaph w^hich history places upon a body, which might have played in the development of modern France as great a part as the English nobility took in the growth of the English consti- tution. There are a ^&s criticisms to be passed upon M. d'Avenel's work. His position as an authority on French history has been for many years established. The present work is not new, but it serves to draw atten- tion once more to one of the most interesting elements in the French nation, at a period when, under the influence of an extraordinary man, the French monarchy was undergoing great and permanent changes. James Breck Perkins.
