Ottoman Ambassador to the French Court, too was tolerated. Selim the Third may be considered to have been a faithful simulacrum of the contemporary French King.
In the Roumanian Principalities, the French emigrants, Carra, de la Roche, Nagni and others, brought with them the ideas of the same triumphant philosophy. As secretaries of the princes, as teachers of language, they were able to exercise considerable influence over the ruling classes of this cultivated society, which was never entirely able to disassociate itself from all that French taste and fashions represented. The old libraries of the Roumanian boyards were full of books chosen from the best current literature of France. Many reforms, such as the liberation of the peasants, held up to that time in the chains of mediaeval bondage, were due, when not to these counsellors, to the spirit of French thought, which had penetrated deep into the Roumanian soul. The high school, where the Greek tradition of grammar and dry literary exercises had held dominion, was wholly transformed. At the same time as Poland became renascent by adopting without reserve the directions of the philosophers, so the establishments of Jassy and Bucharest, consecrated to the study of natural sciences and living languages, courageously took the new road. Roumanian students began to look for higher education in the foreign universities, and they were soon to be seen in the schools of Germany (for medicine), but above all in France, in Paris even, notwithstanding the fact that it was a forbidden city in those revolutionary times.
This important change was brought about not only by social intercourse, but by the native and foreign schools. French literature was procured and was to be found in the majority of the houses of the well-to-do. Long lists of such
