time than ever before, though they have always remained fairly faithful to the spirit of the original constitution.
In France, intermixture of race has been far more common and varied. In some cases, by a sudden turn of the wheel, power has even passed from one race to another. Further, on the social side, there have been complete changes rather than modifications, and these were more or less far-reaching, as the groups that successively held the chief power were more or less different. While the north of France was the preponderating element in national politics, feudalism—or rather a degenerate parody of feudalism—maintained itself with fair success; and the municipal spirit followed its fortunes. After the expulsion of the English, in the fifteenth century, and the restoration of national independence under Charles VII, the central provinces, which had taken the chief part in this revolution and were far less Germanic in race than the districts beyond the Loire, naturally saw their Gallo-Roman blood predominant in the camp and the council-chamber. They combined the taste for military life and foreign conquest—the heritage of the Celtic race—with the love of authority that was innate in their Roman blood; and they turned the current of national feeling in this direction. During the sixteenth century they largely prepared the ground on which, in 1599, the Aquitanian supporters of Henry IV, less Celtic though still more Roman than themselves, laid the foundation stone of another and greater edifice of absolute power. When Paris, whose population is certainly a museum of the most varied ethnological specimens, had finally gained dominion over the rest of France owing to the centralizing policy favoured by the Southern character, it had no longer any reason to love, respect, or understand any particular tendency or tradition. This great capital, this Tower of Babel, broke with the past—the past of Flanders, Poitou, and Languedoc — and dragged the whole of France into ceaseless experiments with doctrines that were quite out of harmony with its ancient customs.
We cannot therefore admit that institutions make peoples
