Henceforth France was marching towards
the unknown, tossed about as she was by divers movements, which were
mostly hostile to the old state of things, blindly and confusedly as yet,
but, under the direction of masters as inexperienced as they were daring,
full of frequently noble though nearly always extravagant and reckless
hopes, all founded on a thorough reconstruction of the bases of society
and of its ancient props. Far more even than the monarchy, at the close
of Louis XV.'s reign, did religion find itself attacked and threatened;
the blows struck by the philosophers at fanaticism recoiled upon the
Christian faith, transiently liable here below for human errors and
faults over which it is destined to triumph in eternity.

CHAPTER LV.----LOUIS XV., THE PHILOSOPHERS.

Nowhere and at no epoch had literature shone with so vivid a lustre as
in the reign of Louis XIV.; never has it been in a greater degree the
occupation and charm of mankind, never has it left nobler and rarer
models behind it for the admiration and imitation of the coming race;
the writers of Louis XV.'s age, for all their brilliancy and all their
fertility, themselves felt their inferiority in respect of their
predecessors. Voltaire confessed as much with a modesty which was by no
means familiar to him. Inimitable in their genius, Corneille, Bossuet,
Pascal, Moliere left their imprint upon the generation that came after
them; it had judgment enough to set them by acclamation in the ranks of
the classics; in their case, greatness displaced time. Voltaire took
Racine for model; La Mothe imagined that he could imitate La Fontaine.
The illustrious company of great minds which surrounded the throne of
Louis XIV., and had so much to do with the lasting splendor of his reign,
had no reason to complain of ingratitude on the part of its successors;
but, from the pedestal to which they raised it, it exercised no potent
influence upon new thought and new passions. Enclosed in their glory as
in a sanctuary, those noble spirits, discreet and orderly even in their
audacities, might look forth on commotions and yearnings they had never
known; they saw, with astonishment mingled with affright, their
successors launching without fear or afterthought upon that boundless
world of intellect, upon which the rules of conscience and the
difficulties of practical life do not come in anywhere to impose limits.
They saw the field everywhere open to human thought,