erated in
producing the change to which I have referred. It found the greater
portion of the _noblesse_ luxuriating in pleasure, and thinking only of
selfish, if not of criminal indulgence, in pursuits equally marked by
puerility and vice.

The corruption of the regency planted the seeds of vice in French
morals, and they yielded a plentiful harvest. How well has St.-Evremond
described that epoch in his playful, but sarcastic verses!--

"Une politique indulgente,
De notre nature innocente,
Favorisait tous les desirs;
Tout gout paraissait legitime,
La douce erreur ne s'appelait point crime,
Les vices delicats se nommalent des plaisirs."

But it was reserved for the reign of Louis the Fifteenth to develope
still more extensively the corruption planted by his predecessor. The
influence exercised on society by the baleful example of his court had
not yet ceased, and time had not been allowed for the reign of the mild
monarch who succeeded that gross voluptuary to work the reform in
manners, if not in morals, which his own personal habits were so well
calculated to produce. It required the terrible lesson given by the
Revolution to awaken the natural feelings of affection that had so long
slumbered supinely in the enervated hearts of the higher classes in
France, corrupted by long habits of indulgence in selfish
gratifications. The lesson at once awoke even the most callous; while
those, and there were many such, who required it not, furnished the
noblest examples of high courage and self-devotion to the objects dear
to them.

In exile and in poverty, when all extraneous sources of consolation
were denied them, those who if still plunged in pleasure and splendour
might have remained insensible to the blessings of family ties, now
turned to them with the yearning fondness with which a last comfort is
clasped, and became sensible how little they had hitherto estimated
them.

Once awakened from their too long and torpid slumber, the hearts
purified by affliction learned to appreciate the blessings still left
them, and from the fearful epoch of the Revolution a gradual change may
be traced in the habits and feelings of the French people. Terrible has
been the expiation of their former errors, but admirable has been the
result; for nowhere can be now found more devoted parents, more dutiful
children, or more attached relatives, than among the French _noblesse_.

If the lesson afforded by th