DE RETZ. 'The Mitred Alcibiades of the Fronde.'-LAMARTINE. THE great religious wave of the Reformation which had swept over central and western Europe during the sixteenth century had loosened the very foundations of mediævalism, and scarcely had the waters of that mighty flood begun to subside ere another and yet more resistless wave, that of political freedom, carried away feudalism into the ocean of eternity. From end to end of the civilised world men's minds were convulsed with the throes of a new birth of thought. The Netherlands had thrown off the yoke of Spain; England was girding up her loins for her great struggle against tyranny; and France, turbulent but purposeless, as usual, having under the iron rule of Richelieu recruited her strength from the exhausting wars of the League, was preparing to make a last struggle against that absolutism which, victorious at last, for nearly a hundred and fifty years afterwards encrusted, but did not extinguish, her volcanic fires. |