THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY IN FRANCE.* THIS book is an ambitious
and fairly successful attempt at a. difficult end—that of reconstructing the manners of a century. The difficulties of so wide a plan seem almost unconquerable when we consider what arbitrary, imaginary barriers they are that divide one set of a hundred years from another. Some- times indeed, as in the case of the eighteenth century, the division is reasonable. The years that separate the death of Louis XIV. and the rise of Napoleon have a distinct character and a steady development of their own ; they can be studied from one standpoint. It is very different with the century that begins with Henry IV. and ends with Louis XIV.'s later days. The France of the one was not the same world as the France of the other. The merry brutalities of the Bearnais and his Court seem to belong to a time of barbarism—a reaction from the false civilization of the -Valois—when they are looked back on from the days of Fenelon and Madame de Maintenon. And yet, when we talk of the seventeenth century, the one state of manners has as much right to be considered as the other.
Thus Miss Hugon set herself a long and a hard task when she proposed to show us the seventeenth century in France. It is not surprising that the book is a little confused and con- fusing, and fails somewhat, as a whole, in unity and perspective. It shows some lack of tech iical skill and of that " choix qui fait l'artisto." The materials, of course, were more than plentiful, and Miss Hugon has made the fullest use of them ; it is sometimes difficult " to see the wood for the trees." In spite, or perhaps because, of this the book is specially amusing to dip into here and there. The criticisms we have made do not interfere with its very real and striking merits. Besides being a monument of industrious study, it is agreeably written and fall of vivid pictures of life, high and low, throughout the length of the century. Etiquette at the Courts of the three Kings, with portraits of the typical figures of their reigns, is the subject of several pleasant chapters : Louis XIV.'s Court and surroundings have naturally the lion's share of notice, but there are some very lively pages dealing with the Fronde, and especially with that most characteristic of royal rebels, la Grande Mademoiselle. The atmosphere of Courts and courtiers, however, is not so attractive to Miss Hugon as that of a lower, less conspicuous, but, as she rightly thinks, more important world. " It is," she says, " in the great army of the poor . . . that the chief interest of the period lies." The poor and the middle classes ; the inarticulate millions, silenced by Richelieu after the States-General of 1614, who worked and paid the taxes, and with whom few or none of the memoir-writers of the century cared to concern themselves—the life of these, both in Paris and the country, has been carefully studied in some of the most interesting
• Social Life in France in the Seventeenth Century. By Cecile Hugon, some. time Scholar of Somerville College, Oxford, With 12 Illustrations. London: Methuen and Co. 110s. 6d. net
pages of the book. Here too shine its most nobly beneficent figures, such as Angelique of Port-Royal, Saint-Vincent de Paul, and such less-known names as Madame de Maignelais and Mademoiselle Le Gras.
The country life of the poorer gentry is a curious and un- familiar subject with which Miss Hugon deals at length and very successfully. .Art, science, religion in all its aspects— and how much that means in the seventeenth century !- education, literature, manners—nothing is left out. A pedigree of the Houses of Bourbon and Conde, a chronological table of events, an historical introduction, an excellent index and bibliography, should make the book valuable to those who read not for amusement alone.
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