ON THE

HISTORY OF FRANCE.

BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE

SIR JAMES STEPHEN, K.C.B., LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF

CAMBRIDGE.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

82 CLIFF STREET.

1852.

ΤΟ

THE REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, D.D.,

MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

MY DEAR SIR,

I SHOULD be sorely embarrassed if it were necessary for me, in dedicating this book to you, to attempt an imitation of that lapidary style in which Dryden and his contemporaries were accustomed to lay their works at the feet of their patrons. I could with almost equal ease present myself at your hospitable lodge at Trinity, in a coat embroidered like that in which Dryden, when in statu pupillari there, may have waited on the Master of his days. Perhaps, indeed, neither our language nor our appearance has really been improved by the exchange of the habits of our ancestors for those now in use among us. But, at present, I gladly avail myself of the unceremonious fashions of our age to address you, not in a formal inscription, but in a familiar letter, since in such a letter I shall best be able to pur. sue that discursive course which will, I foresee, be necessary for bringing under your notice some of the many topics to which I am desirous to refer.

When, in the summer of 1849, her majesty was pleased to appoint me to be her Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, I consulted three, and three only, of my friends, as to the means by which I could most effectually discharge the duties of my office, apprising each of them that the History of France was the subject on which I first proposed to enter. "In that case," answered Mr. John Austin (from whose company no man ever returned without a fuller mind and a warmer heart), "your business will be to ex