From The Contemporary Review. science, one form of government, and ON SOME NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS even in literature the substance at least OF EUROPEAN SOCIETY. THE word "society" is employed in various senses. We use it in political science to designate the community of men united to a State; in the language of certain aristocratic circles in Paris and London it means a league between a limited number of coteries, whose chief care is to keep their doors closed, in order to follow the important pursuit of amusement among themselves. It is not our purpose here to treat either of Rousseau's or of fashionable society, but of the totality of those classes which everywhere represent national culture, and are, properly speaking, not only its chief producers but chief consumers, which preside over national activity, which take the lead in State and Church, commerce and manufactures, letters and science, - in short, of the whole of that stratum of the nation which in Germany, characteristically enough, goes by the name of the "educated class" (die Gebildeten). Now, the nature and habitus of this society has, in different nations, at different periods, assumed set forms under the determining influence here of this, there of that particular class, now of this, now of that predominating interest. It is clearly not unimportant whether a national society took its definite form during the sixteenth or eighteenth century, whether the decisive part in its formation was played by a community of peaceful burghers or by a nobility of soldiers, whether the principle which prevailed in its constitution was that of art or religion, of science or the State. It may not be uninteresting to trace this progress of development in different nationalities, even should we keep strictly to the high-road without tarrying by the way, much less allowing ourselves to be enticed into any of the many byways lying invitingly on every side. was common to all nationalities. On the other hand, each single nation was divided into strictly severed castes; the citizens and the clergy, the clergy and the knights, were sharply separated from each other without intermedium. In a similar way all intellectual intercourse between the provinces was impeded by differences of dialect, or could only be carried on by means of Latin-i.e., of a universal instrument, which hardly permitted the spirit of a nation to find utterance. The development of a national society dates only from the Renaissance, for it was not till then that the races of Europe began to form into individual nations, that each of these proceeded to develop a political and linguistic unity of its own, which enabled the cultured classes to approach each other, to indulge in the interchange of thought and feeling, to act and live together, and to feel the healthy glow of common inter ests. In this point Italy preceded every other European nation; for although, at the close of the fifteenth century, it had not yet formed a national State like the united kingdoms of Spain, England, and France, it had begun since the last German invasion to feel itself an independent nation, like the Greeks of old as opposed to the barbarians. A generation earlier, the written language of Italy had already been recognized as such from the Alps to the Passaro. Above all, the barriers of caste between the educated had well-nigh completely disappeared by the time the revival of classical antiquity gave all of them a common interest. Here, however, it was neither the army nor the clergy, it was the citizen class - i popolani grassi especially the commercial portion of it, towards which the rest gravitated, which absorbed the others, or at least infused its spirit into them. At the time of the Renaissance Italian society was essentially a town society, nor has it ever ceased NATIONAL Society was a thing un- to be so. In political as well as in intelknown to the Middle Ages. The spirit lectual life, the towns stood in the foreby which they were animated was a spirit ground: Milan and Genoa, Venice and of universality; throughout the whole of Florence, Bologna, Pisa, Siena, Perugia. Europe there was but one religion, one | During the fifteenth, and even until the I. beginning of the sixteenth century, some | reality were their subjects remained in of these cities were great European powers of about the same importance as the Netherlands in the seventeenth; and in the greater part of them the citizen class of wholesale merchants had early overpowered the military nobility of Germanic origin and possessed themselves of the sovereignty. Who does not know, by Dante's example, that a noble was not allowed to take part in the government of Florence until he had renounced his title and had himself inscribed in a corporation? And the armies employed by each of these cities to fight its bloodless battles were no nursery-ground for a fresh aristocracy. Held as they were in slight esteem, recruited from the lowest orders, of very little influence in the State, they always remained dependants of the lords of the cities. Even in towns, where, towards the close of that period, the generals mostly men of low extraction succeeded in seizing the reins of government, as, for instance, the Sforzas in Milan, their officers did not form a military nobility that gave the tone to society. Nor was it otherwise with the clergy. Education having become diffused among the laity, their influence was very small, nor did they in any sense take the lead in society, neither had they any privileged position, nor did they enjoy any special reverence. The clergy intermingled with the rest of that citizen class from which they mostly sprang, and when a prelate became the object of any special regard, this distinction came to him in virtue of his superior attainments, the weight of his individuality, or his connection with powerful citizens, never in virtue of his clerical dignity alone. The men who rose to distinction in the State, in letters, in art, belonged almost exclusively to the citizen class. Petrarch's father was a notary, Boccaccio's a merchant, Macchiavelli and Guicciardini were of middleclass parentage. Even long after certain families had grown into dynasties and certain groups of families into oligarchies, they still continued to trade as before, not always to the advantage of the State which they ruled at the same time, while their relations towards those who in Nor was form those of fellow-citizens. The relation of Cosimo de' Medici towards Donatello and Brunelleschi resembled far more that of a friend than of a patron, and the intercourse between his grandson Lorenzo and the Pulcis or Angelo Poliziano took place on a footing of familiar equality. The fact is, that these sovereigns were not foreign conquerors, such as ruled in other countries and in Italy also at an earlier period, neither had their ancestors led a separate unapproachable life from times immemorial. Here rulers and ruled had grown up together, had transacted business with one another, and the fiction that the rulers were only allowed to govern by the consent of the entire community was still retained. Hence the tone of complete equality which prevailed in these circles. it predominant in Florence only; for even in Ferrara, the only northern state of Italy whose sovereigns belonged to a nobility established by foreign conquest, the same tone reigned, albeit with somewhat less freedom. The examples of the cities exercised in fact a decisive influence. Outwardly at least, this democratic equality has kept its ground in daily intercourse even to the present day. Nowhere are conventional forms less observed than in Italy, they are only brought forward on great State occasions; whereas in ordinary circumstances a familiar laisser-aller is the order of the day, which among Italians, chastened as they are by centuries of civilization, seldom degenerates into vulgarity. Still this Italian society, in spite of its ready wit, its brio, and its inborn gracefulness, had not at that time, nor has it now, the peculiar charm of French and Spanish society, as it appears in the comedies and novels of the sixteenth century; that charm which consists in the art of mov ing freely within the limits of conventional forms, of making them bend to the will, of allowing the individuality free play in spite of them, of knowing how to speak of anything and everything without infringing them. Such social intercourse was in fact a game of skill, which, though not without its dangers as well as its fas Ben mi par di veder ch' al secol nostro cinations, differs as widely from. vulgar | operation of all the forces of woman's na- This social equality which acknowl- Thus the gulf which now yawns between the sexes was at that time nowhere perceptible, nor was there any opportunity for the modern blue-stocking to arise, since she is a product of the unnatural state of things by which women are debarred from the educational advantages of men, so that those who contrive to obtain them find themselves isolated among their own sex, and are in danger of appearing and indeed of becoming unwomanly. "In the hands of the women of the Renaissance," as a contemporary writer finely expresses it, "the education of their time only became an instrument with which to develop their feminine characteristics more brilliantly; not the result of an exterior, conventional education, but an interior harmony, arising from the co For, indeed, they were not a few, those Who does not recollect Vittoria Colonna, | but even the State, and above all the indiMichael Angelo's beautiful muse? Above viduality, works of art. And here it was all, where can we find a finer type of true that the Renaissance, which possessed no womanhood than Isabella of Mantua, conventional compass, too soon struck whose letters to her husband, to her sis-upon the rocks which were destined to ter-in-law of Urbino, to her artist friends, wreck the vessel of Italian society. It reveal a feminine soul of such finished had been able to reach the highest possigrace through their somewhat constrained ble pitch of art, because here liberty was form. Now we find her receiving the restrained by law, and Ariosto has remost learned works of antiquity from Al-mained the most striking example of an dus Manutius; now it is Ariosto who apparently unrestrained, in reality strictly submits to her the sketch of his "Orlando controlled freedom. Not so in daily life; Furioso;" Bellini is unable to supply her for here people only too readily forgot fast enough to please her; she listens to that the Muses should accompany, but are Plautus's comedies, ay, even to Cardinal incapable of guiding life. An age which Bibbiena's " Calándra," a piece which could see no more guilt in a Cæsar Bormen would nowadays hardly venture to gia than in a tiger lurking for and pouncread aloud to each other, and enjoys it ing upon its prey, could not long hold merrily in company with the men belong together. Art is indifferent to morals; ing to her society; yet no one who had society cannot subsist without moral conever seen her found her a whit less wom-vention. Art is inexorably true; society anly because she had read Vitruvius, or cannot dispense with a certain amount of dreamt of casting a doubt on her purity hypocrisy. The absolute indifference and chastity because she could laugh with regard to social morality, and the heartily at Macchiavelli's " Manragola" undisguised love of truth which characGirls under twenty were, of course, not admitted to social intercourse with their elders, any more than boys of the same age, and unmarried women above twenty were so extremely rare at that time that they scarcely come into account. terize this period, —a love of truth, by the way, which was quite compatible with the use of direct falsehood or dissimulation in order to attain a given end, — the worship of nature as infallible, and the contempt for any other authority, necessarily led this society to its dissolution, and had done so, in fact, long ere Spanish influences fettered the life of Italy. Women's influence in the State was, for the most part, quite indirect, although a few, like Caterina Sforza, took openly a leading share in politics. In general, the Unrestrained political license had alpart played by women was confined to ready resulted in petty despotism before the truly feminine mission of receiving an unlimited intellectual freedom resulted and returning ideas and aims; they sel- in narrow-minded bigotry. True, art had dom took the initiative either in thought not ceased to be cultivated; but it had or action; but they lent the lives of those become an exterior thing, and the artist indomitable men moderation, grace, and degenerated with inconceivable rapidity refinement, whenever a lull in the inexora-into the virtuoso, the man of science into ble struggle for existence gave them an the pedant, poetry became academism, opportunity of doing so. And thus they sociability a mere satisfaction of empty were indeed the first to realize that artistic vanity and a coarse thirst for pleasure. ideal which the whole age had in its mind's Commerce declined, and with it a free, eye. For arti.e., the interpreting rep- high-spirited class of citizens. Work resentation of nature was the principle began to be discredited; a man of quality which pervaded the whole intellectual lived on the inheritance of his forefathers atmosphere of the age. During the mem- -nay, even down to the present day, orable interview between Charles V. and Italians give the name signori only to Pope Clement VII. at Bologna, which those who have enough to live upon withwas to seal the fate of Italy for many out working. The ancient city patriciate years to come, the wonderfully wrought itself became a nobility, not of arms, but clasp, designed by Benvenuto Cellini to of court offices. And what courts were fasten the pope's mantle, caused both those at which the descendants of the sovereigns for fully a quarter of an hour great merchants of the fourteenth cento lose sight of the purpose for which tury were now content to fawn for titles they had met. It was their desire to ren- and dignities, even when, as at Florence, der not only their domestic surroundings, the new sovereigns descended from a their dress, their dwellings, utensils, gar- race of traders! They were the courts dens, their banquets and entertainments, of small vassals to great foreign poten tates. The horizon had narrowed. No-vent into marriage; on them likewise the where was there an open view to be had absence of all public life acted depressof the wide ocean of European politics. ingly, damping their energies; they also The noble freedom of intercourse which were shut out from the interests which had prevailed during the previous cen- animated the men; they also, like the tury gave way to an oppressive etiquette, men, allowed themselves to be absorbed a formal, Spanish ceremonial replaced the by petty social and religious formalities preceding laisser-aller. Outside the court, and the jealousies of position and rank, it is true, the old tone of friendly inti- or gave themselves up, behind closed macy was still preserved in the intercourse doors, to every caprice of passion or inbetween the cultured middle class and the dolence. The one thing which slightly newly-created nobles, who were so numer- relieved and enlivened the hopeless emptious that their titles were almost meaning-ness of female existences such as these, less; but it had become purely a matter was recognized, tolerated cicisbeism; of form, and this merely external equality, while the inborn grace, the childlike simwhich had been inherited from the age plicity, so nearly akin to nature, of Italian of the Renaissance, can only deceive the women, perhaps also the inheritance of eye of the superficial observer. Then, as the oldest of European civilizations, toned now, counts and marquises exchanged down and refined to a certain degree the the familiar "thou " with lawyers and pro- inner poverty of such a life. The traces fessors, but only with the certain knowl- of this existence of the seventeenth and edge, that the distance which separated eighteenth centuries are not yet quite them inwardly could not be overstepped, obliterated; but Italy is perhaps the counas Don Giovanni is able to joke with try which has undergone the greatest Leporello with impunity, because both social revolution during the last forty inwardly feel how great a gulf is fixed years, a revolution which is still proceedbetween them. In fact, a relationship of ing. French domination at the beginning client to patron had taken the place of of this century, and the almost uninterthe former equality. The decline of com- rupted influence of French literature ever merce and of manufacture, the wide ex- since; the levelling of all frontiers in the tension of the court and of the service of interior; the present rule of the Piedmon the State besides, had for their conse- tese, a race more nearly allied to the quence a steadily increasing poverty and Swiss than to the Italians; above all, the servility of the middle class; the number rise of a new ruling class, and precisely and influence of parasites was continu- of that very same middle class which for ally augmenting. Contrary to the cus- the two previous centuries had been so tom elsewhere, the Church, justice, gov-poor and so humbly dependent, and which ernment offices became a refuge for these to-day reigns supreme and is fully conreduced classes, who no longer felt it scious of the advantages of its position, a humiliation to be patronized by the all this has contributed to bring about wealthy. The dignity with which reli- a transformation, which is still far from gion, jurisprudence, and the State are being completed. wont elsewhere to invest their servants, here had lost all its value; the priest was an affable bachelor to whom the smaller social functions were entrusted, nothing more; the man of learning, the poet generally also an abbé-was the panegyrist, at times even the buffoon of the noble house; the judge was hardly anything but a business agent; the State councillor was a steward to the signori. The wives and daughters of such professional men -for commerce had almost entirely dwindled into a retail trade-led the life of maidservants, in extreme poverty, seclusion, and obscurity, from which they only issued on high days and holidays. The women of higher rank, it is true, continued to be the centre of society, in the aristocratic acceptation of the term; but they, too, passed at a bound from the con II. IN France likewise the influence of Spain was powerfully felt after that of Italy; but in that country national life was so vigorous, that it soon completely subjected and absorbed the foreign element. From time immemorial the State had been led, the Church governed, and the cultivation of literature and science appropriated to themselves, by the nobility of the sword and the robe. These two classes had at an early period entered into a league with the crown against the higher aristocracy. But the more independent the monarchy rendered itself of that aristocracy, the greater became the influence and importance of its allies. Finally, when Richelieu had overcome the higher nobility, they also entered into |