A History of France - from the Earliest Times to 1889

A great poet of another nation called France the soldier of God. For more than twelve centuries, indeed, she seems to have acted, fought, and conquered or suffered, for the whole world. It has been her singular privilege that nothing of the greatest magnitude has been accomplished in Europe without her having a hand in it; no great political or social experiment has been tried that has not first been worked out within her borders; and her history is a summary and abstract of the whole history of modern civilization. Such was the part played by Athens in the Greek world, and later, in the third age of ancient civilization, that of Rome. For there is always one point at which the general life is most intense and rich, a focus in which civilization concentrates its scattered rays...