POLITICAL SCIENCE.

refinements grew up, which made the country nobles feel an
inferiority to the citizen in spite of their pride.* And here
finally, the various kinds of literary men gathered; books
were copied, lectures beyond the demands of mere profes-
sional life were given, and a learned class arose, forming a
sort of brotherhood through a country, or even over Europe.
The changes from these sources might be slow, but the politi-
cal condition could not be what it was before, and the third
estate grew in consciousness of strength — at first within the
towns, then as a general body, until from the towns came,
first, a predominant opinion and a feeling of nationality, then
the demand for alteration in government. In some countries
they did not in the end gain very much ; and there was ho
great sympathy in them for the peasantry, which long re-
mained a dead and blind mass, unless other forces, those of
religion and education, came in to raise them from their igno-
rance and serfdom. The greatest of all the political evils,
that the peasant did not own the land which he tilled, re-
mained a problem for the future to solve.

274.
Revolutions.
The political changes which we have just considered have
Kinds of revoiu- keen slow, often unperccived, and incapable of
tlons* being estimated, save by history looking far
backward. There is another kind of changes arising, it may
be, out of one or more of the same causes, aided by some
great grievance of the present, which have been common
enough under free institutions, and wherever a nation has
reached an advanced point of activity in thinking and judging
of its own affairs. These differ from the other changes in
being explosive and in demanding immediate political altera-
tions or reforms, by force if necessary. They differ among
themselves in this, that there may be no concert, no conspir-
acy ; but there must be a common feeling, whicji, irritated in
*Comp. Villani, 1st. Fior., b. vii., ch. 88, "on a noble company
which was gotten up in Florence in 1283."