"The France on which he [Louis XVIII] had again set his foot was not the France which he had formerly known. The violent and searching revolution, which had driven him into exile, had, during his absence, done the work of ages. The ecclesiastical constitution, the civil administration, the geographical boundaries, had been changed. The limits of the old provinces had been effaced. The privileges of the old aristocracy had passed away. A new body of proprietors held the soil by a new tenure. A new jurisprudence was administered by a new magistracy. A new people – new in their opinions, their prejudices, and their social relations, – had sprung into existence. Between the living generation and that which had preceded it there was a great gulf, such as that which separates the modern nations of Europe from those great civilised societies which flourished before the northern invasions."