Their pictures and engravings enable us to take part in their domestic life, see how they dress, observe their attitudes and follow their movements.

Through their literature, philosophy, scientific pursuits, gazettes, and correspondence, we can reproduce their feeling and thought, and even enjoy their familiar conversation.

The multitude of memoirs, issuing during the past thirty years from public and private archives, lead us from one drawing room to another, as if we bore with us so many letters of introduction.

The independent descriptions by foreign travelers, in their journals and correspondence, correct and complete the portraits, which this society has traced of itself.
Everything that it could state has been stated, except, * what was commonplace and well-known to contemporaries, * whatever seemed technical, tedious and vulgar, * whatever related to the provinces, to the bourgeoisie, the peasant, to the laboring man, to the government, and to the household.
It has been my aim to fill this void, and make France known to others outside the small circle of the literary and the cultivated.

Owing to the kindness of M.Maury[0011] and the precious indications of M.
Boutaric, I have been able to examine a mass of manuscript documents.
These include the correspondence of a large number of intendants, (the Royal governor of a large district), the directors of customs and tax offices, legal officers, and private persons of every kind and of every degree during the thirty last years of the ancient regime.