furniture, plate, objects of art, the accumulated masterpieces of centuries.—­ We can judge of it by an estimate of the portion belonging to the clergy.  Its possessions, capitalized, amount to nearly 4,000,000,000 francs.[5] Income from this amounts to 80 or 100 millions.  To this must be added the dime (or tithes), 123 millions per annum, in all 200 millions, a sum which must be doubled to show its equivalent at the present day.  We must also add the chance contributions and the usual church collections.[6] To fully realize the breadth of this golden stream let us look at some of its affluents. 399 monks at Prémontré estimate their revenue at more than 1,000,000 livres, and their capital at 45,000,000.  The Provincial of the Dominicans of Toulouse admits, for his two hundred and thirty-six monks, “more than 200,000 livres net revenue, not including the convent and its enclosure; also, in the colonies, real estate, Negroes and other effects, valued at several millions.”  The Benedictines of Cluny, numbering 298, enjoy an income of 1,800,000 livres.  Those of Saint-Maur, numbering 1672, estimate the movable property of their churches and houses at 24,000,000, and their net revenue at 8 millions, “without including that which accrues to Messieurs the abbots and priors commendatory,” which means as much and perhaps more.  Dom Rocourt, abbot of Clairvaux, has from 300,000 to 400,000 livres income; the Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasbourg, more than 1,000,000.[7] In Franche-Comté, Alsace and Roussillon the clergy own one-half of the territory, in Hainaut and Artois, three-quarters, in Cambrésis fourteen hundred plow-areas out of seventeen hundred.[8] Almost the whole of Le Velay belongs to the Bishop of Puy, the abbot of La Chaise-Dieu, the noble chapter of Brionde, and to the seigniors of Polignac.  The canons of St. Claude, in the Jura, are the proprietors of 12,000 serfs or ’mainmorts.’[9] — Through fortunes of the first class we can imagine those of the second.  As along with the noble it comprises the ennobled.  As the magistrates for two centuries, and the financiers for one century had acquired or purchased nobility, it is clear that here are to be found almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business.  When a class reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are mounting or clambering up.  Here, too, there is colossal wealth.  It has been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal family, the Comtés of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d’Orléans and de Penthiévre then covered one-seventh of the territory.[10] The princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25 millions; the Duc d’Orléans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.[11] —­ These are the vestiges of the feudal régime.  Similar vestiges are found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia.  Proprietorship, indeed, survives a long time survives the circumstances on which it is founded.  Sovereignty had constituted property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands formerly sovereign.  In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or modified sovereign.