Original subtitles

(MUSIC) MOZART: String Quintet in E Flat Major

What witty, intelligent faces.

They are the successful dramatists of 18th-century Paris,

and their busts stand in the foyer of the French National Theatre

that theatre which for a hundred years

did so much to promote good sense and humanity.

And here is the wittiest and most intelligent of them all.

In fact, at a certain level, one of the most intelligent men that have ever lived,

Voltaire.

He's smiling...

the smile of reason.

You know, there's a character called Fontenelle - a French philosopher -

who, by living to be nearly a hundred,

bridged the 17th and 18th centuries,

the world of Newton and the world of Voltaire.

He held a position known as Perpetual Secretary at the Academy of Science.

He told an interviewer that he had never run and never lost his temper.

The interviewer asked him if he had ever laughed.

He said, "No, I have never made ha-ha."

But he smiled

and so do all the other distinguished writers, philosophers, dramatists and hostesses

of the French 18th century.

It seems to us shallow.

We've got into deep water in the last 50 years.

We feel that people ought to be more passionate,

more convinced or, as the current jargon has it, more committed.

The smile of reason may seem to betray

a certain incomprehension of the deeper human emotions,

but it didn't preclude some strongly-held beliefs.

Belief in natural law, belief in justice,

belief in toleration.

Not bad.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment

pushed European civilisation some steps up the hill...

..and in theory, at any rate,

this gain was consolidated throughout the 19th century.

Up to the 1930s, people were supposed not to burn witches

and other members of minority groups,

or extract confessions by torture,

or pervert the course of justice,

or go to prison for speaking the truth,

except, of course, during wars.

This we owe to the movement known as the Enlightenment

and above all, to Voltaire.

Although the victory of reason and tolerance was won in France

it was initiated in England

and the French philosophers never concealed their debt

to the country that, in a score of years,

had produced Newton, Locke and the Bloodless Revolution.

When Voltaire visited England in the 1720s,

it had enjoyed a quarter of a century of very vigorous intellectual life,

and although Swift, Pope and Addison

might give and receive some hard knocks in print,

they weren't physically beaten up by the hired gangs of offended noblemen,

or sent to prison for satirical references to the Establishment.

Both these things happened to Voltaire,

and as a result he took refuge in England in 1726.

It was the age of the great country houses,

and in 1722 the most splendid of all

had just been completed for Marlborough.

There it is - Blenheim Palace.

(MUSIC) HANDEL: Firework Music, Minuet II

A superb setting, but not everybody's idea of a pleasant country retreat.

When Voltaire saw it, he exclaimed

"What a great heap of stone,

without charm or taste!"

Well, it was built as a monument to military glory,

and the architect, Sir John Vanbrugh, was a natural romantic

a castle builder who didn't care a fig for good taste and classical decorum.

18th-century England was the paradise of the amateur,

by which I mean men rich enough and grand enough to do whatever they liked,

who, nevertheless, did things that require a good deal of expertise.

One of the things they chose to do

was architecture.

Wren began as a brilliant amateur

and, although he made himself into a professional,

he retained the amateur's freedom of approach to every problem,

and two of his chief successors were amateurs by any definition.

Sir John Vanbrugh wrote plays,

but he also designed the vast and complicated structure of Blenheim.

Lord Burlington was a connoisseur and a collector and arbiter of taste.

The sort of character nowadays much despised,

but he built this small masterpiece of domestic architecture - Chiswick.

(MUSIC) MUDGE: Concerto in D Major

One may wonder how many professional architects today

could handle these problems of design

as expertly as Lord Burlington has done.

These steps and colonnades Look very imposing,

but the building behind them is quite small,

about the size of an old parsonage.

In fact, Chiswick was not meant for day-to-day existence,

but for social occasions -

conversation, intrigue,

political gossip and a little music.

Of course, it's only a miniature,

a kind of glorified jewel box,

and yet I don't feel that it's at all pinched or constricted.

In a way, these 18-century amateurs

were the inheritors of the Renaissance ideal of universal man

and it's significant that the typical universal man of the Renaissance, Alberti

had also been an architect.

If we may still consider architecture to be a social art

an art by which men may be, enabled to lead a fuller life

then perhaps the architect should touch life at many points

and not be too narrowly specialised.

18th-century amateurism ran through everything:

chemistry, philosophy, botany and natural history.

It produced men like the indefatigable Sir Joseph Banks,

who refused to go on Captain Cook's second voyage

because he wasn't allowed to have two horn players

to make music for him during dinner.

There was a freshness and a freedom of mind in these men

that is entirely lost in the rigidly-controlled classifications of the professional.

And they were independent,

with all the advantages and disadvantages to society that result from that condition.

They wouldn't have fitted into our modern Utopia.

I recently heard a Professor of Sociology

say on television,

"What's not prohibited must be made compulsory."

Not a suggestion that would have attracted those eminent visitors

Voltaire and Rousseau

who drew inspiration from our philosophy and our institutions...

..and our tolerance.

But as usual, there was another side to this shining medal,

and of this we have an exceptionally vivid record in the work of Hogarth.

(MUSIC) In the days of my youth I could bill like a dove

(MUSIC) Falala, la, la, lalarala, la-di

(MUSIC) In the days of her youth she could bill like a dove

(MUSIC) Like a sparrow at all times was ready for love

(MUSIC) Falalala, la-di, falalala, la-di

(MUSIC) Falala, lalala, la-la-la-di

(MUSIC) The life of all mortals in kissing should pass

(MUSIC) Falala, la, la, lalarala, la-di

(MUSIC) The life of all mortals in kissing should pass

(MUSIC) Lip to lip while we're young

(MUSIC) Then the lip to the glass

(MUSIC) Falalala, la-di

(MUSIC) Falalala, la-di

(MUSIC) Falala, lalala, la-la-la-di (MUSIC)

Drinking, wenching, stealing...

No more than today, I suppose,

but rather more openly.

All this coarse life

is painted with great delicacy.

And although Hogarth's compositions are rather a muddle

one can't deny that he had a gift of narrative invention.

In later life, he did a series of pictures of an election

that are easy to follow, and a very convincing comment

on the much-cracked-up democracy of 18th-century England.

Here's the polling booth,

with imbeciles and moribunds being persuaded to make their marks.

And an old soldier

loyally voting for the Establishment

with his hook.

And here's the successful candidate like a fat, powdered capon,

borne in triumph by his bruisers,

who are still carrying on their private feuds.

And I must confess that Hogarth conquers my prejudice by this blind fiddler,

a real stroke of imagination outside the usual range of his moralising journalism.

The truth is, I think, that 18th-century England

in the aftermath of its middle-class revolution

had created two societies very remote from one another.

One was the society of modest country gentlemen -

of which we have a perfect record in the work of a painter called Devis -

comically stiff and expressionless in their cold, empty rooms.

True, it developed into the world of Jane Austen,

which was not lacking in critical intelligence,

but was somewhat deficient in energy.

The other was the urban society, of which Hogarth has left us many records.

Plenty of animal spirits,

but not what we could call by any stretch "civilisation".

I hope you won't think it too facile if I compare this print,

called A Midnight Modern Conversation...

..with a picture painted in the same decade called A Reading From Moliere

by the French artist de Troy.

In this series I've tried to go beyond the narrower meaning of the word "civilised",

but all the same, it has its value

and one can't deny that this is a picture of civilised life.

Even the furniture contrives to be both beautiful and comfortable at the same time.

And one reason is that

whereas all the characters in Hogarth's Midnight Conversation are male,

five out of the seven figures in the de Troy are women.

In talking about the 12th and 13th centuries,

I said how great an advance in civilisation was achieved

by a respect for feminine qualities...

..and the same was true of 18th-century France.

I think it absolutely essential to civilisation

that the male and female principles be kept in balance,

and I've observed that where, at a party, men and women hive off into separate groups,

the level of civilisation declines.

In 18th-century France, the influence of women was benevolent

and, on the whole, creative

and it produced that curious institution of the 18th century - the salon.

Those small social gatherings of intelligent men and women

drawn from all over Europe,

who met in the rooms of gifted hostesses like Madame du Deffand

were for 40 years the centres of European civilisation.

They were less poetical than the court of Urbino,

but intellectually a good deal more alert.

The ladies who presided over them were neither very young nor very rich.

Here's Madame Geoffrin, eating dinner while her servant reads to her.

We know exactly what they looked like, because French artists of the time

have portrayed them without flattery,

but with a penetrating eye for their subtlety of mind.

How did these ladies do it?

Not by beauty or physical charms.

They did it by human sympathy,

by making people feel at ease, by tact.

The success of the Parisian salon also depended on two accidental factors.

The Court and government of France were not situated in Paris

but here, in Versailles.

(MUSIC) Baroque trumpet and strings

It was a separate world.

Indeed, the courtiers of Versailles always referred to it

as "ce pays-ci" - "this country of ours".

And to this day, I enter this huge, unfriendly courtyard

with mixed feelings - panic and fatigue,

as if I were going into an alien world.

But the remoteness of Versailles had this good result:

that Parisian society was free from the stultifying rituals of Court procedure

and the trivial day-to-day preoccupations of politics.

The other thing that made 18th-century salons a source of enlightenment

was that the French upper classes were not destructively rich.

They'd lost most of their money in a financial crash

brought about by a Scottish wizard named David Law.

As I have said several times a margin of wealth is helpful to civilisation,

but for some mysterious reason, great wealth is destructive.

I suppose that some discipline and economy is as necessary in art as it is in life.

Also, great display is heartless.

The south front of Versailles is a masterpiece of architectural design,

but it doesn't touch us like something loved and familiar.

For example,

look at Chardin the greatest painter of mid-18th'-century France.

No-one has ever had a surer taste in colour and design.

Every area, every interval, every tone

gives one the feeling of perfect rightness.

Well, Chardin didn't depict the upper classes,

still less the Court.

He sometimes found his subjects in the thrifty bourgeoisie

- and what sweet people they are -

sometimes among the working class, where I think he was happiest

because he loved the basic design of pots and barrels.

They are noble in a way that a piece of Louis XV furniture couldn't be.

Chardin's pictures show the qualities immortalised in verse

by La Fontaine and Moliere

- good sense, a good heart, an approach to human relationships both simple and delicate -

and they show that these survived into the mid-18th century

and survive to this day among skilled workmen

- what the French call "artisans" -

who still maintain the character of French civilisation.

The salons where the brightest intellects of France were assembled

were more luxurious, but still not overwhelming.

The furniture was in a style that may seem to us rather extravagant,

but the rooms were of a normal size.

People could feel that they had some human relationship with one another.

After the Law crash, many of the French upper classes couldn't afford houses in Paris

and lived in apartments.

Comfort and elegance took the place of grandeur.

(MUSIC) MOZART: Piano Quartet in G Minor

We have a complete record of how people lived in mid-18th-century France,

because there were innumerable minor artists

who were content to record the contemporary scene,

instead of expressing themselves.

Here's part of a series modestly known as The Monument Of Costume

small masterpieces of design and execution.

The ladies have come to see their friend who is about to have a baby.

"Don't be afraid, dear friend," they say.

In this painting by Boucher, a lady is dressing by the fire,

her maid asking her what she is going to wear.

And here, also by Boucher, is the family sitting by the window

having their morning coffee, or more likely chocolate,

the little girl showing off her toys.

Well, nobody but a sourpuss or a hypocrite

would deny that this is an agreeable way of life.

Why do so many of us instinctively react against it?

Because we think it based on exploitation?

Well, do we really think that far?

If so, it's like being sorry for animals and not being a vegetarian.

Our whole society is based on different sorts of exploitation.

Or is it because we believe that this kind of life was shallow and trivial?

Well, that simply isn't true.

The men who enjoyed it were no fools.

Talleyrand said that only those who experienced the life of 18th-century France

had known the "douceur de vivre" - the sweetness of living -

and Talleyrand was certainly one of the most intelligent men who have ever taken up politics.

The people who frequented the salons of 18th-century France

were not merely a group of fashionable good-timers.

They were the outstanding philosophers and scientists of the time.

They wanted to publish their very revolutionary views on religion.

They wanted to curtail the power of a lazy king and an irresponsible government.

They wanted to change society.

In the end, they got rather more of a change than they'd bargained for.

The men who met each other in the salons of Madame du Deffand and Madame Geoffrin

were engaged in a great work - here it is.

An Encyclopaedia, or Dictionnaire Raisonn� Des Sciences, Des Arts, Et Des M�tiers.

It was intended to advance mankind by conquering ignorance.

It was a gigantic enterprise, as you can see.

Eventually - this is only a small part of it - there were 24 folio volumes

and, of course, it involved a great many contributors,

but the dynamo of the whole undertaking

was Diderot.

There he is, in a picture by van Loo - smiling the smile of reason - which enraged him.

He said he'd been made to look like an old cocotte

who was still trying to be agreeable.

He was a many-sided man, very intelligent

- a novelist, a philosopher, even an art critic, the great supporter of Chardin -

and in the Encyclopaedia he wrote articles on everything, from Aristotle to artificial flowers.

The aims of the Encyclopaedia seem harmless enough to us,

but, you know, authoritarian governments don't like dictionaries.

They live by lies and by bamboozling abstractions,

and they can't afford to have words accurately defined.

The Encyclopaedia was twice suppressed,

and by its ultimate triumph, the polite reunions in these elegant salons

became precursors of revolutionary politics.

They were also precursors of science.

The illustrated supplement of the Encyclopaedia is full of pictures of technical processes.

Here is one of the plates, for example,

showing the...polishing of wood.

And then another.

All the beginning, the beginning here,

shows the making of silk for the tapestry,

and this is the actual...dyeing of the wool

for the Gobelin tapestries.

And throughout the book,

there are extremely interesting examples of the techniques of the day.

In the mid-18th century, science was fashionable and romantic

as one can see from this picture by Wright of Derby.

The Experiment With The Air Pump brings us to the new age of scientific invention.

The natural philosopher, with his long hair and dedicated stare,

perhaps a trifle theatrical,

but the other characters are awfully well observed.

The little girls who can't bear to witness the death of the poor pigeon,

the sensible middle-aged man who tells them that such sacrifices must be made

in the interests of science

and the thoughtful man on the right

who is wondering if this kind of experiment

is really going to do mankind much good.

They are all taking it quite seriously,

but nonetheless, science was to some extent, an after-dinner occupation,

like playing the piano in the next century.

Even Voltaire, who spent a vast amount of time on weighing molten metal and cutting up worms,

was only a dilettante.

He lacked the patient realism of the experimenter,

and perhaps such tenacity exists only in a milieu

where quick-wittedness is less highly valued.

In the 18th century, it emerged in a country

where civilisation still had the energy of newness - Scotland.

(MUSIC) Will ye go to Sheriffmuir

(MUSIC) Bold John o'Innisture

(MUSIC) There to see the noble Mar

(MUSIC) And his Highland laddies

(MUSIC) A' the true men o'the North

(MUSIC) Angus, Huntly and Seaforth

(MUSIC) Scouring on to cross the Forth

(MUSIC) Wi' their white cockadies

(MUSIC) There you'll see the banners flare

(MUSIC) There you'll hear the bagpipes' rair

(MUSIC) And the trumpet's deadly blare

(MUSIC) Wi' the cannon's rattle

(MUSIC) There you'll see the bold McCraws'

(MUSIC) Camerons' and Clanranald's raws

(MUSIC) All the clans wi' loud huzzas

(MUSIC) Rushing to the battle

The Scottish character - and I'm a Scot myself-

shows an extraordinary combination of realism and reckless sentiment.

The sentiment has passed into popular legend and the Scots are proud of it,

and no wonder.

Where but in Edinburgh does a romantic landscape

come right into the centre of the town?

But it's the realism that counts

and that made 18th-century Scotland - a poor, remote, semi-barbarous country -

a force in European civilisation.

Let me name some 18th-century Scots.

In the world of ideas and science: Adam Smith David Hume, Joseph Black and James Watt.

It's a matter of historical fact that these were the men who, soon after the year 1760,

changed the whole current of European thought and life.

Joseph Black and James Watt discovered that heat and, in particular, steam,

could be a source of power.

Well, I needn't describe how that has changed the world!

In The Wealth Of Nations, Adam Smith invented the study of political economy

and created a social science that lasted up to the time of Karl Marx.

In his Treatise On Human Nature

Hume succeeded in proving

that experience and reason have no necessary connection with one another,

that there's no such thing as a rational belief.

Hume, as he himself said was of an open, social and cheerful humour,

and he was much beloved by the ladies in the Paris salons.

I suppose they'd never read that small book

which has made all philosophers feel uneasy till the present day.

All these great Scots lived in the grim, narrow tenements

of the Old Town of Edinburgh,

piled on the hill behind the castle.

But even in their lifetime the great Scottish architects, the brothers Adam,

had produced one of the finest pieces of town planning in Europe,

the New Town of Edinburgh.

In addition, they exploited

- I think one may almost say invented -

the strict, pure classicism that was to influence architecture

all over Europe.

In fact, another Scot named Cameron took it to Russia, with tremendous effect.

And then a Scot having popularised' neoclassicism,

Sir Walter Scott popularised the Gothic Middle Ages

and furnished the imagination of the romantically-minded for a century.

Not bad for a poor, underpopulated country.

Through the practical genius of the Scots and English,

those technical diagrams in the Encyclopaedia became a reality

and before the political revolutions of America and France had taken effect

a far deeper and more durable transformation was already underway,

what we call the Industrial Revolution.

Wright of Derby, whose imagination had been stirred

by the scientific exercises of the intellectuals,

was also moved by their first commercial application

and he painted this picture of Arkwright's mill at Cromford.

He's felt the romance of industrialism

as it begins to usurp the power of the old regime.

If, on the practical side, we had to visit Scotland,

on the moral side we must return to France.

Not to Paris, but to the borders of Switzerland

because it was there

a mile or two from the French frontier

that Voltaire made his home.

After several bad experiences,

he'd become suspicious of authority

and he liked to live in a place where he could easily slip over the border.

He didn't suffer from his exile.

He'd made a lot of money by speculation,

and his last bolthole

the Ch�teau of Ferney, is, as you see, a large, agreeable country house.

Voltaire built the wings at either end.

He also planted this alleyway of beeches

for a cool promenade on a hot day.

When he was visited by the self-important ladies of Geneva,

he would receive them seated on a bench at the far end, down there behind me.

It amused him to see how they struggled to prevent their towering, powdered wigs

from getting entangled in the branches.

Well, it's grown up a good deal since then.

It was in this room that he thought up devastating witticisms

with which to destroy his enemies.

He may even have done so in this very chair,

one of a set with the covers worked by his niece, Madame Denis.

I wish I could convey the quality of his wit to you,

but Voltaire is one of those writers whose virtue is inseparable from his style,

and true style is untranslatable.

He himself said

"One word in the wrong place will ruin the most beautiful thought."

Still more would it ruin the wit and irony,

which were his peculiar gifts.

To the end of his life he couldn't resist a joke,

but on one subject he was completely serious - justice.

Many people in his lifetime, and since, have compared him to a monkey,

but when it came to fighting injustice, he was a bulldog!

He never let go.

He pestered all his friends,

he wrote an unending stream of pamphlets

and finally he had some of the victims -

like these members of a Protestant family named Calas,

who had been cruelly persecuted in Bordeaux -

living at his expense at Ferney.

Gradually, the world ceased to think of him as an impudent libertine,

but as a patriarch and sage,

and by 1778, he at last felt it safe to return to Paris.

He was 84.

No victorious general, no lone flyer has ever been given such a reception.

He was hailed as the universal man and the friend of mankind.

People of all classes crowded round his house,

drew his carriage,

mobbed him wherever he went.

Finally, his bust was crowned on the stage of the Th�atre Fran�ais.

Naturally, it killed him, but he died triumphant.

The remarkable thing about the frivolous 18th century was its seriousness.

It was, in many ways, the heir to Renaissance humanism

but there was a vital difference.

The Renaissance had taken place within the framework of the Christian church.

A few humanists had shown signs of scepticism,

but no-one had expressed doubts about the Christian religion as a whole.

People had the comfortable moral freedom that goes with an unquestioned faith.

But by the middle of the 18th century,

serious-minded men could see that the Church had become a tied house

tied to property and status

and defending its interests by repressions and injustice.

No-one felt this more strongly than Voltaire.

"�crasez l'infame." "Crush the vermin."

It dominated his later life and he bequeathed it to his followers.

I remember HG Wells who was a kind of 20th-century' Voltaire,

saying that he daren't drive a car in France

because the temptation to run over a priest would be too strong for him.

All the same Voltaire remained a kind' of believer.

He even built a chapel at Ferney.

Over the door he had inscribed the words: "Deo erexit Voltaire."

"Voltaire" in larger letters. It was an affair solely between him and God.

However, several of the contributors to the Encyclopaedia were total materialists.

And so, the late 18th century was faced with the troublesome task

of constructing a new morality

without revelation or Christian sanctions.

This morality was built on two foundations.

One of them was the doctrine of natural law.

The other, the stoic morality of ancient republican Rome.

Republican virtue inspired the most gifted painter of his day, David.

In the Lives of Plutarch

people read about those grim, puritanical heroes of the Roman republic,

who sacrificed themselves and their, families in the interests of the State

and they took these monsters as models for a new political order.

Here's David's first great revolutionary picture,

The Oath Of The Horatii.

It was painted in 1785, and it created an effect

which those of us who remember the first appearance of Picasso's Guernica

may be able faintly to imagine.

The Oath Of The Horatii is the supreme picture of revolutionary action,

not only in its subject, but in its treatment.

Gone are all the melting outlines and pools of sensuous shadow of a Fragonard,

and in their place are these firmly-outlined expressions of will.

The unified, totalitarian gesture of the brothers,

like the kinetic image of a rotating wheel,

has an almost hypnotic quality.

Even the architecture is a conscious revolt

against the refined, ornamental style of the time.

These Tuscan columns assert the superior virtue of the plain man.

Two years later, David painted an even more grimly Plutarchian picture,

The Lictors Bringing Back To The House, Of Brutus The Bodies Of His Two Sons

whom he had condemned to death for treachery.

One of those incidents in Roman history that don't appeal to us,

but which was horribly acceptable to French feeling on the eve of the Revolution.

One sees how completely the douceur de vivre had lost its hold on the European imagination,

even before 1789.

In fact, the new morality had already guided a revolution outside Europe.

Once more we must leave the ancient focus of civilisation

and travel to the edge of the civilised world - America

for it was in this virgin soil, and not in the compost heap of Europe,

that the aims of the Encyclopaedia were first realised.

In the 18th century, no white man, except hunters,

had penetrated beyond that range of hills.

(MUSIC) Drums beat rhythmically

But here, on the border territory of the Indian,

the trapper and the buffalo,

a young Virginian lawyer elected to build his home in the 1760s.

His name was Thomas Jefferson

and he called his house Monticello - the "little mountain".

It must have been an extraordinary apparition in that wild landscape.

Jefferson made it up out of the book of the great Renaissance architect Palladio,

of which he is said to have owned the only copy in America.

But of course, he had to invent a great deal of it himself, and he was highly inventive.

The interior of the house betrays the obstinate ingenuity of a creative man

who is determined to work out everything for himself.

This is his idea for a bed

placed between two rooms in the wall,

so that he could get out either side,

either into his study or his sitting room.

And to dress, he went up this little circular stair to the room above.

And this was his own design for spectacles,

in a little box the size of a patch box.

They look a little small, but in fact they're...

You can read by them perfectly well,

and with them I can read his own edition of Vitruvius...

..the classical architect who inspired so much of his building.

It's placed on a table,

a revolving table which he designed himself,

which works very well,

and a revolving chair.

Everything, everything in the room he designed.

The drapes, the mouldings - every single thing,

and it all has a kind of simple, homespun, independent air,

which is the stamp of Jefferson.

He was the typical universal man of the 18th century.

Linguist, scientist, agriculturalist,

educator, town planner and architect.

Almost a reincarnation of Leon Battista Alberti the universal man of the Renaissance

even down to a love of music...

and the management of horses and a certain crankiness -

what, in a lesser man, could have been called a touch of self-righteousness.

What a wilful, independent head.

Of course Jefferson wasn't as good an architect as Alberti,

but then he was also President of the United States

and as an architect he was by no means bad.

Monticello was the beginning of that simple, almost rustic classicism

that stretches right up the eastern seaboard of America

right up to Massachusetts,

and lasted for a hundred years,

producing a body of simple, civilised, domestic architecture

equal to any in the world.

And it reflects the grave self-assurance of the founders of the American Republic.

Jefferson is buried in the grounds of Monticello.

He left instructions for his tomb.

On it were to be inscribed the following sentences, and not a word more.

"Here was buried Thomas Jefferson

author of the Declaration Of American Independence,

of the Statute Of Virginia For Religious Freedom,

and father of the University of Virginia."

Well, the establishment of religious freedom

that earned him so much hatred and abuse in his own day,

we now take for granted.

But the University of Virginia is still a surprise.

It was all designed by Jefferson and it's full of his character.

He called it an "academical village".

There are ten pavilions for ten professors,

and between them, behind this colonnade the rooms of the students

all within reach, and yet all individual,

the ideal of corporate humanism.

And then, outside the courtyard

are small gardens that show his love of privacy.

Those serpentine walls were Jefferson's speciality.

Nobody knows where he got them from.

Needless to say, they had a practical as well as an aesthetic intention.

The great courtyard was round three sides of a rectangle.

The fourth side you saw over the mountains to Indian territory.

How confidently, in their semi-wild domain,

the founding fathers of America assumed the mantle of Republican virtue

and put into practice the notions of the French Enlightenment.

They even called on the great sculptor of the Enlightenment, Houdon

to commemorate their victorious General Washington.

And here's the result standing in the Capitol at Richmond, Virginia.

This programme began with Houdon's statue of Voltaire, smiling the smile of reason.

It could end with Houdon's statue of Washington.

No more smiles.

Houdon saw his subject as that favourite Roman Republican hero,

the decent country gentleman

called away from his farm to defend his neighbour's liberties.

(MUSIC) HEWITT: The Battle Of Trenton

In fact, the War of Independence lasted six years,

and at the end of it the British totally withdrew their forces

and the new republic was born.

Washington retired to his farm at Mount Vernon.

The ideas of the French Enlightenment

influenced the founders of the American Constitution

and, in return the success of the American rebellion

played a part in inspiring the French to overthrow their monarchy.

After the storming of the Bastille,

Lafayette sent the key of that infamous prison as a present to Washington.

Washington hung it in the hall at Mount Vernon,

and there it has stayed ever since.

By this date, Washington had little time to spend at his home farm on the banks of the Potomac.

He had been elected first President of the United States.

(MUSIC) HEWITT: The Battle Of Trenton

His monument dominates the new capital city

which was named after him.

Facing it across the Tidal Basin of the Potomac

is the monument to Jefferson

who became the third President.

(MUSIC) IVES: Variations On America - My Country 'Tis Of Thee

Not only the Palladian architecture,

but the music has crossed the Atlantic.

God Save The King has become My Country 'Tis Of Thee.

On the inner walls are quotations from Jefferson's writings.

First the familiar, noble, indestructible words

of the Declaration Of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..."

Self-evident truths.

That's the voice of 18th-century Enlightenment.

But on the opposite wall are less familiar words by Jefferson

that still give us pause today.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect

that God is just..."

A peaceful-looking scene, a great ideal made visible.

But beyond it, what problems!

Almost insoluble

or at least not soluble by the smile of reason.

(MUSIC) IVES: Variations On America