earnest love of freedom, which in its sobriety is akin to English rather than to French aspirations. Many hostile attacks were made on the book; but only one of these, involving a charge of atheism, provoked any reply. The author published a "Défense de l'Esprit des Lois;" and the Sorbonne, which had a sharp eye on the original work, refrained from the condemnation which it was about to issue. The influence of the "Esprit des Lois," which was translated into English by Nugent in 1750, is believed to have been more powerful in Great Britain than in France. It is distinctly traceable in the "Wealth of Nations," which appeared about thirty years later, of which Gibbon said-"The strong ray of philosophic light on this subject which broke over Scotland in our times was but a reflection, though with a far steadier and more concentrated force, from the scattered but brilliant sparks kindled by the genius of Montesquieu." Mackintosh, in his "Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations," pronounces a noble (not a blind) eulogy on the book, and says that he never names the author without reverence. It was a favourite handbook of the lovers of "regulated liberty," as distinguished from the fanatics of the Revolution. Voltaire, though no friendly critic, recognized its literary quality, and said "Le genre humain avait perdu ses titres; Montesquieu les a retrouvés et les lui a rendus."

The sudden blaze of reputation did not turn the head of so sober and wise a man as Montesquieu. His few remaining years were spent partly at his country seat and partly at Paris. He was a welcome guest in cultivated society; and was beloved by the country people around his home. His private character and life were irreproachable. He married in 1715, and had two daughters and a son. His eyesight, never strong, almost entirely failed him in his later years. His health too gradually broke up; and during a visit to Paris in 1755 he had a severe illness, and died there on the 10th of February of that year. In his last illness he was annoyed by attempts on the part of the Jesuits to convert him; but, while avowing his regard for religion, he would have nothing to do with them. In addition to the works above named, Montesquieu wrote and appended to the "Considérations," a "Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate,” a powerful sketch of the Dictator and of the Roman people cowed by his tyranny; a miniature classical romance entitled "Le Temple de Gnide ;” and a "Histoire physique du Monde ancien et moderne." The last was an early work.

"WHEN the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand for as much as the names of the great decisive movements in the European advance, like the revival of learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and most prodigious era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and spiritual conformation of the West with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of deep-lying, collective forces. A new type of belief and of its shadow, disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into the intelligence and feeling of his own and following times. We may think of Voltairism somewhat as we think of the Catholicism of

the Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portions of the minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either ignored or outraged." -Morley.

Voltaire, or to give him the name of his family and youth, François Arouet, was the second son of a wealthy notary, and was allied to the nobility by his mother. He was born at Châtenay, near Sceaux-endowed with a most surprising intelligence, but an extremely feeble constitution. His first instructors were the Jesuit fathers of the College Louis-le-Grand, who remarking the bent of his genius, and being often witness of his witty penetration, predicted that he would become the Coryphæus of Deism. He was encouraged in these early predispositions by the privately-avowed unbelief of a friend of his father's, the Abbé Chateauneuf, who became a kind of patron to the young Arouet, and introduced him to those circles in Paris where the hypocrisy of the Court and religious orthodoxy alike were held in great contempt.

Launching out into literature, he became speedily noted for his scathing wit. Unjustly accused of the authorship of a satire against Louis XIV., he found himself for some months a prisoner in the Bastille, but devoted his confinement to writing his first play, "Edipus," which was brought out in 1718. His father tried to draw him from literature and Paris by getting him an appointment with the French Ambassador to the Hague, but he soon returned to his former life, and in 1726 was imprisoned a second time for having offended the powerful Chevalier de Rohan. On his release he was ordered to leave France. England, where there was more freedom of tongue and pen, acquired the language with remarkable facility, and entered into friendly relations with Bolingbroke, Tindal, and Collins, and learned to admire Newton, Locke, and Pope. In 1735 he published his "Letters on the English," which were publicly burned in Paris.

He came to

In 1755 the storm which he had raised in France had so far subsided as to enable him to return, but not to Paris. He settled at Cirey, with Madame du Châtelet, varying the monotony of his residence in a solitary château by visits to Frederick the Great of Prussia, being once charged with an affair of diplomacy. In 1750 his connection with Madame du Châtelet came to an end by reason of her death, and he accepted the invitation to reside at the Court of Frederick. But after three years of amicable relations a misunderstanding with Maupertius, succeeded by a quarrel between Voltaire and the Great Frederick, caused him abruptly to leave.

During his residence at Cirey and Berlin he had composed his "History of Charles XII. of Sweden," finished "Siècle de Louis XIV.," and written "La Pucelle," and many tragedies, and occupied himself with the physical With Madame du Châtelet he had studied Newton and Leib

sciences.

nitz, wrote a popular exposition of the discoveries of Newton, became a candidate for the prize of the Academy, and published a memoir in which. he ranged himself on the side of Descartes and Newton against Leibnitz and Bernouilli.

But if ever a man was called, not to science, metaphysics, theology, or poetry even, but to literature alone, that man was Voltaire. Literature is really an art of form, as distinguished from those efforts of the intellect which strive to increase knowledge. "Voltaire is the very first man in the world," says a contemporary of his day, "at writing down what other people have thought;" and after Euler had borne away the prize at the Academy, and death had removed the scientific Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire succumbed to the dictates of his own reason, and the advice of friends, and devoted himself to literature alone.

After leaving Prussia he spent some months in Alsace, for the publication of his "Essay on Manners" had added another barrier to his return to Paris. At last he settled at Ferney, a small village near Geneva, and for the next twenty years gazed upon the busy world from this retired spot. Madame Denis, his niece, presided over his house, and having a yearly income of about 10,0007. he exercised the duties of hospitality in a princely manner, and was never without guests, being visited by the great, the learned, and the curious of all countries. But he was not simply the charming and irresistible host, all these years, he was the indefatigable worker, seeming to sustain a feeble body by the energy of his soul. At Ferney were written some of his most important works, “On the Natural Law," "History of Russia," "Philosophical Dictionary," many tragedies and romances, and much matter contributed for the Encyclopædia of Diderot. He interested himself in many cases of oppression and injustice: he protected the innocent and unfortunate, using his wealth and influence in their behalf. Every one knows the story of his efforts in behalf of Admiral Byng, of the Protestant Calas, the Count Lally, &c. The two words which sum up his teachings and writings are, toleration and humanity. For sixty years he struggled to convert the world to an acceptance of his doctrine, and he lived long enough to see in Russia, Denmark, and Poland, in Prussia, and a good part of Germany, a firm footing given to liberty of conscience and freedom of thought.

In his eighty-fourth year he yielded to the importunities of friends and journeyed to Paris, where he was received in triumph, fêted, and crowned in the theatre. But the excitement proved too strong for the feeble old man, and shortly after his arrival he died. His body remained in the Abbey of Sellières until the Revolution, when it was deposited in the Pantheon.

Full

"Voltaire's ascendency," says Morley, "sprung from no appeal to those parts of human nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching.

He had

not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general. Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an intellectual movement for this reason, that it was primarily and directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with fatal mischief."

While regretting the lengths to which Voltaire allowed his hatred of the hypocrisies of the day and generation to carry him, we must claim for him the highest honours, in regard to his sincere and vehement abhorrence of the military spirit, for his repeated protests against bloodshed. Bossuet had already brought his rhetoric to bear; Voltaire, with Montesquieu, in a grandly comprehensive and philosophic manner, boldly attacked the subject. It is said his "Essay on Manners" is one of the foundations of modern history. He was one of the few historians who combine in one the three kinds of persons who write history: the analyst, the statesman, and the philosopher. He strove always to separate history from geography, statistics, and anecdote, and to give it an independent character. He rested his theory on two principles: first, that laws, customs, and arts are the real things to be treated of; and, secondly, that trifling details embarrass the mind for nothing. "I would rather have details," he said, "about Racine, Molière, Bossuet, and Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. A picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth established, are all of them a thousand times more precious than the annals of a Court, or the narratives of a campaign."

Voltaire's greatest quality, as well as his great fault, is clearly set forth in the latest work of M. Taine, "The Ancient Régime," and this judgment may be accepted as the final decision in a difficult case.

"An entire philosophy, ten volumes of theology, an abstract science, a special library, an important branch of erudition, of human experience and invention, is thus reduced in his hands to a phrase or to a stanza. From the enormous mass of riven or compact scoriæ he extracts whatever is essential, a grain of gold or of copper as a specimen of the rest, presenting this to us in its most convenient and most manageable form, in a simile, in a metaphor, in an epigram that becomes a proverb. In this no ancient or modern writer approaches him; in simplification and in popularization he has not his equal in the world. Without departing from the usual conventional tone, and as if in sport, he puts into little portable phrases the greatest discoveries and hypotheses of the human mind, the theories of Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, Locke, and Newton, the diverse religions of antiquity and of modern times, every known system of physics, physiology, geology, morality, natural law, and political economy, in short all the generalized conceptions, in every order of knowledge to which humanity had attained in the eighteenth century. His