wardly, and for the people. In secret, they wrote abusive songs against the king and nobility; in public, they composed poems in praise of Louis, and in celebration of the feast of the Virgin Mary. It never occurred to any one, that the wantonness and the scorn of polite and fashionable loungers would ever reach the oppressed and labouring people, who were held in bonds of degradation and slavery by the priesthood, the public officials and nobility; it seemed beyond the hope or possibility of deliverance from temporal and spiritual tyranny; and therefore these people did homage in private to the very things which they publicly persecuted with unrelenting severity.'

The enlightenment which Voltaire announced, as well as that which Bolingbroke and his friends advocated in England, was wanting in the solid foundations which secure an edifice against overthrow. Every reformation intended to be real, firm, and lasting, must be founded upon severe and strict morality. History as well as human nature furnishes abundant evidence, that without morality and a high zeal for truth, all attacks upon existing systems can only lead to mischief. Nothing can be effected for reformation when the conduct and principles of the reformers themselves are not free from selfishness, and from the empty vanity of mean or courtly souls. Voltaire came to England in 1726, and during his temporary sojourn here till 1729, the brothers Walpole, one of whom had completely gone over to the French school, were at the head of national affairs. During his stay in England and immediately afterwards, he reached the very summit of his European renown, and became the national idol of the French. That fact is, that his journey to England was attended with consequences scarcely dreamt of by the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of France. In the latter country there was a want of all that legal order which constitutes the rightful guardian of the middle and lower classes against the brutal insolence and oppression of the great. As appears from his English Letters,' Voltaire fled from a country in which despotism put down the law, and superstition superseded religion, and took refuge for a time in a land of freedom. The times seemed ripe for such a renovator as this, and he came forth to fulfil his mission of destructiveness. We are told, that the pious cardinal Fleury experienced to his horror what Louis the Fifteenth afterwards felt and could never pardon,that, notwithstanding, and in spite of all his state-prisons and Jesuits, his hired mercenaries and officials, an organ of the popular voice and of the spirit of the age had sounded; before which, sooner or later, the monarchy and the court would be obliged to give way. By the publication of his EnglishLetters,' Voltaire introduced into France the religious philo

sophy, the literature, and views of life entertained at that time in our own country, precisely in the same manner as it is now sought to introduce there the opposite views from Germany; and they enjoyed the readier reception, and excited the greater attention, because Montesquieu had already awakened the people, and turned their regards from the system prevailing in France, to a mania for England.

Montesquieu was not unconscious of the oppression and misery of the last years of Louis the Fourteenth's reign; and with a strong feeling of disapprobation, had communicated his thoughts to his contemporaries. Subsequently, he witnessed the times of the regency and of its demoralization; and wishing to speak his mind to the people, he chose the form of the novel as most suitable to his genius. Voltaire had directed his poetical satire against superstition and the priesthood; Montesquieu took the more political side of the subject, and kept in view ministerial despotism, and want of respect for the law and legal forms. We are now alluding to his 'Persian Letters,' which may be regarded in some respects as more important than any writing of Voltaire's, inasmuch as they enter into almost all the relations of life, and expose before the eyes of the people everything which was absurd or unnatural in their institutions, which the people were accustomed to admire, and the courts and governments to praise, as the highest perfection of fortune and wisdom.' Before the appearance of the Persian Letters,' no one had ventured to blame the church and the government in prose, (satirical poetry had been the usual channel,)-and his work, therefore, assumed a special importance, and his boldness excited astonishment. He therein depicts the influence of the female sex, and prepares his readers for his new theory deduced from the example of England, of the true nature of modern constitutions, the theory of a religion without a priesthood, and of a monarchy without bayonets,

In some of these letters', observes Schlosser, in which the principles of administration and the relation of luxury and industry to civilization, are discussed, the germs of that philosophy are visible which has since pervaded the whole of the French people; but which had at first slowly and unobserved given an entirely new colour to literature. This is the most remarkable feature in the activity and influence of Voltaire and of Montesquieu. These two, who were the greatest writers of the nation, both availed themselves of poetry and morals, of the forms of confidential correspondence and songs, in order to place in a clear light, and to hold up to the public contempt, the meanness and degradation of courtly, flattering, and mercenary writers. Those alone can judge how important a service

this was, who are well acquainted with the condition of literature at that time.'-vol. i. p. 133.

We pass by those writers in the French language, who, in the first half of the eighteenth century, were protected by Frederic the Second, as well as the 'learned Coteries in Paris,' the French theatre, and the early German philosophers and writers, to each of which topics our author has devoted a section of his work, and arrive at some of the manifestations of English and French literature and philosophy during the latter half of the century.

After a brief notice of Lord Chesterfield, the general character of whose writings is well known, we are led to the historian Hume, who was guided in the composition of his great work, according to his own express declaration, by the judgment and taste of his Parisian friends, the exclusive so-called philosophers. 'It will be readily seen besides, that this age required a species of history quite different from the former; and that after Voltaire and Bolingbroke and Montesquieu had spread the light of a sounder criticism, or bold negation, over the dead masses of historical knowledge,-dialectics, rhetoric, and sophistry, must necessarily be called in to aid, if the distinguished public which had been instructed by their writings was to be addressed.' If, however, we judge from the incredibly small circulation which his work at first obtained, we must be led to the conclusion that Hume was somewhat too early, at least in England, with a historical work, manifesting such bold scepticism, such keen criticism, and the art of using facts for the purpose of building up a particular system. To account for this limited circulation, it is more than probable, that the principles of the new philosophy which the work promulgated, had not yet much descended below the literary aristocratic coteries in England, of whom Hume, no less than his brother philosophers, Voltaire and Montesquieu, may be regarded as the leader and the organ. Of the two latter, it may indeed be said, that they were at the head of the history of the formulas of wisdom, which regulated the life of the distinguished and educated society of Europe.

Montesquieu's journey to England, and his close intimacy with Englishmen, produced a considerable influence upon his writings posterior to the publication of the Persian Letters,' and especially upon his 'Spirit of Laws.' With regard to this latter work, some peculiar circumstances attending the second edition are worth mentioning. It appears that all who were influenced by an enlightened patriotism, and were concerned for the improvement of the condition of their countrymen, whether English, French, or Italians, assisted and supported the author by

their counsel, and suggested alterations and improvements. The 'Spirit of Laws,' therefore, as we now have it (for the second edition is to be regarded as the proper work), may be in some measure considered as the result of the labours of many friends of moderate freedom, who wished for a change of the prevailing police and government regulations. It was not merely negative, and destructive, like the productions of Voltaire and his school, nor sought to depart altogether from what was historical and real, like Rousseau and his followers.

We have not space to follow our author through any analysis of this remarkable work-remarkable at least for that age-and shall only further, therefore, observe upon it, that Montesquieu found an opponent in Crevier, a man of solid learning, but no philosopher, who had gained great and deserved reputation by his learned historical collections. The labours of Crevier, however, soon ceased to interest, while the work of Montesquieu, for thirty years after its appearance, was regarded as a general manual of political and worldly wisdom. In Germany and France its immediate effect was comparatively insignificant, while in England a foreign book has rarely worked more strongly upon the nature of the state, the theory of the constitution, and even upon legislation. The case of Gibbon shows most distinctly the influence which it had in England upon the treatment and application of history.

Having mentioned the name of Rousseau, we must endeavour to convey to the reader in a few words some notion of his character and principles. To these our author has devoted a long section of his fourth chapter, but we can only touch upon the principal heads of his able analysis. The reader will bear in mind that the time of which we are speaking was one of passion, and movement and transition; and it is the dictate of experience that in such times the first of these qualities generally carries the predominance, and hence, whoever takes a middle course, or remains neutral, is likely to be superseded by the more passionate and zealous spirits of the age. This is in part the reason why Voltaire and his school, Diderot, D'Alembert, Holbach, and Helvetius, who were for pulling down what was old, were more readily listened to than Montesquieu and Rousseau, who were for erecting a new moral structure, and required a vast force of virtue from a demoralized and self-seeking generation. However visionary and absurd the views of society as held by Rousseau might be, there is no doubt that his principles of life were of a higher and purer order than those entertained by many of his contemporaries. He was born at Geneva, and received his early education in a Protestant republic, in which, at that time, morality, and do

mestic happiness, were maintained. The effects of this early discipline never entirely forsook him, though great temptations beset his path, more especially after the notice taken of him by Diderot, Voltaire, and their friends. Those salutary impressions, doubtless, mainly contributed to disgust him with what he saw and experienced, and rendered it impossible for him to keep pace with the parasites and talkers of the great world, of whom the greatest number of the so-called philosophers of genius at that time consisted.' After many adventures, this Genevese self-taught scholar, who had gone over from Protestantism to the Romish church, and had returned to Protestantism again, came to Paris about the year 1745. While there he contributed some musical articles to the Encyclopædia, and attempted a reply to a prize-question which had been proposed by the academy of Dijon, when a complete change in the whole cast of his thinking and life suddenly took place. We need not be surprized at this. The circumstances of the case sufficiently account for it. Schlosser treats the character of this singular man throughout with great fairness and discrimination, and we will give his allusion to this affair in his own words:

No one will deny that the ideas which Rousseau conceived and illustrated in the case of the prize-question proposed by the academy of Dijon, guided his whole future life and labours, and became to him truth, even if we grant to his opponents and accusers that these ideas were at first taken up and defended, in order to excite greater attention by a clear-sighted, ingenious, and eloquent illustration and support of a principle opposed to the common opinion. Rousseau not only propounded the principle, which classes scholars with sophists, and against which the whole writing world, decorated with their academical uniform, rose up in arms, he not only propounded this principle, but preached it in all his writings, with the fire and enthusiasm of an apostle of his own and of a true conviction; but he carried out his ideas even to folly, into life, and freely sacrificed for their maintenance, what men in general most eagerly seek for. This last circumstance distinguished him most favourably from the Parisian philosophers, who, like their master, were all good men of the world, and sought by diplomacy and sophistry to give currency to their opinions; but always veered according to the wind of the prevailing fashion.

The academy of Dijon had proposed a learned question upon the influence of the revival of ancient literature upon morals. Rousseau took a philosophical view of the question, and answered it with such eloquence, clearness, and power, and in such language, that the academy, without concurring in the main in his opinion, crowned his reply as a master-piece of eloquence and art. Rousseau had turned the question of the academy, as if they had asked, whether