Charles Secondat, Baron de la Brede and Montesquieu, was born at the chateau of La Brede, near Bourdeaux, on the 18th January 1689. The estate of La Brede had been long in his family, which was a very ancient one; it had been erected into a barony in favour of Jacob de Secondat, his great-great-grandfather, by Henry IV. The office of President of the Parliament (or Local Court of Justice) of Bourdeaux, had been acquired by his family in consequence of the marriage of his father with the daughter of the first president of that tribunal. From his earliest years young Montesquieu evinced remarkable readiness and vivacity of mind; a circumstance which determined his father to breed him up to the "magistracy," as it was termed in France--a profession midway, as it were, between the career of arms peculiar to the noble, and the labours of the bar confined to persons of plebeian origin, and from which many of the greatest men, and nearly all the distinguished statesmen of France took their rise. Montesquieu entered with the characteristic ardour of his disposition into the studies suited for that destination; and at the age of twenty he had already collected the materials of the _Esprit des Loix_, and evinced the characteristic turn of his mind for generalization, by an immense digest which he had made of the civil law. But these dry, though important studies, did not exclusively occupy his mind; he carried on, at the same time, a great variety of other pursuits. Like all men of an active and intellectual turn of mind, his recreation was found not in repose, but in change of occupation. Books of voyages and travels were collected, and read with avidity; he devoured rather than read the classical remains of Greece and Rome. "That antiquity," said he, "enchants me, and I am always ready to say with Pliny--You are going to Athens; show respect to the gods."