than neglected fabliaux of the middle ages. Even the chansons de geste attracted the notice of the Comte de Caylus (1692-1765) and the Comte de Tressan (1705-1783). The latter, in his _Bibliotheque des romans_, worked up a large number of the old epics into a form suited to the taste of the century. In his hands they became lively tales of the kind suited to readers of Voltaire and Crebillon. But in this travestied form they had considerable influence both in France and abroad. By these publications attention was at least called to early French literature, and when it had been once called, a more serious and appreciative study became merely a matter of time. The method of much of the literary criticism of the close of this period was indeed deplorable enough. Jean Francois de la Harpe (1739-1803), who though a little later in time as to most of his critical productions is perhaps its most representative figure, shows criticism in one of its worst forms. The critic specially abhorred by Sterne, who looked only at the stop-watch, was a kind of prophecy of La Harpe, who lays it down distinctly that a beauty, however beautiful, produced in spite of rules is a "monstrous beauty" and cannot be allowed. But such a writer is a natural enough expression of an expiring principle. The year after the death of La Harpe Sainte-Beuve was born. Buffon. The Encyclopedie. _18th-Century Savants._--In science and general erudition the 18th century in France was at first much occupied with the mathematical studies for which the French genius is so peculiarly adapted, which the great discoveries of Descartes had made possible and popular, and which those of his supplanter Newton only made more popular still. Voltaire took to himself the credit, which he fairly deserves, of first introducing the Newtonian system into France, and it was soon widely popular--even ladies devoting themselves to the exposition of mathematical subjects, as in the case of Gabrielle de Breteuil, marquise du Chatelet (1706-1749) Voltaire's "divine Emilie." Indeed ladies played a great part in the literary and scientific activity of the century, by actual contribution sometimes, but still more by continuing and extending the tradition of "salons." The duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Lambert, de Tencin, Geoffrin, du Deffand, Necker, and above all, the baronne d'Holbach (whose husband, however, was here the principal personage) presided over coteries which became more and more "philosophical." Many of the greatest mathematicians of the age, such as de Moivre and Laplace, were French by birth, while others like Euler belonged to French-speaking races, and wrote in French. The physical sciences were also ardently cultivated, the impulse to them being given partly by the generally materialistic tendency of the age, partly by the Newtonian system, and partly also by the extended knowledge of the world provided by the circumnavigatory voyage of Louis Antoine de Bougainville