was one branch of political writing, moreover, which could be indulged in without much fear. Political economy and administrative theories received much attention. The earliest writer of eminence on these subjects was the great engineer Sebastien le Prestre, marquis de Vauban (1633-1707), whose _Oisivetes_ and _Dime royale_ exhibit both great ability and extensive observation. A more utopian economist of the same time was Charles Irenee Castel, abbe de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), not to be confounded with the author of _Paul et Virginie_. Soon political economy in the hands of Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) took a regular form, and towards the middle of the century a great number of works on questions connected with it, especially that of free trade in corn, on which Ferdinand Galiani (1728-1787), Andre Morellet (1727-1819), both abbes, and above all Turgot, distinguished themselves. Of writers on legal subjects and of the legal profession, the century, though not less fertile than in other directions, produced few or none of any great importance from the literary point of view. The chief name which in this connexion is known is that of Chancellor Henri Francois d'Aguesseau (1668-1751), at the beginning of the century, an estimable writer of the Port Royal school, who took the orthodox side in the great disputes of the time, but failed to display any great ability therein. He was, as became his profession, more remarkable as an orator than a writer, and his works contain valuable testimonies to the especially perturbed and unquiet condition of his century--a disquiet which is perhaps also its chief literary note. There were other French magistrates, such as Montesquieu, Henault (1685-1770), de Brosses (1706-1773) and others, who made considerable mark in literature; but it was usually (except in the case of Montesquieu) in subjects not even indirectly connected with their profession. The _Esprit des lois_ stands alone; but as an example of work barristerial in kind, famous partly for political reasons but of some real literary merit, we may mention the _Memoire_ for Calas written by J. B. J. Elie de Beaumont (1732-1786).