Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, born in 1689 near Bordeaux, died at Paris 1755, who earned considerable fame by his "Lettres Persanes," is more famous for his oft-referred to work "L'Esprit des Lois." Victor Cousin describes him as "the man of our country who has best comprehended history, and who first gave an example of true historic method." In the publication of certain of his ideas on history, Montesquieu was the layer of the foundation-stone for an edifice which Buckle would probably have gloriously crowned had his life been longer. Voltaire, who sharply criticises Montesquieu, declares that he has earned the eternal gratitude of Europe by his grand views and his bold attacks on tyranny, superstition, and grinding taxation. Montesquieu urged that virtue is the true essence of republicanism, but misled by the mistaken notions of honour held by his predecessors and contemporaries, he declared honour to be the principle of monarchical institutions. Voltaire reminds him that "it is in courts that men, devoid of honour, often attain to the highest dignities; and it is in republics that a known dishonourable citizen is seldom trusted by the people with public concerns." Montesquieu wrote in favour of a constitutional monarchy such as then existed in England, and his work shadowed forth a future for the middle class in France. Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, born 20th February, 1694, at Chatenay, died 30th May, 1778, may be fairly written of as the man to whose fertile brain and active pen, to whose great genius, fierce irony, and thorough humanity, we owe much more of the rapid change of popular thought in Europe during the last century than to any other man. His wit, like the electric flash, spared nothing; his love for his kind would have made him the protector of everything weak, his desire to protect himself from the consequences of his truest utterances, often dims the hero-halo with which his name is surrounded. Born and trained amongst a corrupt and selfish class, it is not wonderful that we find some of their pernicious habits clinging to parts of his career. On the contrary, it is more wonderful to find that he has shaken off so much of the consequences of his education. Neither in politics nor in theology was he so very extreme in his utterances as many deemed him, for while he occasionally severely handled individual monarchs, we do not find him the preacher of republicanism. On the contrary, he is often severe against some of the advanced political views of Jean Jacques Rousseau. He nevertheless suggests that it might have been "the art of working metals which originally made kings, and the art of casting cannons which now maintains them," and as a commentary on kingly conduct in the matter of taxation, declares that "a shepherd ought to shear his sheep, and not to flay them." In theological controversy he wrote as a Theist, and declares "Atheism and Fanaticism" to be "two monsters which may tear