Among recent works it is only necessary to specify one, viz. the second series of the _Histoire de l’Eglise Chrétienne_, by E. de Pressensé (1861), containing _La Grande Lutte du Christianisme contre le Paganisme_, the account of the struggle both of deeds and ideas on the part of the heathens against Christianity, and of the apology of the Christians in reply. The sketches of the arguments used both by the heathens, as recovered from fragments, and by the Christian apologists, are most ably executed. The frequent references to it in the foot-notes will show the importance which the writer attaches to this work.(31) The long period of the middle ages, together with early modern(32) history, so far as the latter bears upon the present subject, is spanned by the aid of four works; Cousin’s Memoir on Abelard (1836); the _La Reforme_ of Laurent (1861), a professor at Ghent; the _Averroes_ of E. Renan (1851), one of the ablest among the younger writers of France; and the _Essais de Philosophie Religieuse_ of E. Saisset (1859). All these works are full of learning; some of them are works of mind as well as of erudition. Cousin’s treatise is well known,(33) and may be said to have reopened the study of medieval philosophy. The contents of Laurent’s work are specified elsewhere.(34) That of Renan, besides containing a sketch of the life and philosophy of Averroes, studies his influence in the three great spheres where it was felt,—the Spanish Jews, the Scholastic philosophers, and the Peripatetics of Padua. The work of Saisset is a most instructive critical sketch on religious philosophy. The period of English Deism(35) is treated in two works; the well-known work of Leland above cited, and the one also named above by Lechler, now general superintendent at Leipsic; a work full of information, and exceedingly complete; one of the carefully executed monographs with which many of the younger German scholars first bring their names into notice. Though the interest of the subject is limited, it well merits a translator.(36) There is a deficiency of any similar work on the history of infidelity in France,(37) treating it separately and exhaustively. The work which most nearly deserves the description is vol. vi. of Henke’s _Kirchengeschichte_.(38) This want however is the less felt, because almost every portion of the period has been treated in detail by French critics of various schools; among which some of the sketches of Bartholmess, _Histoire Critique des Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie Moderne_, 1855; and of Damiron, _Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de Philosophie au 18__e__ siècle_;(39) are perhaps the most useful for our purpose. One portion of Mr. Buckle’s _History of Civilisation_, the best written part of his first volume, also affords much information, in the main trustworthy, in reference to the intellectual condition of France of the same period.(40)