Galiani was a genius. Whatever he touched shone at once with his brightness, in which there was originality as well as knowledge. He was a finished scholar, and very successful in lapidary verses. Early in life, while in Italy, he wrote a grave essay on Money, which contrasted with another of rare humor suggested by the death of the public executioner. Other essays followed, and then came the favor of that congenial pontiff, Benedict XIV. In 1760 he found himself at Paris, as Secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy. Here he mingled with the courtiers officially, according to the duties of his position, but he fraternized with the liberal and sometimes audacious spirits who exercised such an influence over society and literature. He was soon recognized as one of them, and as inferior to none. His petty stature was forgotten, when he conversed with inexhaustible faculties of all kinds, so that he seemed an Encyclopædia, Harlequin, and Machiavelli all in one. The atheists at the Thursday dinner of D'Holbach were confounded, while he enforced the existence of God. Into the questions of political economy which occupied attention at the time he entered with a pen which seemed borrowed from the French Academy. His _Dialogues sur le Commerce des Blés_ had the success of a romance; ladies carried this book on corn in their work-baskets. Returning to Naples, he continued to live in Paris through his correspondence, especially with Madame d'Epinay, the Baron d'Holbach, Diderot, and Grimm.[33] Among his later works, after his return to Naples, was a solid volume--not to be forgotten in the History of International Law--on the "Rights of Neutrals," where a difficult subject is treated with such mastery that, half a century later, D'Hautefeuille, in his elaborate treatise, copies from it at length. Galiani was the predecessor of this French writer in the extreme assertion of neutral rights. Other works were left at his death in manuscript, some grave and some humorous; also letters without number. The letters he had preserved from Italian _savans_ filled eight large volumes; those from _savans_, ministers, and sovereigns abroad filled fourteen. His Parisian correspondence did not see the light till 1818, although some of the letters may be found in the contemporary correspondence of Grimm. In his Parisian letters, which are addressed chiefly to that clever individuality, Madame d'Epinay, the Neapolitan Abbé shows not only the brilliancy and nimbleness of his talent, but the universality of his knowledge and the boldness of his speculations. Here are a few words from a letter dated at Naples, 12th October, 1776, in which he brings forward the idea of "races," so important in our day, with an illustration from Russia:--