His _Philosophie de l’Histoire_, the prototype of its successors in name at least, was designed to expose that long-established and prevailing idolatry of Antiquity, which received everything bequeathed by it with astounding credulity. The _Philosophie_ called forth a numerous host of small critics, to which men who knew, or ought to have known better, allied themselves. Their curious way of maintaining the credit of Antiquity afforded, as may be imagined, the author of the _Defence of my Uncle_, under which title Voltaire chose to defend himself, full scope for the exercise of his unrivalled powers of irony. Warburton, the pedant Bishop of Gloucester, with his odd theories about the “Divine Legation,” comes in for a share of this Dunciad sort of immortalisation. A work of equal merit with the _Philosophie_ are the _Questions_, addressed to the lovers of science, upon the _Encyclopædia_, wherein, in the form of a dictionary, he treats, as the Marquis de Condorcet eloquently describes, “Successively of theology, grammar, natural philosophy, and literature. At one time he discusses subjects of Antiquity; at another questions of policy, legislation, and public economy. His style, always animated and seductive, clothed these various subjects with a charm hitherto known to himself alone, and which springs chiefly from the licence with which, yielding to his successive emotions, adapting his style less to his subject than to the momentary disposition of his mind, sometimes he spreads ridicule over objects which seem capable of inspiring only horror, and almost instantaneously hurried away by the energy and sensibility of his soul, he vehemently and eloquently exclaims against abuses which he had just before treated with mockery. His anger is excited by false taste; he quickly perceives that his indignation ought to be reserved for interests more important, and he finishes by laughing in his usual way. Sometimes he abruptly leaves a moral or political discussion for a literary criticism, and in the midst of a lesson on taste he pronounces abstract maxims of the profoundest philosophy, or makes a sudden and terrible attack on fanaticism and tyranny.” It is with his romances that we are here chiefly concerned, since it is in those lighter productions of his genius that he has most especially allowed us to see his opinions upon flesh-eating. In the charming tale of _The Princess of Babylon_, her attendant _Phœnix_ thus accounts to his mistress for the silence of his brethren of the inferior races:--