recueilli quelques malheureuses compositions de ce temps: c'est faire un amas de cailloux tirés dantiques masures quand on est entouré de palais._ Frederick of Prussia, who here showed himself a consistent Voltairean, did not receive the new edition of the Nibelungenlied and the other epic monuments of Germany graciously. In a word, the whole of the past lost its value, or preserved only the negative value of evil: _Que les citoyens d'une ville immense, où les arts, les plaisirs, et la paix régnent aujourd'hui, où la raison même commence à s'introduire, comparent les temps, et qu'ils se plaignent, s'ils osent. C'est une réflexion qu'il faut faire presque à chaque page de cette histoire._ The lack of the conception of development rendered sterile the very acquisition of knowledge of distant things and people; and although there was in certain respects merit in introducing India and China into universal history, and although the criticism and satire of the 'four monarchies' and of 'sacred' history was to a certain extent justified, it is well to remember that in the notion mocked at was satisfied the legitimate need for understanding history in its relations with Christian and European civilized life; and that if it had not been found possible (and it never was at that time) to form a more complete chain, in which were Arabia, India and China, and the American civilizations, and all the other newly discovered things, these additional contributions to knowledge would have remained a mere object for curiosity or imagination. India, China, and the East in general were therefore of little more use in the eighteenth century than to manifest an affection for tolerance, indeed for religious indifferentism. Those distant countries, in which there was no proselytizing frenzy, and which did not send missionaries to weary Europe--though Europe did not spare them such visitations--were not treated as historical realities, nor did they obtain their place in the reality of spiritual development, but became longed-for ideals, countries of dream. Those who in our day renew praises of Asiatic toleration, contrasting it with European intolerance, and wax tender over such wisdom and meekness, are not aware that in so doing they are repeating uselessly and inopportunely what Voltaire has already done; and if in this matter he did not aid the better understanding of history, he at any rate fulfilled a practical and moral function which was necessary for the conditions of his own time. The defective conception of development, and not accidental circumstances, such as the publicistic, journalistic, and literary tendencies of the original among those historians, is also the profound reason for the failure of contact and of union between the immense mass of erudition accumulated by the sixteenth century philologists, and the historiography of the enlightenment. How were those documents and collections to be employed