97-1780), whose
lucid intelligence perceived everything, whose disabused heart
seemed detached until old age from all that most interested her
understanding. For clear good sense we turn to the Marquise de Lambert,
for bourgeois worth and kindliness to Mme. Geoffrin, for passion which
kindles the page to Mdlle. de Lespinasse, for sensibility and romance
ripening to political ardour and strenuous convictions to Mme. Roland.
Among the philosophers Diderot pours the torrent, clear or turbid,
of his genius into his correspondence with affluent improvisation;
D'Alembert is grave, temperate, lucid; the Abbe Galiani, the little
Machiavel--"a pantomime from head to foot," said Diderot--the gay
Neapolitan punchinello, given the freedom of Paris, that "capital
of curiosity," is at once wit, cynic, thinker, scholar, and buffoon.
These, again, are but examples from an epistolary swarm.

While the eighteenth century thus mirrored itself in memoirs and
letters, it did not forget the life of past centuries. The studious
Benedictines, who had already accomplished much, continued their
erudite labours. Nicolas Freret (1688-1749), taking all antiquity
for his province, illuminated the study of chronology, geography,
sciences, arts, language, religion. Daniel and Velly narrated the
history of France. Vertot (1655-1735), with little of the spirit of
historical fidelity, displayed certain gifts of an historical artist.
The school of scepticism was represented by the Jesuit Hardouin, who
doubted the authenticity of all records of the past except those of
his own numismatic treasures. Questions as to the principles of
historical certitude occupied the Academy of Inscriptions during
many sittings from 1720 onwards, and produced a body of important
studies. While the Physiocrats were endeavouring to demonstrate that
there is a natural order in social circumstances, a philosophy of
history, which bound the ages together, was developed in the writings
of Montesquieu and Turgot, if not of Voltaire. The _Esprit des Lois_,
the _Essai sur les Moeurs_, and Turgot's discourses, delivered in
1750 at the Sorbonne, contributed in different degrees and ways
towards a new and profounder conception of the life of societies or
of humanity. By Turgot for the first time the idea of progress was
accepted as the ruling principle of history. It cannot be denied that,
as regards the sciences of inorganic nature, he more than foreshadowed
Comte's theory of the thre