ately after this he quitted France for a long course of travel
throughout Europe, undertaken with the purpose of studying the
manners, institutions, and governments of foreign lands. At Venice
he gained the friendship of Lord Chesterfield, and they arrived
together in England, where for nearly two years Montesquieu remained,
frequently hearing the parliamentary debates, and studying the
principles of English politics in the writings of Locke. His thoughts
on government were deeply influenced by his admiration of the British
constitution with its union of freedom and order attained by a balance
of the various political powers of the State. On Montesquieu's return
to La Brede he occupied himself with that great work which resumes
the observations and meditations of twenty years, the _Esprit des
Lois_. In the history of Rome, which impressed his imagination with
its vast moral, social, and political significance, he found a signal
example of the causes which lead a nation to greatness and the causes
which contribute to its decline. The study made at this point of view
detached itself from the more comprehensive work which he had
undertaken, and in 1734 appeared his _Considerations sur les Causes
de la Grandeur et de la Decadence des Romains_.

Bossuet had dealt nobly with Roman history, but in the spirit of a
theologian expounding the course of Divine Providence in human
affairs. Montesquieu studied the operation of natural causes. His
knowledge, indeed, was incomplete, but it was the knowledge afforded
by the scholarship of his own time. The love of liberty, the patriotic
pride, the military discipline, the education in public spirit
attained by discussion, the national fortitude under reverses, the
support given to peoples against their rulers, the respect for the
religion of conquered tribes and races, the practice of dealing at
one time with only a single hostile power, are pointed out as
contributing to the supremacy of Rome in the ancient world. Its
decadence is explained as the gradual result of its vast overgrowth,
its civil wars, the loss of patriotism among the soldiery engaged
in remote provinces, the inroads of luxury, the proscription of
citizens, the succession of unworthy rulers, the division of the
Empire, the incursion of the barbarians; and in treating this portion
of his subject Montesquieu may be said to be wholly original. A short
_Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate_ may be viewed as a pendant to the
_Con