emember that in
England as elsewhere, the people are dissatisfied with the ministers and
write what is only thought elsewhere. England is the freest country in
the world; I do not except any republic." He returned to France so
smitten with the parliamentary or moderate form of government, as he
called it, that he seemed sometimes to forget the prudent maxim of the
_Lettres persanes_. "It is true," said the Parsee Usbeck, "that, in
consequence of a whimsicality (_bizarrerie_) which springs rather from
the nature than from the mind of man, it is sometimes necessary to change
certain laws; but the case is rare, and, when it occurs, it should not be
touched save with a trembling hand."

On returning to his castle of La Brede after so many and such long
travels, Montesquieu resolved to restore his tone by intercourse with the
past. "I confess my liking for the ancients," he used to say; "this
antiquity enchants me, and I am always ready to say with Pliny, 'You are
going to Athens; revere the gods.'" It was not, however, on the Greeks
that he concentrated the working of his mind; in 1734, he published his
_Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la decadence des
Romaine_. Montesquieu did not, as Bossuet did, seek to hit upon God's
plan touching the destinies of mankind; he discovers in the virtues and
vices of the Romans themselves the secret of their triumphs and of their
reverses. The contemplation of antiquity inspires him with language
often worthy of Tacitus, curt, nervous, powerful in its grave simplicity.
"It seemed," he says, "that the Romans only conquered in order to give;
but they remained so positively the masters that, when they made war on
any prince, they crushed him, so to speak, with the weight of the whole
universe."

Montesquieu thus performed the prelude to the great work of his life; he
had been working for twenty years at the _Esprit des lois,_ when he
published it in 1748. "In the course of twenty years," he says, "I saw
my work begin, grow, progress, and end." He had placed as the motto to
his book this Latin phrase, which at first excited the curiosity of
readers: _Prolem sine matre creatam_ (Offspring begotten without a
mother). "Young man," said Montesquieu, by this time advanced in years,
to M. Suard (afterwards perpetual secretary to the French Academy),
"young man, when a notable book is written, genius is its father, and
liberty its mother; that is why I wrote upon the titl