ure of our manners, that his style makes us forget his
country. This small solecism was perhaps not unintentional. While
exposing our follies and vices, he meant, no doubt, to do justice to our
merits. Avoiding the insipidity of a direct panegyric, he has more
delicately praised us by assuming our own air in professed satire.

Notwithstanding the success of his work, M. de Montesquieu did not
acknowledge it. Perhaps he wished to escape criticism. Perhaps he wished
to avoid a contrast of the frivolity of the 'Persian Letters' with the
gravity of his office; a sort of reproach which critics never fail to
make, because it requires no sort of effort. But his secret was
discovered, and the public suggested his name for the Academy. The event
justified M. de Montesquieu's silence. Usbec expresses himself freely,
not concerning the fundamentals of Christianity, but about matters which
people affect to confound with Christianity itself: about the spirit of
persecution which has animated so many Christians; about the temporal
usurpation of ecclesiastical power; about the excessive multiplication
of monasteries, which deprive the State of subjects without giving
worshipers to God; about some opinions which would fain be established
as principles; about our religious disputes, always violent and often
fatal. If he appears anywhere to touch upon questions more vital to
Christianity itself, his reflections are in fact favorable to
revelation, because he shows how little human reason, left to
itself, knows.

Among the genuine letters of M. de Montesquieu the foreign printer had
inserted some by another hand. Before the author was condemned, these
should have been thrown out. Regardless of these considerations, hatred
masquerading as zeal, and zeal without understanding, rose and united
themselves against the 'Persian Letters.' Informers, a species of men
dangerous and base, alarmed the piety of the ministry. M. de
Montesquieu, urged by his friends, supported by the public voice, having
offered himself for the vacant place of M. de Sacy in the French
Academy, the minister wrote "The Forty" that his Majesty would never
accept the election of the author of the "Persian Letters" that he had
not, indeed, read the book, but that persons in whom he placed
confidence had informed him of its poisonous tendency. M. de Montesquieu
saw what a blow such an accusation might prove to his person, his
family, and his tranquillity. He neither sought