literary honors nor
affected to disdain them when they came in his way, nor did he regard
the lack of them as a misfortune: but a perpetual exclusion, and the
motives of that exclusion, appeared to him to be an injury. He saw the
minister, and explained that though he did not acknowledge the 'Persian
Letters,' he would not disown a work for which he had no reason to
blush; and that he ought to be judged upon its contents, and not upon
mere hearsay. At last the minister read the book, loved the author, and
learned wisdom as to his advisers. The French Academy obtained one of
its greatest ornaments, and France had the happiness to keep a subject
whom superstition or calumny had nearly deprived her of; for M. de
Montesquieu had declared to the government that, after the affront they
proposed, he would go among foreigners in quest of that safety, that
repose, and perhaps those rewards which he might reasonably have
expected in his own country. The nation would really have deplored his
loss, while yet the disgrace of it must have fallen upon her.

M. de Montesquieu was received the 24th of January, 1728. His oration is
one of the best ever pronounced here. Among many admirable passages
which shine out in its pages is the deep-thinking writer's
characterization of Cardinal Richelieu, "who taught France the secret of
its strength, and Spain that of its weakness; who freed Germany from her
chains and gave her new ones."

The new Academician was the worthier of this title, that he had
renounced all other employments to give himself entirely up to his
genius and his taste. However important was his place, he perceived that
a different work must employ his talents; that the citizen is
accountable to his country and to mankind for all the good he may do;
and that he could be more useful by his writings than by settling
obscure legal disputes. He was no longer a magistrate, but only a man
of letters.

But that his works should serve other nations, it was necessary that he
should travel, his aim being to examine the natural and moral world, to
study the laws and constitution of every country; to visit scholars,
writers, artists, and everywhere to seek for those rare men whose
conversation sometimes supplies the place of years of observation. M. de
Montesquieu might have said, like Democritus, "I have forgot nothing to
instruct myself; I have quitted my country and traveled over the
universe, the better to know truth; I have seen a