ll the illustrious
personages of my time." But there was this difference between the French
Democritus and him of Abdera, that the first traveled to instruct men,
and the second to laugh at them.

He went first to Vienna, where he often saw the celebrated Prince
Eugene. This hero, so fatal to France (to which he might have been so
useful), after having checked the advance of Louis XIV. and humbled the
Ottoman pride, lived without pomp, loving and cultivating letters in a
court where they are little honored, and showing his masters how to
protect them.

Leaving Vienna, the traveler visited Hungary, an opulent and fertile
country, inhabited by a haughty and generous nation, the scourge of its
tyrants and the support of its sovereigns. As few persons know this
country well, he has written with care this part of his travels.

From Germany he went to Italy. At Venice he met the famous Mr. Law, of
whose former grandeur nothing remained but projects fortunately destined
to die away unorganized, and a diamond which he pawned to play at games
of hazard. One day the conversation turned on the famous system which
Law had invented; the source of so many calamities, so many colossal
fortunes, and so remarkable a corruption in our morals. As the
Parliament of Paris had made some resistance to the Scotch minister on
this occasion, M. de Montesquieu asked him why he had never tried to
overcome this resistance by a method almost always infallible in
England, by the grand mover of human actions--in a word, by money.
"These are not," answered Law, "geniuses so ardent and so generous as my
countrymen; but they are much more incorruptible." It is certainly true
that a society which is free for a limited time ought to resist
corruption more than one which is always free: the first, when it sells
its liberty, loses it; the second, so to speak, only lends it, and
exercises it even when it is thus parting with it. Thus the
circumstances and nature of government give rise to the vices and
virtues of nations.

Another person, no less famous, whom M. de Montesquieu saw still oftener
at Venice, was Count de Bonneval. This man, so well known for his
adventures, which were not yet at an end, delighted to converse with so
good a judge and so excellent a hearer, often related to him the
military actions in which he had been engaged, and the remarkable
circumstances of his life, and drew the characters of generals and
ministers whom he had known.