that of physics,
which are easily overthrown, because one new and unforeseen experiment
can upset them in an instant. On the contrary, when we carefully collect
the facts, if we do not always gather together all the desired
materials, we may at least hope one day to obtain more. A great
historian combines in the most perfect manner these defective materials.
His merit is like that of an architect, who, from a few remains, traces
the plan of an ancient edifice; supplying, by genius and happy
conjectures, what was wanting in fact.

It is from this point of view that we ought to consider the work of M.
de Montesquieu. He finds the causes of the grandeur of the Romans in
that love of liberty, of labor, and of country, which was instilled into
them during their infancy; in those intestine divisions which gave an
activity to their genius, and which ceased immediately upon the
appearance of an enemy; in that constancy after misfortunes, which never
despaired of the republic; in that principle they adhered to of never
making peace but after victories; in the honor of a triumph, which was a
subject of emulation among the generals; in that protection which they
granted to those peoples who rebelled against their kings; in the
excellent policy of permitting the conquered to preserve their religion
and customs; and the equally excellent determination never to have two
enemies upon their hands at once, but to bear everything from the one
till they had destroyed the other. He finds the causes of their
declension in the aggrandizement of the State itself: in those distant
wars, which, obliging the citizens to be too long absent, made them
insensibly lose their republican spirit; in the too easily granted
privilege of being citizens of Rome, which made the Roman people at last
become a sort of many-headed monster; in the corruption introduced by
the luxury of Asia; in the proscriptions of Sylla, which debased the
genius of the nation, and prepared it for slavery; in the necessity of
having a master while their liberty was become burdensome to them; in
the necessity of changing their maxims when they changed their
government; in that series of monsters who reigned, almost without
interruption, from Tiberius to Nerva, and from Commodus to Constantine;
lastly, in the translation and division of the empire, which perished
first in the West by the power of barbarians, and after having
languished in the East, under weak or cruel emperors, i