ed. The frequent references to it in the foot-notes will show the
importance which the writer attaches to this work.(31)

The long period of the middle ages, together with early modern(32)
history, so far as the latter bears upon the present subject, is spanned
by the aid of four works; Cousin's Memoir on Abelard (1836); the _La
Reforme_ of Laurent (1861), a professor at Ghent; the _Averroes_ of E.
Renan (1851), one of the ablest among the younger writers of France; and
the _Essais de Philosophie Religieuse_ of E. Saisset (1859). All these
works are full of learning; some of them are works of mind as well as of
erudition. Cousin's treatise is well known,(33) and may be said to have
reopened the study of medieval philosophy. The contents of Laurent's work
are specified elsewhere.(34) That of Renan, besides containing a sketch of
the life and philosophy of Averroes, studies his influence in the three
great spheres where it was felt,--the Spanish Jews, the Scholastic
philosophers, and the Peripatetics of Padua. The work of Saisset is a most
instructive critical sketch on religious philosophy.

The period of English Deism(35) is treated in two works; the well-known
work of Leland above cited, and the one also named above by Lechler, now
general superintendent at Leipsic; a work full of information, and
exceedingly complete; one of the carefully executed monographs with which
many of the younger German scholars first bring their names into notice.
Though the interest of the subject is limited, it well merits a
translator.(36)

There is a deficiency of any similar work on the history of infidelity in
France,(37) treating it separately and exhaustively. The work which most
nearly deserves the description is vol. vi. of Henke's
_Kirchengeschichte_.(38) This want however is the less felt, because
almost every portion of the period has been treated in detail by French
critics of various schools; among which some of the sketches of
Bartholmess, _Histoire Critique des Doctrines Religieuses de la
Philosophie Moderne_, 1855; and of Damiron, _Memoires pour servir a
l'Histoire de Philosophie au 18__e__ siecle_;(39) are perhaps the most
useful for our purpose. One portion of Mr. Buckle's _History of
Civilisation_, the best written part of his first volume, also affords
much information, in the main trustworthy, in reference to the
intellectual condition of France of the same period.(40)

A description of the events of a period so com