, and commerce" from Napoleon, and
spread them with the British colonial empire over half the globe.

Montesquieu owes his colossal reputation chiefly to his _Esprit des
Loix_; but the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_ is by much the
greater work. It has never attained nearly the reputation in this
country which it deserves, either in consequence of the English mind
being less partial than the French to the philosophy of human affairs,
or, as is more probable, from the system of education at our
universities being so exclusively devoted to the study of words, that
our scholars never arrive at the knowledge of things. It is impossible
to imagine a work in which the philosophy of history is more ably
condensed, or where there is exhibited, in a short space, a more
profound view of the general causes to which the long-continued
greatness and ultimate decline of that celebrated people were owing.
It is to be regretted only that he did not come to modern times and
other ages with the same masterly survey; the information collected in
the _Esprit des Loix_ would have furnished him with ample materials
for such a work. In that noble treatise, the same philosophic and
generalizing spirit is conspicuous; but there is too great a love of
system, an obvious partiality for fanciful analogies, and, not
unfrequently, conclusions hastily deduced from insufficient data.
These errors, the natural result of a philosophic and profound mind
wandering without a guide in the mighty maze of human transactions,
are entirely avoided in the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_, where
he was retained by authentic history to a known train of events, and
where his imaginative spirit and marked turn for generalization found
sufficient scope, and no more, to produce the most perfect commentary
on the annals of a single people of which the human mind can boast.

Bossuet, in his _Universal History_, aimed at a higher object; he
professed to give nothing less than a development of the plan of
Providence in the government of human affairs, during the whole of
antiquity, and down to the reign of Charlemagne. The idea was
magnificent, and the mental powers, as well as eloquence, of the
Bishop of Meaux promised the greatest results from such an
undertaking. But the execution has by no means corresponded to the
conception. Voltaire has said, that he professed to give a view of
universal history, and he has only given the history of the Jews; and
there is