acrifice of
repose, of health, of interest been more absolute and more entire."[116]
These modest and unwearying helpers in good works ought not to be wholly
forgotten, in a commemoration of more far-shining names.

Besides those who were known to the conductors of the Encyclopaedia, was
a host of unsought volunteers. "The further we proceed," the editors
announced in the preface to the sixth volume (1756), "the more are we
sensible of the increase both in matter and in number of those who are
good enough to second our efforts." They received many articles on the
same subject. They were constantly embarrassed by an emulation which,
however flattering as a testimony to their work, obliged them to make a
difficult choice, or to lose a good article, or to sacrifice one of
their regular contributors, or to offend some influential newcomer.
Every one who had a new idea in his head, or what he thought a new idea,
sent them an article upon it. Men who were priests or pastors by
profession and unbelievers in their hearts, sent them sheaves of
articles in which they permitted themselves the delicious luxury of
saying a little of what they thought. Women, too, pressed into the great
work. Unknown ladies volunteered sprightly explanations of the
technicalities of costume, from the falbala which adorned the bottom of
their skirts, up to that little knot of riband in the hair, which had
come to replace the old appalling edifice of ten stories high, in
hierarchic succession of duchess, solitary, musketeer, crescent,
firmament, tenth heaven, and mouse.[117] The oldest contributor was
Lenglet du Fresnoy, whose book on the Method of Studying History is
still known to those who have examined the development of men's ideas
about the relations of the present to the past. Lenglet was born in
1674. The youngest of the band was Condorcet, who was born nearly
seventy years later (1743). One veteran, Morellet, who had been, the
schoolmate of Turgot and Lomenie de Brienne, lived to think of many
things more urgent than Faith, Fils de Dieu, and Fundamentals. He
survived the Revolution, the Terror, the Empire, Waterloo, the
Restoration, and died in 1819, within sight of the Holy Alliance and the
Peterloo massacre. From the birth of Lenglet to the death of
Morellet--what an arc of the circle of western experience!

No one will ask whether the keen eye, and stimulating word, and helpful
hand of Voltaire were wanting to an enterprise which was to aw