l view of institutions, habits, and manners, differing
in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are
so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all
other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances
apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their
mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as
it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed to form the
_matrix_ in which original thought was formed, and new truth
communicated by Providence to mankind. In the course of his travels,
which lasted several years, he visited successively Austria, Hungary,
Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine, Flanders, Holland, and England--in the
latter of which he lived two years. During these varied travels, he
made notes on all the countries which he visited, which contributed
largely to the great stock of political information which he
possessed. These notes are still extant; but, unfortunately, not in
such a state of maturity as to admit of publication.

On his return to France, which took place in 1732, he retired to his
native chateau of La Brede, and commenced in good earnest the great
business of his life. The fruit of his studies and reflections
appeared in the _Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de
la Decadence des Romains_, which was published in 1732. Great and
original as this work--the most perfect of all his compositions--was,
it did not give vent to the whole ideas which filled his capacious
mind. Rome, great as it was, was but a single state; it was the
comparison with other states, the development of the general
principles which run through the jurisprudence and institutions of all
nations, which occupied his thoughts. The success which attended his
essay on the institutions and progress of a single people, encouraged
him to enlarge his views and extend his labours. He came to embrace
the whole known world, civilized and uncivilized, in his plan; and
after fourteen years of assiduous labours and toil, the immortal
"Spirit of Laws" appeared.

The history of Montesquieu's mind, during the progress of this great
work, is singularly curious and interesting. At times he wrote to his
friends that his great work advanced "a pas de geant;" at others, he
was depressed by the slow progress which it made, and overwhelmed by
the prodigious mass of materials which required to be worked into its
composition. So distrustful was he