or systems of
government at the time, but they did not reflect on the chain of
causes which first raised up, and afterwards undermined it. Aristotle,
the most powerful intellect of the ancient world, was of the same
calibre as a political observer. He considered only the effects of the
various forms of government which he saw established around him. In
that survey he was admirable, but he never went beyond it. Bossuet's
_Universal History_ is little more than a history of the Jews; he
refers every thing to the direct and immediate agency of Providence,
irrespective of the freedom of the human will. Montesquieu first fixed
his eyes upon the rise, progress, and decay of nations, as worked out
by the actions of free agents. The _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_
is as original as the _Principia_, and laid the foundation of a
science as sublime, and perhaps still more important to man than the
laws of the planetary bodies.

Charles Secondat, Baron de la Brede and Montesquieu, was born at the
chateau of La Brede, near Bourdeaux, on the 18th January 1689. The
estate of La Brede had been long in his family, which was a very
ancient one; it had been erected into a barony in favour of Jacob de
Secondat, his great-great-grandfather, by Henry IV. The office of
President of the Parliament (or Local Court of Justice) of Bourdeaux,
had been acquired by his family in consequence of the marriage of his
father with the daughter of the first president of that tribunal. From
his earliest years young Montesquieu evinced remarkable readiness and
vivacity of mind; a circumstance which determined his father to breed
him up to the "magistracy," as it was termed in France--a profession
midway, as it were, between the career of arms peculiar to the noble,
and the labours of the bar confined to persons of plebeian origin, and
from which many of the greatest men, and nearly all the distinguished
statesmen of France took their rise. Montesquieu entered with the
characteristic ardour of his disposition into the studies suited for
that destination; and at the age of twenty he had already collected
the materials of the _Esprit des Loix_, and evinced the characteristic
turn of his mind for generalization, by an immense digest which he had
made of the civil law. But these dry, though important studies, did
not exclusively occupy his mind; he carried on, at the same time, a
great variety of other pursuits. Like all men of an active and
intellectual tu