the power of the monarchy, done away with priestcraft, established the liberty of the Press, set its face against every kind of bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and, through the means of free institutions, taken up the task of governing itself.  The inference was obvious:  in France also, like causes would lead to like results.  When he was allowed to return to his own country, Voltaire published the outcome of his observations and reflections in his Lettres Philosophiques, where for the first time his genius displayed itself in its essential form.  The book contains an account of England as Voltaire saw it, from the social rather than from the political point of view.  English life is described in its actuality, detailed, vivid, and various; we are shown Quakers and members of Parliament, merchants and philosophers; we come in for the burial of Sir Isaac Newton; we go to a performance of Julius Caesar; inoculation is explained to us; we are given elaborate discussions of English literature and English science, of the speculations of Bolingbroke and the theories of Locke.  The Letters may still be read with pleasure and instruction; they are written in a delightful style, running over with humour and wit, revealing here and there remarkable powers of narrative, and impregnated through and through with a wonderful mingling of gaiety, irony, and common sense.  They are journalism of genius; but they are something more besides.  They are informed with a high purpose, and a genuine love of humanity and the truth.  The French authorities soon recognized this; they perceived that every page contained a cutting indictment of their system of government; and they adopted their usual method in such a case.  The sale of the book was absolutely prohibited throughout France, and a copy of it solemnly burnt by the common hangman.

It was only gradually that the new views, of which Montesquieu and Voltaire were the principal exponents, spread their way among the public; and during the first half of the century many writers remained quite unaffected by them.  Two of these—­resembling each other in this fact alone, that they stood altogether outside the movement of contemporary thought—­deserve our special attention.

The mantle of Racine was generally supposed to have fallen on to the shoulders of Voltaire—­it had not:  if it had fallen on to anyone’s shoulders it was on to those of MARIVAUX.  No doubt it had become diminished in the transit.  Marivaux was not a great tragic writer; he was not a poet; he worked on a much smaller scale, and with far less significant material.  But he was a true dramatist, a subtle psychologist, and an artist pure and simple.  His comedies, too, move according to the same laws as the tragedies of Racine; they preserve the same finished symmetry of design, and leave upon the mind the same sense of unity and grace.  But they are slight, etherealized, fantastic; they are Racine, as it were, by moonlight.  All Marivaux’s