ple. Society which naturally tended towards the popular establishment did not retrograde with the system of Hobbes, notwithstanding the excesses of the English Revolution; it was only checked in its progress by Louis XIV, who barred its way by his glory. Hobbes inculcated scepticism, as did our philosophers of the eighteenth century, with an imperious tone of dogmatical haughtiness. He wished to be thought a firm believer in unbelief, and preached doubt like an Inquisitor. His style is energetic, and his Thucydides has been too much decried. This strong mind, (esprit fort) this free-thinker, was the weakest of men; he trembled at the thought of the tomb. Nature supported him to the age of ninety-two, and delivered him fainting into the arms of death, as a swooning convict is carried to the fatal block.

Sir John Denham is still slightly remembered for his descriptive poem of "Cooper's Hill." He was a royalist, and the agent in London of the correspondence between Charles the First and his Queen. Cowley held the same office in Paris thus did the Muses render service to conjugal tenderness and misfortune.

Harington's "Oceana" is a repetition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Where is a perfect government to be found? In Utopia-no whereas the name implies.

Harvey described his great discovery of the circulation of the blood. No physician in Europe, having attained the age of forty, would adopt the doctrine of Harvey; he himself lost his practice in London, because he had discovered an important truth. Harvey was encouraged by Charles the First and remained faithful to him. Servetus, burnt in effigy by the catholics and in person by Calvin, had pointed out the circulation of the blood in the lungs. This age treated a man of genius as a vulgar heretic, whom another heretic conducted to the stake.

For the rest, as to the purely political English pamphlets, even when not infected by the theological jargon of the time, (which was a rare case) they remain at an immense distance behind our modern investigations. If we except Milton, no writer during the Revolution of 1649 can approach Sieyes, Mirabeau, Benjamin Constant, still less Carrel. This last, close, firm, able and logical writer, has in his manner something of the positive eloquence of facts; his deep and grave style may be compared with history recorded by monuments.