rit of
that picture itself, the vividness and effortless effect with which the
men and women dealt with--their doings and their sayings--are presented,
the completeness and dramatic force of the presentation.

[Sidenote: Galiani.]

The last of the epistolers selected for comment, the Abbe Galiani, has
this peculiarity as distinguished from Voltaire and Diderot, that he is
little except a letter-writer to the present and probably to all future
generations of readers. He will indeed appear again, but his dealings
with political economy are of merely ephemeral interest. Galiani was of
a noble Neapolitan family, was attached to the Neapolitan Legation in
Paris, and made himself a darling of _philosophe_ society there. When he
was recalled to his native country and endowed with sufficiently
lucrative employments, his chief consolation for the loss of Parisian
society was to gather as far as he could a copy of it--consisting partly
of Italians, partly of foreign and especially English visitors--to
Italy, to study classical archaeology, in which (and especially in the
department of numismatics) he was an expert, and to write letters to his
French friends. In his long residence at Paris, Galiani had acquired a
style not entirely destitute of Italianisms, but all the more piquant on
that account. His letters were published early in this century, but
incompletely and in a somewhat garbled fashion. They have recently had
the benefit of two different complete editions. They are addressed, the
greater part of them to Madame d'Epinay, and the remainder to various
correspondents. Galiani had the reputation of being one of the best
talkers of his time, and the memoirs and correspondence of his friends
(especially Diderot's) contain many reported sayings of his which amply
support the reputation. Like many famous talkers, he seems to have been
not quite so ready with the pen as with the tongue. But it is only by
comparison that his letters can be depreciated. Less voluminous and
manifold than Voltaire, less picturesque than Diderot, he is a model of
general letter-writing. He is also remarkable as an exponent of the
curious feeling of the time towards religion; a feeling which was
prevalent in the cultivated classes (with certain differences) all over
Europe. Galiani was not, like some of his French friends, a
proselytising atheist. He held some ecclesiastical employments in his
own country with decency, and died with all due attention