n the way a curious and dangerous adventure. After a year
at the Hague he went home, and was put in possession of his share of his
mother's property. He visited Italy, where he made a pilgrimage to
Loretto, then returned to France, and dwelt in Paris for some time;
resuming however his military character for a while, and serving at the
siege of La Rochelle. At last, in 1628, being then thirty-two years old,
he left the service finally, and gave himself up wholly to the study of
philosophy. For this purpose he retired to Holland, where he was still
somewhat restless[273]. But his chief centres were successively
Amsterdam, Egmond, not far from Alkmaar, and Endegeest, within easy
distance of the Hague. He returned to France more than once, and was
asked to settle at court, receiving from Mazarin a pension of 3000
livres. But the troubles of the Fronde made Paris a distasteful and
unsuitable residence for him. He then accepted, at the end of 1649, an
invitation from Queen Christina of Sweden and went to Stockholm, where
the severe weather and the gracious habit which the queen had of
summoning him for discussion at five o'clock in the morning (he had all
his life when not on active service made a point of not rising till
eleven), put an end to his life, by inflammation of the lungs, on Feb.
11, 1650.

The works of Descartes are numerous, though few of them are of very
great extent. He wrote a treatise (not now extant) on the art of fencing
when he was but sixteen; and during the succeeding years small treatises
on different points, chiefly of mathematics and natural theology,
constantly issued from his pen, though he was not a ready writer. The
works which alone concern us here are his famous _Discours de la
Methode_, 1637, and his letters. The _Meditations_, of equal importance
philosophically with the _Discours_, and the _Principia Philosophiae_, a
rehandling of the two, were originally published in Latin. No attempt
can here be made to give any account of Descartes' mathematical,
physical, and metaphysical speculations, or of the means by which he
endeavoured to work out his great principle, that all knowledge springs
from certain ideas clearly and distinctly conceived, and is deducible
mathematically, or rather logically, from these principles.

Until and including Victor Cousin, who, though his own style has some
drawbacks, was a keen judge and a fervent admirer of the best classical
French, French writers have always