that great principle of true taste, the _belle ame_.[67] He
wrote eclogues in French, and he attempted the more useful but more
difficult task of writing in the half-formed tongue of his own country
an account of the great painters of Italy and Holland.[68] Diderot makes
the pointed remark about him, that he believed in equality of ranks by
instinct, which is better than believing in it by reflection.[69] It was
through the medium of this friendly and intelligent man that the Empress
had acted in the purchase of Diderot's library. In 1769 he was appointed
Russian minister at the Hague, and his chief ground for delight at the
appointment was that it brought him within reach of his friends in
Paris.

[67] _Oeuv._, xviii. 239.

[68] Grimm, _Cor. Lit._, xv. 18. Diderot, xviii. 251.

[69] _Oeuv._, xix. 250.

Diderot set out on his expedition some time in the summer of 1773--the
date also of Johnson's memorable tour to the Hebrides--and his first
halt was at the Dutch capital, then at the distance of a four days'
journey from Paris. Here he remained for many weeks, in some doubt
whether or not to persist in the project of a more immense journey. He
passed most of his time with the Prince and Princess Galitzin, as
between a good brother and a good sister. Their house, he notices, had
once been the residence of Barneveldt. Men like Diderot are the last
persons to think of their own historic position, else we might have
expected to find him musing on the saving shelter which this land of
freedom and tolerance had given to more than one of his great precursors
in the literature of emancipation. Descartes had found twenty years of
priceless freedom (1629-1649) among the Dutch burghers. The ruling ideas
of the Encyclopaedia came in direct line from Bayle (_d. 1706_) and Locke
(_d. 1704_), and both Bayle and Locke, though in different measures,
owed their security to the stout valour with which the Dutch defended
their own land, and taught the English how to defend theirs, against the
destructive pretensions of Catholic absolutism. Of these memories
Diderot probably thought no more than Descartes thought about the
learning of Grotius or the art of Rembrandt. It was not the age, nor was
his the mind, for historic sentimentalism. "The more I see of this
country," he wrote to his good friends in Paris, "the more I feel at
home in it. The soles, fresh herrings, turbot, perch, are all the best
people in the world. The wa