blood was as noble in Sweden as it was in Russia. Diderot
replied that he would greatly have liked to see on the throne the
sovereign (Gustavus III.) who was so nearly coming to pay him a visit on
his own fourth storey in Paris. But he confessed that he was growing
homesick, and Stockholm must remain unvisited. In September (1774)
Diderot set his face homewards. "I shall gain my fireside," he wrote on
the eve of his journey, "never to quit it again for the rest of my life.
The time that we count by the year has gone, and the time that we must
count by the day comes in its stead. The less one's income, the more
important to use it well. I have perhaps half a score of years at the
bottom of my wallet. In these ten years, fluxions, rheumatisms, and the
other members of that troublesome family will take two or three of them;
let us try to economise the seven that are left, for the repose and the
small happinesses that a man may promise himself on the wrong side of
sixty." The guess was a good one. Diderot lived ten years more, and
although his own work in the world was done, they were years of great
moment both to France and the world. They witnessed the establishment of
a republic in the American colonies, and they witnessed the final stage
in the decay of the old monarchy in France. Turgot had been made
controller-general in the months before Diderot's return, and Turgot's
ministry was the last serious experiment in the direction of orderly
reform. The crash that followed resounded almost as loudly at St.
Petersburg and in Holland as in France itself, and Catherine, in 1792,
ordered all the busts of Voltaire that had adorned the saloons and
corridors of her palace to be thrust ignominiously down into the
cellars.

CHAPTER V.

HELVETIUS.

Before proceeding to the closing chapter of Diderot's life, I propose to
give a short account of three remarkable books, of all of which he was
commonly regarded as the inspirer, which were all certainly the direct
and natural work of the Encyclopaedic school, and which all play a
striking part in the intellectual commotions of the century.

The great attack on the Encyclopaedia was made, as we have already seen,
in 1758, after the publication of the seventh volume. The same
prosecution levelled an angrier blow at Helvetius's famous treatise,
_L'Esprit_. It is not too much to say, that of all the proscribed books
of the century, that excited the keenest resentment. This arose