at felicity of experiment is to the
scientific discoverer. The book came into immediate vogue. It was
published in 1772; a second edition was demanded within a couple of
years, and it is computed that more than twenty editions, as well as
countless pirated versions, were exhausted before the universal
curiosity and interest were satisfied. As the subject took the writer
over the whole world, so he found readers in every part of the habitable
globe. And among them were men for whom destiny had lofty parts in
store. Zeal carried one young reader so far that he collected all the
boldest passages into a single volume, and published it as _L'Esprit de
Raynal_; an achievement for which, as he was a member of a religious
congregation, he afterwards got into some trouble.[160] Franklin read
and admired the book in London. Black Toussaint Louverture in his
slave-cabin at Hayti laboriously spelled his way through its pages, and
found in their story of the wrongs of his race and their passionate
appeal against slavery, the first definite expression of thoughts which
had already been dimly stirred in his generous spirit by the brutalities
that were every day enacted under his eyes. Gibbon solemnly immortalised
Raynal by describing him, in one of the great chapters of the _Decline
and Fall_, as a writer who "with a just confidence had prefixed to his
own history the honourable epithets of political and
philosophical."[161] Robertson, whose excellent _History of America_,
covering part of Raynal's ground, was not published until 1777,
complimented Raynal on his ingenuity and eloquence, and reproduced some
of Raynal's historical speculations.[162]

[160] Hedouin by name.

[161] Ch. xxi.

[162] _Works_, xii. 189 (edition of 1822).

Frederick the Great began to read it, and for some days spoke
enthusiastically to his French satellites at dinner of its eloquence and
reason. All at once he became silent, and he never spoke a word about
the book again. He had suddenly come across half a dozen pages of
vigorous rhapsodising, delivered for his own good:

"Oh Frederick, Frederick! thou wast gifted by nature with a bold and
lively imagination, a curiosity that knew no bounds, a passion for
industry. Humanity, everywhere in chains, everywhere cast down, wiped
away her tears at the sight of thy earliest labours, and seemed to find
a solace for all her woes in the hope of finding in thee her avenger. On
the dread theatre of war