ns, Persians,
Indians, of Louis XIV. and the King of Prussia, of La Bourdonnais,
Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and women that dance naked; of
camels, gingham, and muslin; of millions of millions of lires, pounds,
rupees, and cowries; of iron cables and Circassian women; of Law and the
Mississippi; and against all governments and religions."[170]

[170] _Walpole's Letters_, v. 421.

All this is really not too highly coloured. And Raynal's cosmorama
exactly hit the tastes of the hour. The readers of that day were full of
a new curiosity about the world outside of France, and the less known
families of the human stock. It was no doubt more like the curiosity of
keen-witted children than the curiosity of science. Montesquieu first
stirred this interest in the unfamiliar forms of custom, institution,
creed, motive, and daily manners. But while Montesquieu treated such
matters fragmentarily, and in connection with a more or less abstract
discussion on polity, Raynal made them the objects of a vivid and
concrete picture, and presented them in the easier shape of a systematic
history. Again, if the reading class in France were intelligently
curious, it must be added, we fear, that they were not without a
certain lubricity of imagination, which was pleasantly tickled by
sensuous descriptions of the ways of life that were strange to the iron
restraints of civilisation. Finally, the public of that day always chose
to veil and confuse the furtive voluptuousness of the time by moral
disquisition, and a light and busy meddling with the insoluble
perplexities of philosophy. Here too the dexterous Raynal knew how to
please the fancies of his patrons, and whether Diderot was or was not
the writer of those pages of moral sophism and paradox, there is
something in them which incessantly reminds us of his _Supplement to
Bougainville's Voyages_.

Among the superficial causes of the popularity of Raynal's _History_, we
cannot leave out the circumstance that it was composed after a very
interesting and critical moment in the colonial relations of France. The
Seven Years' War ended in the expulsion of the French from Canada and
from their possessions in the East Indies. When the peace of 1763 was
made, this was counted the most disastrous part of that final record and
sealing of misfortune. When we see with what attachment the ordinary
Frenchman of to-day regards what is as yet the thankless possession of
Algeria, we might eas