said, "will last as long as I shall," and his forecast was
justified: the "deluge" came long after he had gone to his account; and
the phrase stands against him as an expression of his base selfishness,
which saw the coming troubles without caring about them, because he
believed that they would not come in his day. The other saying is that
of Voltaire, who, in 1762, exclaimed in an ecstasy of hope and prophecy,
"Happy the young men, for they shall see many things." And yet those
youths were mostly gray-headed when the "many things" began, and not a
few of them lost those gray heads, instead of looking on as interested
spectators of a new order of things.

The writers of this time, whatever their faults, form the true
aristocracy of France: the rest of the nation, sinking lower and lower,
left their superiority all the more marked and uncontested. The series
of great writers of the age may be said to begin with Montesquieu,
though Voltaire had published his _OEdipus_ in 1718, and the _Lettres
Persanes_ did not appear till 1721. Montesquieu, a man of noble birth,
was brought up as a lawyer. We trace in him accordingly an aristocratic
and legal tone of mind, which naturally took pleasure in England and the
law-abiding conservatism of her constitution, as it appeared to him in
the middle of the eighteenth century. Like so many of his fellows,
Montesquieu chafed under the influence of a corrupt clergy, and declared
against them, with the philosophers. This was almost the only point he
had in common with Voltaire, whom he heartily disliked. We may say that
he represents the aristocratic and constitutional resistance to the
state of things in France, while Voltaire is champion of liberty of
thought and tolerance. Montesquieu resists the Jesuit influences of his
day on conservative grounds alone; Voltaire resists them by resting on
the enlightened despotism of his time, and appealing to it, rather than
to the laws or constitution of his country. Lastly, at a later day,
Rousseau, sworn foe to society, from which he had suffered much, the
sentimentalist, enemy of aristocracy and monarchy, instinctively
antagonistic to the legal temperament, speaks directly to the people,
even as Montesquieu had spoken to the educated and the well-to-do, and
Voltaire to kings; and they, stirred to the heart by his appeals,
elected him the prophet of their cause, believed in him, and at his
bidding subverted the whole fabric of society.

Montesqui