Untitled - 24grammata.com

342 ON THE RISE, PROGKESS, ETC.boast, not even Machiavel, who, as the founder of practicalhistory among the moderns, might otherwise claim a placebeside him.The object of Montesquieu was to attain by the study ofhistory to a knowledge of the very essence of states and political constitutions to distinguish the peculiarities of eachform ;and thus to deduce maxims for the administration ofthe different branches of legislature under different constitutions.His fieldwas therefore of boundless extent and proportionate abundance ;but then the subjects which it embracedpossessed of themselves the highest practical interest, andhad they been treated with only moderate ability, the firstattempt on so large a scale could not have failed to attractthe reader. How much more, then, when they were in thehands of a man so gifted as !Montesquieu Indeed, interesting as we have declared the subjects to be of which hetreats, it was not to them, but to his manner of treating ofthem, that his work owes the great and. permanent sensationwhich it produced. The method which he adopted of givingno finished descriptions, but of only hinting as it were byoutline ;of never exhausting his subject, and yet of sayingso much on it in so few words ;of busying not only the reason, by philosophical argument and definition, but the imagination, by the pictures which he often substituted in theirroom above all, those lightningflashes of genius which,perhaps, blind as often as they illustrate all this was admirably calculated to secure him. assent and admirationamong a people such as his own.His work contained inexhaustible matter of thought forthose who wished to think;whilst those who were too indolent for such exertions might console themselves with thebelief that they had gathered from it an abundance of readymadethoughts, and these of the brightest description.This exuberance of genius, however, was unaccompaniedby a true philosophical spirit. The mind of Montesquieuwas well adapted for deriving shrewd remarks from experience ;but for all matters of speculation, as far as that consists in the definition and distinction of abstract ideas, he wasalmost totally unfitnay, he does not even seem to have oncefelt the want of it ! The very first pages of his work show,