appears where the author is in the wrong, almost as strongly as
where he is in the right. He never advances a false opinion
because it is new or splendid, because he can clothe it in a
happy phrase, or defend it by an ingenious sophism. His errors
are at once explained by a reference to the circumstances in
which he was placed. They evidently were not sought out; they lay
in his way, and could scarcely be avoided. Such mistakes must
necessarily be committed by early speculators in every science.

In this respect it is amusing to compare The Prince and the
Discourses with the Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu enjoys, perhaps,
a wider celebrity than any political writer of modern Europe.
Something he doubtless owes to his merit, but much more to his
fortune. He had the good luck of a Valentine.

He caught the eye of the French nation, at the moment when it was
waking from the long sleep of political and religious bigotry;
and, in consequence, he became a favourite. The English, at that
time, considered a Frenchman who talked about constitutional
checks and fundamental laws as a prodigy not less astonishing
than the learned pig or the musical infant. Specious but shallow,
studious of effect, indifferent to truth, eager to build a
system, but careless of collecting those materials out of which
alone a sound and durable system can be built, the lively
President constructed theories as rapidly and as slightly as
card-houses, no sooner projected than completed, no sooner
completed than blown away, no sooner blown away than forgotten.
Machiavelli errs only because his experience, acquired in a very
peculiar state of society, could not always enable him to
calculate the effect of institutions differing from those of