during the last four years of Louis XIV's reign, and the first five years of the Regency, and they describe the impressions of three Persians who are supposed to be travelling in Europe at that time. There is an elder, Usbek, who is grave and sedate, a younger, Rica, who is gay and frivolous, and a third, Rhédi, who does not appear to have got further westward than Venice.
The device was not new, but it had never been employed with such brilliancy of style, with such fine irony, with such audacity, with such fertility of suggestion, with such subtlety of observation, with such profundity of thought. And it was admirably adapted for a writer who wished to let his mind play freely on men and manners, to compare and contrast the religious, political and social codes of different countries, to look at his manifold subject from different points of view, to suggest inferences and reflections, and to do all this without committing himself to or making himself responsible for any definite proposition. Any dangerous comment could be easily qualified by a note which explained that it merely represented the Mahommedan or the Persian point of view.
There were a great many dangerous passages. There was the famous letter about the Two Magicians,
conclusions. In short, the feuilletonist is ripening into the philosophical historian and the political philosopher. But at this stage his political philosophy has perhaps not advanced beyond the point indicated by a passage in Letter lxxxi. 'I have often set myself to think which of all the different forms of government is the most conformable to reason, and it seems to me that the most perfect government is that which guides men in the manner most in accordance with their own natural tendencies and inclinations.'
