lay neither in law nor in physics, but in the study of human nature. His first book, the Persian Letters, appeared in 1721. He resigned his judicial office in 1726, and became a member of the Académie française at the beginning of 1728. The next three years were spent in travel, and his travels ended with a stay of nearly two years in England. The Grandeur et décadence des Romains appeared in 1734, and the Esprit des lois in 1748. He died, as I have said, in 1755.
His personal appearance is known to us from the excellent medallion portrait by Dassier, executed in 1752. Aquiline features, an expression, subtle, kindly, humorous. He was always short-sighted, and towards the end of his life became almost entirely blind. 'You tell me that you are blind,' he writes to his old friend Madame du Deffand, in 1752: 'Don't you see we were both once upon a time, you and I, rebellious spirits, now condemned to darkness? Let us console our-
Dr. Teissier and recommended by M. Ste-Hyacynthe and the President (Sir Hans Sloane). He refers to his reception in a letter to Père Cerati, dated London, March 1, 1730 (new style). Among the documents of the Royal Society is the copy of a letter from Montesquieu to Sir Hans Sloane, dated Paris, August 4, 1734, and enclosing copies of his book on the Grandeur et décadence des Romains. The M. Ste-Hyacynthe, who figures as Montesquieu's backer, must have been the 'Thémiseul de Ste-Hyacinthe, the half-starved author of the Chef-d'œuvre d'un inconnu, who, after having served, if we may believe Voltaire, as a dragoon during the persecution of the French Protestants, had crossed over to England, there had been converted, had translated [[Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)|]], and, though always a destitute wanderer, had been nominated a member of the Royal Society of London' (Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, translated by J. W. Matthews, p. 18). The English translation of this book embodies additions to, and corrections of, the original work.
