Page:Montesquieu.djvu/15

Rh which one could wish there were better evidence. The Pope expressed a wish to do something for his distinguished visitor, and at last offered him for himself and his family a perpetual dispensation from fasting. The next day a papal official called with a bull of dispensation made out in due form, and an account of the customary fees. But the thrifty Gascon waved away the parchment. 'The Pope is an honest man,' he said; 'his word is enough for me, and I hope it will be enough for my Maker.'

After leaving Italy he visited Munich and Augsburg, travelled by Würtemberg and the Rhine countries to Bonn, the residence of the Elector and Archbishop of Cologne, had an interview with our king George II at Hanover, explored the Hartz country (on whose mines he wrote a paper), and thence went to the Low Countries. At the Hague he met Lord Chesterfield, who was then British Ambassador, and was on the point of taking leave for England, where he hoped to be made Secretary of State. Montesquieu sailed with him in his yacht on the last day of October 1729, and remained in England until some time in 1731.

A distinguished German historian, who takes a rather depreciatory view of Montesquieu, says that he travelled rather as a tourist than as a student. The journals of travels and copious notes which have been recently given to the world by the Montesquieu family do not bear out this statement. Probably no