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 MONTESQUIEU

Sainte-Beuve sat down, in the year 1852, to write a causerie about Montesquieu, he gave as a reason for not having dealt with the subject before that Montesquieu belonged to the class of men whom one approaches with apprehension on account of the respect which they inspire, and of the kind of religious halo which has gathered round their names.

This was written more than fifty years ago, and the language reflects the glamour which still attached to Montesquieu's name during the first half of the nineteenth century. That glamour has now passed away. Not that Montesquieu has died, or is likely to die. But he is no longer the oracle of statesmen; his Spirit of Laws is no longer treated by framers of constitutions as a Bible of political philosophy, bearing with it the same kind of authority as that which Aristotle bore among the schoolmen. That authority ended when the greater part of the civilized world had been endowed with parliamentary and representative institutions framed more or less on the model which Montesquieu had described and had held up for imitation. The interest which attaches to him now is of a different order. It is literary and historical. He lives as one of the greatest of French writers, and his Considerations on the Greatness and Decay of the Romans are still read as a school classic by French boys and girls, much as the masterpieces of Burke are, or ought to be,