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Rh 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