VOLTAIRE. 101 



only a picture without any motion ; only the representa- 

 tion of a people's manners and condition at a given 

 time, and not the history of the changes which those 

 manners undergo, and the varying and progressive 

 alteration in that condition. 



Voltaire, whose daring genius was never trammelled 

 by the precedents of former times, or the works of pre- 

 ceding writers, at once saw how grievous was the error 

 thus committed in both its branches ; and he resolved 

 to remedy it by writing a history of nations, giving, in 

 his narrative of events, their spirit and their tendency 

 rather than their details. For we shall greatly err if 

 we suppose that he only supplied the second defect now 

 pointed out, and joined with ordinary history the 

 account of the manners and condition of nations at dif- 

 ferent stated periods of their progress. He undertook to 

 banish the servile presentation of all events in all their 

 details, according to their succession in order of time ; 

 to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the ore from 

 the dross ; to seize on the salient points, the really im- 

 portant parts of each period, giving as it were the cream 

 only, and preserving the true spirit of history ; and with 

 all this to give, at every step and in every relation, whe- 

 ther of particular occurrences or of general subjects in 

 any one country, a comparative view of similar occur- 

 rences and similar subjects in other countries, or the 

 contrasts which the analogous history of these other 

 countries presents to the view of the philosophical his- 

 torian. This last characteristic of the work is, in some 

 respects, the most distinguishing and the most remark- 

 able of the whole ; for it should seem as if the author 

 never deals with any subject in the history of any one 



