Voltaire

Excerpt from Histoire de Charles XII, Roi de Su de, Vol. 1 Les pays septentrionaux taient alors beau coup plus peupl s qu'ils ne le sont de nos jours, parce que la religion laissait aux habi tants la libert de donner plus de citoyens l'etat par la pluralit de leurs femmes; que ces femmes elles - m mes ne connaissaient d'op probre que la st rilit et l'oisivet ; et qu'aussi laborieuses et aussi robustes que les hommes, elles en taient plus t t et plus longtemps f condes. Mais la Su de, avec ce qui lui reste aujourd'hui de la Finlande, n'a pas plus de quatre millions d'habitants. Le pays est ste rile et pauvre; la Scenic est sa seule province qui porte du froment. Il n'y a pas plus de neuf millions de nos livres en argentmonnaÿ dans tout le pays. La Banque publique, qui est la plus ancienne de l'eur0pe, y fut introduite par n cessit , parce que les payements se faisant en monnaie de cuivre et de fer, le transport tait trop difficile. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) was born into a wealthy Parisian family in 1694. His intellectual powers made him a justly influential figure in the Enlightenment, but he seemed to court controversy, twice lampooning the regent Philipe D'Orleans, which earned him first exile from Paris, and then a year in the Bastille. On release, Voltaire continued to ride a roller-coaster between fame and ill-repute, becoming again a royal favourite until a love affair (and imminent duel) led to the threat of further imprisonment, a fate he escaped only by seeking exile across the Channel in May 1726. He would not return for almost three years. Letters Concerning the English Nation is the fruit of this time in England, where he met King George I, perfected his English, and conversed with the likes of Jonathan Swift, Bolingbroke, and other lions of English Literary Society. He read widely, his open, analytical mind consuming a swathe of topics across the Arts and Science. The result is an enthralling series of essays, shot through with Voltaire's hallmark acerbic wit, celebrating the openness of 18th Century English society, its relatively meritocratic nature, and covering such disparate subjects as Trade, Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Parliament, The Royal Society, Inoculation, John Locke, and The Quakers. Though lauded in Britain, in France this book was burned and the publisher jailed.