and his Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations, and on the Principal Facts of History from Charlemagne to the Death of Louis XIII.

The former work, which everybody reads still, appeared in 1751.

Parts of the Essay, which has long since fallen into neglect, were published in the Mercure de France between 1745 and 1751; it was issued complete in 1756, along with the Age of Louis XIV., which was its continuation.

If we add the Precis of the Reign of Louis XV.

(1769), and observe that the Introduction and first fourteen chapters of the Essay sketch the history of the world before Charlemagne, and that China, India, and America are included in the survey, Voltaire's work amounts to a complete survey of the civilisation of the world from the earliest times to his own.