Lawrence E. Klein, who teaches history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is the author of "Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early-Eighteenth-Century England". He has also edited the third earl of Shaftesbury's "Characteristics" for Cambridge University Press. Anthony J. La Vopa, who teaches history at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center. He is the author of a number of articles on eighteenth-century German social and intellectual history, and of "Grace, Talent, and Merit: P...