Diplomatic negotiation of our day is a curious mix of national endeavor within the bloc concept. The remnants of our nineteenth century nation alism struggles - half willingly - with the power that a larger continental or ideological bloc might bring. In the sixteenth century men knew that the protective bloc of Christendom would not provide peace, yet they were not sure that the new national states would secure it either. We have much to gain from a study of diplomatic procedures and institutions in such a transitional period. This monograph is based upon the great collections of published...

The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" Wallace Stevens said somewhere that the theory of poetry is the life of poetry.l Charles Darwin, who likes poetry, "recognized that at the eost of losing his appreciation of poetry and other things that delighted him in his youth, his mind had become a 'machine for grinding generallaws out of large colleetions of facts.' "2 Somewhere in between the polar positions of Stevens' extreme aesthetic belief and Darwin's extreme meehanistic belief...

The place of Gilbert Sheldon in seventeenth century history and his influence upon the events of the period have long presented a tantalizing problem. A historian exploring the archives of the time cannot help but be impressed by the ubiquitous appearances of the archbishop. Yet the frequent references too often provide little detail, so that what emerges is a wraith-like picture of the man and a very uncertain account of his activities. As a result it is difficult to know what to think of Sheldon. He has been termed a "Laudian," but Mathew Wren, Laud's loyal assistant and sharer of his...

The Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty of Anthony Collins' was considered by Joseph Priestley and Voltaire to be the best book written on freewill up to their own time. Priestley admitted that it convert ed him to determinism and it had a powerful effect on Voltaire in the same direction. It seems important to place in its wider historical context a book which so influenced such men and which greatly impressed the philosophes in general. Therefore - and because such an account has value in itself - the Introduction contains a survey of the freewill controversy from the time of...

Charles Pinot Duclos' biography dramatizes the evolution from the rigid separation of the aristocratic and plebeian classes in the seventeenth century to the gradual social democratization in the eighteenth. This son of a Brittany merchant from the little village of Dinan rose to social prominence in the aristocratic salon circles of Paris and to literary pre- eminence, as attest contemporary memoirs, the success of his novels, histories and moral writings as well as his official positions - a member of two academies, Royal Historiographer, Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy -a feat...

Part of the material contained in the present book was presented in the form of a lecture course given by me at the University of Oxford in I962 as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer. Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate School contributed to the cost of research and publication. The staff of the Honnold Library, Claremont, California, was extremely obliging in matters concerning inter-library loans. The page proofs were read in part by Professor Richard Walzer, the University of Oxford. Mr. Salih Alich, Blaisdell Institute, Claremont, California, corrected many errors occurring in the...