HENRY DE, Lord of Saint Saire, and an eminent French writer, was descended from a very ancient and noble French family, and born at Saint Saire in 1658. He received his education among the fathers of the oratory, at the college of Juilli, where he discovered from his infancy the uncommon abilities for which he was afterwards distinguished. He applied himself principally to the study of history; and his performances in this department are numerous and considerable, but deformed by an extravagant admiration of the feudal system, which he regarded as the chef d'œuvre of the human mind. To this idea he incessantly recurs in all his writings, and misses no opportunity of regretting those good old times, in which the people, enslaved by petty tyrants alike ignorant and barbarous, had neither industry, nor commerce, nor property, and in which a hundred seigneurs, the oppressors of the country and the enemies of the king, composed what he is pleased to consider the most perfect of all governments. He was the author of a History of the Arabs; Fourteen Letters upon the ancient Parliaments of France; a History of France to the reign of Charles VIII.; and the State of France, with historical memoirs concerning the ancient government of that monarchy, to the time of Hugh Capet, "written," says M. Montesquieu, "with a simplicity and honest freedom worthy of that ancient family from which their author was descended." M. Boullainvilliers died at Paris in 1722, and after his death was published his Life of Mahammed.