Sta Joux, a celebrated traveller, was born at Paris in 1643. His father, who was a jeweller, caused him to be educated in the Protestant religion, after which he travelled into Persia and India. He traded in jewels, and died at London in 1713. The account he wrote of his travels in the above-mentioned regions is much esteemed; and in it Montesquieu, Rousseau, Gibbon, Helvetius, and other philosophers studied the political system of Persia, and acquired a positive knowledge of despotic government, which they have so forcibly characterized.