Childhood and Early Youth
(1724-1740)
Early Childhood (1724-1731):
"The Best Education from the Moral Point of View"T
HE YEAR 1724 was not one of the most significant years in the his¬
tory of the human race, but it was not wholly insignificant either. It
saw the signing of a treaty between Moscow and Constantinople, designed
to dismember Persia, whose territory the two powers had previously in¬
vaded. Persia's Shah Mahmoud went insane and ordered a wholesale mas¬
sacre at Isfahan. Philip V abdicated the Spanish throne in favor of his son
Louis — only to regain it when Louis died a few months later. The Sieur de
Bienvilles, governor of Louisiana at New Orleans, proclaimed a Code Noir
for regulating blacks and expelling Jews, while the Quakers and Mennon-
ites published their first statements opposing slavery. In Philadelphia, a
craft guild along the lines of European guilds was established. In Ireland,
still a colony of England and largely exploited by absentee landlords,
Jonathan Swift published Drapier's Letters, in which he tried to persuade
the Irish to oppose a scheme by one William Wood, who had received a
royal patent for issuing a new Irish coin but who planned to profit from
debasing it. Peter I, known as Peter the Great, founded the Russian Acad¬
emy of Sciences and Arts. Paul Dudley discovered the possibility of cross-
fertilizing corn. Herman Boerhaave argued in his Elementae chemiae (El¬
ements of Chemistry) that heat is a fluid, and Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit
described the supercooling of water. George Frederick Handel finished
two of his lesser-known works, the operas Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano. Jean
Philippe Rameau composed one of his three collections of harpsichord
pieces. Daniel Defoe published Roxana and A New Voyage around the World.
The second volume of Alain Rene Lesage's picaresque romance Gil Bias
appeared. The Comtesse de Lafayette's posthumous La Comtesse de Tende
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