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, son of the preceding artist, was born at Paris in 1715, and, assisted by the instructions of his father, and his mother Louise Madeleine Hortemels, became an engraver of considerable celebrity. In 1749, he travelled to Italy with the marquis de Marigny, and after his return, was in 1752 made a member of the royal academy of Paris, and, in the sequel, appointed secretary and historian to that society. In addition to these honours, he was made a knight of the order of St. Michael, and keeper of the king’s drawings. Of his works, then extremely numerous, Mr. Jombert published a catalogue in 1770. He died April 29, 1790, after having published some works connected with his profession, as, 1. “Lettres sur les Peintures d'Herculaneum,” 1751, 12mo. 2. “Dissertation sur l'effet de la lumiere et des ombres, relativement a la peinture,” 1757, 12mo. 3. “Voyage d‘ltalie, ou Recueil d’ observations sur les ouvrages d‘architecture, de peinture, et de sculpture, que l’on voit dans les principales villes d'ltalie,” Lausanne, 1773, 3 vols. 8vo. 4. “Les Mysotechniques aux enfers,” 1763, 12mo. 5. “Lettres sur les Vies de Slodz et de Deshays,” 1765, 12mo. 6. “Projet d'une salle de spectacle,” 1765, 12mo. Cochin gave the design for the monument of the mareschal D'Harcourt, executed by Pigal, which is now in the French museum.

, the most remarkable of this family, was born at Paris in 1715, and was son of the preceding Helvetius. He studied under the famous father Pon'e in the college of Louis the Great, and his tutor, discovering in his compositions remarkable proofs of genius, was particularly attentive to his education. An early association with the wits of his time gave him the desire to become an author, but his principles unfortunately became tainted with false philosophy. He did not publish any thing till 1758, when he produced his celebrated book “DeTEsprit,” which appeared first in one volume 4to, and afterwards in three volumes, 12mo. This work was very justly condemned by the parliament of Paris, as confining the faculties of man to animal sensibility, and removing at once the restraints of vice and the encouragements to virtue. Attacked in various ways at home, on account of these principles, he visited England in 1764, and the next year went into Prussia, where he was received with honourable attention by the king. When he returned into France, he led a retired and domestic life on his estate at Vore. Attached to his wife and family, and strongly inclined to benevolence, he lived there more happily than at Paris, where, as he said, he “was obliged to encounter the mortifying spectacle of misery that he could not relieve.” To Marivaux, and M. Saurin, of the French academy, he allowed pensions, that, for a private benefactor, were considerable, merely on the score of merit; which he was anxious to search out and to assist. Yet, with all this benevolence of disposition, he was strict in the care of his game, and in the exaction of his feudal rights. He was maltre-d'hotel to the queen, and, for a time, a farmer-general, but quitted that lucrative post to enjoy his studies. When he found that he had bestowed his bounty upon unworthy persons, or was reproached with it, he said, “If I was king, I would correct them; but I am only rich, and they are poor, my business therefore is to aid them.” Nature had been kind to Helvetius; she had given him a fine person, genius, and a constitution which promised long life. This last, however, he did not attain, for he was attacked by the gout in his head and stomach, under which complaint he languished some little time, and died in December 1771. His works were, 1. the treatise “De l'Esprit,” “on the Mind,” already mentioned: of* which various opinions have been entertained, It certainly is one of those which endeavour to degrade the nature of man too nearly to that of mere animals; and even Voltaire, who called the author at one time a true philosopher, has said that it is filled with common-place truths, delivered with great parade, but without method, and disgraced by stories very unworthy of a philosophical production. The ideas of virtue and vice, according to this book, depend chiefly upon climate. 2. “Le Bonheur,” or “Happiness,” a poem in six cantos; published after his death, in 1772, with some fragments of epistles. His poetical style is still more affected than his prose, and though he produces some fine verses, he is more frequently stiff and forced. His poem on happiness is a declamation, in which he makes that great object depend, not on virtue, but on the cultivation of letters and the arts. 3. “De l'Homme,” 2 vols. 8vo, another philosophical work, not less bold than the first. A favourite paradox, produced in this book, under a variety of different forms, is, “that all men are born with equal talents, and owe their genius solely to education.” This book is even more dangerous than that on the mind, because the style is clearer, and the author writes with less reserve. He* speaks sometimes of the enemies of what he called philosophy, with an asperity that ill accords with the general mildness of his character.

, a French writer, and one of the Encyclopedists, was born at Paris in 1715, and was bred an advocate, but forsook the bar to cultivate general literature. In his youth he is thought to have been somewhat fanatical, as he wrote Latin hymns in praise of the abb Paris, at whose tomb extraordinary miracles were performed. (See Paris). An enthusiasm of a very opposite kind connected him with the philosophers who were exerting their powers against revealed religion, and in 1748 he contributed his first share by his book called “Moeurs,” or “Manners,” in which, although tolerably disguised, are some of those bold attacks, both on Christianity and morals, which afterwards appeared more plainly in the writings of his associates D'Alembert, Diderot, &c. This work procured him, however, a name in the world, although some have endeavoured to deprive him of it, by asserting that the work was written by an impious priest, and that Toussaint consented to bear the praise or blame. For this, however, there seems little foundation, if, according to the abbe Barruel, he afterwards publicly recanted his errors. In the mean time he published “Eciaircissemens sur les Mceurs,” 1764, which he meant as an apology for the former, but it was condemned by the parliament of Paris, and the author made his escape to Brussels, where he became editor of a French paper, devoted to the inte^ rests of the house of Austria. In this, of course, he treated the king of Prussia with little respect, even using the epithet, the “highwayman of the North,” and the philosopherking was not ignorant of this, but had been so much pleased with his book on “Manners,' 7 that he bestowed on him the professorship of logic and rhetoric at Berlin, where Tous* saint died in 1772. While there he published an excellent translation of Gellert’s Fables; and while in France had contributed some articles on jurisprudence to the Encyclopaedia, and assisted in a Dictionary of Medicine, published in 6 vols. folio. His” Mceurs" were translated into English about 1750.