Sentence:  Such was the impromptu that Voltaire gave to howls of laughter at Sans Souci and that was soon circulated in manuscript throughout the literary circles of <WSD>Europe</WSD> , to be printed sometime later , but with the name of Timon of Athens , the famous misanthrope , substituted for that of Rousseau . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  the 2nd smallest continent (actually a vast peninsula of Eurasia); the British use `Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles