Truth hung loosely on Voltaire, who acknowledged not its empire, insensible as he was of its dignity, and disdainful of its ennobling inspirations:

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La vérité repose aux pieds de l' Eternel,

Rarement elle éclaire un orgueilleux mortel."

though, indeed, the words of Parolles, in "All's Well that Ends Well," are more applicable to him, "He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth was a fool." Laugh he must, and raise laughter, at the cost of whom, or at what sacrifice of principle, he little cared. "On doit être sûr du succès quand on se moque de son prochain"-(to Madame Du Deffant, 21st November, 1776.) "Le plaisir, est le but universel, qui l'attrape fait son salut (letter of 10th August, 1736, to Berger;) and need we recur to the bold exhortation already quoted-" Mentez mes amis," &c.—to Thiriot, the 21st October, 1736? Again, in reference to his "Dictionnaire Philosophique," he wrote to D'Alembert, the 19th September, 1764, "Dès qu'il y aura le moindre danger, je vous prie en grâce de m'avertir, afin que je désavoue l'ouvrage dans tous les papiers publics, avec ma candeur et mon innocence ordinaires." Just so, as we have seen, he disavowed the "Epître à Uranie," and the "Lettres Philosophiques," abandoning to the fatal consequences his betrayed publishers, like the unfortunate Jore, but careful of himself. The most shameful of his proceedings, however, was his and his confederate Condorcet's falsification of various works of genius or celebrity, when adverse to their views. In 1776, they published ostensibly a new edition of "Pascal's Thoughts"-" frauduleusement mutilée de moitié pour le maintien d'un système, dont ils auraient

bien voulu faire Pascal l'apôtre," writes M. Renouard, (who has often indignantly mentioned to us this vile stratagem of deception,) confirmed by M. Cousin, in his "Rapport à l'Académie Française," in 1842, on the autograph manuscript of the "Thoughts," and by M. Fougères' "Pensées, Fragments, et Lettres de Blaise Pascal," (1844, two vols., 8vo.) M. Renouard's words above cited are in the preface of his edition of 1812, 2 tomes, 12mo. In similar pursuance of his chief's inculcation, though after his death, Condorcet, in 1787, edited the illustrious Euler's Letters to the Princess of Anhalt-Dessau, studiously suppressing whatever was favourable to religion; as for instance, at letter 90, the reference to miracles, and at letter 113, our obligations to Christ, for rescuing us from the trammels of vice, (les chaines du vice,) so emphatically expressed in the first impression at Petersburgh, in 1768-1772, three volumes, 8vo.-The Siècle de Louis XIV. (chap. 38,) in the appended account of Quietism, in reference to Fénélon, contains only one of two original stanzas, extracted from the magnificent edition of Telemachus, printed in 1734, at Amsterdam, which, thus curtailed, would argue a perfect apathy as to futurity, in the pious and accomplished prelate; but when disclosed in full, unfolds the genuine and well-known sentiments of implicit reliance on the mercy and merits of his Saviour.*

From the tenor of this first stanza, the motive of its suppression will be easily understood; but Voltaire considered himself safe from detection, by the high price of the volume, which few could possess.

"Adieu vaine prudence!

Je ne te dois plus rien :
Une heureuse ignorance
Est toute ma science:
Jésus et son enfance
Est tout mon bien."

Never, again, did this hierophant of blasphemy hesitate to falsify or warp the sense of scriptural texts, in accommodation to his purpose, as the "Lettres de Quelques Juifs Portugais," 3 volumes, 8vo., by the Abbé Guénée, show-(See Letters v. vi. vii., &c., of first volume,)-when Voltaire unblushingly replied“L'Abbé, il m'importe beaucoup d'être lu, et fort peu d'être cru." The ascription of impious works to deceased persons of celebrity, begun in his early career with Chaulieu, as previously mentioned, became an habitual instrument of mischief; and the example was sedulously followed by the "Club d'Holbach,” consisting of Condorcet, Diderot, Damilaville, Helvétius, Grimm, D'Argental, &c., who constantly issued from their Pandæmonium, volumes under attractive and respectable names, wholly inconsistent, in act or spirit, with such compositions. So the Club's Secretary, M. Leroy, in a letter published in 1789, avowed. "La plupart des livres que vous avez vu paraître depuis long temps contre la religion, les mœurs, les rois et les gouvernements, étaient notre ouvrage...... Le livre paraissait sous un nom que nous choisissions...... nous en envoyions à des libraires, ou à des colporteurs, qui étaient chargés de les vendre au plus bas prix." This accomplice of forgers made the confession in an hour of repentance, and contemplation of the arising flame which they had excited; as so many of Voltaire's adherents successively continued to deplore these fatal effects of derided religion and loosened morality-Marmontel-Raynal-Morellet-la Harpe, with numerous others. Even the "Systéme de la Nature," the most audacious of atheistical emanations, exhibiting a depth of mental depravity to which Vol

taire's abberations never sunk, and from which he abhorrently recoiled, for he undertook its refutation, was circulated by this association, fearlessly presenting on the title-page as its author-J. B. Mirabaud, a writer guiltless of a written line against his professed christian faith, and then (1770) ten years deceased.From the consonance, though not the identity of the name, he has been ignorantly confounded with the great revolutionary protagonist, with whom he had no connexion of blood or principle, and whose senior he was by above seventy years—(1675-1749.) See also what the dispassionate Barante, the historian of Burgundy, says in his "Mélanges Historiques,” tome iii. article Boulanger, on this subject.

Not only did Voltaire, on the 26th of June, 1765, address Helvétius-" Nous avons des livres qui démontrent la fausseté et l'horreur des dogmes chrêtiens; mais nous aurions besoin d'un ouvrage qui fît voir combien la morale des vrais philosophes l'emporte sur celle du christianisme,"* but he earnestly supplicated Catherine of Russia, the 4th of July, 1771, "d'engager Aly-Bey de faire rebâtir le temple de Jérusalem," with the obvious design of disproving by visible demonstration, the prophesied doom and irrevocable fall of that sacred edifice.† And yet to

*It was the similar purpose of Gibbon, (vol. v. p. 538, 4to.) to prove, that the characteristic inculcation of the Gospel, "to do as we would be done by," had been anticipated by the Pagan rhetorician Isocrates. ""A táσxovteS ὑφι ἐτέρων ὀρνίζεσθε, ταυτα τοῖς αλλοῖς μή ποιέτε.” (in Niocle. tom. i. p. 93, edit. Baltic, 1749); but the recommendation of the heathen, became as we have elsewhere distinguished it, a divine command, a condition of salvation to the followers of Christ.

In the same letter, and in others, he exhorts Catherine to arrest the anarchy of Poland--that is, to take possession of it-as she afterwards did, in the infamous partition of the kingdom which soon followed. "J'ai un petit

many protestants his eternal denunciation-" Ecrasez l'infâme," equivalent in its intensity of denunciation to the Censor Cato's-" Delenda est Carthago," appears as solely aimed at Catholicity! But is not the whole Christian system here assailed in its doctrines and foundation? Still, too, and triumphantly emergent, do we behold the Catholic structure fulfilling its destined endurance, and extending its hallowed sway over civilised man.

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.....cujo alto imperio,

O sol logo em nascendo vê primeiro;
Ve-o tambem no meio do hemispherio;
E quando desce o deixa derradeiro," &c.

Os Lusíadas, Canto i-viii.

The preceding series of irrefutable facts is susceptible of ample additions from the same authentic source; but, without further prosecution of the subject, we may leave its contrasted phases to impartial decision. It were needless to ask on which side of good or evil the scale inclines; nor is it possible to deny the absence of all moral consistency or fixed principle of virtue and honour in Voltaire's character and conduct. Good, it would seem, he did by starts and impulses; but evil systematically and perseveringly; as if the inborn principle, the moving spirit of his being. Indeed, he was not altogether uncon

démon familier qui m'a dit, tout bas à l'oreille, que ...vous pacifierez la Pologne," &c. Well may this pacification be characterised in the words of Galgacus, allusive to the Romans, "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."-(Tacit. Agricola, cap. 30.) See again his letter to Catherine, of 2nd November, 1772, and his congratulations on that detestable act, to Frederic, in various letters. (Correspondence avec les Souverains, tome ii.) With Voltaire, our constitutional fiction of royal inerrability, extends to every misdeed of these ruling powers; though his base adulation has wrung even from his disciples an expression of censure.