SECTION II.

Oliver Cromwell was regarded with admiration by the Puritans and

Independents of England; he is still their hero. But Richard Cromwell,

his son, is the man for me. The first was a fanatic who in the present

day would be hissed down in the House of Commons, on uttering any one of

the unintelligible absurdities which he delivered with such confidence

before other fanatics who listened to him with open mouth and staring

eyes, in the name of the Lord. If he were to say that they must seek the

Lord, and fight the battles of the Lord--if he were to introduce the

Jewish jargon into the parliament of England, to the eternal disgrace of

the human understanding, he would be much more likely to be conducted to

Bedlam than to be appointed the commander of armies.

Brave he unquestionably was--and so are wolves; there are even some

monkeys as fierce as tigers. From a fanatic he became an able

politician; in other words, from a wolf he became a fox, and the knave,

craftily mounting from the first steps where the mad enthusiasm of the

times had placed him, to the summit of greatness, walked over the heads

of the prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the horrors of

alarm and had neither cheerful days nor tranquil nights. The

consolations of friendship and society never approached him. He died

prematurely, more deserving, beyond a doubt, of public execution than

the monarch whom, from a window of his own palace, he caused to be led

out to the scaffold.

Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, was gentle and prudent and refused to

keep his father's power at the expense of the lives of three or four

factious persons whom he might have sacrificed to his ambition. He

preferred becoming a private individual to being an assassin with

supreme power. He relinquished the protectorship without regret, to live

as a subject; and in the tranquillity of a country life he enjoyed

health and possessed his soul in peace for ninety years, beloved by his

neighbors, to whom he was a peacemaker and a father.

Say, reader, had you to choose between the destiny of the father and

that of the son, which would you prefer?

CUISSAGE.

Dion Cassius, that flatterer of Augustus and detractor from Cicero,

because Cicero was the friend of liberty--that dry and diffuse writer

and gazetteer of popular rumors, Dion Cassius, reports that certain

senators were of opinion that in order to recompense Cæsar for all the

evil which he had brought upon the commonwealth it would be right, at

the age of fifty-seven, to allow him to honor with his favors all the

ladies who took his fancy. Men are still found who credit this

absurdity. Even the author of the "Spirit of Laws" takes it for a truth

and speaks of it as of a decree which would have passed the Roman senate

but for the modesty of the dictator, who suspected that he was not

altogether prepared for the accession of so much good fortune. But if

the Roman emperors attained not this right by a _senatus-consultum_,

duly founded upon a _plebiscitum_, it is very likely that they fully

enjoyed it by the courtesy of the ladies. The Marcus Aureliuses and the

Julians, to be sure, exercised not this right, but all the rest extended

it as widely as they were able.

It is astonishing that in Christian Europe a kind of feudal law for a

long time existed, or at least it was deemed a customary usage, to

regard the virginity of a female vassal as the property of the lord. The

first night of the nuptials of the daughter of his _villein_ belonged to

him without dispute.

This right was established in the same manner as that of walking with a

falcon on the fist, and of being saluted with incense at mass. The

lords, indeed, did not enact that the _wives_ of their villeins belonged

to them; they confined themselves to the daughters, the reason of which

is obvious. Girls are bashful and sometimes might exhibit reluctance.

This, however, yielded at once to the majesty of the laws, when the

condescending baron deemed them worthy the honor of personally enforcing

their practice.

It is asserted that this curious jurisprudence commenced in Scotland,

and I willingly believe that the Scotch lords had a still more absolute

power over their clans than even the German and French barons over their

vassals.

It is undoubted that some abbots and bishops enjoyed this privilege in

their quality of temporal lords, and it is not very long since that

these prelates compounded their prerogative for acknowledgments in

money, to which they have just as much right as to the virginity of the

girls.

But let it be well remarked that this excess of tyranny was never

sanctioned by any public law. If a lord or a prelate had cited before a

regular tribunal a girl affianced to one of his vassals, in claim of her

quit-rent, he would doubtless have lost his cause and costs.

Let us seize this occasion to rest assured that no partially civilized

people ever established formal laws against morals; I do not believe

that a single instance of it can be furnished. Abuses creep in and are

borne: they pass as customs and travellers mistake them for fundamental

laws. It is said that in Asia greasy Mahometan saints march in

procession entirely naked and that devout females crowd round them to

kiss what is not worthy to be named, but I defy any one to discover a

passage in the Koran which justifies this brutality.

The phallus, which the Egyptians carry in procession, may be quoted in

order to confound me, as well as the idol Juggernaut, of the Indians. I

reply that these ceremonies war no more against morals than circumcision

at the age of eight days. In some of our towns the holy foreskin has

been borne in procession, and it is preserved yet in certain sacristies

without this piece of drollery causing the least disturbance in

families. Still, I am convinced that no council or act of parliament

ever ordained this homage to the holy foreskin.

I call a public law which deprives me of my property, which takes away

my wife and gives her to another, a law against morals; and I am certain

that such a law is impossible. Some travellers maintain that in Lapland

husbands, out of politeness, make an offer of their wives. Out of still

greater politeness, I believe them; but I nevertheless assert, that they

never found this rule of good manners in the legal code of Lapland, any

more than in the constitutions of Germany, in the ordinances of the king

of France, or in the "Statutes at Large" of England, any positive law,

adjudging the right of _cuissage_ to the barons. Absurd and barbarous

laws may be found everywhere; formal laws against morals nowhere.

CURATE (OF THE COUNTRY).

A curate--but why do I say a curate?--even an imam, a talapoin, or

brahmin ought to have the means of living decently. The priest in every

country ought to be supported by the altar since he serves the public.

Some fanatic rogue may assert that I place the curate and the brahmin on

the same level and associate truth with imposture; but I compare only

the services rendered to society, the labor, and the recompense.

I maintain that whoever exercises a laborious function ought to be well

paid by his fellow-citizens. I do not assert that he ought to amass

riches, sup with Lucullus, or be as insolent as Clodius. I pity the

case of a country curate who is obliged to dispute a sheaf of corn with

his parishioner; to plead against him; to exact from him the tenth of

his peas and beans; to be hated and to hate, and to consume his

miserable life in miserable quarrels which engross the mind as much as

they embitter it.

I still more pity the inconsistent lot of a curate, whom monks, claiming

the great tithes, audaciously reward with a salary of forty ducats per

annum for undertaking, throughout the year, the labor of visiting for

three miles round his abode, by day and by night, in hail, rain, or

snow, the most disagreeable and often the most useless functions, while

the abbot or great tithe-holder drinks his rich wine of Volney, Beaune,

or Chambertin, eats his partridges and pheasants, sleeps upon his down

bed with a fair neighbor, and builds a palace. The disproportion is too

great.

It has been taken for granted since the days of Charlemagne that the

clergy, besides their own lands, ought to possess a tenth of the lands

of other people, which tenth is at least a quarter, computing the

expense of culture. To establish this payment it is claimed on a

principle of divine right. Did God descend on earth to give a quarter of

His property to the abbey of Monte Cassino, to the abbey of St. Denis,

to the abbey of Fulda? Not that I know, but it has been discovered that

formerly, in the desert of Ethan, Horeb, and Kadesh Barnea, the Levites

were favored with forty-eight cities and a tenth of all which the earth

produced besides.

Very well, great tithe-holders, go to Kadesh Barnea and inhabit the

forty-eight cities in that uninhabitable desert. Take the tenth of the

flints which the land produces there, and great good may they do you.

But Abraham having combated for Sodom, gave a tenth of the spoil to

Melchizedek, priest and king of Salem. Very good, combat you also for

Sodom, but, like Melchizedek, take not from me the produce of the corn

which I have sowed.

In a Christian country containing twelve hundred thousand square leagues

throughout the whole of the North, in part of Germany, in Holland, and

in Switzerland, the clergy are paid with money from the public treasury.

The tribunals resound not there with lawsuits between landlords and

priests, between the great and the little tithe-holders, between the

pastor, plaintiff, and the flock defendants, in consequence of the third

Council of the Lateran, of which the said flocks defendant have never

heard a syllable.

The king of Naples this year (1772) has just abolished tithes in one of

his provinces: the clergy are better paid and the province blesses him.

The Egyptian priests, it is said, claimed not this tenth, but then, it

is observed that they possessed a third part of the land of Egypt as

their own. Oh, stupendous miracle! oh, thing most difficult to be

conceived, that possessing one-third of the country they did not quickly

acquire the other two!

Believe not, dear reader, that the Jews, who were a stiff-necked people,

never complained of the extortion of the tenths, or tithe. Give yourself

the trouble to consult the Talmud of Babylon, and if you understand not

the Chaldæan, read the translation, with notes of Gilbert Gaumin, the

whole of which was printed by the care of Fabricius. You will there

peruse the adventure of a poor widow with the High Priest Aaron, and

learn how the quarrel of this widow became the cause of the quarrel of

Koran, Dathan, and Abiram, on the one side, and Aaron on the other.

"A widow possessed only a single sheep which she wished to shear. Aaron

came and took the wool for himself: 'It belongs to me,' said he,

'according to the law, thou shalt give the first of the wool to God.'

The widow, in tears, implored the protection of Koran. Koran applied to

Aaron but his entreaties were fruitless. Aaron replies that the wool

belongs to him. Koran gives some money to the widow and retires, filled

with indignation.

"Some time after, the sheep produces a lamb. Aaron returns and carries

away the lamb. The widow runs weeping again to Koran, who in vain

implores Aaron. The high priest answers, 'It is written in the law,

every first-born male in thy flock belongs to God.' He eats the lamb and

Koran again retires in a rage.

"The widow, in despair, kills her sheep; Aaron returns once more and

takes away the shoulder and the breast. Koran again complains. Aaron

replies: 'It is written, thou shalt give unto the priests the shoulder,

the two cheeks, and the maw.'

"The widow could no longer contain her affliction and said, 'Anathema,'

to the sheep, upon which Aaron observed, 'It is written, all that is

anathema (cursed) in Israel belongs to thee;' and took away the sheep

altogether."

What is not so pleasant, yet very remarkable, is that in a suit between

the clergy of Rheims and the citizens, this instance from the Talmud was

cited by the advocate of the citizens. Gaumin asserts that he witnessed

it. In the meantime it may be answered that the tithe-holders do not

take _all_ from the people, the tax-gatherers will not suffer it. To

every one his share is just.

CURIOSITY.

_Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis,_

_E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;_

_Non quia vexari quemquam est jucunda voluptas,_

_Sed quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est._

_Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri_

_Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli;_

_Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere_

_Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena_

_Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre_

_Errare, atque viam palantes quaerere vitae,_

_Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,_

_Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore_

_Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri._

_O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!_

'Tis pleasant, when the seas are rough, to stand

And view another's danger, safe at land;

Not 'cause he's troubled, but 'tis sweet to see

Those cares and fears, from which ourselves are free;

Tis also pleasant to behold from far

How troops engage, secure ourselves from war.

But, above all, 'tis pleasantest to get

The top of high philosophy, and set

On the calm, peaceful, nourishing head of it;

Whence we may view, deep, wondrous deep below,

How poor mistaken mortals wandering go,

Seeking the path to happiness; some aim

At learning, not nobility, or fame;

Others, with cares and dangers vie each hour

To reach the top of wealth and sovereign power.

Blind, wretched man, in what dark paths of strife

We walk this little journey of our life.

--CREECH'S _Lucretius_.

I ask your pardon, Lucretius! I suspect that you are here as mistaken in

morals as you are always mistaken in physics. In my opinion it is

curiosity alone that induces people to hasten to the shore to see a

vessel in danger of being overwhelmed in a tempest. The case has

happened to myself, and I solemnly assure you that my pleasure, mingled

as it was with uneasiness and distress, did not at all arise from

reflection, nor originate in any secret comparison between my own

security and the danger of the unfortunate crew. I was moved by

curiosity and pity.

At the battle of Fontenoy little boys and girls climbed up the

surrounding trees to have a view of the slaughter. Ladies ordered seats

to be placed for them on a bastion of the city of Liege that they might

enjoy the spectacle at the battle of Rocoux.

When I said, "Happy they who view in peace the gathering storm," the

happiness I had in view consists in tranquillity and the search of

truth, and not in seeing the sufferings of thinking beings, oppressed

by fanatics or hypocrites under persecution for having sought it.

Could we suppose an angel flying on six beautiful wings from the height

of the Empyrean, setting out to take a view through some loophole of

hell of the torments and contortions of the damned, and congratulating

himself on feeling nothing of their inconceivable agonies, such an angel

would much resemble the character of Beelzebub.

I know nothing of the nature of angels because I am only a man; divines

alone are acquainted with them; but, as a man, I think, from my own

experience and also from that of all my brother drivellers, that people

do not flock to any spectacle, of whatever kind, but from pure

curiosity.

This seems to me so true that if the exhibition be ever so admirable men

at last get tired of it. The Parisian public scarcely go any longer to

see "_Tartuffe_" the most masterly of Molière's masterpieces. Why is it?

Because they have gone often; because they have it by heart. It is the

same with "Andromache."

Perrin Dandin is unfortunately right when he proposes to the young

Isabella to take her to see the method of "putting to the torture;" it

serves, he says, to pass away an hour or two. If this anticipation of

the execution, frequently more cruel than the execution itself, were a

public spectacle, the whole city of Toulouse would have rushed in crowds

to behold the venerable Calas twice suffering those execrable torments,

at the instance of the attorney-general. Penitents, black, white, and

gray, married women, girls, stewards of the floral games, students,

lackeys, female servants, girls of the town, doctors of the canon law

would have been all squeezed together. At Paris we must have been almost

suffocated in order to see the unfortunate General Lally pass along in a

dung cart, with a six-inch gag in his mouth.

But if these tragedies of cannibals, which are sometimes performed

before the most frivolous of nations, and the one most ignorant in

general of the principles of jurisprudence and equity; if the

spectacles, like those of St. Bartholomew, exhibited by tigers to

monkeys and the copies of it on a smaller scale were renewed every day,

men would soon desert such a country; they would fly from it with

horror; they would abandon forever the infernal land where such

barbarities were common.

When little boys and girls pluck the feathers from their sparrows it is

merely from the impulse of curiosity, as when they dissect the dresses

of their dolls. It is this passion alone which produces the immense

attendance at public executions. "Strange eagerness," as some tragic

author remarks, "to behold the wretched."

I remember being in Paris when Damiens suffered a death the most

elaborate and frightful that can be conceived. All the windows in the

city which bore upon the spot were engaged at a high price by ladies,

not one of whom, assuredly, made the consoling reflection that her own

breasts were not torn by pincers; that melted lead and boiling pitch

were not poured upon wounds of her own, and that her own limbs,

dislocated and bleeding, were not drawn asunder by four horses. One of

the executioners judged more correctly than Lucretius, for, when one of

the academicians of Paris tried to get within the enclosure to examine

what was passing more closely, and was forced back by one of the guards,

"Let the gentleman go in," said he, "he is an amateur." That is to say,

he is inquisitive; it is not through malice that he comes here; it is

not from any reflex consideration of self to revel in the pleasure of

not being himself quartered; it is only from curiosity, as men go to see

experiments in natural philosophy.

Curiosity is natural to man, to monkeys, and to little dogs. Take a

little dog with you in your carriage, he will continually be putting up

his paws against the door to see what is passing. A monkey searches

everywhere, and has the air of examining everything. As to men, you know

how they are constituted: Rome, London, Paris, all pass their time in

inquiring what's the news?

CUSTOMS--USAGES.

There are, it is said, one hundred and forty-four customs in France

which possess the force of law.

These laws are almost all different in different places. A man that

travels in this country changes his law almost as often as he changes

his horses. The majority of these customs were not reduced to writing

until the time of Charles VII., the reason of which probably was that

few people knew how to write. They then copied a part of the customs of

a part of Ponthieu, but this great work was not aided by the Picards

until Charles VIII. There were but sixteen digests in the time of Louis

XII., but our jurisprudence is so improved there are now but few customs

which have not a variety of commentators, all of whom are of different

opinions. There are already twenty-six upon the customs of Paris. The

judges know not which to prefer, but, to put them at their ease the

custom of Paris has been just turned into verse. It was in this manner

that the Delphian pythoness of old declared her oracles.

Weights and measures differ as much as customs, so that which is correct

in the faubourg of Montmartre, is otherwise in the abbey of St. Denis.

The Lord pity us!

CYRUS.

Many learned men, and Rollin among the number, in an age in which reason

is cultivated, have assured us that Javan, who is supposed to be the

father of the Greeks, was the grandson of Noah. I believe it precisely

as I believe that Persius was the founder of the kingdom of Persia and

Niger of Nigritia. The only thing which grieves me is that the Greeks

have never known anything of Noah, the venerable author of their race. I

have elsewhere noted my astonishment and chagrin that our father Adam

should be absolutely unknown to everybody from Japan to the Strait of Le

Maire, except to a small people to whom he was known too late. The

science of genealogy is doubtless in the highest degree certain, but

exceedingly difficult.

It is neither upon Javan, upon Noah, nor upon Adam that my doubts fall

at present; it is upon Cyrus, and I seek not which of the fables in

regard to him is preferable, that of Herodotus, of Ctesias, of Xenophon,

of Diodorus, or of Justin, all of which contradict one another. Neither

do I ask why it is obstinately determined to give the name of Cyrus to a

barbarian called Khosrou, and those of Cyropolis and Persepolis to

cities that never bore them.

I drop all that has been said of the grand Cyrus, including the romance

of that name, and the travels which the Scottish Ramsay made him

undertake, and simply inquire into some instructions of his to the Jews,

of which that people make mention.

I remark, in the first place, that no author has said a word of the Jews

in the history of Cyrus, and that the Jews alone venture to notice

themselves, in speaking of this prince.

They resemble, in some degree, certain people, who, alluding to

individuals of a rank superior to their own say, we know the gentlemen

but the gentlemen know not us. It is the same with Alexander in the

narratives of the Jews. No historian of Alexander has mixed up his name

with that of the Jews, but Josephus fails not to assert that Alexander

came to pay his respects at Jerusalem; that he worshipped, I know not

what Jewish pontiff, called Jaddus, who had formerly predicted to him

the conquest of Persia in a dream. Petty people are often visionary in

this way: the great dream less of their greatness.

When Tarik conquered Spain the vanquished said they had foretold it.

They would have said the same thing to Genghis, to Tamerlane, and to

Mahomet II.

God forbid that I should compare the Jewish prophets to the predictors

of good fortune, who pay their court to conquerors by foretelling them

that which has come to pass. I merely observe that the Jews produce some

testimony from their nation in respect to the actions of Cyrus about one

hundred and sixty years before he was born.

It is said, in the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, "Thus saith the Lord

to His anointed--His Christ--Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to

subdue nations before him, and I will loosen the loins of kings to open

before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut. I will

go before thee and make the crooked places straight; I will break in

pieces the gates of brass and cut in sunder the bars of iron. And I will

give thee the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places

that thou mayest know that I the Lord, who call thee by thy name, am

the God of Israel," etc.

Some learned men have scarcely been able to digest the fact of the Lord

honoring with the name of His Christ an idolater of the religion of

Zoroaster. They even dare to say that the Jews, in the manner of all the

weak who flatter the powerful, invented predictions in favor of Cyrus.

These learned persons respect Daniel no more than Isaiah, but treat all

the prophecies attributed to the latter with similar contempt to that

manifested by St. Jerome for the adventures of Susannah, of Bel and the

Dragon, and of the three children in the fiery furnace.

The sages in question seem not to be penetrated with sufficient esteem

for the prophets. Many of them even pretend that to see clearly the

future is metaphysically impossible. To see that which is not, say they,

is a contradiction in terms, and as the future exists not, it

consequently cannot be seen. They add that frauds of this nature abound

in all nations, and, finally, that everything is to be doubted which is

recorded in ancient history.

They observe that if there was ever a formal prophecy it is that of the

discovery of America in the tragedy of Seneca:

_Venient annis_

_Sæcula seris quibus oceanus_

_Vinculo rerum laxet, et ingens_

_Pateat tellus,..._

A time may arrive when ocean will loosen the chains of nature and lay

open a vast world. The four stars of the southern pole are advanced

still more clearly in Dante, yet no one takes either Seneca or Dante for

diviners.

As to Cyrus, it is difficult to know whether he died nobly or had his

head cut off by Tomyris, but I am anxious, I confess, that the learned

men may be right who claim the head of Cyrus was cut off. It is not

amiss that these illustrious robbers on the highway of nations who

pillage and deluge the earth with blood, should be occasionally

chastised.

Cyrus has always been the subject of remark, Xenophon began and,

unfortunately, Ramsay ended. Lastly, to show the sad fate which

sometimes attends heroes, Danchet has made him the subject of a tragedy.

This tragedy is entirely unknown; the "Cyropædia" of Xenophon is more

popular because it is in Greek. The "Travels of Cyrus" are less so,

although printed in French and English, and wonderfully erudite.

The pleasantry of the romance entitled "The Travels of Cyrus," consists

in its discovery of a Messiah everywhere--at Memphis, at Babylon, at

Ecbatana, and at Tyre, as at Jerusalem, and as much in Plato as in the

gospel. The author having been a Quaker, an Anabaptist, an Anglican, and

a Presbyterian, had finally become a _Fénelonist_ at Cambray, under the

illustrious author of "Telemachus." Having since been made preceptor to

the child of a great nobleman, he thought himself born to instruct and

govern the universe, and, in consequence, gives lessons to Cyrus in

order to render him at once the best king and the most orthodox

theologian in existence. These two rare qualities appear to lack the

grace of congruity.

Ramsay leads his pupil to the school of Zoroaster and then to that of

the young Jew, Daniel, the greatest philosopher who ever existed. He not

only explained dreams, which is the acme of human science, but

discovered and interpreted even such as had been forgotten, which none

but he could ever accomplish. It might be expected that Daniel would

present the beautiful Susannah to the prince, it being in the natural

manner of romance, but he did nothing of the kind.

Cyrus, in return, has some very long conversations with Nebuchadnezzar

while he was an ox, during which transformation Ramsay makes

Nebuchadnezzar ruminate like a profound theologian.

How astonishing that the prince for whom this work was composed

preferred the chase and the opera to perusing it!

DANTE.

You wish to become acquainted with Dante. The Italians call him divine,

but it is a mysterious divinity; few men understand his oracles, and

although there are commentators, that may be an additional reason why

he is little comprehended. His reputation will last because he is little

read. Twenty pointed things in him are known by rote, which spare people

the trouble of being acquainted with the remainder.

The divine Dante was an unfortunate person. Imagine not that he was

divine in his own day; no one is a prophet at home. It is true he was a

prior--not a prior of monks, but a prior of Florence, that is to say,

one of its senators.

He was born in 1260, when the arts began to flourish in his native land.

Florence, like Athens, abounded in greatness, wit, levity, inconstancy,

and faction. The white faction was in great credit; it was called after

a Signora Bianca. The opposing party was called the blacks, in

contradistinction. These two parties sufficed not for the Florentines;

they had also Guelphs and Ghibellines. The greater part of the whites

were Ghibellines, attached to the party of the emperors; the blacks, on

the other hand, sided with the Guelphs, the partisans of the popes.

All these factions loved liberty, but did all they could to destroy it.

Pope Boniface VIII. wished to profit by these divisions in order to

annihilate the power of the emperors in Italy. He declared Charles de

Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, king of France, his vicar in Italy.

The vicar came well armed and chased away the whites and the Ghibellines

and made himself detested by blacks and Guelphs. Dante was a white and a

Ghibelline; he was driven away among the first and his house razed to

the ground. We may judge if he could be for the remainder of his life,

favorable towards the French interest and to the popes. It is said,

however, that he took a journey to Paris, and, to relieve his chagrin

turned theologian and disputed vigorously in the schools. It is added

that the emperor Henry VIII. did nothing for him, Ghibelline as he was,

and that he repaired to Frederick of Aragon, king of Sicily, and

returned as poor as he went. He subsequently died in poverty at Ravenna

at the age of fifty-six. It was during these various peregrinations that

he composed his divine comedy of "Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise."

[Voltaire here enters into a description of the "_Inferno_," which it is

unnecessary to insert, after the various translations into English. The

conclusion, however, exhibiting our author's usual vivacity, is

retained.]

Is all this in the comic style? No. In the heroic manner? No. What then

is the taste of this poem? An exceedingly wild one, but it contains

verses so happy and piquant that it has not lain dormant for four

centuries and never will be laid aside. A poem, moreover, which puts

popes into hell excites attention, and the sagacity of commentators is

exhausted in correctly ascertaining who it is that Dante has damned, it

being, of course, of the first consequence not to be deceived in a

matter so important.

A chair and a lecture have been founded with a view to the exposition

of this classic author. You ask me why the Inquisition acquiesces. I

reply that in Italy the Inquisition understands raillery and knows that

raillery in verse never does any harm.

DAVID.

We are called upon to reverence David as a prophet, as a king, as the

ancestor of the holy spouse of Mary, as a man who merited the mercy of

God from his penitence.

I will boldly assert that the article on "David," which raised up so

many enemies to Bayle, the first author of a dictionary of facts and of

reasonings, deserves not the strange noise which was made about it. It

was not David that people were anxious to defend, but Bayle whom they

were solicitous to destroy. Certain preachers of Holland, his mortal

enemies, were so far blinded by their enmity as to blame him for having

praised popes whom he thought meritorious, and for having refuted the

unjust calumny with which they had been assailed.

This absurd and shameful piece of injustice was signed by a dozen

theologians on Dec. 20, 1698, in the same consistory in which they

pretended to take up the defence of King David. A great proof that the

condemnation of Bayle arose from personal feeling is supplied by the

fact of that which happened in 1761, to Mr. Peter Anet, in London. The

doctors Chandler and Palmer, having delivered funeral sermons on the

death of King George II., in which they compared him to King David, Mr.

Anet, who did not regard this comparison as honorable to the deceased

monarch, published his famous dissertation entitled, "The History of the

Man after God's Own Heart." In that work he makes it clear that George

II., a king much more powerful than David, did not fall into the errors

of the Jewish sovereign, and consequently could not display the

penitence which was the origin of the comparison.

He follows, step by step, the Books of Kings, examines the conduct of

David with more severity than Bayle, and on it founds an opinion that

the Holy Spirit does not praise actions of the nature of those

attributed to David. The English author, in fact, judges the king of

Judah upon the notions of justice and injustice which prevail at the

present time.

He cannot approve of the assembly of a band of robbers by David to the

amount of four hundred; of his being armed with the sword of Goliath, by

the high priest Abimelech, from whom he received hallowed bread.

He could not think well of the expedition of David against the farmer,

Nabal, in order to destroy his abode with fire and sword, because Nabal

refused contributions to his troop of robbers; or of the death of Nabal

a few days afterwards, whose widow David immediately espoused.

He condemned his conduct to King Achish, the possessor of a few villages

in the district of Gath. David, at the head of five or six hundred

banditti, made inroads upon the allies of his benefactor Achish. He

pillaged the whole of them, massacred all the inhabitants, men, women,

and children at the breast. And why the children at the breast? For

fear, says the text, these children should carry the news to King

Achish, who was deceived into a belief that these expeditions were

undertaken against the Israelites, by an absolute lie on the part of

David.

Again, Saul loses a battle and wishes his armor-bearer to slay him, who

refuses; he wounds himself, but not effectually, and at his own desire a

young man despatches him, who, carrying the news to David, is massacred

for his pains.

Ishbosheth succeeds his father, Saul, and David makes war upon him.

Finally Ishbosheth is assassinated.

David, possessed of the sole dominion, surprised the little town or

village of Rabbah and put all the inhabitants to death by the most

extraordinary devices--sawing them asunder, destroying them with harrows

and axes of iron, and burning them in brick-kilns.

After these expeditions there was a famine in the country for three

years. In fact, from this mode of making war, countries must necessarily

be badly cultivated. The Lord was consulted as to the causes of the

famine. The answer was easy. In a country which produces corn with

difficulty, when laborers are baked in brick-kilns and sawed into

pieces, few people remain to cultivate the earth. The Lord, however,

replied that it was because Saul had formerly slain some Gibeonites.

What is David's speedy remedy? He assembles the Gibeonites, informs them

that Saul had committed a great sin in making war upon them, and that

Saul not being like him, a man after God's own heart, it would be proper

to punish him in his posterity. He therefore makes them a present of

seven grandsons of Saul to be hanged, who were accordingly hanged

because there had been a famine.

Mr. Anet is so just as not to insist upon the adultery with Bathsheba

and the murder of her husband, as these crimes were pardoned in

consequence of the repentance of David. They were horrible and

abominable, but being remitted by the Lord, the English author also

absolves from them.

No one complained in England of the author, and the parliament took

little interest in the history of a kinglet of a petty district in

Syria.

Let justice be done to Father Calmet; he has kept within bounds in his

dictionary of the Bible, in the article on "David." "We pretend not,"

said he, "to approve of the conduct of David, but it is to be believed

that this excess of cruelty was committed before his repentance on the

score of Bathsheba." Possibly he repented of all his crimes at the same

time, which were sufficiently numerous.

Let us here ask what appears to us to be an important question. May we

not exhibit a portion of contempt in the article on "David," and treat

of his person and glory with the respect due to the sacred books? It is

to the interest of mankind that crime should in no case be sanctified.

What signifies what _he_ is called, who massacres the wives and children

of his allies; who hangs the grandchildren of his king; who saws his

unhappy captives in two, tears them to pieces with harrows, or burns

them in brick-kilns? These actions we judge, and not the letters which

compose the name of the criminal. His name neither augments nor

diminishes the criminality.

The more David is revered after his reconciliation with God, the more

are his previous qualities condemnable.

If a young peasant, in searching after she-asses finds a kingdom it is

no common affair. If another peasant cures his king of insanity by a

tune on the harp that is still more extraordinary. But when this petty

player on the harp becomes king because he meets a village priest in

secret, who pours a bottle of olive oil on his head, the affair is more

marvellous still.

I know nothing either of the writers of these marvels, or of the time in

which they were written, but I am certain that it was neither Polybius

nor Tacitus.

I shall not speak here of the murder of Uriah, and of the adultery with

Bathsheba, these facts being sufficiently well known. The ways of God

are not the ways of men, since He permitted the descent of Jesus Christ

from this very Bathsheba, everything being rendered pure by so holy a

mystery.

I ask not now how Jurieu had the audacity to persecute the wise Bayle

for not approving all the actions of the good King David. I only inquire

why a man like Jurieu is suffered to molest a man like Bayle.

DECRETALS.

These are letters of the popes which regulate points of doctrine and

discipline and which have the force of law in the Latin church.

Besides the genuine ones collected by Denis le Petit, there is a

collection of false ones, the author of which, as well as the date, is

unknown. It was an archbishop of Mentz called Riculphus who circulated

it in France about the end of the eighth century; he had also brought to

Worms an epistle of Pope Gregory, which had never before been heard of,

but no vestige of the latter is at present remaining, while the false

decretals, as we shall see, have met with the greatest success for eight

centuries.

This collection bears the name of Isidore Mercator, and comprehends an

infinite number of decrees falsely ascribed to the popes, from Clement

I. down to Siricius. The false donation of Constantine; the Council of

Rome under Sylvester; the letter of Athanasius to Mark; that of

Anastasius to the bishops of Germany and Burgundy; that of Sixtus III.

to the Orientals; that of Leo. I. relating to the privileges of the

rural bishops; that of John I. to the archbishop Zachariah; one of

Boniface II. to Eulalia of Alexandria; one of John III. to the bishops

of France and Burgundy; one of Gregory, containing a privilege of the

monastery of St. Médard; one from the same to Felix, bishop of Messina,

and many others.

The object of the author was to extend the authority of the pope and the

bishops. With this view, he lays it down as a principle that they can be

definitely judged only by the pope, and he often repeats this maxim that

not only every bishop but every priest, and, generally, every oppressed

individual may, in any stage of a cause, appeal directly to the pope. He

likewise considers it as an incontestable principle that no council, not

even a provincial one, may be held without the permission of the pope.

These decretals, favoring the impunity of bishops, and still more the

ambitious pretensions of the popes, were eagerly adopted by them both.

In 861, Rotade, bishop of Soissons, being deprived of episcopal

communion in a provincial council on account of disobedience, appeals to

the pope. Hincmar of Rheims, his metropolitan, notwithstanding his

appeal, deposes him in another council under the pretext that he had

afterwards renounced it, and submitted himself to the judgment of the

bishops.

Pope Nicholas I. being informed of this affair, wrote to Hincmar, and

blamed his proceedings. "You ought," says he, "to honor the memory of

St. Peter, and await our judgment, even although Rotade had not

appealed." And in another letter on the same matter, he threatens

Hincmar with excommunication, if he does not restore Rotade. That pope

did more. Rotade having arrived at Rome, he declared him acquitted in a

council held on Christmas eve, 864; and dismissed him to his see with

letters. That which he addressed to all the bishops is worthy of notice,

and is as follows:

"What you say is absurd, that Rotade, after having appealed to the holy

see, changed his language and submitted himself anew to your judgment.

Even although he had done so, it would have been your duty to set him

right, and teach him that an appeal never lies from a superior judge to

an inferior one. But even although he had not appealed to the holy see,

you ought by no means to depose a bishop without our participation, in

prejudice of so many decretals of our predecessors; for, if it be by

their judgment that the writings of other doctors are approved or

rejected, how much more should that be respected which they have

themselves written, to decide on points of doctrine and discipline. Some

tell you that these decretals are not in the book of canons; yet those

same persons, when they find them favorable to their designs, use both

without distinction, and reject them only to lessen the power of the

holy see. If the decretals of the ancient popes are to be rejected

because they are not contained in the book of canons, the writings of

St. Gregory, and the rest of the fathers, must, on the same principle,

be rejected also, and even the Holy Scriptures themselves."

"You say," the pope continues, "that judgments upon bishops are not

among the higher causes; we maintain that they are high in proportion as

bishops hold a high rank in the church. Will you assert that it is only

metropolitan affairs which constitute the higher causes? But

metropolitans are not of a different order from bishops, and we do not

demand different witnesses or judges in the one case, from what are

usual in the other; we therefore require that causes which involve

either should be reserved for us. And, finally, can anyone be found so

utterly unreasonable as to say that all other churches ought to preserve

their privileges, and that the Roman Church alone should lose hers?" He

concludes with ordering them to receive and replace Rotade.

Pope Adrian, the successor of Nicholas I., seems to have been no less

zealous in a similar case relating to Hincmar of Laon. That prelate had

rendered himself hateful both to the clergy and people of his diocese,

by various acts of injustice and violence. Having been accused before

the Council of Verberie--at which Hincmar of Rheims, his uncle and

metropolitan, presided--he appealed to the pope, and demanded permission

to go to Rome. This was refused him. The process against him was merely

suspended, and the affair went no farther. But upon new matters of

complaint brought against him by Charles the Bald and Hincmar of

Rheims, he was cited at first before the Council of Attigny, where he

appeared, and soon afterwards fled; and then before the Council of

Douzy, where he renewed his appeal, and was deposed. The council wrote

to the pope a synodal letter, on Sept. 6, 871, to request of him a

confirmation of the acts which they sent him; but Adrian, far from

acquiescing in the judgment of the council, expressed in the strongest

terms his disapprobation of the condemnation of Hincmar; maintaining

that, since Hincmar declared before the council that he appealed to the

holy see, they ought not to have pronounced any sentence of condemnation

upon him. Such were the terms used by that pope, in his letter to the

bishops of the council, as also in that which he wrote to the king.

The following is the vigorous answer sent by Charles to Adrian: "Your

letters say, 'We will and ordain, by apostolical authority, that Hincmar

of Laon shall come to Rome and present himself before us, resting upon

your supremacy.'

"We wonder where the writer of this letter discovered that a king, whose

duty it is to chastise the guilty and be the avenger of crimes, should

send to Rome a criminal convicted according to legal forms, and more

especially one who, before his deposition, was found guilty, in three

councils, of enterprises against the public peace; and who, after his

deposition, persisted in his disobedience.

"We are compelled further to tell you, that we, kings of France, born

of a royal race, have never yet passed for the deputies of bishops, but

for sovereigns of the earth. And, as St. Leon and the Roman council have

said, kings and emperors, whom God has appointed to govern the world,

have permitted bishops to regulate their affairs according to their

ordinances, but they have never been the stewards of bishops; and if you

search the records of your predecessors, you will not find that they

have ever written to persons in our exalted situation as you have done

in the present instance."

He then adduces two letters of St. Gregory, to show with what modesty he

wrote, not only to the kings of France, but to the exarchs of Italy.

"Finally," he concludes, "I beg that you will never more send to me, or

to the bishops of my kingdom, similar letters, if you wish that we

should give to what you write that honor and respect which we would

willingly grant it." The bishops of the Council of Douzy answered the

pope nearly in the same strain; and, although we have not the entire

letter, it appears that their object in it was to prove that Hincmar's

appeal ought not to be decided at Rome, but in France, by judges

delegated conformably to the canons of the Council of Sardis.

These examples are sufficient to show how the popes extended their

jurisdiction by the instrumentality of these false decretals; and

although Hincmar of Rheims objected to Adrian, that, not being included

in the book of canons, they could not subvert the discipline

established by the canons--which occasioned his being accused, before

Pope John VIII., of not admitting the decretals of the popes--he

constantly cited these decretals as authorities, in his letters and

other writings, and his example was followed by many bishops. At first,

those only were admitted which were not contrary to the more recent

canons, and afterwards there was less and less scruple.

The councils themselves made use of them. Thus, in that of Rheims, held

in 992, the bishops availed themselves of the decretals of Anacletus, of

Julius, of Damasus, and other popes, in the cause of Arnoul. Succeeding

councils imitated that of Rheims. The popes Gregory VII., Urban II.,

Pascal II., Urban III., and Alexander III. supported the maxims they

found in them, persuaded that they constituted the discipline of the

flourishing age of the church. Finally, the compilers of the

canons--Bouchard of Worms, Yves of Chartres, and Gratian--introduced

them into their collection. After they became publicly taught in the

schools, and commented upon, all the polemical and scholastic divines,

and all the expositors of the canon law, eagerly laid hold of these

false decretals to confirm the Catholic dogmas, or to establish points

of discipline, and scattered them profusely through their works.

It was not till the sixteenth century that the first suspicions of their

authenticity were excited. Erasmus, and many others with him, called

them in question upon the following grounds:

1. The decretals contained in the collection of Isidore are not in that

of Denis le Petit, who cited none of the decretals of the popes before

the time of Siricius. Yet he informs us that he took extreme care in

collecting them. They could not, therefore, have escaped him, if they

had existed in the archives of the see of Rome, where he resided. If

they were unknown to the holy see, to which they were favorable, they

were so to the whole church. The fathers and councils of the first eight

centuries have made no mention of them. But how can this universal

silence be reconciled with their authenticity?

2. These decretals do not all correspond with the state of things

existing at the time in which they are supposed to have been written.

Not a word is said of the heresies of the three first centuries, nor of

other ecclesiastical affairs with which the genuine works of the same

period are filled. This proves that they were fabricated afterwards.

3. Their dates are almost always false. Their author generally follows

the chronology of the pontifical book, which, by Baronius's own

confession, is very incorrect. This is a presumptive evidence that the

collection was not composed till after the pontifical book.

4. These decretals, in all the citations of Scripture passages which

they contain, use the version known by the name of "Vulgate," made, or

at least revised, by St. Jerome. They are, therefore, of later date

than St. Jerome.

Finally, they are all written in the same style, which is very

barbarous; and, in that respect, corresponding to the ignorance of the

eighth century: but it is not by any means probable that all the

different popes, whose names they bear, affected that uniformity of

style. It may be concluded with confidence, that all the decretals are

from the same hand.

Besides these general reasons, each of the documents which form

Isidore's collection carries with it marks of forgery peculiar to

itself, and none of which have escaped the keen criticism of David

Blondel, to whom we are principally indebted for the light thrown at the

present day on this compilation, now no longer known but as "The False

Decretals"; but the usages introduced in consequence of it exist not the

less through a considerable portion of Europe.

DELUGE (UNIVERSAL).

We begin with observing that we are believers in the universal deluge,

because it is recorded in the holy Hebrew Scriptures transmitted to

Christians. We consider it as a miracle:

1. Because all the facts by which God condescends to interfere in the

sacred books are so many miracles.

2. Because the sea could not rise fifteen cubits, or one-and-twenty

standard feet and a half, above the highest mountains, without leaving

its bed dry, and, at the same time, violating all the laws of gravity

and the equilibrium of fluids, which would evidently require a miracle.

3. Because, even although it might rise to the height mentioned, the ark

could not have contained, according to known physical laws, all the

living things of the earth, together with their food, for so long a

time; considering that lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, ounces,

rhinoceroses, bears, wolves, hyenas, eagles, hawks, kites, vultures,

falcons, and all carnivorous animals, which feed on flesh alone, would

have died of hunger, even after having devoured all the other species.

There was printed some time ago, in an appendix to Pascal's "Thoughts,"

a dissertation of a merchant of Rouen, called Le Peletier, in which he

proposes a plan for building a vessel in which all kinds of animals

might be included and maintained for the space of a year. It is clear

that this merchant never superintended even a poultry-yard. We cannot

but look upon M. Le Peletier, the architect of the ark, as a visionary,

who knew nothing about menageries; and upon the deluge as an adorable

miracle, fearful, and incomprehensible to the feeble reason of M. Le

Peletier, as well as to our own.

4. Because the physical impossibility of a universal deluge, by natural

means, can be strictly demonstrated. The demonstration is as follows:

All the seas cover half the globe. A common measure of their depths

near the shores, and in the open ocean, is assumed to be five hundred

feet.

In order that they might cover both hemispheres to the depth of five

hundred feet, not only would an ocean of that depth be necessary over

all the land, but a new sea would, in addition, be required to envelop

the ocean at present existing, without which the laws of hydrostatics

would occasion the dispersion of that other new mass of water five

hundred feet deep, which should remain covering the land. Thus, then,

two new oceans are requisite to cover the terraqueous globe merely to

the depth of five hundred feet.

Supposing the mountains to be only twenty thousand feet high, forty

oceans, each five hundred feet in height, would be required to

accumulate on each other, merely in order to equal the height of the

mountains. Every successive ocean would contain all the others, and the

last of them all would have a circumference containing forty times that

of the first.

In order to form this mass of water, it would be necessary to create it

out of nothing. In order to withdraw it, it would be necessary to

annihilate it. The event of the deluge, then, is a double miracle, and

the greatest that has ever manifested the power of the eternal Sovereign

of all worlds.

We are exceedingly surprised that some learned men have attributed to

this deluge some small shell found in many parts of our continent. We

are still more surprised at what we find under the article on "Deluge,"

in the grand "Encyclopædia." An author is quoted in it, who says things

so very profound that they may be considered as chimerical. This is the

first characteristic of Pluche. He proves the possibility of the deluge

by the history of the giants who made war against the gods!

_Briareus_, according to him, is clearly the deluge, for it signifies

"the loss of serenity": and in what language does it signify this

loss?--in Hebrew. But _Briareus_ is a Greek word, which means "robust":

it is not a Hebrew word. Even if, by chance, it had been so, we should

beware of imitating Bochart, who derives so many Greek, Latin, and even

French words from the Hebrew idiom. The Greeks certainly knew no more of

the Jewish idiom than of the language of the Chinese.

The giant Othus is also in Hebrew, according to Pluche, "the derangement

of the seasons." But it is also a Greek word, which does not signify

anything, at least, that I know; and even if it did, what, let me ask,

could it have to do with the Hebrew?

_Porphyrion_ is "a shaking of the earth," in Hebrew; but in Greek, it is

porphyry. This has nothing to do with the deluge.

_Mimos_ is "a great rain"; for once, he does mention a name which may

bear upon the deluge. But in Greek _mimos_ means mimic, comedian. There

are no means of tracing the deluge of such an origin. _Enceladus_ is

another proof of the deluge in Hebrew; for, according to Pluche, it is

the fountain of time; but, unluckily, in Greek it is "noise."

_Ephialtes_, another demonstration of the deluge in Hebrew; for

_ephialtes_, which signifies leaper, oppressor, incubus, in Greek is,

according to Pluche, "a vast accumulation of clouds."

But the Greeks, having taken everything from the Hebrews, with whom they

were unacquainted, clearly gave to their giants all those names which

Pluche extracts from the Hebrew as well as he can, and all as a memorial

of the deluge.

Such is the reasoning of Pluche. It is he who cites the author of the

article on "Deluge" without refuting him. Does he speak seriously, or

does he jest? I do not know. All I know is, that there is scarcely a

single system to be found at which one can forbear jesting.

I have some apprehension that the article in the grand "Encyclopædia,"

attributed to M. Boulanger, is not serious. In that case, we ask whether

it is philosophical. Philosophy is so often deceived, that we shall not

venture to decide against M. Boulanger.

Still less shall we venture to ask what was that abyss which was broken

up, or what were the cataracts of heaven which were opened. Isaac

Vossius denies the universality of the deluge: "_Hoc est pie nugari_."

Calmet maintains it; informing us, that bodies have no weight in air,

but in consequence of their being compressed by air. Calmet was not

much of a natural philosopher, and the weight of the air has nothing to

do with the deluge. Let us content ourselves with reading and respecting

everything in the Bible, without comprehending a single word of it.

I do not comprehend how God created a race of men in order to drown

them, and then substituted in their room a race still viler than the

first.

How seven pairs of all kinds of clean animals should come from the four

quarters of the globe, together with two pairs of unclean ones, without

the wolves devouring the sheep on the way, or the kites the pigeons,

etc.

How eight persons could keep in order, feed, and water, such an immense

number of inmates, shut up in an ark for nearly two years; for, after

the cessation of the deluge, it would be necessary to have food for all

these passengers for another year, in consequence of the herbage being

so scanty.

I am not like M. Le Peletier. I admire everything, and explain nothing.

DEMOCRACY.

_Le pire des états, c'est l'état populaire._

That sway is worst, in which the people rule.

Such is the opinion which Cinna gave Augustus. But on the other hand,

Maximus maintains, that

_Le pire des états, c'est l'état monarchique._

That sway is worst, in which a monarch rules.

Bayle, in his "Philosophical Dictionary," after having repeatedly

advocated both sides of the question, gives, under the article on

"Pericles," a most disgusting picture of democracy, and more

particularly that of Athens.

A republican, who is a stanch partisan of democracy, and one of our

"proposers of questions," sends us his refutation of Bayle and his

apology for Athens. We will adduce his reasons. It is the privilege of

every writer to judge the living and the dead; he who thus sits in

judgment will be himself judged by others, who, in their turn, will be

judged also; and thus, from age to age, all sentences are, according to

circumstances, reversed or reformed.

Bayle, then, after some common-place observations, uses these words: "A

man would look in vain into the history of Macedon for as much tyranny

as he finds in the history of Athens."

Perhaps Bayle was discontented with Holland when he thus wrote; and

probably my republican friend, who refutes him, is contented with his

little democratic city "for the present."

It is difficult to weigh, in an exquisitely nice balance, the iniquities

of the republic of Athens and of the court of Macedon. We still upbraid

the Athenians with the banishment of Cimon, Aristides, Themistocles, and

Alcibiades, and the sentences of death upon Phocion and Socrates;

sentences similar in absurdity and cruelty to those of some of our own

tribunals.

In short, what we can never pardon in the Athenians is the execution of

their six victorious generals, condemned because they had not time to

bury their dead after the victory, and because they were prevented from

doing so by a tempest. The sentence is at once so ridiculous and

barbarous, it bears such a stamp of superstition and ingratitude, that

those of the Inquisition, those delivered against Urbain Grandier,

against the wife of Marshal d'Ancre, against Montrin, and against

innumerable sorcerers and witches, etc., are not, in fact, fooleries

more atrocious.

It is in vain to say, in excuse of the Athenians, that they believed,

like Homer before them, that the souls of the dead were always

wandering, unless they had received the honors of sepulture or burning.

A folly is no excuse for a barbarity.

A dreadful evil, indeed, for the souls of a few Greeks to ramble for a

week or two on the shores of the ocean! The evil is, in consigning

living men to the executioner; living men who have won a battle for you;

living men, to whom you ought to be devoutly grateful.

Thus, then, are the Athenians convicted of having been at once the most

silly and the most barbarous judges in the world. But we must now place

in the balance the crimes of the court of Macedon; we shall see that

that court far exceeds Athens in point of tyranny and atrocity.

There is ordinarily no comparison to be made between the crimes of the

great, who are always ambitious, and those of the people, who never

desire, and who never can desire, anything but liberty and equality.

These two sentiments, "liberty and equality," do not _necessarily_ lead

to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, and devastation of the

lands of neighbors; but, the towering ambition and thirst for power of

the great precipitate them head-long into every species of crime in all

periods and all places.

In this same Macedon, the virtue of which Bayle opposes to that of

Athens, we see nothing but a tissue of tremendous crimes for a series of

two hundred years.

It is Ptolemy, the uncle of Alexander the Great, who assassinates his

brother Alexander to usurp the kingdom. It is Philip, his brother, who

spends his life in guilt and perjury, and ends it by a stab from

Pausanias.

Olympias orders Queen Cleopatra and her son to be thrown into a furnace

of molten brass. She assassinates Aridæus. Antigonus assassinates

Eumenes. Antigonus Gonatas, his son, poisons the governor of the citadel

of Corinth, marries his widow, expels her, and takes possession of the

citadel. Philip, his grandson, poisons Demetrius, and defiles the whole

of Macedon with murders. Perseus kills his wife with his own hand, and

poisons his brother. These perfidies and cruelties are authenticated in

history.

Thus, then, for two centuries, the madness of despotism converts

Macedon into a theatre for every crime; and in the same space of time

you see the popular government of Athens stained only by five or six

acts of judicial iniquity, five or six certainly atrocious judgments, of

which the people in every instance repented, and for which they made, as

far as they could, honorable expiation (_amende honorable._) They asked

pardon of Socrates after his death, and erected to his memory the small

temple called _Socrateion_. They asked pardon of Phocion, and raised a

statue to his honor. They asked pardon of the six generals, so

ridiculously condemned and so basely executed. They confined in chains

the principal accuser, who, with difficulty, escaped from public

vengeance. The Athenian people, therefore, appear to have had good

natural dispositions, connected, as they were, with great versatility

and frivolity. In what despotic state has the injustice of precipitate

decrees ever been thus ingenuously acknowledged and deplored?

Bayle, then, is for this once in the wrong. My republican has reason on

his side. Popular government, therefore, is in itself iniquitous, and

less abominable than monarchical despotism.

The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty. There

have been republicans in mountainous regions wild and ferocious; but

they were made so, not by the spirit of republicanism, but by nature.

The North American savages were entirely republican; but they were

republics of bears.

The radical vice of a civilized republic is expressed by the Turkish

fable of the dragon with many heads, and the dragon with many tails. The

multitude of heads become injurious, and the multitude of tails obey one

single head, which wants to devour all.

Democracy seems to suit only a very small country; and even that

fortunately situated. Small as it may be, it will commit many faults,

because it will be composed of men. Discord will prevail in it, as in a

convent of monks; but there will be no St. Bartholomews there, no Irish

massacre, no Sicilian vespers, no Inquisition, no condemnation to the

galleys for having taken water from the ocean without paying for it; at

least, unless it be a republic of devils, established in some corner of

hell.

After having taken the side of my Swiss friend against the dexterous

fencing-master, Bayle, I will add: That the Athenians were warriors like

the Swiss, and as polite as the Parisians were under Louis XIV.; that

they excelled in every art requiring genius or execution, like the

Florentine in time of the Medici; that they were the masters of the

Romans in the sciences and in eloquence, even in the days of Cicero;

that this same people, insignificant in number, who scarcely possessed

anything of territory, and who, at the present day, consist only of a

band of ignorant slaves, a hundred times less numerous than the Jews,

and deprived of all but their name, yet bear away the palm from Roman

power, by their ancient reputation, which triumphs at once over time and

degradation.

Europe has seen a republic, ten times smaller than Athens, attract its

attention for the space of one hundred and fifty years, and its name

placed by the side of that of Rome, even while she still commanded

kings; while she condemned one Henry, a sovereign of France, and

absolved and scourged another Henry, the first man of his age; even

while Venice retained her ancient splendor, and the republic of the

seven United Provinces was astonishing Europe and the Indies, by its

successful establishment and extensive commerce.

This almost imperceptible ant-hill could not be crushed by the royal

demon of the South, and the monarch of two worlds, nor by the intrigues

of the Vatican, which put in motion one-half of Europe. It resisted by

words and by arms; and with the help of a Picard who wrote, and a small

number of Swiss who fought for it, it became at length established and

triumphant, and was enabled to say, "Rome and I." She kept all minds

divided between the rich pontiffs who succeeded to the Scipios--_Romanos

rerum dominos_--and the poor inhabitants of a corner of the world long

unknown in a country of poverty and _goîtres_.

The main point was, to decide how Europe should think on the subject of

certain questions which no one understood. It was the conflict of the

human mind. The Calvins, the Bezas, and Turetins, were the

Demostheneses, Platos, and Aristotles, of the day.

The absurdity of the greater part of the controversial questions which

bound down the attention of Europe, having at length been acknowledged,

this small republic turned our consideration to what appears of solid

consequence--the acquisition of wealth. The system of law, more

chimerical and less baleful than that of the supralapsarians and the

sublapsarians, occupied with arithmetical calculations those who could

no longer gain celebrity as partisans of the doctrine of crucified

divinity. They became rich, but were no longer famous.

It is thought at present there is no republic, except in Europe. I am

mistaken if I have not somewhere made the remark myself; it must,

however, have been a great inadvertence. The Spaniards found in America

the republic of Tlascala perfectly well established. Every part of that

continent which has not been subjugated is still republican. In the

whole of that vast territory, when it was first discovered, there

existed no more than two kingdoms; and this may well be considered as a

proof that republican government is the most natural. Men must have

obtained considerable refinement, and have tried many experiments,

before they submit to the government of a single individual.

In Africa, the Hottentots, the Kaffirs, and many communities of negroes,

are democracies. It is pretended that the countries in which the greater

part of the negroes are sold are governed by kings. Tripoli, Tunis, and

Algiers are republics of soldiers and pirates. There are similar ones in

India. The Mahrattas, and many other Indian hordes, have no kings: they

elect chiefs when they go on their expeditions of plunder.

Such are also many of the hordes of Tartars. Even the Turkish Empire has

long been a republic of janissaries, who have frequently strangled their

sultan, when their sultan did not decimate them. We are every day asked,

whether a republican or a kingly government is to be preferred? The

dispute always ends in agreeing that the government of men is

exceedingly difficult. The Jews had God himself for their master; yet

observe the events of their history. They have almost always been

trampled upon and enslaved; and, nationally, what a wretched figure do

they make at present!

DEMONIACS.

Hypochondriacal and epileptic persons, and women laboring under

hysterical affections, have always been considered the victims of evil

spirits, malignant demons and divine vengeance. We have seen that this

disease was called the sacred disease; and that while the physicians

were ignorant, the priests of antiquity obtained everywhere the care and

management of such diseases.

When the symptoms were very complicated, the patient was supposed to be

possessed with many demons--a demon of madness, one of luxury, one of

avarice, one of obstinacy, one of short-sightedness, one of deafness;

and the exorciser could not easily miss finding a demon of foolery

created, with another of knavery.

The Jews expelled devils from the bodies of the possessed, by the

application of the root _barath_, and a certain formula of words; our

Saviour expelled them by a divine virtue; he communicated that virtue to

his apostles, but it is now greatly impaired.

A short time since, an attempt was made to renew the history of St.

Paulin. That saint saw on the roof of a church a poor demoniac, who

walked under, or rather upon, this roof or ceiling, with his head below

and his feet above, nearly in the manner of a fly. St. Paulin clearly

perceived that the man was possessed, and sent several leagues off for

some relics of St. Felix of Nola, which were applied to the patient as

blisters. The demon who supported the man against the roof instantly

fled, and the demoniac fell down upon the pavement.

We may have doubts about this history, while we preserve the most

profound respect for genuine miracles; and we may be permitted to

observe that this is not the way in which we now cure demoniacs. We

bleed them, bathe them, and gently relax them by medicine; we apply

emollients to them. This is M. Pome's treatment of them; and he has

performed more cures than the priests of Isis or Diana, or of anyone

else who ever wrought by miracles. As to demoniacs who say they are

possessed merely to gain money, instead of being bathed, they are at

present flogged.

It often happened, that the specific gravity of epileptics, whose fibres

and muscles withered away, was lighter than water, and that they floated

when put into it. A miracle! was instantly exclaimed. It was pronounced

that such a person must be a demoniac or sorcerer; and holy water or the

executioner was immediately sent for. It was an unquestionable proof

that either the demon had become master of the body of the floating

person, or that the latter had voluntarily delivered himself over to the

demon. On the first supposition the person was exorcised, on the second

he was burned. Thus have we been reasoning and acting for a period of

fifteen or sixteen hundred years, and yet we have the effrontery to

laugh at the Kaffirs.

In 1603, in a small village of Franche-Comté, a woman of quality made

her granddaughter read aloud the lives of the saints in the presence of

her parents; this young woman, who was, in some respects, very well

informed, but ignorant of orthography, substituted the word _histories_

for that of _lives_ (_vies_). Her step-mother, who hated her, said to

her in a tone of harshness, "Why don't you read as it is there?" The

girl blushed and trembled, but did not venture to say anything; she

wished to avoid disclosing which of her companions had interpreted the

word upon a false orthography, and prevented her using it. A monk, who

was the family confessor, pretended that the devil had taught her the

word. The girl chose to be silent rather than vindicate herself; her

silence was considered as amounting to confession; the Inquisition

convicted her of having made a compact with the devil: she was condemned

to be burned, because she had a large fortune from her mother, and the

confiscated property went by law to the inquisitors. She was the hundred

thousandth victim of the doctrine of demoniacs, persons possessed by

devils and exorcisms, and of the real devils who swayed the world.

DESTINY.

Of all the books written in the western climes of the world, which have

reached our times, Homer is the most ancient. In his works we find the

manners of profane antiquity, coarse heroes, and material gods, made

after the image of man, but mixed up with reveries and absurdities; we

also find the seeds of philosophy, and more particularly the idea of

destiny, or necessity, who is the dominatrix of the gods, as the gods

are of the world.

When the magnanimous Hector determines to fight the magnanimous

Achilles, and runs away with all possible speed, making the circuit of

the city three times, in order to increase his vigor; when Homer

compares the light-footed Achilles, who pursues him, to a man that is

asleep! and when Madame Dacier breaks into a rapture of admiration at

the art and meaning exhibited in this passage, it is precisely then

that Jupiter, desirous of saving the great Hector who has offered up to

him so many sacrifices, bethinks him of consulting the destinies, upon

weighing the fates of Hector and Achilles in a balance. He finds that

the Trojan must inevitably be killed by the Greek, and is not only

unable to oppose it, but from that moment Apollo, the guardian genius of

Hector, is compelled to abandon him. It is not to be denied that Homer

is frequently extravagant, and even on this very occasion displays a

contradictory flow of ideas, according to the privilege of antiquity;

but yet he is the first in whom we meet with the notion of destiny. It

may be concluded, then, that in his days it was a prevalent one.

The Pharisees, among the small nation of Jews, did not adopt the idea of

a destiny till many ages after. For these Pharisees themselves, who were

the most learned class among the Jews, were but of very recent date.

They mixed up, in Alexandria, a portion of the dogmas of the Stoics with

their ancient Jewish ideas. St. Jerome goes so far as to state that

their sect is but a little anterior to our vulgar era.

Philosophers would never have required the aid of Homer, or of the

Pharisees, to be convinced that everything is performed according to

immutable laws, that everything is ordained, that everything is, in

fact, _necessary_. The manner in which they reason is as follows:

Either the world subsists by its own nature, by its own physical laws,

or a Supreme Being has formed it according to His supreme laws: in both

cases these laws are immovable; in both cases everything is necessary;

heavy bodies tend towards the centre of the earth without having any

power or tendency to rest in the air. Pear-trees cannot produce

pine-apples. The instinct of a spaniel cannot be the instinct of an

ostrich; everything is arranged, adjusted, and fixed.

Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hairs, and ideas; and a

period arrives when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair, and ideas.

It is contradictory to say that yesterday should not have been; or that

to-day does not exist; it is just as contradictory to assert that that

which is to come will not inevitably be.

Could you derange the destiny of a single fly there would be no possible

reason why you should not control the destiny of all other flies, of all

other animals, of all men, of all nature. You would find, in fact, that

you were more powerful than God.

Weak-minded persons say: "My physician has brought my aunt safely

through a mortal disease; he has added ten years to my aunt's life."

Others of more judgment say, the prudent man makes his own destiny.

_Nullum numen abest, si sit Prudentia, sed te_

_Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam cœoque locamus._

--JUVENAL, _Sat_. x. v. 365.

We call on Fortune, and her aid implore,

While Prudence is the goddess to adore.

But frequently the prudent man succumbs under his destiny instead of

making it; it is destiny which makes men prudent. Profound politicians

assure us that if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton, and a dozen other

parliamentary leaders, had been assassinated eight days before Charles

I. had his head cut off, that king would have continued alive and have

died in his bed; they are right; and they may add, that if all England

had been swallowed up in the sea, that king would not have perished on a

scaffold before Whitehall. But things were so arranged that Charles was

to have his head cut off.

Cardinal d'Ossat was unquestionably more clever than an idiot of the

_petites maisons_; but is it not evident that the organs of the wise

d'Ossat were differently formed than those of that idiot?--Just as the

organs of a fox are different from those of a crane or a lark.

Your physician saved your aunt, but in so doing he certainly did not

contradict the order of nature, but followed it. It is clear that your

aunt could not prevent her birth in a certain place, that she could not

help being affected by a certain malady, at a certain time; that the

physician could be in no other place than where he was, that your aunt

could not but apply to him, that he could not but prescribe medicines

which cured her, or were thought to cure her, while nature was the sole

physician.

A peasant thinks that it hailed upon his field by chance; but the

philosopher knows that there was no chance, and that it was absolutely

impossible, according to the constitution of the world, for it not to

have hailed at that very time and place.

There are some who, being shocked by this truth, concede only half of

it, like debtors who offer one moiety of their property to their

creditors, and ask remission for the other. There are, they say, some

events which are necessary, and others which are not so. It would be

curious for one part of the world to be changed and the other not; that

one part of what happens should happen inevitably, and another

fortuitously. When we examine the question closely, we see that the

doctrine opposed to that of destiny is absurd; but many men are destined

to be bad reasoners, others not to reason at all, and others to

persecute those who reason well or ill.

Some caution us by saying, "Do not believe in fatalism, for, if you do,

everything appearing to you unavoidable, you will exert yourself for

nothing; you will sink down in indifference; you will regard neither

wealth, nor honors, nor praise; you will be careless about acquiring

anything whatever; you will consider yourself meritless and powerless;

no talent will be cultivated, and all will be overwhelmed in apathy."

Do not be afraid, gentlemen; we shall always have passions and

prejudices, since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and

passions. We shall very well know that it no more depends upon us to

have great merit or superior talents than to have a fine head of hair,

or a beautiful hand; we shall be convinced that we ought to be vain of

nothing, and yet vain we shall always be.

I have necessarily the passion for writing as I now do; and, as for you,

you have the passion for censuring me; we are both equally fools, both

equally the sport of destiny. Your nature is to do ill, mine is to love

truth, and publish it in spite of you.

The owl, while supping upon mice in his ruined tower, said to the

nightingale, "Stop your singing there in your beautiful arbor, and come

to my hole that I may eat you." The nightingale replied, "I am born to

sing where I am, and to laugh at you."

You ask me what is to become of liberty: I do not understand you; I do

not know what the liberty you speak of really is. You have been so long

disputing about the nature of it that you do not understand it. If you

are willing, or rather, if you are able to examine with me coolly what

it is, turn to the letter L.

DEVOTEE.

The word devout (_dévot_) signifies devoted (_dévoué_), and, in the

strict sense of the term, can only be applicable to monks, and to

females belonging to some religious order and under vows. But as the

gospel makes no mention of vows or devotees, the title should not, in

fact, be given to any person: the whole world ought to be equally just.

A man who calls himself devout is like a plebeian who calls himself a

marquis; he arrogates a quality which does not belong to him; he thinks

himself a better man than his neighbor. We pardon this folly in women;

their weakness and frivolity render them excusable; they pass, poor

things, from a lover to a spiritual director with perfect sincerity, but

we cannot pardon the knaves who direct them, who abuse their ignorance,

and establish the throne of their pride on the credulity of the sex.

They form a snug mystical harem, composed of seven or eight elderly

beauties subjugated by the weight of inoccupation, and almost all these

subjects pay tribute to their new master. No young women without lovers;

no elderly devotee without a director.--Oh, how much more shrewd are the

Orientals than we! A pasha never says, "We supped last night with the

aga of the janissaries, who is my sister's lover; and with the vicar of

the mosque, who is my wife's director."

DIAL.

_Dial of Ahaz._

It is well known that everything is miraculous in the history of the

Jews; the miracle performed in favor of King Hezekiah on the dial of

Ahaz is one of the greatest that ever took place: it is evident that the

whole earth must have been deranged, the course of the stars changed

forever, and the periods of the eclipses of the sun and moon so altered

as to confuse all the ephemerides. This was the second time the prodigy

happened. Joshua had stopped the sun at noon on Gibeon, and the moon on

Ascalon, in order to get time to kill a troop of Amorites already

crushed by a shower of stones from heaven.

The sun, instead of stopping for King Hezekiah, went back, which is

nearly the same thing, only differently described.

In the first place Isaiah said to Hezekiah, who was sick, "Thus saith

the Lord, set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live."

Hezekiah wept and God was softened; He signified to him, through Isaiah,

that he should still live fifteen years, and that in three days he

should go to the temple; then Isaiah brought a plaster of figs and put

it on the king's ulcers, and he was cured--"_et curatus est_."

Hezekiah demanded a sign to convince him that he should be cured. Isaiah

said to him, "Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten

degrees?" And Hezekiah answered, "It is a light thing for the shadow to

go down ten degrees; let the shadow return backward ten degrees." And

Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and He brought the shadow ten

degrees backwards from the point to which it had gone down on the dial

of Ahaz.

We should like to know what this dial of Ahaz was; whether it was the

work of a dialmaker named Ahaz, or whether it was a present made to a

king of that name, it is an object of curiosity. There have been many

disputes on this dial; the learned have proved that the Jews never knew

either clocks or dials before their captivity in Babylon--the only time,

say they, in which they learned anything of the Chaldæans, or the

greater part of the nation began to read or write. It is even known that

in their language they had no words to express clock, dial, geometry, or

astronomy; and in the Book of Kings the dial of Ahaz is called the hour

of the stone.

But the grand question is to know how King Hezekiah, the possessor of

this clock, or dial of the sun--this hour of stone--could tell that it

was easy to advance the sun ten degrees. It is certainly as difficult to

make it advance against its ordinary motion as to make it go backward.

The proposition of the prophet appears as astonishing as the discourse

of the king: Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten

degrees? That would have been well said in some town of Lapland, where

the longest day of the year is twenty hours; but at Jerusalem, where the

longest day of the year is about fourteen hours and a half, ii was

absurd. The king and the prophet deceived each other grossly. We do not

deny the miracle, we firmly believe it; we only remark that Hezekiah and

Isaiah knew not what they said. Whatever the hour, it was a thing

equally impossible to make the shadow of the dial advance or recede ten

hours. If it were two hours after noon, the prophet could, no doubt,

have very well made the shadow of the dial go back to four o'clock in

the morning; but in this case he could not have advanced it ten hours,

since then it would have been midnight, and at that time it is not usual

to have a shadow of the sun in perfection.

It is difficult to discover when this strange history was written, but

perhaps it was towards the time in which the Jews only confusedly knew

that there were clocks and sun-dials. In that case it is true that they

got but a very imperfect knowledge of these sciences until they went to

Babylon. There is a still greater difficulty of which the commentators

have not thought; which is that the Jews did not count by hours as we

do.

The same miracle happened in Greece, the day that Atreus served up the

children of Thyestes for their father's supper.

The same miracle was still more sensibly performed at the time of

Jupiter's intrigue with Alcmena. It required a night double the natural

length to form Hercules. These adventures are common in antiquity, but

very rare in our days, in which all things have degenerated.

DICTIONARY.

The invention of dictionaries, which was unknown to antiquity, is of the

most unquestionable utility; and the "Encyclopædia," which was

suggested by Messrs. d'Alembert and Diderot, and so successfully

completed by them and their associates, notwithstanding all its defects,

is a decisive evidence of it. What we find there under the article

"Dictionary" would be a sufficient instance; it is done by the hand of a

master.

I mean to speak here only of a new species of historical dictionaries,

which contain a series of lies and satires in alphabetical order; such

is the "Historical Literary and Critical Dictionary," containing a

summary of the lives of celebrated men of every description, and printed

in 1758, in six volumes, octavo, without the name of the author.

The compilers of that work begin with declaring that it was undertaken

by the advice of the author of the "Ecclesiastical Gazette," "a

formidable writer," they add, "whose arrow," which had already been

compared to that of Jonathan, "never returned back, and was always

steeped in the blood of the slain, in the carnage of the valiant."--"_A

sanguine interfectorum ab adipe fortium sagitta Jonathæ nunquam abiit

retrorsum._"

It will, no doubt, be easily admitted that the connection between

Jonathan, the son of Saul, who was killed at the battle of Gilboa, and a

Parisian convulsionary, who scribbles ecclesiastical notices in his

garret, in 1758, is wonderfully striking.

The author of this preface speaks in it of the great Colbert. We should

conceive, at first, that the great statesman who conferred such vast

benefits on France is alluded to; no such thing, it is a bishop of

Montpellier. He complains that no other dictionary has bestowed

sufficient praise on the celebrated Abbé d'Asfeld, the illustrious

Boursier, the famous Genes, the immortal Laborde, and that the lash of

invective on the other hand has not been sufficiently applied to

Languet, archbishop of Sens, and a person of the name of Fillot, all, as

he pretends, men well known from the Pillars of Hercules to the frozen

ocean. He engages to be "animated, energetic, and sarcastic, on a

principle of religion"; that he will make his countenance "sterner than

that of his enemies, and his front harder than their front, according to

the words of Ezekiel," etc.

He declares that he has put in contribution all the journals and all the

anas; and he concludes with hoping that heaven will bestow a blessing on

his labors.

In dictionaries of this description, which are merely party works, we

rarely find what we are in quest of, and often what we are not. Under

the word "Adonis," for example, we learn that Venus fell in love with

him; but not a word about the worship of Adonis, or Adonai among the

Phœnicians--nothing about those very ancient and celebrated

festivals, those lamentations succeeded by rejoicings, which were

manifest allegories, like the feasts of Ceres, of Isis, and all the

mysteries of antiquity.

But, in compensation, we find _Adkichomia_ a devotee, who translated

David's psalms in the sixteenth century; and _Adkichomus_, apparently

her relation, who wrote the life of Jesus Christ in low German.

We may well suppose that all the individuals of the faction which

employed this person are loaded with praise, and their enemies with

abuse. The author, of the crew of authors who have put together this

vocabulary of trash, say of Nicholas Boindin, attorney-general of the

treasures of France, and a member of the Academy of Belles-lettres, that

he was a poet and an atheist.

That magistrate, however, never printed any verses, and never wrote

anything on metaphysics or religion.

He adds that Boindin will be ranked by posterity among the Vaninis, the

Spinozas, and the Hobbeses. He is ignorant that Hobbes never professed

atheism--that he merely subjected religion to the sovereign power, which

he denominates the Leviathan. He is ignorant that Vanini was not an

atheist; that the term "atheist" is not to be found even in the decree

which condemned him; and that he was accused of impiety for having

strenuously opposed the philosophy of Aristotle, and for having disputed

with indiscretion and acrimony against a counsellor of the parliament of

Toulouse, called Francon, or Franconi, who had the credit of getting him

burned to death; for the latter burn whom they please; witness the Maid

of Orleans, Michael Servetus, the Counsellor Dubourg, the wife of

Marshal d'Ancre, Urbain Grandier, Morin, and the books of the

Jansenists. See, moreover, the apology for Vanini by the learned

Lacroze, and the article on "Atheism."

The vocabulary treats Boindin as a miscreant; his relations were

desirous of proceeding at law and punishing an author, who himself so

well deserved the appellation which he so infamously applied to a man

who was not merely a magistrate, but also learned and estimable; but the

calumniator concealed himself, like most libellers, under a fictitious

name.

Immediately after having applied such shameful language to a man

respectable compared with himself, he considers him as an irrefragable

witness, because Boindin--whose unhappy temper was well known--left an

ill-written and exceedingly ill-advised memorial, in which he accuses La

Motte--one of the worthiest men in the world, a geometrician, and an

ironmonger--with having written the infamous verses for which Jean

Baptiste Rousseau was convicted. Finally, in the list of Boindin's

works, he altogether omits his excellent dissertations printed in the

collection of the Academy of Belles-lettres, of which he was a highly

distinguished member.

The article on "Fontenelle" is nothing but a satire upon that ingenious

and learned academician, whose science and talents are esteemed by the

whole of literary Europe. The author has the effrontery to say that "his

'History of Oracles' does no honor to his religion." If Van Dale, the

author of the "History of Oracles," and his abridger, Fontenelle, had

lived in the time of the Greeks and of the Roman republic, it might have

been said with reason that they were rather good philosophers than good

pagans; but, to speak sincerely, what injury do they do to Christianity

by showing that the pagan priests were a set of knaves? Is it not

evident that the authors of the libel, miscalled a dictionary, are

pleading their own cause? "_Jam proximus ardet Ucalegon"_ But would it

be offering an insult to the Christian religion to prove the knavery of

the Convulsionaries? Government has done more; it has punished them

without being accused of irreligion.

The libeller adds that he suspects that Fontenelle never performed the

duties of a Christian but out of contempt for Christianity itself. It is

a strange species of madness on the part of these fanatics to be always

proclaiming that a philosopher cannot be a Christian. They ought to be

excommunicated and punished for this alone; for assuredly it implies a

wish to destroy Christianity to assert that it is impossible for a man

to be a good reasoner and at the same time believe a religion so

reasonable and holy.

Des Yveteaux, preceptor of Louis XIV., is accused of having lived and

died without religion. It seems as if these compilers had none; or at

least as if, while violating all the precepts of the true one, they

were searching about everywhere for accomplices.

The very gentlemanly writer of these articles is wonderfully pleased

with exhibiting all the bad verses that have been written on the French

Academy, and various anecdotes as ridiculous as they are false. This

also is apparently out of zeal for religion.

I ought not to lose an opportunity of refuting an absurd story which has

been much circulated, and which is repeated exceedingly malapropos under

the article of the "Abbé Gedoyn," upon whom the writer falls foul with

great satisfaction, because in his youth he had been a Jesuit; a

transient weakness, of which I know he repented all his life.

The devout and scandalous compiler of the dictionary asserts that the

Abbé Gedoyn slept with the celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos on the very

night of her completing her eightieth year. It certainly was not exactly

befitting in a priest to relate this anecdote in a pretended dictionary

of illustrious men. Such a foolery, however, is in fact highly

improbable; and I can take upon me to assert that nothing can be more

false. The same anecdote was formerly put down to the credit of the Abbé

Chateauneuf, who was not very difficult in his amours, and who, it was

said, had received Ninon's favors when she was of the age of sixty, or,

rather, had conferred upon her his own. In early life I saw a great deal

of the Abbé Gedoyn, the Abbé Chateauneuf, and Mademoiselle de l'Enclos;

and I can truly declare that at the age of eighty years her countenance

bore the most hideous marks of old age--that her person was afflicted

with all the infirmities belonging to that stage of life, and that her

mind was under the influence of the maxims of an austere philosophy.

Under the article on "Deshoulières" the compiler pretends that lady was

the same who was designated under the term prude (_précieuse_) in

Boileau's satire upon women. Never was any woman more free from such

weakness than Madame Deshoulières; she always passed for a woman of the

best society, possessed great simplicity, and was highly agreeable in

conversation.

The article on "La Motte" abounds with atrocious abuse of that

academician, who was a man of very amiable manners, and a philosophic

poet who produced excellent works of every description. Finally the

author, in order to secure the sale of his book of six volumes, has made

of it a slanderous libel.

His hero is Carré de Montgeron, who presented to the king a collection

of the miracles performed by the Convulsionaries in the cemetery of St.

Médard; who became mad and died insane.

The interest of the republic of literature and reason demands that those

libellers should be delivered up to public indignation, lest their

example, operating upon the sordid love of gain, should stimulate others

to imitation; and the more so, as nothing is so easy as to copy books in

alphabetical order, and add to them insipidities, calumnies, and abuse.

_Extract from the Reflections of an Academician on the "Dictionary of

the French Academy."_

It would be desirable to state the natural and incontestable etymology

of every word, to compare the application, the various significations,

the extent of the word, with use of it; the different acceptations, the

strength or weakness of correspondent terms in foreign languages; and

finally, to quote the best authors who have used the word, to show the

greater or less extent of meaning which they have given to it and to

remark whether it is more fit for poetry than prose.

For example, I have observed that the "inclemency" of the weather is

ridiculous in history, because that term has its origin in the anger of

heaven, which is supposed to be manifested by the intemperateness,

irregularities, and rigors of the seasons, by the violence of the cold,

the disorder of the atmosphere, by tempests, storms, and pestilential

exhalations. Thus then inclemency, being a metaphor, is consecrated to

poetry.

I have given to the word "impotence" all the acceptations which it

receives. I showed the correctness of the historian, who speaks of the

impotence of King Alphonso, without explaining whether he referred to

that of resisting his brother, or that with which he was charged by his

wife.

I have endeavored to show that the epithets "irresistible" and

"incurable" require very delicate management. The first who used the

expression, "the irresistible impulse of genius," made a very fortunate

hit; because, in fact, the question was in relation to a great genius

throwing itself upon its own resources in spite of all difficulties.

Those imitators who have employed the expression in reference to very

inferior men are plagiarists who know not how to dispose of what they

steal.

As soon as the man of genius has made a new application of any word in

the language, copyists are not wanting to apply it, very malapropos, in

twenty places, without giving the inventor any credit.

I do not know that a single one of these words, termed by Boileau

"foundlings" (_des mots trouvés_) a single new expression of genius, is

to be found in any tragic author since Racine, until within the last few

years. These words are generally lax, ineffective, stale, and so ill

placed as to produce a barbarous style. To the disgrace of the nation,

these Visigothic and Vandal productions were for a certain time

extolled, panegyrized, and admired in the journals, especially as they

came out under the protection of a certain lady of distinction, who knew

nothing at all about the subject. We have recovered from all this now;

and, with one or two exceptions, the whole race of such productions is

extinct forever.

I did not in the first instance intend to make all these reflections,

but to put the reader in a situation to make them. I have shown at the

letter E that our _e_ mute, with which we are reproached by an Italian,

is precisely what occasions the delicious harmony of our

language:--_empire, couronne, diadème, épouvantable, sensible_. This _e_

mute, which we make perceptible without articulating it, leaves in the

ear a melodious sound like that of a bell which still resounds although

it is no longer struck. This we have already stated in respect to an

Italian, a man of letters, who came to Paris to teach his own language,

and who, while there, ought not to decry ours.

He does not perceive the beauty or necessity of our feminine rhymes;

they are only _e_'s mute. This interweaving of masculine and feminine

rhymes constitutes the charm of our verse.

Similar observations upon the alphabet, and upon words generally, would

not have been without utility; but they would have made the work too

long.

DIOCLETIAN.

After several weak or tyrannic reigns, the Roman Empire had a good

emperor in Probus, whom the legions massacred, and elected Carus, who

was struck dead by lightning while making war against the Persians. His

son, Numerianus, was proclaimed by the soldiers. The historians tell us

seriously that he lost his sight by weeping for the death of his father,

and that he was obliged to be carried along with the army, shut up in a

close litter. His father-in-law Aper killed him in his bed, to place

himself on the throne; but a druid had predicted in Gaul to Diocletian,

one of the generals of the army, that he would become emperor after

having killed a boar. A boar, in Latin, is _aper_. Diocletian assembled

the army, killed Aper with his own hands in the presence of the

soldiers, and thus accomplished the prediction of the druid. The

historians who relate this oracle deserve to be fed on the fruit of the

tree which the druids revered. It is certain that Diocletian killed the

father-in-law of the emperor, which was his first right to the throne.

Numerianus had a brother named Carinus, who was also emperor, but being

opposed to the elevation of Diocletian, he was killed by one of the

tribunes of his army, which formed his second pretension to the purple.

These were Diocletian's rights to the throne, and for a long time he had

no other.

He was originally of Dalmatia, of the little town of Dioclea, of which

he took the name. If it be true that his father was a laborer, and that

he himself in his youth had been a slave to a senator named Anulinus,

the fact forms his finest eulogium. He could have owed his elevation to

himself alone; and it is very clear that he had conciliated the esteem

of his army, since they forgot his birth to give him the diadem.

Lactantius, a Christian authority, but rather partial, pretends that

Diocletian was the greatest poltroon of the empire. It is not very

likely that the Roman soldiers would have chosen a poltroon to govern

them, or that this poltroon would have passed through all the degrees of

the army. The zeal of Lactantius against a pagan emperor is very

laudable, but not judicious.

Diocletian continued for twenty years the master of those fierce

legions, who dethroned their emperors with as much facility as they

created them; which is another proof, notwithstanding Lactantius, that

he was as great a prince as he was a brave soldier. The empire under him

soon regained its pristine splendor. The Gauls, the Africans, Egyptians,

and British, who had revolted several times, were all brought under

obedience to the empire; even the Persians were vanquished. So much

success without; a still more happy administration within; laws as

humane as wise, which still exist in the Justinian code; Rome, Milan,

Autun, Nicomedia, Carthage, embellished by his munificence; all tended

to gain him the love and respect both of the East and West; so that, two

hundred and forty years after his death, they continued to reckon and

date from the first year of his reign, as they had formerly dated from

the foundation of Rome. This is what is called the era of Diocletian; it

has also been called the era of martyrs; but this is a mistake of

eighteen years, for it is certain that he did not persecute any

Christian for eighteen years. So far from it, the first thing he did,

when emperor, was to give a company of prætorian guards to a Christian

named Sebastian, who is in the list of the saints.