which requires a more candid admission of imputed failing. As addressed to Englishmen, frankness in this particular is still more essential, because most of the follies and weaknesses of Voltaire were attributable to circumstances, of which, experimentally, they can form no adequate conception; not to mention the prevalence of certain national traits in his character with which they are peculiarly uncongenial. We are not

quite certain that the latter may not add to the difficulty of the task more than the former; for, in respect to literary restriction, profligate misgovernment, illegal persecution, and political oppression, the reign of the Stuarts may vie with the unblushing regimen of Louis XV.; but at no time, nor in consideration of the past character of any time, can English feelings accommodate themselves to the personal vanity and vain glory so prevalent in the Frenchman; and never was there more a Frenchman, both in the merits and demerits of the character, than Voltaire.

In order to form a fair and correct estimate of this original and fertile genius, in the spirit of the example which has just been quoted, it will be well to attend, in the first place, to the state of the French society, in the midst of which he was reared, and his predispositions irretrievably formed; and, in the second, to the complexion of the evils which his cultivated reason and great extent of information led him so determinedly to oppose. A brief attention to both these points, and to their effects upon a temperament rendered so peculiarly mercurial as that of Voltaire, may be sufficient to lead the general reader into that calm and unprejudiced view of his character and conduct, which it is the principal object of these prefatory pages to recommend.

All the world is aware of the vast mass of slander

which is upheld in the social atmosphere, ready, like humidity, to descend in a visible shower upon every head which is more or less occupied in the consideration of evils, the existence of which is profitable to a powerful few exactly in proportion as it is injurious to every body else. Contrast is resemblance with the single addition of a negative, says an eminent writer; according to which definition, the virulence here spoken of may pair off with the apparent unconsciousness of all similar failings in the parties, persons, or principles, which it is the interest of these active bodies to uphold. The injustice and hypocrisy which gross and venal people can display in concert, is indescribable. While dwelling with an earnestness approaching to vociferation on the vices of an individual whom they choose to regard as an enemy, they will assiduously cover and even defend the very same offences in an idol or partisan. Now one half of this baseness may be allowed to pass; for although both are detestable, flattery is less so than slander. That" a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn," may be granted; but the converse of the proposition is certainly not admissible. The sinner in purple is not to be held twice a sinner in drab, even if a sinner in purple can exist at all, which, according to a mitred prelate, is somewhat doubtful.*

*That is to say, either constitutionally or morally. The constitutional fiction, that the King can do no wrong, is absurd enough, and has been utterly burlesqued by the practice of the country which professes it; but the silly dictum, in its usual acceptation, was not enough in the instance alluded to. When the First James asked one of his Prelates whether he might not make free with his subjects' goods and chattels when he thought proper?" To be sure," returned the obsequious priest: "Is not your Majesty the breath of our nostrils?" Whether the existing bishop would allow reigning Majesty to make free at pleasure with the goods of the Church is

The bronzed assurance with which this despicable game is daily played, is frequently amusing. What more common, for instance, than to hear a brazen-faced lawyer, the very epitome of Voltore, in the "Fox" of Ben Jonson, exclaim against the venality of the periodical Press, and the baseness with which it is swayed by "filthy lucre." Now, although the fact is often true enough, it is ludicrous to hear such a general imputation from an animal, who is possibly at that very moment exhibiting the most complete mental prostitution, -palliating falsehood, disguising truth, mimicking conviction, and acting vehemency to the very approximation of convulsion, for a fee of five, ten, or twenty guineas.* Who has not read-who does not every day read, the grossest adulation of dissolute rank and power, from quarters which are absolutely making similar aberrations in others the foundation of a degree of rancorous slander,

doubtful, but he has clearly made him an unlimited present of the Decalogue.

* It is scarcely necessary to observe, that the writer is fully aware of the extent of argument by which the existing system of advocacy can be attacked and defended; but, however the question may be decided, they, whose business it is to play at football with truth, have no reason to look down upon any profession. The operation of the practice of the law upon the power of moral discrimination, is singularly curious. A case in point: The writer, a few days ago, listened with great attention to an eulogium from legal lips, of a very successful mode of tactic by an eminent barrister, now a Judge. "He had the art, Sir, of attracting the attention of the jury while the opposite counsel was speaking; of turning up his eyes, shaking his head, smiling as in derision, and nodding as in scorn every time the argument of the speaker was likely to be peculiarly effective. A very clever man, Sir: he obtained many a verdict by these means." If this be true, how can Judge pass sentence upon a

prisoner for being guilty of obtaining money upon false pretences, without a blush? It may also be asked, how far he is from being a rascal, who obtains a verdict for a rascal by such management?

almost amounting to social proscription? Who, in fine, is ignorant of the existence of a Society, whose object it is to attack powerless vice exclusively; nay worse-to assail much that is merely enacted into criminality, whilst indisputable gilded offence, and unequivocal lofty turpitude, are left unmolested?* The extent of this conventional hypocrisy among the abettors of all existing abuses in the present day, has gone far to distinguish it as the Age of CANT, and with justice; for although the practice must exist more or less in all crowded society, it was never so extensively ramified and expanded before. This fact is, doubtless, owing to the increased circulation of opinion, and to the alarm which is thereby naturally excited among all the close and injurious monopolists of power, profit, or privilege; who feel, and feel justly, that in proportion as sentiment is freely and rapidly interchanged, are their outworks assailed and their strong holds in danger.

But what has all this to do with Voltaire, the reader will demand. Simply this; that having been the man who baffled the odious vices of superstition, intolerance, and bigotry while living, his memory is pursued with proportionate misrepresentation and rancour by the legitimate representatives of those vices since his death. Every puling fanatic can dwell upon his personal failings, without the slightest endeavour to discriminate the faults and errors of the man from those of his age and country; and every maudlin alarmist attribute to a writer, whose

* It is asserted upon knowledge, that the proprietors of a considerable manufactory in the suburbs subscribed to this Society, and even took an interest in its proceedings, who kept ten or fifteen labourers secretly employed every Sunday on their premises, for half-a-year together.

ever fertile brain was in eternal exercise against the vilest atrocities of priestcraft and misgovernment, the reaction of violence which, in the fullness of time, they engendered. This observation is not made in advertence to the production of argument against argument, or of opinion against opinion; but to the monstrous injustice of attributing the horrors of a revolution of unparalleled magnitude to the operation of a writer, whose ostensible and probably whose only real object was, unlimited toleration, or it may be, equal political eligibility,* while the most convenient silence is maintained on the multiplied horrors, oppression, and misrule, which alone can effect a simultaneous movement in any great country like France. That the works of this most popular writer of his own or possibly of any other time, who had laboured earnestly against a great number of the enormities which had brought about the crisis, should give a turn to the language and sentiment of the day, is natural enough: but who can quote a line of Voltaire in justification of the various atrocities of the infuriated Parisian mob-the broken-loose roturiers, exasperated by a recollection of the insolence and oppression of ages? Since all revolted slaves are cruel and revengeful, the cure is, not to possess slaves to revolt.

It has already been observed that, in the estimation of a public character, a due consideration must be had for the necessary operation of the period in which he lived, and of the nature of the society

* Some people may imagine that his views extended further, which possibly, under the idea that complete toleration would never otherwise be obtained, may be true. The practice of the United States has, however, rectified this idea.