striking and important. The whole, however, is given with great vivacity and talent, and with a degree of freedom which trespasses occasionally upon the borders both of propriety and of good taste.

There is nothing indeed more exactly painted in these graphical volumes than the character of M. Grimm himself; and the beauty of it is, that as there is nothing either natural or peculiar about it, it may stand for the character of all the wits and philosophers he frequented. He had more wit, perhaps, and more sound sense and information, than the greater part of the society in which he lived-but the leading traits belong to the whole class, and to all classes indeed, in similar situations, in every part of the world. Whenever there is a very large assemblage of persons who have no other occupation but to amuse themselves, there will infallibly be generated acuteness of intellect, refinement of manners, and good taste in conversation; and, with the same certainty, all profound thought, and all serious affection, will be discarded from their society. The multitude of persons and things that force themselves on the attention in such a scene, and the rapidity with which they succeed each other and pass away, prevent any one from making a deep or permanent impression; and the mind, having never been tasked to any course of application, and long habituated to this lively succession and variety of objects, comes at last to require the excitement of perpetual change, and to find a multiplicity of friends as indispensable as a multiplicity of amusements. Thus the characteristics of large and polished society come almost inevitably to be, wit and heartlessness-acuteness and perpetual derision. The same impatience of uniformity, and passion for variety which give so much grace to their conversation, by excluding all tediousness and pertinacious wrangling, make them incapable of dwelling for many minutes on the feelings and concerns of any one individual; while the constant pursuit of little gratifications, and the weak dread of all uneasy sensations, render them equally averse from serious sympathy and deep thought. They speedily find out the shortest and most pleasant way to all truths, to which a short and a pleasant way can readily be discovered; and then lay it down as a maxim that no others are worth looking afterand, in the same way, they do such petty kindnesses, and indulge such light sympathies, as do not put them to any trouble, or encroach at all on their amusements-while they make it a principle to wrap themselves up in those amusements from the assault of all more engrossing or importunate affections.

The turn for derision again arises naturally out of this order of things. When passion and enthusiasm, affection and serious occupation, have once been banished by a short-sighted voluptuous

ness, the sense of ridicule is almost the only lively sensation that remains; and the envied life of those who have nothing to do but to enjoy themselves, would be utterly listless and without interest, if they were not allowed to laugh at each other. Their quickness in perceiving ordinary follies, and illusions too, affords great encouragement to this laudable practice; and as none of them have so much passion or enthusiasm left as to be deeply wounded by the shafts of derision, they fall lightly, and without rankling, on the lesser vanities, which supply in them those master-springs of human action and feeling.

The whole style and tone of this publication affords the most striking illustration of these general remarks. From one end of it to the other, it is a display of the most complete heartlessness, and the most uninterrupted levity. It chronicles the deaths of half the author's acquaintance-and makes jests upon them all; and is much more serious in discussing the merits of an opera dancer, than in considering the evidence for the being of a God, or the first foundations of morality. Nothing, indeed, can be more just or conclusive, than the remark that is forced from M. Grimm himself, upon the utter carelesness, and instant oblivion, that followed the death of one of the most distinguished, active, and amiable members of his coterie; "tant il est vrai que ce qui nous appellons la Societé, est ce qu'il y a de plus leger, de plus ingrat, et de plus frivole au monde !"

Holding this opinion very firmly ourselves, it will easily be believed that we are very far from envying the brilliant persons who composed, or gave the tone to this exquisite society;—and while we have a due admiration for the elegant pleasantry, correct taste, and gay acuteness, of which they furnish, perhaps, the only perfect models, we think it more desirable, on the whole, to be the spectators than the possessors of those accomplishments; and would no more wish to buy them at the price of our sober thinking, and settled affections, than we would buy the dexterity of a fiddler, or a ropedancer, at the price of our personal respectability. Even in the days of youth and high spirits, there is no solid enjoyment in living altogether with people who care nothing about us; and when we begin to grow old and unamusable, there can be nothing so comfortless as to be surrounded with those who think of nothing but amusement. The spectacle, however, is gay and beautiful to those who look upon it with a goodnatured sympathy; and naturally suggests reflections that may be interesting to the most serious. A judicious extractor, we have no doubt, might accommodate both classes of readers, from the ample magazine that lies before us.

The most figuring person in the work, and indeed of the age to which it belongs, was, beyond all question, Voltaire-of whom,

and of whose character, it presents us with many amusing traits. He receives no other name throughout the book, than "The Patriarch" of the Holy Philosophical Church, of which the authors, and the greater part of their friends, profess to be humble votaries and disciples. The infallibility of its chief, however, seems to have formed no part of the creed of this reformed religion; for, with all his admiration for the wit, and playfulness, and talent, of the philosophic pontiff, nothing can exceed the freedoms in which M. Grimm indulges, both as to his productions and his character. All his poetry, he says, after Tancred, is clearly marked with the symptoms of approaching dotage and decay; and his views of many important subjects he treats as altogether erroneous, shal low, and contemptible. He is particularly offended with him for not adopting the decided atheism of the Systéme de la Nature, and for weakly stopping short at a kind of paltry deism. "The patriarch," says he, "still sticks to his Remunerateur-Vengeur, without whom he fancies the world would go on very ill. He is resolute enough, I confess, for putting down the god of knaves and bigots, but is not for parting with that of the virtuous and rational. He reasons upon all this, too, like a baby-a very smart baby it must be owned-but a baby notwithstanding. He would be a little puzzled, I take it, if he were asked what was the colour of his god of the virtuous and wise, &c. &c. He cannot conceive, he says, how mere motion, undirected by intelligence, should ever have produced such a world as we inhabit-and we verily believe him. Nobody can conceive it-but it is a fact nevertheless; and we see it--which is nearly as good." We give this merely as a specimen of the disciple's irreverence towards his master; for nothing can be more contemptible than the reasoning of M. Grimm in support of his own desolating opinions. He is more near being right, where he makes himself merry with the patriarch's ignorance of natural philosophy. Every Achilles, however, he adds, has a vulnerable heel-and that of the hero of Ferney is his physics.*

M. Grimm, however, reveals worse infirmities than this in his great preceptor. There was a Mademoiselle Raucour, it seems,

* This is only true, however, with regard to natural history and chymistry; for as to the nobler part of physics, which depends on science, his attainments were equal perhaps to those of any of his age and country, with the exception of D'Alembert. Even his astronomy, however, though by no means "mince et raccourtie," had a tendency to confirm him in that paltry deism, for which he is so unmercifully rated by M. Grimm. We no not know many quatrains in French poetry more beautiful than the following, which the patriarch indited impromptu, one fine summer evening:

who, though an actress, enjoyed an unblemished reputation. Voltaire, who had never seen her, chose one morning to write to the Marechal de Richelieu, by whom she was patronised, that she was a notorious prostitute, and ready to be taken into keeping by any one who would offer for her. This imputation having been thoughtlessly communicated to the damsel herself, produced no little commotion; and upon Voltaire's being remonstrated with, he immediately retracted the whole story, which it seems was a piece of pure invention; and confessed that the only thing he had to object to Mademoiselle Rau cour was, that he had understood they had put off the representation of a new play of his in order to gratify the public with her appearance in comedy;-" and this was enough," says M. Grimm, "to irritate a child of seventy-nine against another child of seventeen, who came in the way of his gratification!"

A.

A little after, he tells a story which is not only very disrepu table to the patriarch, but affords a striking example of the monstrous evils that arise from religious intolerance, in a country where the whole population is not of the same communion. A Mons. de B. introduced himself into a protestant family at Montaubon, and, after some time, publicly married the only daughter of the house, in the church of her pastor. He lived several years with her, and had one daughter-dissipated her whole property-and at last deserted her, and married another woman at Paris-upon the pretence that his first union was not binding, the ceremony not having been performed by a catholic priest. The parliament ultimately allowed this plea; and farther directed, that the daughter should be taken from its mother, and educated in the true faith in a convent. The transaction excited general indignation; and the legality of the sentence, and especially the last part of it, was very much disputed, both in the profession and out of it;-when Voltaire, to the astonishment of all the world, thought fit to put forth a pamphlet in its defence. M. Grimm treats the whole matter with his usual coldness and pleasantry;-and as a sort of apology for this extraordinary proceeding of his chief, very coolly observes, "The truth is, that for some time past the patriarch has been suspected, and indeed convicted, of the most abominable cowardice. He defied the old parliament in his youth with signal courage and intrepidity; and now he cringes to the new one, and even condescends to be its panegyrist, from an absurd dread of being persecuted by it on the very brink of the tomb. Ah! Seigneur Patriarche!" he concludes, in the true Parisian accent, "Horace was much more excusable for flattering Augustus who had honoured him though he destroyed the republic, than you are, for justifying, without any intelligible motive, a proceeding so utterly detestable, and upon which, if you had not courage

to speak as became you, you were not called upon to say any thing." It must be a comfort to the reader to learn, that immediately after this sentence, a M. Vanrobais, an old and most respectable gentleman, was chivalrous enough, at the age of 70, to marry the deserted widow, and to place her in a situation every way more respectable than that of which she had been so basely defrauded.

There is a great deal, in the first of these volumes, about the statue that was voted to Voltaire by his disciples in 1770.Pigalle, the sculptor, was despatched to Ferney to model him, in spite of the opposition he affects to make in a letter to Mad. Necker, in which he very reasonably observes, that in order to be modelled, a man ought to have a face-but that age and sickness have so reduced him, that it is not easy to point out whereabouts his had been; that his eyes are sunk into pits three inches deep, and the small remnant of his teeth recently deserted; that his skin is like old parchment wrinkled over dry bones, and his legs and arms like dry spindles; in short, "qu'on n'a jamais sculpté un pauvre homme dans cet etat." Phidias Pigalle, however, as he calls him, goes upon his errand, notwithstanding all these discouragements; and finds him, according to M. Grimm, in a state of great vivacity. "He skips up stairs," he assures me, "more nimbly than all his subscribers together, and is as quick as lightning in running to shut doors, and open windows; but with all this, he is very anxious to pass for a poor man in the last extremities; and would take it much amiss if he thought that any body had discovered the secret of his health and vigour." Some awkward person, indeed, it appears, has been complimenting him upon the occasion; for he writes me as follows-"My dear friend-Though Phidias Pigalle is the most virtuous of mortals, he calumniates me cruelly; I understand he goes about saying that I am quite well, and as sleek as a monk!-Such is the ungrateful return he makes for the pains I took to force my spirits for his amusement, and to puff up my buccinatory muscles to reCommend myself to him!-Jean Jacques is far more puffed up, however, than me; but it is with conceit, from which I am free." -In another letter he says-"When the peasants in my village saw Pigalle laying out some of the instruments of his art, they flocked round us with great glee, and said, Ah! he is going to dissect him-how droll!-so one spectacle, you see, is just as good for some people as another.

The account which Pigalle gives of his mission is extremely characteristic. For the first eight days, he could make nothing of his patient-he was so restless and full of grimaces, starts and gesticulations. He promised every night to give him a long sitting next day, and always kept his word;-but then, he could no