When he accepted the office of historiographer, he was far
from anticipating an increase of labor through it.
from anticipating an increase of labor through it.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v19 - Oli to Phi
11126 (#342) ##########################################
11126
JAMES PARTON
of the American people, that all those eminent men united could
not prevail against him in a single instance.
It is pleasant to justify the ways of man to man. The in-
stinctive preferences of the people must be right. That is to
say, the man preferred by the people must have more in him of
what the people most want than any other of his generation.
The more intimately we know the men who surrounded General
Washington, the clearer to us does his intrinsic superiority be-
come, and the more clearly we perceive his utter indispensable-
ness. Washington was the only man of the Revolution who did
for the Revolution what no other man could have done. And if
ever the time comes when the eminent contemporaries of Andrew
Jackson shall be as intimately known to the people as Andrew
Jackson now is, the invincible preference of the people for him
will be far less astonishing than it now appears. Clay was the
only man of the four leading spirits whose character will bear
a comparison with our fiery, faulty hero. Clay was indeed a
princely man; it is impossible not to love him: but then, his
endowments were not great, and his industry was limited. How
often when the country wanted statesmanship, he had nothing to
give it but oratory!
Besides, suppose Washington had not fought the battle of
Trenton, and not restored the Revolution when it was about to
perish. Suppose England had lost the battle of Waterloo, and
given the fellest-because the ablest-of tyrants another lease of
power. Suppose the English had sacked New Orleans, and no-
peace had come to check their career of conquest! By indulging
this turn of reflection, we shall perceive that the Washingtons,
the Wellingtons, and the Jacksons of a nation are they who pro-
vide or preserve for all other gifts, talents, and virtues, their
opportunity and sphere. How just, therefore, is the gratitude of
nations toward those who, at the critical moment, DO the great
act that creates or defends them!
What man supremely admires in man is manhood. The val-
iant man alone has power to awaken the enthusiastic love of
us all. So dear to us is valor, that even the rudest manifesta-
tions of it in the pugilistic ring excite, for a moment, a universal
interest. Its highest manifestation, on the martyr's cross, be-
comes the event from which whole races date their after history.
Every great career, whether of a nation or of an individual, dates
from a heroic action, and every downfall from a cowardly one
## p. 11127 (#343) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11127
To dare, to dare again, and always to dare, is the inexorable
condition of every signal and worthy success, from founding a
cobbler's stall to promulgating a nobler faith. In barbarous ages,
heroes risked their lives to save their self-respect; in civilized
periods, they risk what it is harder to risk, their livelihood, their
career.
It is not for nothing that nature has implanted in her darling
the instinct of honoring courage before all other qualities. What
a delicate creature was man to be tossed upon this planet, and
sent whirling through space, naked, shelterless, and untaught;
wild beasts hungering to devour him; the elements in league
against him; compelled instantly to begin the "struggle for life,"
which could never cease until life ceased. What but heroic valor
could have saved him for a day? Man has tamed the beasts, and
reduced the warring elements to such subjection that they are
his untiring servants. His career on earth has been, is, will ever
be, a fight; and the ruling race in all ages is that one which has
produced the greatest number of brave men. Men truly brave.
Men valiant enough to die rather than do, suffer, or consent to,
wrong. To risk life is not all of courage, but it is an essential
part of it.
There are things dearer to the civilized man than
life. But he who cannot calmly give up his life rather than live
unworthily comes short of perfect manhood; and he who can do
so, has in him at least the raw material of a hero.
In the eternal necessity of courage, and in man's instinctive
perception of its necessity, is to be found perhaps the explana-
tion of the puzzling fact, that in an age which has produced so
many glorious benefactors of their species, such men as Welling-
ton and Jackson are loved by a greater number of people than
any others.
The spiritualized reader is not expected to coincide
in the strict justice of this arrangement. His heroes are of an-
other cast. But the rudest man and the scholar may agree in this,
that it is the valor of their heroes which renders them effect-
ive and admirable. The intellect, for example, of a discoverer of
truth excites our wonder; but what rouses our enthusiasm is the
calm and modest valor with which he defies the powerful animos-
ity of those who thrive by debauching the understanding of man.
It was curious that England and America should both, and
nearly at the same time, have elevated their favorite generals to
the highest civil station. Wellington became prime minister in
1827; Jackson, President in 1829. Wellington was tried three
## p. 11128 (#344) ##########################################
11128
JAMES PARTON
years, and found wanting, and driven from power, execrated by
the people. His carriage, his house, and his statue were pelted
by the mob. Jackson reigned eight years, and retired with his
popularity undiminished. The reason was, that Wellington was
not in accord with his generation, and was surrounded by men
who were if possible less so; while Jackson, besides being in
sympathy with the people, had the great good fortune to be
influenced by men who had learned the rudiments of statesman-
ship in the school of Jefferson.
Yes, autocrat as he was, Andrew Jackson loved the people, the
common people, the sons and daughters of toil, as truly as they
loved him, and believed in them as they believed in him.
He was in accord with his generation. He had a clear per-
ception that the toiling millions are not a class in the community,
but are the community. He knew and felt that government
should exist only for the benefit of the governed; that the strong
are strong only that they may aid the weak; that the rich are
rightfully rich only that they may so combine and direct the
labors of the poor as to make labor more profitable to the laborer.
He did not comprehend these truths as they are demonstrated
by Jefferson and Spencer, but he had an intuitive and instinctive
perception of them. And in his most autocratic moments he
really thought that he was fighting the battle of the people, and
doing their will while baffling the purposes of their representa-
tives. If he had been a man of knowledge as well as force, he
would have taken the part of the people more effectually, and
left to his successors an increased power of doing good, instead
of better facilities for doing harm. He appears always to have
meant well. But his ignorance of law, history, politics, science,
of everything which he who governs a country ought to know,
was extreme. Mr. Trist remembers hearing a member of the
General's family say that General Jackson did not believe the
world was round. His ignorance was as a wall round about
him-high, impenetrable. He was imprisoned in his ignorance,
and sometimes raged round his little dim inclosure like a tiger
in his den.
## p. 11129 (#345) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
II129
FROM THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRE›
Copyright 1881, by James Parton. Reprinted here by consent of Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
A
FTER this interesting experience of court life in a foreign
country, where the king was king, he [Voltaire] was to
become a courtier at Versailles, where the man who gov-
erned the king's mistress was king.
Again it was the Duke de Richelieu, First Gentleman of the
Chamber, who broke in upon the elevated pursuits of Cirey, and
called him to lower tasks and less congenial scenes. The royal
children were coming of age. The marriage of the Dauphin to
the Infanta of Spain, long ago agreed upon, was soon to be
celebrated, the prince having passed his sixteenth year; and it
devolved upon the First Gentleman to arrange the marriage fes-
tival. This was no light task; for Louis XIV. had accustomed
France to the most elaborate and magnificent fêtes. Not content
with such splendor as mere wealth can everywhere procure, that
gorgeous monarch loved to enlist all the arts and all the talents;
exhibiting to his guests divertisements written by Molière, per-
formed with original music, and with scenery painted by artists.
Several of his festivals have to this day a certain celebrity in
France, and have left traces still noticeable. There is a public
ground in Paris, opposite the Tuileries, which is called the Place
of the Carousal. It was so named because it was the scene of
one of this King's fêtes, in which five bodies of horsemen -or
quadrilles, as they were called-took part. One of these bodies
were dressed and equipped as Roman knights, and they were
led by the King in person. His brother, the Duke of Orleans,
commanded a body of Persian cavalry; the Prince of Condé, a
splendid band of Turks; the Duke of Guise, a company of Peru-
vian horse; and a son of Condé shone at the head of East-Indian
horsemen in gorgeous array. Imagine these five bodies of horse
galloping and manoeuvring, entering and departing, charging
and retreating, like circus riders in an extremely large and splen-
did tent; and in the midst, on a lofty platform, three queens
in splendid robes,-the mother of Louis, the wife of Louis,
and the widow of Charles I. , who lived and died the guest of
the King of France. There were grand doings at this festival.
There were tournaments, games of skill and daring, stately pro-
cessions, concerts, plays, and buffooneries, with a ball at the
close.
## p. 11130 (#346) ##########################################
11130
JAMES PARTON
That pageant, splendid as it was, was "effaced," as the French
say, by one which the King gave only two years after at Ver-
sailles, probably the most sumptuous thing of the kind ever seen.
On the 5th of May, the most beautiful month of the year in
France, the King rode out to Versailles with all his court, which
then included six hundred persons, each attended by retainers
and servants, the whole numbering more than two thousand
individuals and as many horses. The festival was to last seven
days, and the King defrayed the expenses of every one of his
guests. In the park and gardens of Versailles, miracles had been
wrought. Theatres, amphitheatres, porticoes, pavilions, seemed
to have sprung into being at the waving of an enchanter's wand.
On the first day there was a kind of review, or march-past, of
all who were to take part in the games and tourneys. Under
a triumphal arch the three queens appeared again, resplendent,
each attended by one hundred ladies, who were attired in the
brilliant manner of the period; past these marched heralds,
pages, squires, carrying the devices and shields of the knights, as
well as banners upon which verses were written in letters of gold.
The knights followed in burnished armor and bright plumes; the
King at their head in the character of Roger, a famous knight
of old. All the crown diamonds glittered upon his coat and
the trappings of his horse. Both he and the animal sparkled and
blazed in the May sun; and we can well imagine that a hand-
some young man, riding with perfect grace the most beautiful of
horses, must have been a very pretty spectacle, despite so much
glitter. When this procession of squires and knights had passed
and made their obeisance to the queens, a huge car followed,
eighteen feet high, fifteen wide, and twenty-four long, represent-
ing the Car of the Sun,- an immense vehicle, all gilding and
splendor. Behind this car came groups exhibiting the Four
Ages,- of Gold, of Silver, of Brass, and of Iron; and these were
followed by representations of the celestial signs, the seasons,
and the hours. All this, the spectators inform us, was admirably
performed to the sound of beautiful music; and now and then
persons would step from the procession, and the music would.
cease while they recited poems, written for the occasion, before
the queens. Imagine shepherds, blacksmiths, farmers, harvesters,
vine-dressers, fauns, dryads, Pans, Dianas, Apollos, marching by,
and representing the various scenes of life and industry!
The procession ends at last. Night falls. With wondrous
rapidity four thousand great torches are lighted in an inclosure
## p. 11131 (#347) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11131
fitted up as a banqueting-place.
a banqueting-place. Two hundred of the persons.
who had figured in the procession now bring in various articles.
of food: the seasons, the vine-dressers, the shepherds, the har-
vesters, each bear the food appropriate to them; while Pan and
Diana advance upon a moving mountain, and alight to super-
intend the distribution of the exquisite food which had been
brought in. Behind the tables was an orchestra of musicians, and
when the feast was done the pleasures of the day ended with a
ball. For a whole week the festival continued; the sports varied
every day. There were tourneys, pageants, hunts, shooting at a
mark, and spearing the ring. Four times the King gained the
prize, and offered it to be competed for again. There were a
great number of court fools at this festival, as we still find
clowns at a circus. Indeed, when we attend a liberally appointed
circus, we are looking upon a show resembling in many particu-
lars the grand doings in the park of Versailles when Louis XIV.
entertained his court and figured as chief of the riders.
were
Most of the performances could have been procured by money
lavishly spent; and in order to reproduce them, the Duke de
Richelieu needed little assistance from the arts. But there were
items of the programme which redeemed the character of this
festival, and caused it to be remembered by the susceptible peo-
ple of France with pride. Molière composed for it a kind of
show play, called the 'Princesse d'Elide'; a vehicle for music,
ballet, and costume, with here and there a spice of his comic
talent. A farce of his, the 'Forced Marriage,' was also played;
and the first three acts of his 'Tartuffe - the greatest effort of
French dramatic genius in that age, if not in any age-
performed for the first time. There was only one man in France
who could help a "First Gentleman" to features of the coming
fête at all resembling these; and to him that First Gentleman
applied. Voltaire entered into the scheme with zeal. In April
1744, Cirey all blooming with flowers and verdure, he began to
write his festive divertisement, the Princesse de Navarre,' the
hero of which was a kind of Spanish Duke de Richelieu. "I am
making," he wrote, "a divertisement for a Dauphin and Dau-
phiness whom I shall not divert; but I wish to produce some-
thing pretty, gay, tender, worthy of the Duke de Richelieu,
director of the fête. " It was his chief summer work, and he
labored at it with an assiduity that would have sufficed to pro-
duce three new tragedies. He very happily laid the scene of
―
## p. 11132 (#348) ##########################################
11132
JAMES PARTON
his play in an ancient château close to the borders of the Span-
ish province of Navarre; an expedient which enabled him to
group upon the stage both Frenchmen and Spaniards, with their
effective contrasts of costume, and to present to the Spanish
bride and her court, pleasing traits of their own countrymen.
The poet and the First Gentleman arranged the processions, the
ballets, the tableaux, the fête within a fête; exchanging many
long letters, and pondering many devices. There is good comic
writing in this piece; and there are two characters a rustic
Spanish baron and his extremely simple-minded daughter- that
are worthy of a better kind of play and occasion.
―――――
This was the year in which the King of France first braved the
hardships of the field, accompanied by his mistress, the Duchesse
de Châteauroux, and attended by that surprising retinue of cour-
tiers and comedians often described. I need not pause to relate
how, after being present at warlike operations, he fell dangerously
sick of a fever; how the mistress and the First Gentleman took
possession of the King's quarters, and barred the door against
priests and princes; how, as the King grew worse, the alarmed
mistress tried to come to a compromise with the royal confessor,
the keeper of the King's conscience, saying to him in substance,
"Let me go away without scandal,- that is, without being sent
away, and I will quietly let you into the King's chamber;" how
the cautious Jesuit contrived to get through a long interview
without saying either yes or no to this proposal; how at length,
when the King seemed near his end, she was terrified into yield-
ing, and the King, fearing to lose his absolution and join some of
the bad kings in the other world, sent her a positive command
to depart, as if she had been, what the priest officially styled her,
a concubine; how the King, having recovered, humbly courted
her return, calling upon her in person at her house; and how,
while she affected to hesitate, and dictated terms of direst ven-
geance, even the exile of every priest, courtier, and minister who
had taken the least part in her disgrace, she died of mingled
rage, mortification, and triumph, leaving both the King and the
First Gentleman perfectly consolable.
The impressive fact is, that none of these things impaired
the spell of the King's divinity. During the crisis of his fever
all France seemed panic-stricken; and when he recovered, the
manifestations of joy were such as to astonish the King himself,
inured as he was to every form and degree of adulation from his
-
## p. 11133 (#349) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11133
childhood. "What have I done," cried the poor man, "to be
loved so? " It was at this time that he received his name of
Louis the Well-Beloved, by which it was presumed that he would
go to posterity, along with Louis the Fat and Philip the Long,
-titles so helpful to childish memory. On his return to Paris
in September 1744, "crowned with victory," and recovered from
the borders of the tomb, the fêtes were of such magnitude and
splendor that Madame du Châtelet came to Paris to witness
them, with her poet in her train. He brought his 'Princesse de
Navarre' with him, however, and was soon in daily consultation.
with composer, ministers, First Gentleman, and friends, as to the
resources of an extemporized theatre.
A curious street adventure befell madame and himself on the
night of the grand fireworks, which they rode in from a châ-
teau near the city to witness. They found all the world in the
streets. Voltaire gave an account of their night's exploits to
the President Hénault, whose visit to Cirey they now returned
in an unusual manner:-"There were two thousand backing car-
riages in three files; there were the outcries of two or three hun-
dred thousand men, scattered among those carriages; there were
drunkards, fights with fists, streams of wine and tallow flow-
ing upon the people, a mounted police to augment the embro-
glio; and by way of climax to our delights, his Royal Highness
[Duke de Chartres] was returning peacefully to the Palais-Royal
with his great carriages, his guards, his pages: and all this un-
able to go back or advance until three in the morning. I was with
Madame du Châtelet. Her coachman, who had never before
been in Paris, was about boldly to break her upon the wheel.
Covered as she was with diamonds, she alighted, calling upon
me to follow, got through the crowd without being either plun-
dered or hustled, entered your house [Rue St. Honoré], sent for
some roast chicken at the corner restaurant, and drank your
health very pleasantly in that house to which every one wishes
to see you return. "
It was a busy time with him during the next six months,
arranging the details of the fête, with Rameau the composer,
with scene-painters, with the Duke de Richelieu and the Marquis
d'Argenson. We see him cutting down eight verses to four,
and swelling four verses to eight, to meet the exigencies of the
music. We see him deep in converse with Richelieu upon the
complicated scenes of his play,-suggesting, altering, abandoning,
curtailing numberless devices of the stage manager.
## p. 11134 (#350) ##########################################
11134
JAMES PARTON
On this occasion also, as before going to Prussia, he took care
to secure some compensation in advance. It was not his inten-
tion to play courtier for nothing. He was resolved to improve
this opportunity, and to endeavor so to strengthen himself at
court that henceforth he could sleep in peace at his abode, in
Paris, or in the country, fearless of the Ane of Mirepoix. To
get the dull, shy, sensualized King on his side was a material
point with him. He wrote a poem on the 'Events of the Year'
(1744), in which the exploits of the King upon the tented field,
and his joyful recovery from sickness, were celebrated in the true
laureate style. He also took measures to have this poem shown
to the King by the Cardinal de Tencin, "in a moment of good-
humor. " He made known to two of his friends in the ministry,
M. Orry and the Marquis d'Argenson, precisely what he wanted.
He wanted an office which would protect him against confessors,
bishops, and Desfontaines,-say, for example, gentleman-in-ordi-
nary of the king's chamber; a charge of trifling emolument, less
duty, and great distinction. He would then be a member of the
King's household, not to be molested on slight pretext by a Mire-
poix, nor to be calumniated with impunity by a journalist. But
since such offices were seldom vacant, he asked to be appointed
at once writer of history (historiographe) to the King, at a nomi-
nal salary of four hundred francs a year.
M. Orry thought this very modest and suitable; the Marquis
d'Argenson was of the same opinion: and both engaged to aid in
accomplishing his wishes. If he could add to these posts an
arm-chair in the French Academy, which in good time he also
meant to try for, he thought he might pursue his natural voca-
tion in his native land without serious and constant apprehension.
But first, the fête! That must succeed as a preliminary. In
January 1745 he took up his abode at Versailles to superintend
the rehearsals, conscious of the incongruity of his employment.
"I am here," he wrote to Thierot, "braving Fortune in her own
temple; at Versailles I play a part similar to that of an atheist
in a church. " To Cideville, also:-"Do you not pity a poor
devil who at fifty is a king's buffoon, and who is more embar-
rassed with musicians, decorators, actors, singers, and dancers
than the eight or nine electors will soon be in making a German
Cæsar? I rush from Paris to Versailles; I compose verses in
the postchaise; I have to praise the King highly, Madame the
Dauphiness delicately, the royal family sweetly. I must satisfy
the court, and not displease the city. "
## p. 11135 (#351) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11135
In the very crisis of the long preparation, February 18th,
1745, seven days before the festival, Voltaire's Jansenist of a
brother, the "Abbé Arouet," Receiver-of-Fees to the Chamber of
Accounts, died at Paris, aged two months less than sixty years.
The brothers, as we know, had been long ago estranged, and
had rarely met of late years. The parish register, still accessible,
attests that the funeral was attended, February 19th, by "François-
Marie Arouet de Voltaire, bourgeois of Paris"; not yet gentleman-
in-ordinary. The receiver-of-fees died, as he had lived, in what
was called the odor of sanctity; presenting to the view of young
and old that painful caricature of goodness which has for some
centuries, in more than one country, made virtue more difficult
than it naturally is. From his will, which also exists, we learn
that if he did not disinherit his brother, he came as near it as
a French brother could without doing violence to the sentiment
and custom of his country. After giving legacies to cousins,
friends, and servants, he leaves one half the bulk of his estate
to his nephew and nieces, and the other half to his brother; but
with a difference. Voltaire was to enjoy his half "in usufruct
only," the capital to fall finally "to his nephew and nieces afore-
said. " He took care also to prevent his brother from gaining
anything by the decease of any of the heirs. As the receiver-of-
fees, besides bequeathing his valuable office to a relative, died
worth, as French investigators compute, about two hundred
thousand francs, Voltaire received an increase to his income of
perhaps six thousand francs a year.
From his brother's grave, without waiting to learn these par-
ticulars, he was obliged to go post-haste to Versailles, towards
which all eyes were now directed. The marriage festival, a
tumult of all the splendors, began February 23d, 1745. The
'Princess of Navarre' succeeded to admiration. A vast and
beautiful edifice had risen, at the command of Richelieu, in the
horse-training ground near the palace of Versailles, so con-
structed that it could serve as a theatre on one evening and a
ball-room on the next, both equally magnificent and complete.
The stage was fifty-six feet in depth; and as the boxes were so
arranged as to exhibit the audience to itself in the most effective
and brilliant manner, the words spoken on the stage could not
be always perfectly heard. But this was not so important, since
the play was chiefly designed as a vehicle for music, dancing,
costume, and picture. At six in the evening the King entered
## p. 11136 (#352) ##########################################
11136
JAMES PARTON
and took the seat prepared for him in the middle of the theatre,
followed in due order by his family and court, arrayed in the
gorgeous fashion of the time. These placed themselves around
him, a splendid group, in the midst of a great theatre filled with
the nobility of the kingdom, all sumptuous and glittering. The
author of the play about to be performed was himself thrilled
by the picturesque magnificence of the spectacle which the audi-
ence presented; and he regretted that a greater number of the
people of France could not have been present to behold the
superb array of princes and princesses, noble lords and ladies,
adorned by masterpieces of decorative art, which the beauty of
the ladies "effaced. " He wished that more people could observe
the noble and becoming joy that filled every heart and beamed
in all those lovely eyes.
But since nothing can be perfect, not even in France, this
most superb audience was so much elated with itself that it
could not stop talking. There was a buzz and hum of conver-
sation, reminding the anxious author of a hive of bees humming
and buzzing around the queen. The curtain rose; but still they
talked. The play, however, being a mélange of poetry, song,
music, ballet, and dialogue, everything was enjoyed except the
good verses here and there, which could scarcely be caught by
distant ears. Every talent in such a piece meets its due of
approval except that of the poet, who imagines the whole before
any part of it exists. At half-past nine the curtain fell upon the
closing scene; when the audience, retiring to the grounds with-
out, found the entire façade of the palace and adjacent structures
illuminated. All were enchanted. The King himself, the hardest
man in Europe to amuse, was so well pleased that he ordered
the play to be repeated on another evening of the festival. "The
King is grateful to me," wrote Voltaire to his guardian angel,
D'Argental. "The Mirepoix cannot harm me. What more do I
need ? »
He was exhausted with the long strain upon his nervous sys-
tem. "So tired am I," he wrote to Thierot, "that I have neither
hands, feet, nor head, and write to you by the hand of another. "
But he soon had the consolation of receiving the King's promise
of the next vacancy among the gentlemen-in-ordinary, and his
immediate appointment as writer of history at an annual salary
of two thousand francs. Thus the year consumed in these courtly
toils, he thought, was not without its compensations. Nor did he
## p. 11137 (#353) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11137
relax his vigilance, nor give ministers peace, until these offices
were securely his by letters patent and the King's signature.
When he accepted the office of historiographer, he was far
from anticipating an increase of labor through it. But in truth,
no poet laureate ever won his annual pipe of sack by labors
so arduous as those by which Voltaire earned this salary of
two thousand francs. Several volumes of history attest his dili-
gence. During the first two or three years of his holding the
place he was historiographer, laureate, writer of royal letters and
ministerial dispatches, complimenter of the royal mistress, and
occasionally court dramatist and master of the revels.
The marriage festivities at Versailles drew to a close, and all
that brilliant crowd dispersed. From the splendors of the court
he was suddenly called away to attend the son of Madame du
Châtelet through the small-pox. He assisted to save the future
Duke du Châtelet for the guillotine, applying to his case his own.
experience of the two hundred pints of lemonade. That duty
done and his forty days of quarantine fulfilled, he returned to
court, where the minister for foreign affairs had a piece of work
for his pen. Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, had offered her me-
diation to the King of France, and the task of writing the King's
reply, accepting the offer, was assigned to Voltaire, who per-
formed it in the loftiest style of sentimental politics. If Louis
XV. took the trouble to glance over this composition, he must
have been pleased to find himself saying that "kings can aspire
to no other glory than that of promoting the happiness of their
subjects," and swearing that he "had never taken up arms except
with a view to promote the interests of peace. It was an ami-
able, effusive letter, in the taste of the period,- being written
by the man who made the taste of the period. Later in the sum-
mer he drafted a longer dispatch to the government of Holland,
remonstrating against its purpose of sending aid to the King
of England against the Pretender. It was he also who wrote
the manifesto to be published in Great Britain on the landing
of the French expedition under the Duke de Richelieu, in aid
of the Pretender. Whenever, indeed, during 1745, 1746, and
1747, the ministry had occasion for a skillful pen, Voltaire was
employed. We perceive in this part of his correspondence the
mingled horror and contempt that war excited in his mind.
"Give us peace, monseigneur," is the burden of his cry to the
XIX-697
## p. 11138 (#354) ##########################################
11138
JAMES PARTON
Marquis d'Argenson in confidential notes; and we see him, with
his usual easy assurance, suggesting such marriages for the royal
children as would "render France happy by a beautiful peace,
and your name immortal despite the fools. "
Whatever philosophers may think of war, few citizens can
resist the contagious delirium of victory after national defeat
and humiliation. The King of France again, in 1745, was posed
by his advisers in the part of conqueror. From a hill, he and
the Dauphin looked on while Marshal Saxe won the decisive and
fruitful victory of Fontenoy, over the English Duke of Cumber-
land and the forces of the allies, with a loss of eight thousand
men on each side. Voltaire received the news at Paris, late in
the evening, direct from D'Argenson, who was with the King in
the field. He dashed upon paper a congratulatory note to the
minister: "Ah! the lovely task for your historian! In three hun-
dred years the kings of France have done nothing so glorious. I
am mad with joy! Good-night, monseigneur! "
His poem 'Fontenoy,' of three hundred lines or more, was
scattered over the delirious city damp from the press, and in a
few days was declaimed in every town of the kingdom. Edition.
after edition was sold. "Five editions in ten days! " The author,
as his custom was, added, erased, altered, corrected; offending
some by omitting their names, offending others by inserting
names odious to them; working all one night to make the poem
a less imperfect expression of the national joy; not forgetting to
dedicate it to the King, and to get a copy placed in his hands.
"The King deigns to be content with it," he wrote. Thousands
of copies were sold in the first month, and there were two bur-
lesques of the poem in the second.
In the very ecstasy of the general enthusiasm, he still repeats,
in a private note to D'Argenson, "Peace, monseigneur, peace,
and you are a great man, even among the fools! "
He was
now in high favor, even with the King, who had
said to Marshal Saxe that the Princesse de Navarre' was above
criticism. The marshal himself gave Madame du Châtelet this
agreeable information. "After that," said the author, "I must
regard the King as the greatest connoisseur in his kingdom. "
He renewed his intimacy with his early patron, the Duchesse du
Maine, who still held court at the château of Sceaux near by.
By great good luck, too, as doubtless he regarded it at the time,
he was acquainted with the new mistress, Pompadour, before she
## p. 11139 (#355) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11139
was Pompadour. He knew her when she was only the most
bewitching young wife in France, cold to her rich and amorous.
young husband, and striving by every art that such women know
to catch the King's eye as he hunted in the royal forest near her
abode. Already, even while the King was sleeping on histrionic
straw on the field near Fontenoy, it was settled that the dream
of her life was to be realized. She was to be Petticoat III.
This summer, during the King's absence at the seat of war,
Voltaire was frequently at her house, and had become established
in her favor. She was a gifted, brilliant, ambitious woman, of
cold temperament, who courted this infamy as men seek honor-
able posts which make them conspicuous, powerful, and envied.
In well-ordered nations, accomplished men win such places by
thirty years' well-directed toil in the public service. She won her
place, and kept it nineteen years, by amusing the least amusable
of men.
She paid a high price. In return, she governed France,
enriched her family, promoted her friends, exiled her enemies,
owned half a dozen châteaux, and left an estate of thirty-six
millions of francs.
With such and so many auxiliaries supporting his new posi-
tion, the historiographer of France, if he had been a younger
man, might have felt safe. But he knew his ground. Under
personal government nations usually have two masters, the king
and the priest, between whom there is an alliance offensive and
defensive. He had gained some favor with the King, the King's
ministers, and the King's mistress. But the priest remained hos-
tile. The King being a coward, a fit of the colic might frighten
him into turning out the mistress and letting in the confessor;
and suppose the colic successful, instantly a pious and bigoted
Dauphin became king, with a Mirepoix as chief priest! Moreover,
to depend upon the favor of either king or mistress is worse than
basing the prosperity of an industrial community upon a change-
able fraction in a tariff bill.
Revolving such thoughts in an anxious mind, Voltaire con-
ceived a notable scheme for going behind the Mirepoix, and
silencing him forever by capturing the favor of the Pope. Bene-
dict XIV. was a scholar, a gentleman of excellent temper, and
no bigot. He owed his election to his agreeable qualities. When
the cardinals were exhausted by days and nights of fruitless
balloting, he said, with his usual gayety and good-humor, "Why
waste so much time in vain debates and researches ?
Do you
## p. 11140 (#356) ##########################################
11140
JAMES PARTON
want a saint? elect Gotti. A politician? Aldovrandi. A good
fellow? take me. " And they took him.
It was soon after the close of the fête at Versailles that
Voltaire consulted the Marquis d'Argenson, minister for foreign
affairs, upon his project of getting, as he expressed it, "some
mark of papal benevolence that could do him honor both in this.
- world and the next. " The minister shook his head. He said
it was scarcely possible to mingle in that way things celestial
and political. Like a true courtier of the period, the poet betook
himself to a lady, Mademoiselle du Thil, a connection of Madame
du Châtelet, and extremely well disposed toward himself. She
had a friend in the Pope's household, the Abbé de Tolignan
whom she easily engaged in the cause. D'Argenson also bore
the scheme in mind when he wrote to the French envoy at
Rome. Voltaire meanwhile read the works of his Holiness, of
which there are still accessible fifteen volumes, and in various
ways "coquetted" with him, causing him to know that the cele-
brated Voltaire was one of his readers. The good-natured Pope
was prompt to respond. The Abbé de Tolignan having asked for
some mark of papal favor for Voltaire, the Pope gave two of his
large medals to be forwarded to the French poet, the medals
bearing the Pope's own portrait. His Holiness also caused a
polite letter to be written to him by his secretary, asking his
acceptance of the medals. Then the French envoy, ignorant of
these proceedings, also applied to the Pope on behalf of Voltaire,
requesting for him one of his large medals. The Pope, ignorant
of the envoy's ignorance, replied, "To St. Peter's itself I should
not give any larger ones! " The envoy was mystified, and Vol-
taire, on receiving a report of the affair, begged the minister for
foreign affairs to write to the envoy in explanation.
The two large medals reached the poet in due time. He
thought Benedict XIV. the most plump-cheeked holy father the
church had enjoyed for a long time, and one who "had the air
of knowing very well what all that was worth. " He wrote two
Latin verses as a legend for the Pope's portrait, to the effect
that Lambertinus, officially styled Benedict XIV. , was the orna-
ment of Rome and the father of the world, who by his works
instructed the earth, and adorned it by his virtues. Emboldened
by success, he ventured upon an audacity still more exquisite,
and one which would not be concealed in the archives of the
foreign office. All Europe should know the favor in which this
## p. 11141 (#357) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
II 141
son of the Church was held at the papal court. He resolved to
dedicate to the Pope that tragedy of "Mahomet" which the late
Cardinal de Fleury had admired and suppressed.
The coming of Marmontel to Paris added one more to the
ever increasing number of young writers whom Voltaire had
assisted to form. The new men of talent were his own, and
they were preparing to aid him in future contests with hostile
powers. The Marquis de Vauvenargues, the young soldier who
was compelled by ill health to abandon the career of arms, in
which he was already distinguished, and now aspired to serve his
country in the intellectual life, had been for some time one of
Voltaire's most beloved friends. His first, his only work, 'Intro-
duction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind,' was just appear-
ing from the press, heralded by Voltaire's zealous commendation.
"My dear Master," the young disciple loved to begin his letters;
and Voltaire, in writing to him, used all those endearing expres-
sions which often make a French letter one long and fond
caress. He sank into the grave in 1747, but his name and his
work survive. It is evident from his correspondence that he was
of a lofty and generous nature, capable of the true public spirit,
the religion of the new period.
Marmontel reached Paris in time to witness a day of triumph
for Voltaire, which had been long deferred. There was a va-
cancy at the French Academy early in 1746. Mirepoix's voice was
not heard on this occasion; and Voltaire, without serious trouble,
succeeded in obtaining a unanimous election to the chair. This
event could not have been at that time any increase of honor
to an author of his rank. He valued an academic chair for him-
self and for his colleagues, such as Marmontel, D'Alembert, and
others, as an additional protection against the Mirepoix. Mem-
bers of the Academy had certain privileges in common with the
officers of the king's household. They could not be compelled
to defend a suit out of Paris; they were accountable to the king
directly, and could not be molested except by the king's com-
mand. Above all, they stood in the sunshine of the king's efful-
gent majesty; they shared in the mystic spell of rank, which no
American citizen can ever quite understand, and of which even
Europeans of to-day begin to lose the sense. He was a little
safer now against all the abuses of the royal power, usually
covered by lettres de cachet.
## p. 11142 (#358) ##########################################
11142
JAMES PARTON
May 9th, 1746, was the day of his public reception at the
Academy, when, according to usage, it devolved upon him to
deliver a set eulogium upon his departed predecessor. The new
member signalized the occasion by making his address much more.
than that. His eulogy was brief, but sufficient; and when he had
performed that pious duty, he struck into an agreeable and very
ingenious discourse upon the charms, the limits, the defects, and
the wide-spread triumphs of the French language. With that
matchless art of his, he contrived in kingly style to compliment
all his "great friends and allies," while adhering to his subject
with perfect fidelity. Was it not one of the glories of the French
language that a Frederic should adopt it as the language of his
court and of his friendships, and that Italian cardinals and pon-
tiffs should speak it like natives? His dear Princess Ulrique,
too, then Queen of Sweden, was not French her native tongue?
There were some wise remarks in this address; as, for example,
where he says that eminent talents become of necessity rarer as
the whole nation advances: "In a well-grown forest, no single
tree lifts its head very high above the rest. " He concluded with
the "necessary burst of eloquence" respecting the late warlike
exploits of the king; in which, however, he gave such promi-
nence to the services in the field of the Duke of Richelieu, a
member of the Academy, that the First Gentleman almost eclipsed
the monarch.
He was now at the highest point of his court favor. An epi-
gram of his, written at this period, conveys to us his sense of
the situation, and renders other comment superfluous:-
"Mon Henri Quatre' et ma 'Zaïre,'
Et mon Americaine 'Alzire,'
Ne m'ont valu jamais un seul regard du roi;
J'eus beaucoup d'ennemis avec très-peu de gloire
Les honneurs et les biens pleuvent enfin sur moi
Pour une farce de la foire. "
(My Henry Fourth' and my 'Zaïre,'
With my American ‘Alzire,’
No smile have ever won me from the king;
Too many foes were mine, too little fame:
Now all men gifts and honors on me fling,
Since with a farce I to the market came. )
## p. 11142 (#359) ##########################################
## p. 11142 (#360) ##########################################
BLAISE PASCAL.
## p. 11142 (#361) ##########################################
B. 2.
## p. 11142 (#362) ##########################################
BLAISE PASCAL.
## p. 11143 (#363) ##########################################
11143
PASCAL
(1623-1662)
BY ARTHUR G. CANFIELD
B
LAISE PASCAL was born at Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France,
June 19th, 1623. His father, Étienne Pascal, was a man of
wealth, education, and high judicial position, who, when
Blaise was eight years old, removed to Paris especially to care for
his education. Blaise showed a very precocious talent, especially for
mathematics. At the age of sixteen he wrote a remarkable treatise
on conic sections; at nineteen he invented a calculating machine. By
this time his health, never robust, was undermined by his study, and
thereafter he had to contend with disease. But in spite of it he went
on with his researches in mathematics and physics. He developed
the calculus of probabilities, and solved the problem of the cycloid.
In 1648 he made the series of experiments which confirmed the con-
clusions of Torricelli, and established our knowledge of the weight
of the atmosphere. Then for some years he gave himself to social
pleasures and dissipations; but after his sister Jacqueline's entrance.
into a convent, and a startling accident through which he nearly lost
his life, he renounced the world and entered the community of Port-
Royal in 1654. In its defense he wrote, under the name of Louis de
Montalte, the famous 'Lettres Provinciales,' in 1656. The even more
famous 'Pensées' are the fruit of the profound and poignant medita-
tion that, with increasing bodily pains, filled out the few years until
his death, August 19th, 1662.
But this little outline gives no adequate suggestion of the power
and versatility of his mind:
"There was a man who at the age of twelve, with straight lines and cir-
cles, had created mathematics; who at sixteen had composed the most learned
treatise on conic sections produced since ancient times; who at nineteen re-
duced to machinery the processes of a science that resides wholly in the mind;
who at twenty-three demonstrated the weight of the atmosphere and destroyed
one of the greatest errors of the older physics; who at an age when other
men are just beginning to awake to life, having traversed the whole round of
human knowledge, perceived its emptiness, and turned all his thoughts toward
religion; who from that moment till his death at the age of thirty-eight,
constantly beset by infirmity and disease, fixed the tongue that Bossuet and
## p. 11144 (#364) ##########################################
II 144
PASCAL
Racine spoke, gave the model at once of the most perfect pleasantry and of
the closest logic, and finally, in the short respite that his bodily pains allowed
him, solved unaided one of the deepest problems of geometry, and set down
in random order thoughts that seem as much divine as human. »
In such words does Châteaubriand sum up Pascal's career, and
they hardly overstate his qualities and achievements. His contribu-
tions to the progress of mathematics and physics would be enough of
themselves to make his name remembered; but they are wholly over-
shadowed by the fame of his two great contributions to literature,—
the 'Provincial Letters' and the Thoughts. ' Both these works have
a very direct relation to his life and experience. The 'Provincial
Letters' bear witness both to his sincere devotion to Port-Royal,
and to his familiarity with the mind and spirit of worldly society.
Before becoming a member of that famous little band of scholars
and teachers, he had been an accomplished man of the world. He
had early been attracted by the logic of the doctrines of Jansenius,
and had become a zealous champion of Jansenism. But he did not
therefore renounce the gay companions and pleasures of his hours
of recreation. It was only as his ideas developed, and he advanced
from the curious pursuit of knowledge to the imperious need of cer-
tainty, that he was driven from reason, self-convicted of insufficiency,
to revelation, and the complete surrender of himself to God and to
the austere religious life of Port-Royal. The influence of his sister
Jacqueline's example, and the impression made upon him by his
almost miraculous escape from death, are only incidents of his ap-
proach to the experience of the night of the twenty-third of Novem-
ber, 1654; when, in an ecstasy of religious feeling, he felt himself
possessed by Divine grace. So he brought to Port-Royal a wholly
lay mind, capable of appreciating from the simple human standpoint
of the common man the theological controversy over grace and free-
will in which it was soon involved. He was therefore equipped as
no other for bringing this quarrel before the bar of public opinion.
So the Provincial Letters' are not merely, nor mainly, a skillful
argument on the theological doctrines in contest. They are that at
first; but from the fifth letter their field broadens, and they become
a vehement and indignant impeachment of the moral teachings and
practices of the Jesuits, who were the head and front of the attack
against Port-Royal. In them Pascal makes an appeal to the common
reason and conscience, with such an accent of intense sincerity and
conviction, with such resources of irony, ridicule, illustration, and elo-
quent indignation, and with such command of clear, nimble, and
strong speech, that the letters have long outlived the interest of the
quarrel that was the occasion of them, and have become its imperish-
able monument.
## p. 11145 (#365) ##########################################
PASCAL
11145
The Thoughts' are especially the expression of the life of reli-
gious devotion and meditation to which he gave himself at Port-
Royal. Having given himself unreservedly to it, he could not do
and suffer enough. He welcomed the pains that his feeble health
imposed upon him, and doubled them by self-inflicted rigors. All
the strength his infirmities left him was given to an 'Apology for
the Christian Religion,' but he was not permitted to finish it.
The Thoughts' are the fragments of this work. In them he
unites the eager intellectual curiosity of the man of science with the
fervent devotion of the religious ascetic and the imagination of the
poet. He is possessed, almost tormented, by the imperious need of
knowing, of satisfying his reason. But his reason halts appalled be-
fore the infinitely little and the infinitely great, and declares itself
powerless to get beyond the partial and relative knowledge of the
world and to attain absolute truth. The source of absolute certainty
must then be above reason, and reason herself is summoned to testify
to the superior authority of revelation and Christian faith. In the
very opposition of revelation and reason he makes reason find a seal
of the Divine source of revelation. But the Thoughts,' left incom-
plete and in disorder, do not persuade us, as Pascal intended, by close
and consecutive argument and logical unity, so much as profoundly
impress us by his wealth of powerful and illuminating ideas, the
depth of his searching of the human heart, and the intense and pas-
sionate eloquence of his style. Few if any have given such poignant
expression to the sense of disproportion between human powers and
human aspirations, and of the combined grandeur and pettiness of
human destiny. From all other such collections of Thoughts,' Pas-
cal's stand pre-eminent for the intensity of the human emotion that
vibrates through them.
Arthur 9 Canfield.
FROM THE THOUGHTS'
HE whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the
THE
ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may
swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring
forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is
an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circum-
ference nowhere. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of
the almighty power of God; in that thought let imagination lose
itself.
## p. 11146 (#366) ##########################################
II146
PASCAL
Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own being
compared with all that is; let him regard himself as wandering
in this remote province of nature; and from the little dungeon
in which he finds himself lodged — I mean the universe let him
learn to set a true value on the earth, on its kingdoms, its cities,
and on himself.
-
-
What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another
prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate
things he knows. Let him take a mite, which in its minute body
presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with
their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humors in
the blood, drops in the humors, vapors in the drops; let him,
again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the
last point at which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he
will perhaps think that here is the extremest diminutive in nature.
Then I will open before him therein a new abyss.
I will paint
for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can con-
ccive of nature's immensity in the inclosure of this diminished
atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes, of which each
has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as
in the visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the
mites, in which he will come upon all that was in the first, and
still find in these others the same without end and without ces-
sation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in their
minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not be
amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible
in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole,
is now a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness
to which we cannot attain.
Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the
thought that he is upheld in the material being given him by
nature, between these two abysses of the infinite and nothing,-
he will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that
as his curiosity changes into wonder, he will be more disposed to
contemplate them in silence than to search into them with pre-
sumption.
For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to
the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between noth-
ing and the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either
extreme. The end of things and their beginnings are invincibly
hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy; he is equally incapable
## p. 11147 (#367) ##########################################
PASCAL
11147
of seeing the nothing whence he was taken, and the infinite in
which he is engulfed.
What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle
of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning
or their end? All things arise from nothing, and tend towards
the infinite. Who can follow their marvelous course? The author
of these wonders can understand them, and none but he.
WE THINK We are playing on ordinary organs when we play
upon man.
11126
JAMES PARTON
of the American people, that all those eminent men united could
not prevail against him in a single instance.
It is pleasant to justify the ways of man to man. The in-
stinctive preferences of the people must be right. That is to
say, the man preferred by the people must have more in him of
what the people most want than any other of his generation.
The more intimately we know the men who surrounded General
Washington, the clearer to us does his intrinsic superiority be-
come, and the more clearly we perceive his utter indispensable-
ness. Washington was the only man of the Revolution who did
for the Revolution what no other man could have done. And if
ever the time comes when the eminent contemporaries of Andrew
Jackson shall be as intimately known to the people as Andrew
Jackson now is, the invincible preference of the people for him
will be far less astonishing than it now appears. Clay was the
only man of the four leading spirits whose character will bear
a comparison with our fiery, faulty hero. Clay was indeed a
princely man; it is impossible not to love him: but then, his
endowments were not great, and his industry was limited. How
often when the country wanted statesmanship, he had nothing to
give it but oratory!
Besides, suppose Washington had not fought the battle of
Trenton, and not restored the Revolution when it was about to
perish. Suppose England had lost the battle of Waterloo, and
given the fellest-because the ablest-of tyrants another lease of
power. Suppose the English had sacked New Orleans, and no-
peace had come to check their career of conquest! By indulging
this turn of reflection, we shall perceive that the Washingtons,
the Wellingtons, and the Jacksons of a nation are they who pro-
vide or preserve for all other gifts, talents, and virtues, their
opportunity and sphere. How just, therefore, is the gratitude of
nations toward those who, at the critical moment, DO the great
act that creates or defends them!
What man supremely admires in man is manhood. The val-
iant man alone has power to awaken the enthusiastic love of
us all. So dear to us is valor, that even the rudest manifesta-
tions of it in the pugilistic ring excite, for a moment, a universal
interest. Its highest manifestation, on the martyr's cross, be-
comes the event from which whole races date their after history.
Every great career, whether of a nation or of an individual, dates
from a heroic action, and every downfall from a cowardly one
## p. 11127 (#343) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11127
To dare, to dare again, and always to dare, is the inexorable
condition of every signal and worthy success, from founding a
cobbler's stall to promulgating a nobler faith. In barbarous ages,
heroes risked their lives to save their self-respect; in civilized
periods, they risk what it is harder to risk, their livelihood, their
career.
It is not for nothing that nature has implanted in her darling
the instinct of honoring courage before all other qualities. What
a delicate creature was man to be tossed upon this planet, and
sent whirling through space, naked, shelterless, and untaught;
wild beasts hungering to devour him; the elements in league
against him; compelled instantly to begin the "struggle for life,"
which could never cease until life ceased. What but heroic valor
could have saved him for a day? Man has tamed the beasts, and
reduced the warring elements to such subjection that they are
his untiring servants. His career on earth has been, is, will ever
be, a fight; and the ruling race in all ages is that one which has
produced the greatest number of brave men. Men truly brave.
Men valiant enough to die rather than do, suffer, or consent to,
wrong. To risk life is not all of courage, but it is an essential
part of it.
There are things dearer to the civilized man than
life. But he who cannot calmly give up his life rather than live
unworthily comes short of perfect manhood; and he who can do
so, has in him at least the raw material of a hero.
In the eternal necessity of courage, and in man's instinctive
perception of its necessity, is to be found perhaps the explana-
tion of the puzzling fact, that in an age which has produced so
many glorious benefactors of their species, such men as Welling-
ton and Jackson are loved by a greater number of people than
any others.
The spiritualized reader is not expected to coincide
in the strict justice of this arrangement. His heroes are of an-
other cast. But the rudest man and the scholar may agree in this,
that it is the valor of their heroes which renders them effect-
ive and admirable. The intellect, for example, of a discoverer of
truth excites our wonder; but what rouses our enthusiasm is the
calm and modest valor with which he defies the powerful animos-
ity of those who thrive by debauching the understanding of man.
It was curious that England and America should both, and
nearly at the same time, have elevated their favorite generals to
the highest civil station. Wellington became prime minister in
1827; Jackson, President in 1829. Wellington was tried three
## p. 11128 (#344) ##########################################
11128
JAMES PARTON
years, and found wanting, and driven from power, execrated by
the people. His carriage, his house, and his statue were pelted
by the mob. Jackson reigned eight years, and retired with his
popularity undiminished. The reason was, that Wellington was
not in accord with his generation, and was surrounded by men
who were if possible less so; while Jackson, besides being in
sympathy with the people, had the great good fortune to be
influenced by men who had learned the rudiments of statesman-
ship in the school of Jefferson.
Yes, autocrat as he was, Andrew Jackson loved the people, the
common people, the sons and daughters of toil, as truly as they
loved him, and believed in them as they believed in him.
He was in accord with his generation. He had a clear per-
ception that the toiling millions are not a class in the community,
but are the community. He knew and felt that government
should exist only for the benefit of the governed; that the strong
are strong only that they may aid the weak; that the rich are
rightfully rich only that they may so combine and direct the
labors of the poor as to make labor more profitable to the laborer.
He did not comprehend these truths as they are demonstrated
by Jefferson and Spencer, but he had an intuitive and instinctive
perception of them. And in his most autocratic moments he
really thought that he was fighting the battle of the people, and
doing their will while baffling the purposes of their representa-
tives. If he had been a man of knowledge as well as force, he
would have taken the part of the people more effectually, and
left to his successors an increased power of doing good, instead
of better facilities for doing harm. He appears always to have
meant well. But his ignorance of law, history, politics, science,
of everything which he who governs a country ought to know,
was extreme. Mr. Trist remembers hearing a member of the
General's family say that General Jackson did not believe the
world was round. His ignorance was as a wall round about
him-high, impenetrable. He was imprisoned in his ignorance,
and sometimes raged round his little dim inclosure like a tiger
in his den.
## p. 11129 (#345) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
II129
FROM THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRE›
Copyright 1881, by James Parton. Reprinted here by consent of Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
A
FTER this interesting experience of court life in a foreign
country, where the king was king, he [Voltaire] was to
become a courtier at Versailles, where the man who gov-
erned the king's mistress was king.
Again it was the Duke de Richelieu, First Gentleman of the
Chamber, who broke in upon the elevated pursuits of Cirey, and
called him to lower tasks and less congenial scenes. The royal
children were coming of age. The marriage of the Dauphin to
the Infanta of Spain, long ago agreed upon, was soon to be
celebrated, the prince having passed his sixteenth year; and it
devolved upon the First Gentleman to arrange the marriage fes-
tival. This was no light task; for Louis XIV. had accustomed
France to the most elaborate and magnificent fêtes. Not content
with such splendor as mere wealth can everywhere procure, that
gorgeous monarch loved to enlist all the arts and all the talents;
exhibiting to his guests divertisements written by Molière, per-
formed with original music, and with scenery painted by artists.
Several of his festivals have to this day a certain celebrity in
France, and have left traces still noticeable. There is a public
ground in Paris, opposite the Tuileries, which is called the Place
of the Carousal. It was so named because it was the scene of
one of this King's fêtes, in which five bodies of horsemen -or
quadrilles, as they were called-took part. One of these bodies
were dressed and equipped as Roman knights, and they were
led by the King in person. His brother, the Duke of Orleans,
commanded a body of Persian cavalry; the Prince of Condé, a
splendid band of Turks; the Duke of Guise, a company of Peru-
vian horse; and a son of Condé shone at the head of East-Indian
horsemen in gorgeous array. Imagine these five bodies of horse
galloping and manoeuvring, entering and departing, charging
and retreating, like circus riders in an extremely large and splen-
did tent; and in the midst, on a lofty platform, three queens
in splendid robes,-the mother of Louis, the wife of Louis,
and the widow of Charles I. , who lived and died the guest of
the King of France. There were grand doings at this festival.
There were tournaments, games of skill and daring, stately pro-
cessions, concerts, plays, and buffooneries, with a ball at the
close.
## p. 11130 (#346) ##########################################
11130
JAMES PARTON
That pageant, splendid as it was, was "effaced," as the French
say, by one which the King gave only two years after at Ver-
sailles, probably the most sumptuous thing of the kind ever seen.
On the 5th of May, the most beautiful month of the year in
France, the King rode out to Versailles with all his court, which
then included six hundred persons, each attended by retainers
and servants, the whole numbering more than two thousand
individuals and as many horses. The festival was to last seven
days, and the King defrayed the expenses of every one of his
guests. In the park and gardens of Versailles, miracles had been
wrought. Theatres, amphitheatres, porticoes, pavilions, seemed
to have sprung into being at the waving of an enchanter's wand.
On the first day there was a kind of review, or march-past, of
all who were to take part in the games and tourneys. Under
a triumphal arch the three queens appeared again, resplendent,
each attended by one hundred ladies, who were attired in the
brilliant manner of the period; past these marched heralds,
pages, squires, carrying the devices and shields of the knights, as
well as banners upon which verses were written in letters of gold.
The knights followed in burnished armor and bright plumes; the
King at their head in the character of Roger, a famous knight
of old. All the crown diamonds glittered upon his coat and
the trappings of his horse. Both he and the animal sparkled and
blazed in the May sun; and we can well imagine that a hand-
some young man, riding with perfect grace the most beautiful of
horses, must have been a very pretty spectacle, despite so much
glitter. When this procession of squires and knights had passed
and made their obeisance to the queens, a huge car followed,
eighteen feet high, fifteen wide, and twenty-four long, represent-
ing the Car of the Sun,- an immense vehicle, all gilding and
splendor. Behind this car came groups exhibiting the Four
Ages,- of Gold, of Silver, of Brass, and of Iron; and these were
followed by representations of the celestial signs, the seasons,
and the hours. All this, the spectators inform us, was admirably
performed to the sound of beautiful music; and now and then
persons would step from the procession, and the music would.
cease while they recited poems, written for the occasion, before
the queens. Imagine shepherds, blacksmiths, farmers, harvesters,
vine-dressers, fauns, dryads, Pans, Dianas, Apollos, marching by,
and representing the various scenes of life and industry!
The procession ends at last. Night falls. With wondrous
rapidity four thousand great torches are lighted in an inclosure
## p. 11131 (#347) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11131
fitted up as a banqueting-place.
a banqueting-place. Two hundred of the persons.
who had figured in the procession now bring in various articles.
of food: the seasons, the vine-dressers, the shepherds, the har-
vesters, each bear the food appropriate to them; while Pan and
Diana advance upon a moving mountain, and alight to super-
intend the distribution of the exquisite food which had been
brought in. Behind the tables was an orchestra of musicians, and
when the feast was done the pleasures of the day ended with a
ball. For a whole week the festival continued; the sports varied
every day. There were tourneys, pageants, hunts, shooting at a
mark, and spearing the ring. Four times the King gained the
prize, and offered it to be competed for again. There were a
great number of court fools at this festival, as we still find
clowns at a circus. Indeed, when we attend a liberally appointed
circus, we are looking upon a show resembling in many particu-
lars the grand doings in the park of Versailles when Louis XIV.
entertained his court and figured as chief of the riders.
were
Most of the performances could have been procured by money
lavishly spent; and in order to reproduce them, the Duke de
Richelieu needed little assistance from the arts. But there were
items of the programme which redeemed the character of this
festival, and caused it to be remembered by the susceptible peo-
ple of France with pride. Molière composed for it a kind of
show play, called the 'Princesse d'Elide'; a vehicle for music,
ballet, and costume, with here and there a spice of his comic
talent. A farce of his, the 'Forced Marriage,' was also played;
and the first three acts of his 'Tartuffe - the greatest effort of
French dramatic genius in that age, if not in any age-
performed for the first time. There was only one man in France
who could help a "First Gentleman" to features of the coming
fête at all resembling these; and to him that First Gentleman
applied. Voltaire entered into the scheme with zeal. In April
1744, Cirey all blooming with flowers and verdure, he began to
write his festive divertisement, the Princesse de Navarre,' the
hero of which was a kind of Spanish Duke de Richelieu. "I am
making," he wrote, "a divertisement for a Dauphin and Dau-
phiness whom I shall not divert; but I wish to produce some-
thing pretty, gay, tender, worthy of the Duke de Richelieu,
director of the fête. " It was his chief summer work, and he
labored at it with an assiduity that would have sufficed to pro-
duce three new tragedies. He very happily laid the scene of
―
## p. 11132 (#348) ##########################################
11132
JAMES PARTON
his play in an ancient château close to the borders of the Span-
ish province of Navarre; an expedient which enabled him to
group upon the stage both Frenchmen and Spaniards, with their
effective contrasts of costume, and to present to the Spanish
bride and her court, pleasing traits of their own countrymen.
The poet and the First Gentleman arranged the processions, the
ballets, the tableaux, the fête within a fête; exchanging many
long letters, and pondering many devices. There is good comic
writing in this piece; and there are two characters a rustic
Spanish baron and his extremely simple-minded daughter- that
are worthy of a better kind of play and occasion.
―――――
This was the year in which the King of France first braved the
hardships of the field, accompanied by his mistress, the Duchesse
de Châteauroux, and attended by that surprising retinue of cour-
tiers and comedians often described. I need not pause to relate
how, after being present at warlike operations, he fell dangerously
sick of a fever; how the mistress and the First Gentleman took
possession of the King's quarters, and barred the door against
priests and princes; how, as the King grew worse, the alarmed
mistress tried to come to a compromise with the royal confessor,
the keeper of the King's conscience, saying to him in substance,
"Let me go away without scandal,- that is, without being sent
away, and I will quietly let you into the King's chamber;" how
the cautious Jesuit contrived to get through a long interview
without saying either yes or no to this proposal; how at length,
when the King seemed near his end, she was terrified into yield-
ing, and the King, fearing to lose his absolution and join some of
the bad kings in the other world, sent her a positive command
to depart, as if she had been, what the priest officially styled her,
a concubine; how the King, having recovered, humbly courted
her return, calling upon her in person at her house; and how,
while she affected to hesitate, and dictated terms of direst ven-
geance, even the exile of every priest, courtier, and minister who
had taken the least part in her disgrace, she died of mingled
rage, mortification, and triumph, leaving both the King and the
First Gentleman perfectly consolable.
The impressive fact is, that none of these things impaired
the spell of the King's divinity. During the crisis of his fever
all France seemed panic-stricken; and when he recovered, the
manifestations of joy were such as to astonish the King himself,
inured as he was to every form and degree of adulation from his
-
## p. 11133 (#349) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11133
childhood. "What have I done," cried the poor man, "to be
loved so? " It was at this time that he received his name of
Louis the Well-Beloved, by which it was presumed that he would
go to posterity, along with Louis the Fat and Philip the Long,
-titles so helpful to childish memory. On his return to Paris
in September 1744, "crowned with victory," and recovered from
the borders of the tomb, the fêtes were of such magnitude and
splendor that Madame du Châtelet came to Paris to witness
them, with her poet in her train. He brought his 'Princesse de
Navarre' with him, however, and was soon in daily consultation.
with composer, ministers, First Gentleman, and friends, as to the
resources of an extemporized theatre.
A curious street adventure befell madame and himself on the
night of the grand fireworks, which they rode in from a châ-
teau near the city to witness. They found all the world in the
streets. Voltaire gave an account of their night's exploits to
the President Hénault, whose visit to Cirey they now returned
in an unusual manner:-"There were two thousand backing car-
riages in three files; there were the outcries of two or three hun-
dred thousand men, scattered among those carriages; there were
drunkards, fights with fists, streams of wine and tallow flow-
ing upon the people, a mounted police to augment the embro-
glio; and by way of climax to our delights, his Royal Highness
[Duke de Chartres] was returning peacefully to the Palais-Royal
with his great carriages, his guards, his pages: and all this un-
able to go back or advance until three in the morning. I was with
Madame du Châtelet. Her coachman, who had never before
been in Paris, was about boldly to break her upon the wheel.
Covered as she was with diamonds, she alighted, calling upon
me to follow, got through the crowd without being either plun-
dered or hustled, entered your house [Rue St. Honoré], sent for
some roast chicken at the corner restaurant, and drank your
health very pleasantly in that house to which every one wishes
to see you return. "
It was a busy time with him during the next six months,
arranging the details of the fête, with Rameau the composer,
with scene-painters, with the Duke de Richelieu and the Marquis
d'Argenson. We see him cutting down eight verses to four,
and swelling four verses to eight, to meet the exigencies of the
music. We see him deep in converse with Richelieu upon the
complicated scenes of his play,-suggesting, altering, abandoning,
curtailing numberless devices of the stage manager.
## p. 11134 (#350) ##########################################
11134
JAMES PARTON
On this occasion also, as before going to Prussia, he took care
to secure some compensation in advance. It was not his inten-
tion to play courtier for nothing. He was resolved to improve
this opportunity, and to endeavor so to strengthen himself at
court that henceforth he could sleep in peace at his abode, in
Paris, or in the country, fearless of the Ane of Mirepoix. To
get the dull, shy, sensualized King on his side was a material
point with him. He wrote a poem on the 'Events of the Year'
(1744), in which the exploits of the King upon the tented field,
and his joyful recovery from sickness, were celebrated in the true
laureate style. He also took measures to have this poem shown
to the King by the Cardinal de Tencin, "in a moment of good-
humor. " He made known to two of his friends in the ministry,
M. Orry and the Marquis d'Argenson, precisely what he wanted.
He wanted an office which would protect him against confessors,
bishops, and Desfontaines,-say, for example, gentleman-in-ordi-
nary of the king's chamber; a charge of trifling emolument, less
duty, and great distinction. He would then be a member of the
King's household, not to be molested on slight pretext by a Mire-
poix, nor to be calumniated with impunity by a journalist. But
since such offices were seldom vacant, he asked to be appointed
at once writer of history (historiographe) to the King, at a nomi-
nal salary of four hundred francs a year.
M. Orry thought this very modest and suitable; the Marquis
d'Argenson was of the same opinion: and both engaged to aid in
accomplishing his wishes. If he could add to these posts an
arm-chair in the French Academy, which in good time he also
meant to try for, he thought he might pursue his natural voca-
tion in his native land without serious and constant apprehension.
But first, the fête! That must succeed as a preliminary. In
January 1745 he took up his abode at Versailles to superintend
the rehearsals, conscious of the incongruity of his employment.
"I am here," he wrote to Thierot, "braving Fortune in her own
temple; at Versailles I play a part similar to that of an atheist
in a church. " To Cideville, also:-"Do you not pity a poor
devil who at fifty is a king's buffoon, and who is more embar-
rassed with musicians, decorators, actors, singers, and dancers
than the eight or nine electors will soon be in making a German
Cæsar? I rush from Paris to Versailles; I compose verses in
the postchaise; I have to praise the King highly, Madame the
Dauphiness delicately, the royal family sweetly. I must satisfy
the court, and not displease the city. "
## p. 11135 (#351) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11135
In the very crisis of the long preparation, February 18th,
1745, seven days before the festival, Voltaire's Jansenist of a
brother, the "Abbé Arouet," Receiver-of-Fees to the Chamber of
Accounts, died at Paris, aged two months less than sixty years.
The brothers, as we know, had been long ago estranged, and
had rarely met of late years. The parish register, still accessible,
attests that the funeral was attended, February 19th, by "François-
Marie Arouet de Voltaire, bourgeois of Paris"; not yet gentleman-
in-ordinary. The receiver-of-fees died, as he had lived, in what
was called the odor of sanctity; presenting to the view of young
and old that painful caricature of goodness which has for some
centuries, in more than one country, made virtue more difficult
than it naturally is. From his will, which also exists, we learn
that if he did not disinherit his brother, he came as near it as
a French brother could without doing violence to the sentiment
and custom of his country. After giving legacies to cousins,
friends, and servants, he leaves one half the bulk of his estate
to his nephew and nieces, and the other half to his brother; but
with a difference. Voltaire was to enjoy his half "in usufruct
only," the capital to fall finally "to his nephew and nieces afore-
said. " He took care also to prevent his brother from gaining
anything by the decease of any of the heirs. As the receiver-of-
fees, besides bequeathing his valuable office to a relative, died
worth, as French investigators compute, about two hundred
thousand francs, Voltaire received an increase to his income of
perhaps six thousand francs a year.
From his brother's grave, without waiting to learn these par-
ticulars, he was obliged to go post-haste to Versailles, towards
which all eyes were now directed. The marriage festival, a
tumult of all the splendors, began February 23d, 1745. The
'Princess of Navarre' succeeded to admiration. A vast and
beautiful edifice had risen, at the command of Richelieu, in the
horse-training ground near the palace of Versailles, so con-
structed that it could serve as a theatre on one evening and a
ball-room on the next, both equally magnificent and complete.
The stage was fifty-six feet in depth; and as the boxes were so
arranged as to exhibit the audience to itself in the most effective
and brilliant manner, the words spoken on the stage could not
be always perfectly heard. But this was not so important, since
the play was chiefly designed as a vehicle for music, dancing,
costume, and picture. At six in the evening the King entered
## p. 11136 (#352) ##########################################
11136
JAMES PARTON
and took the seat prepared for him in the middle of the theatre,
followed in due order by his family and court, arrayed in the
gorgeous fashion of the time. These placed themselves around
him, a splendid group, in the midst of a great theatre filled with
the nobility of the kingdom, all sumptuous and glittering. The
author of the play about to be performed was himself thrilled
by the picturesque magnificence of the spectacle which the audi-
ence presented; and he regretted that a greater number of the
people of France could not have been present to behold the
superb array of princes and princesses, noble lords and ladies,
adorned by masterpieces of decorative art, which the beauty of
the ladies "effaced. " He wished that more people could observe
the noble and becoming joy that filled every heart and beamed
in all those lovely eyes.
But since nothing can be perfect, not even in France, this
most superb audience was so much elated with itself that it
could not stop talking. There was a buzz and hum of conver-
sation, reminding the anxious author of a hive of bees humming
and buzzing around the queen. The curtain rose; but still they
talked. The play, however, being a mélange of poetry, song,
music, ballet, and dialogue, everything was enjoyed except the
good verses here and there, which could scarcely be caught by
distant ears. Every talent in such a piece meets its due of
approval except that of the poet, who imagines the whole before
any part of it exists. At half-past nine the curtain fell upon the
closing scene; when the audience, retiring to the grounds with-
out, found the entire façade of the palace and adjacent structures
illuminated. All were enchanted. The King himself, the hardest
man in Europe to amuse, was so well pleased that he ordered
the play to be repeated on another evening of the festival. "The
King is grateful to me," wrote Voltaire to his guardian angel,
D'Argental. "The Mirepoix cannot harm me. What more do I
need ? »
He was exhausted with the long strain upon his nervous sys-
tem. "So tired am I," he wrote to Thierot, "that I have neither
hands, feet, nor head, and write to you by the hand of another. "
But he soon had the consolation of receiving the King's promise
of the next vacancy among the gentlemen-in-ordinary, and his
immediate appointment as writer of history at an annual salary
of two thousand francs. Thus the year consumed in these courtly
toils, he thought, was not without its compensations. Nor did he
## p. 11137 (#353) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11137
relax his vigilance, nor give ministers peace, until these offices
were securely his by letters patent and the King's signature.
When he accepted the office of historiographer, he was far
from anticipating an increase of labor through it. But in truth,
no poet laureate ever won his annual pipe of sack by labors
so arduous as those by which Voltaire earned this salary of
two thousand francs. Several volumes of history attest his dili-
gence. During the first two or three years of his holding the
place he was historiographer, laureate, writer of royal letters and
ministerial dispatches, complimenter of the royal mistress, and
occasionally court dramatist and master of the revels.
The marriage festivities at Versailles drew to a close, and all
that brilliant crowd dispersed. From the splendors of the court
he was suddenly called away to attend the son of Madame du
Châtelet through the small-pox. He assisted to save the future
Duke du Châtelet for the guillotine, applying to his case his own.
experience of the two hundred pints of lemonade. That duty
done and his forty days of quarantine fulfilled, he returned to
court, where the minister for foreign affairs had a piece of work
for his pen. Elizabeth, Empress of Russia, had offered her me-
diation to the King of France, and the task of writing the King's
reply, accepting the offer, was assigned to Voltaire, who per-
formed it in the loftiest style of sentimental politics. If Louis
XV. took the trouble to glance over this composition, he must
have been pleased to find himself saying that "kings can aspire
to no other glory than that of promoting the happiness of their
subjects," and swearing that he "had never taken up arms except
with a view to promote the interests of peace. It was an ami-
able, effusive letter, in the taste of the period,- being written
by the man who made the taste of the period. Later in the sum-
mer he drafted a longer dispatch to the government of Holland,
remonstrating against its purpose of sending aid to the King
of England against the Pretender. It was he also who wrote
the manifesto to be published in Great Britain on the landing
of the French expedition under the Duke de Richelieu, in aid
of the Pretender. Whenever, indeed, during 1745, 1746, and
1747, the ministry had occasion for a skillful pen, Voltaire was
employed. We perceive in this part of his correspondence the
mingled horror and contempt that war excited in his mind.
"Give us peace, monseigneur," is the burden of his cry to the
XIX-697
## p. 11138 (#354) ##########################################
11138
JAMES PARTON
Marquis d'Argenson in confidential notes; and we see him, with
his usual easy assurance, suggesting such marriages for the royal
children as would "render France happy by a beautiful peace,
and your name immortal despite the fools. "
Whatever philosophers may think of war, few citizens can
resist the contagious delirium of victory after national defeat
and humiliation. The King of France again, in 1745, was posed
by his advisers in the part of conqueror. From a hill, he and
the Dauphin looked on while Marshal Saxe won the decisive and
fruitful victory of Fontenoy, over the English Duke of Cumber-
land and the forces of the allies, with a loss of eight thousand
men on each side. Voltaire received the news at Paris, late in
the evening, direct from D'Argenson, who was with the King in
the field. He dashed upon paper a congratulatory note to the
minister: "Ah! the lovely task for your historian! In three hun-
dred years the kings of France have done nothing so glorious. I
am mad with joy! Good-night, monseigneur! "
His poem 'Fontenoy,' of three hundred lines or more, was
scattered over the delirious city damp from the press, and in a
few days was declaimed in every town of the kingdom. Edition.
after edition was sold. "Five editions in ten days! " The author,
as his custom was, added, erased, altered, corrected; offending
some by omitting their names, offending others by inserting
names odious to them; working all one night to make the poem
a less imperfect expression of the national joy; not forgetting to
dedicate it to the King, and to get a copy placed in his hands.
"The King deigns to be content with it," he wrote. Thousands
of copies were sold in the first month, and there were two bur-
lesques of the poem in the second.
In the very ecstasy of the general enthusiasm, he still repeats,
in a private note to D'Argenson, "Peace, monseigneur, peace,
and you are a great man, even among the fools! "
He was
now in high favor, even with the King, who had
said to Marshal Saxe that the Princesse de Navarre' was above
criticism. The marshal himself gave Madame du Châtelet this
agreeable information. "After that," said the author, "I must
regard the King as the greatest connoisseur in his kingdom. "
He renewed his intimacy with his early patron, the Duchesse du
Maine, who still held court at the château of Sceaux near by.
By great good luck, too, as doubtless he regarded it at the time,
he was acquainted with the new mistress, Pompadour, before she
## p. 11139 (#355) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
11139
was Pompadour. He knew her when she was only the most
bewitching young wife in France, cold to her rich and amorous.
young husband, and striving by every art that such women know
to catch the King's eye as he hunted in the royal forest near her
abode. Already, even while the King was sleeping on histrionic
straw on the field near Fontenoy, it was settled that the dream
of her life was to be realized. She was to be Petticoat III.
This summer, during the King's absence at the seat of war,
Voltaire was frequently at her house, and had become established
in her favor. She was a gifted, brilliant, ambitious woman, of
cold temperament, who courted this infamy as men seek honor-
able posts which make them conspicuous, powerful, and envied.
In well-ordered nations, accomplished men win such places by
thirty years' well-directed toil in the public service. She won her
place, and kept it nineteen years, by amusing the least amusable
of men.
She paid a high price. In return, she governed France,
enriched her family, promoted her friends, exiled her enemies,
owned half a dozen châteaux, and left an estate of thirty-six
millions of francs.
With such and so many auxiliaries supporting his new posi-
tion, the historiographer of France, if he had been a younger
man, might have felt safe. But he knew his ground. Under
personal government nations usually have two masters, the king
and the priest, between whom there is an alliance offensive and
defensive. He had gained some favor with the King, the King's
ministers, and the King's mistress. But the priest remained hos-
tile. The King being a coward, a fit of the colic might frighten
him into turning out the mistress and letting in the confessor;
and suppose the colic successful, instantly a pious and bigoted
Dauphin became king, with a Mirepoix as chief priest! Moreover,
to depend upon the favor of either king or mistress is worse than
basing the prosperity of an industrial community upon a change-
able fraction in a tariff bill.
Revolving such thoughts in an anxious mind, Voltaire con-
ceived a notable scheme for going behind the Mirepoix, and
silencing him forever by capturing the favor of the Pope. Bene-
dict XIV. was a scholar, a gentleman of excellent temper, and
no bigot. He owed his election to his agreeable qualities. When
the cardinals were exhausted by days and nights of fruitless
balloting, he said, with his usual gayety and good-humor, "Why
waste so much time in vain debates and researches ?
Do you
## p. 11140 (#356) ##########################################
11140
JAMES PARTON
want a saint? elect Gotti. A politician? Aldovrandi. A good
fellow? take me. " And they took him.
It was soon after the close of the fête at Versailles that
Voltaire consulted the Marquis d'Argenson, minister for foreign
affairs, upon his project of getting, as he expressed it, "some
mark of papal benevolence that could do him honor both in this.
- world and the next. " The minister shook his head. He said
it was scarcely possible to mingle in that way things celestial
and political. Like a true courtier of the period, the poet betook
himself to a lady, Mademoiselle du Thil, a connection of Madame
du Châtelet, and extremely well disposed toward himself. She
had a friend in the Pope's household, the Abbé de Tolignan
whom she easily engaged in the cause. D'Argenson also bore
the scheme in mind when he wrote to the French envoy at
Rome. Voltaire meanwhile read the works of his Holiness, of
which there are still accessible fifteen volumes, and in various
ways "coquetted" with him, causing him to know that the cele-
brated Voltaire was one of his readers. The good-natured Pope
was prompt to respond. The Abbé de Tolignan having asked for
some mark of papal favor for Voltaire, the Pope gave two of his
large medals to be forwarded to the French poet, the medals
bearing the Pope's own portrait. His Holiness also caused a
polite letter to be written to him by his secretary, asking his
acceptance of the medals. Then the French envoy, ignorant of
these proceedings, also applied to the Pope on behalf of Voltaire,
requesting for him one of his large medals. The Pope, ignorant
of the envoy's ignorance, replied, "To St. Peter's itself I should
not give any larger ones! " The envoy was mystified, and Vol-
taire, on receiving a report of the affair, begged the minister for
foreign affairs to write to the envoy in explanation.
The two large medals reached the poet in due time. He
thought Benedict XIV. the most plump-cheeked holy father the
church had enjoyed for a long time, and one who "had the air
of knowing very well what all that was worth. " He wrote two
Latin verses as a legend for the Pope's portrait, to the effect
that Lambertinus, officially styled Benedict XIV. , was the orna-
ment of Rome and the father of the world, who by his works
instructed the earth, and adorned it by his virtues. Emboldened
by success, he ventured upon an audacity still more exquisite,
and one which would not be concealed in the archives of the
foreign office. All Europe should know the favor in which this
## p. 11141 (#357) ##########################################
JAMES PARTON
II 141
son of the Church was held at the papal court. He resolved to
dedicate to the Pope that tragedy of "Mahomet" which the late
Cardinal de Fleury had admired and suppressed.
The coming of Marmontel to Paris added one more to the
ever increasing number of young writers whom Voltaire had
assisted to form. The new men of talent were his own, and
they were preparing to aid him in future contests with hostile
powers. The Marquis de Vauvenargues, the young soldier who
was compelled by ill health to abandon the career of arms, in
which he was already distinguished, and now aspired to serve his
country in the intellectual life, had been for some time one of
Voltaire's most beloved friends. His first, his only work, 'Intro-
duction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind,' was just appear-
ing from the press, heralded by Voltaire's zealous commendation.
"My dear Master," the young disciple loved to begin his letters;
and Voltaire, in writing to him, used all those endearing expres-
sions which often make a French letter one long and fond
caress. He sank into the grave in 1747, but his name and his
work survive. It is evident from his correspondence that he was
of a lofty and generous nature, capable of the true public spirit,
the religion of the new period.
Marmontel reached Paris in time to witness a day of triumph
for Voltaire, which had been long deferred. There was a va-
cancy at the French Academy early in 1746. Mirepoix's voice was
not heard on this occasion; and Voltaire, without serious trouble,
succeeded in obtaining a unanimous election to the chair. This
event could not have been at that time any increase of honor
to an author of his rank. He valued an academic chair for him-
self and for his colleagues, such as Marmontel, D'Alembert, and
others, as an additional protection against the Mirepoix. Mem-
bers of the Academy had certain privileges in common with the
officers of the king's household. They could not be compelled
to defend a suit out of Paris; they were accountable to the king
directly, and could not be molested except by the king's com-
mand. Above all, they stood in the sunshine of the king's efful-
gent majesty; they shared in the mystic spell of rank, which no
American citizen can ever quite understand, and of which even
Europeans of to-day begin to lose the sense. He was a little
safer now against all the abuses of the royal power, usually
covered by lettres de cachet.
## p. 11142 (#358) ##########################################
11142
JAMES PARTON
May 9th, 1746, was the day of his public reception at the
Academy, when, according to usage, it devolved upon him to
deliver a set eulogium upon his departed predecessor. The new
member signalized the occasion by making his address much more.
than that. His eulogy was brief, but sufficient; and when he had
performed that pious duty, he struck into an agreeable and very
ingenious discourse upon the charms, the limits, the defects, and
the wide-spread triumphs of the French language. With that
matchless art of his, he contrived in kingly style to compliment
all his "great friends and allies," while adhering to his subject
with perfect fidelity. Was it not one of the glories of the French
language that a Frederic should adopt it as the language of his
court and of his friendships, and that Italian cardinals and pon-
tiffs should speak it like natives? His dear Princess Ulrique,
too, then Queen of Sweden, was not French her native tongue?
There were some wise remarks in this address; as, for example,
where he says that eminent talents become of necessity rarer as
the whole nation advances: "In a well-grown forest, no single
tree lifts its head very high above the rest. " He concluded with
the "necessary burst of eloquence" respecting the late warlike
exploits of the king; in which, however, he gave such promi-
nence to the services in the field of the Duke of Richelieu, a
member of the Academy, that the First Gentleman almost eclipsed
the monarch.
He was now at the highest point of his court favor. An epi-
gram of his, written at this period, conveys to us his sense of
the situation, and renders other comment superfluous:-
"Mon Henri Quatre' et ma 'Zaïre,'
Et mon Americaine 'Alzire,'
Ne m'ont valu jamais un seul regard du roi;
J'eus beaucoup d'ennemis avec très-peu de gloire
Les honneurs et les biens pleuvent enfin sur moi
Pour une farce de la foire. "
(My Henry Fourth' and my 'Zaïre,'
With my American ‘Alzire,’
No smile have ever won me from the king;
Too many foes were mine, too little fame:
Now all men gifts and honors on me fling,
Since with a farce I to the market came. )
## p. 11142 (#359) ##########################################
## p. 11142 (#360) ##########################################
BLAISE PASCAL.
## p. 11142 (#361) ##########################################
B. 2.
## p. 11142 (#362) ##########################################
BLAISE PASCAL.
## p. 11143 (#363) ##########################################
11143
PASCAL
(1623-1662)
BY ARTHUR G. CANFIELD
B
LAISE PASCAL was born at Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France,
June 19th, 1623. His father, Étienne Pascal, was a man of
wealth, education, and high judicial position, who, when
Blaise was eight years old, removed to Paris especially to care for
his education. Blaise showed a very precocious talent, especially for
mathematics. At the age of sixteen he wrote a remarkable treatise
on conic sections; at nineteen he invented a calculating machine. By
this time his health, never robust, was undermined by his study, and
thereafter he had to contend with disease. But in spite of it he went
on with his researches in mathematics and physics. He developed
the calculus of probabilities, and solved the problem of the cycloid.
In 1648 he made the series of experiments which confirmed the con-
clusions of Torricelli, and established our knowledge of the weight
of the atmosphere. Then for some years he gave himself to social
pleasures and dissipations; but after his sister Jacqueline's entrance.
into a convent, and a startling accident through which he nearly lost
his life, he renounced the world and entered the community of Port-
Royal in 1654. In its defense he wrote, under the name of Louis de
Montalte, the famous 'Lettres Provinciales,' in 1656. The even more
famous 'Pensées' are the fruit of the profound and poignant medita-
tion that, with increasing bodily pains, filled out the few years until
his death, August 19th, 1662.
But this little outline gives no adequate suggestion of the power
and versatility of his mind:
"There was a man who at the age of twelve, with straight lines and cir-
cles, had created mathematics; who at sixteen had composed the most learned
treatise on conic sections produced since ancient times; who at nineteen re-
duced to machinery the processes of a science that resides wholly in the mind;
who at twenty-three demonstrated the weight of the atmosphere and destroyed
one of the greatest errors of the older physics; who at an age when other
men are just beginning to awake to life, having traversed the whole round of
human knowledge, perceived its emptiness, and turned all his thoughts toward
religion; who from that moment till his death at the age of thirty-eight,
constantly beset by infirmity and disease, fixed the tongue that Bossuet and
## p. 11144 (#364) ##########################################
II 144
PASCAL
Racine spoke, gave the model at once of the most perfect pleasantry and of
the closest logic, and finally, in the short respite that his bodily pains allowed
him, solved unaided one of the deepest problems of geometry, and set down
in random order thoughts that seem as much divine as human. »
In such words does Châteaubriand sum up Pascal's career, and
they hardly overstate his qualities and achievements. His contribu-
tions to the progress of mathematics and physics would be enough of
themselves to make his name remembered; but they are wholly over-
shadowed by the fame of his two great contributions to literature,—
the 'Provincial Letters' and the Thoughts. ' Both these works have
a very direct relation to his life and experience. The 'Provincial
Letters' bear witness both to his sincere devotion to Port-Royal,
and to his familiarity with the mind and spirit of worldly society.
Before becoming a member of that famous little band of scholars
and teachers, he had been an accomplished man of the world. He
had early been attracted by the logic of the doctrines of Jansenius,
and had become a zealous champion of Jansenism. But he did not
therefore renounce the gay companions and pleasures of his hours
of recreation. It was only as his ideas developed, and he advanced
from the curious pursuit of knowledge to the imperious need of cer-
tainty, that he was driven from reason, self-convicted of insufficiency,
to revelation, and the complete surrender of himself to God and to
the austere religious life of Port-Royal. The influence of his sister
Jacqueline's example, and the impression made upon him by his
almost miraculous escape from death, are only incidents of his ap-
proach to the experience of the night of the twenty-third of Novem-
ber, 1654; when, in an ecstasy of religious feeling, he felt himself
possessed by Divine grace. So he brought to Port-Royal a wholly
lay mind, capable of appreciating from the simple human standpoint
of the common man the theological controversy over grace and free-
will in which it was soon involved. He was therefore equipped as
no other for bringing this quarrel before the bar of public opinion.
So the Provincial Letters' are not merely, nor mainly, a skillful
argument on the theological doctrines in contest. They are that at
first; but from the fifth letter their field broadens, and they become
a vehement and indignant impeachment of the moral teachings and
practices of the Jesuits, who were the head and front of the attack
against Port-Royal. In them Pascal makes an appeal to the common
reason and conscience, with such an accent of intense sincerity and
conviction, with such resources of irony, ridicule, illustration, and elo-
quent indignation, and with such command of clear, nimble, and
strong speech, that the letters have long outlived the interest of the
quarrel that was the occasion of them, and have become its imperish-
able monument.
## p. 11145 (#365) ##########################################
PASCAL
11145
The Thoughts' are especially the expression of the life of reli-
gious devotion and meditation to which he gave himself at Port-
Royal. Having given himself unreservedly to it, he could not do
and suffer enough. He welcomed the pains that his feeble health
imposed upon him, and doubled them by self-inflicted rigors. All
the strength his infirmities left him was given to an 'Apology for
the Christian Religion,' but he was not permitted to finish it.
The Thoughts' are the fragments of this work. In them he
unites the eager intellectual curiosity of the man of science with the
fervent devotion of the religious ascetic and the imagination of the
poet. He is possessed, almost tormented, by the imperious need of
knowing, of satisfying his reason. But his reason halts appalled be-
fore the infinitely little and the infinitely great, and declares itself
powerless to get beyond the partial and relative knowledge of the
world and to attain absolute truth. The source of absolute certainty
must then be above reason, and reason herself is summoned to testify
to the superior authority of revelation and Christian faith. In the
very opposition of revelation and reason he makes reason find a seal
of the Divine source of revelation. But the Thoughts,' left incom-
plete and in disorder, do not persuade us, as Pascal intended, by close
and consecutive argument and logical unity, so much as profoundly
impress us by his wealth of powerful and illuminating ideas, the
depth of his searching of the human heart, and the intense and pas-
sionate eloquence of his style. Few if any have given such poignant
expression to the sense of disproportion between human powers and
human aspirations, and of the combined grandeur and pettiness of
human destiny. From all other such collections of Thoughts,' Pas-
cal's stand pre-eminent for the intensity of the human emotion that
vibrates through them.
Arthur 9 Canfield.
FROM THE THOUGHTS'
HE whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the
THE
ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may
swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring
forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is
an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circum-
ference nowhere. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of
the almighty power of God; in that thought let imagination lose
itself.
## p. 11146 (#366) ##########################################
II146
PASCAL
Then, returning to himself, let man consider his own being
compared with all that is; let him regard himself as wandering
in this remote province of nature; and from the little dungeon
in which he finds himself lodged — I mean the universe let him
learn to set a true value on the earth, on its kingdoms, its cities,
and on himself.
-
-
What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another
prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate
things he knows. Let him take a mite, which in its minute body
presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with
their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humors in
the blood, drops in the humors, vapors in the drops; let him,
again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the
last point at which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he
will perhaps think that here is the extremest diminutive in nature.
Then I will open before him therein a new abyss.
I will paint
for him not only the visible universe, but all that he can con-
ccive of nature's immensity in the inclosure of this diminished
atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes, of which each
has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as
in the visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the
mites, in which he will come upon all that was in the first, and
still find in these others the same without end and without ces-
sation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in their
minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not be
amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible
in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole,
is now a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness
to which we cannot attain.
Whoso takes this survey of himself will be terrified at the
thought that he is upheld in the material being given him by
nature, between these two abysses of the infinite and nothing,-
he will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that
as his curiosity changes into wonder, he will be more disposed to
contemplate them in silence than to search into them with pre-
sumption.
For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing in regard to
the infinite, a whole in regard to nothing, a mean between noth-
ing and the whole; infinitely removed from understanding either
extreme. The end of things and their beginnings are invincibly
hidden from him in impenetrable secrecy; he is equally incapable
## p. 11147 (#367) ##########################################
PASCAL
11147
of seeing the nothing whence he was taken, and the infinite in
which he is engulfed.
What shall he do then, but discern somewhat of the middle
of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either their beginning
or their end? All things arise from nothing, and tend towards
the infinite. Who can follow their marvelous course? The author
of these wonders can understand them, and none but he.
WE THINK We are playing on ordinary organs when we play
upon man.
