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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-Euvres de Condorcet complétées sur les MSS. originaux enrichies d'un grand nombre de Lettres inédites de Voltaire, de Turgot, &c.: précédées de l'Eloge de Condorcet, par M. F. Arago: publiées par A. Condorcet O'Connor, Lieutenant-Général, et M. F. Arago, Secrétaire perpétuel de l'Académie des Sciences. 12 tomes 8vo. Paris, 1847-1849.

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F these twelve volumes the slenderest has 600 pages-the most corpulent reaches to 823. Of that first and monster tome 180 pages are given to a biographical preface by Arago; 65 pages to letters between Condorcet and Voltaire; 170 to correspondence with Turgot and others: the rest to academical discourses and other minor pieces considered as illustrating important steps in Condorcet's personal career. The second and third volumes consist of his Eloges on Academicians. There succeed three of Mélanges de Littérature et de Philosophie;' one of them wholly occupied with the Life of Voltaire and Notes on his works-another with the historical Essays composed after Condorcet's proscription. The remaining six volumes are Economie-Politique et Politique.' The arrangement and editorship are, we presume, wholly M. Arago's. Condorcet's daughter and her husband, the well-known General Arthur O'Connor, have supplied the inedited materials of the collection, and it is no doubt published at their expense.

Bulky as it is more bulky in fact than the one of 1804, in twenty-one ordinary volumes-we miss here again several tracts which made noise enough in their day, and of which we possess the original editions with the author's name to them. Several others which M. Arago labels as now for the first time printed are also on our shelves as yellow tea-paper pamphlets of the revolutionary period-and it is probable that their text, as given from Condorcet's MS., may be distinguished only by wanting his final correction-but that is a point which we lack zeal to investigate, What is certainly new comprises almost all Condorcet's letters to Voltaire-perhaps half of Voltaire's to him—and the far greater part of the correspondence with Turgot. The prefatory narrative was printed a few years ago in the Journal des Savans

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-but those quartos have, we suppose, very little circulation beyond the learned brotherhood; and M. Arago has now added an entertaining Epilogue, of which more anon. On the whole it seems very improbable that the cost of these huge octavos will ever be repaid; but the really novel and popular materials entombed in the ponderous cenotaph will soon be reproduced in a couple of handy duodecimos-at Brussels, if Paris be not on the alert. At all events there can be no doubt as to what concerns Voltaire.

For M. de Condorcet we cannot affect the enthusiasm which M. Arago proclaims. He seems to have been amiable-for his time and country exemplary-in his domestic relations; he was a man of vigorous talents and very extensive accomplishments; but why M. Arago should speak of the nom glorieux de Condorcet we are at a loss to comprehend. He was in no walk truly original-not in any sense of the word a genius-nor, as to mere acquisition, had he studied any one subject or science so profoundly as to merit a place among its first-rate masters. He was (to parody Johnson's phrase) a man of letters among the savants, a savant among the men of letters-the best possible Secretary and Eloge-maker for the Academy-vix amplius. The cleverest of the lighter pieces, viz., the Lettres d'un Théologien,' are such close copies of Voltaire's controversial tracts-of his peculiar style of sarcasm and insolence-that, to the Patriarch's annoyance, they passed at the moment for his own. Condorcet's Political Economy is, first and last, an elaborate expansion of Turgot-of his political writings prior to 1788 we may say the same thing. His conduct from the commencement of the revolution to the fall of the Girondists seems to us very unworthy of Arago's lofty eulogies. The history of his closing months brings out some striking features of resolution and self-command; but on the whole his public career was that of an uninteresting variety of the mischief-maker, —a sort of frigid fanatic who calmly inculcated on the multitude lessons that they were sure to carry out into atrocity, and who, though he might not have foreseen the extreme application of his own doctrines, was at least ready enough to exert all the resources of his literary skill in apologising for the practical results. When an Arago could extol such a man in the face of the Academicians of 1845 as a model of philosophic and patriotic virtue, the Guizots who listened to him might have suspected that they were yet to witness more fruits of the science of 1789.

Though M. Arago spends several pages in explaining why he gives not an Eloge but a Biographie, his bookseller's titlepage speaks the truth, and his preliminary essay is in fact much more of a Panegyric than a Life. He has in truth very little

feeling

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