bustion, he never dreamt of Paris-he had agents enough in other quarters, and the anonymous or pseudonymous mischief was printed at London, Amsterdam, or Hamburgh, from a fifth or sixth copy in the handwriting of some Dutch or English clerk thence by cautious steps smuggled into France-and then disavowed and denounced by himself, and for him by his numberless agents, with an intrepid assurance which down to the last confounded and baffled all official inquisitors, until, in each separate case, the scent had got cold. Therefore he sympathized not at all with any of these his subalterns when they, in their own proper matters, allowed themselves a less guarded style of movement. On one occasion Condorcet's imprudence extorts a whole series of really passionate remonstrances to him and his probable confidants-but the burden is always the same-Tolerate the whispers of age! How often shall I have to tell you all that no one but a fool will publish such things unless he has 200,000 bayonets at his back?' Each Encyclopedist was apt to forget that, though he corresponded familiarly with Frederick, he was not a king of Prussia; and by and bye not one of them more frequently exemplified this mistake than Condorcet-for that gentleman's saint-like tranquillity of demeanour, though it might indicate a naturally languid pulse, covered copious elements of vital passion. The slow wheel could not resist the long attrition of controversy, and when it once blazed the flame was all the fiercer for its unseen nursing. You mistake Condorcet,' said D'Alembert to one of the philosophical dames; he is a volcano covered with snow.'

Among the inedited essays is one on the constitution of scientific bodies which our secretary (still a young man) was good enough to compose for the enlightenment and direction of the Spanish government of that day. Chiefly noticeable in our eyes as a specimen of French presumption, M. Arago lauds it for profound wisdom and dexterous logic, especially in arguing against any inquiry about the religious tenets of members. Here the biographer finds nothing but cause for admiration in his hero's brave contempt for the whole system of opinion as well as law beyond the Pyrenees. He condescends, on the other hand, to allege consideration for the rooted prejudices of Spain as a sufficient excuse for Condorcet in advocating the admission into the proposed new Academy of a class of noble amateurs. would have been merely absurd,' he says, 'to plan a Spanish institution from which Dukes of Osuna and Medina-Celi were to be hopelessly excluded.' M. Arago, while on this topic, reports a saying of Louis XIV., which we are tempted to repeat:- Do you know why Racine and M. de Cavoye, whom you see down there,

.

'It

like so well to be together? Racine, with Cavoye, fancies himself a gentleman; Cavoye, with Racine, fancies himself a genius.'

Our readers would not much thank us for entering into other points of Condorcet's programme, on which Arago enlarges with a zest and sometimes with a bitterness that must have been prompted by feuds less remote than those of D'Alembert and Buffon. The pure mathematicians were in those days little disposed to acquiesce in the high pretensions of zoologists, geologists, or any of the kindred classes now so esteemed and the Patriarch of Ferney countenanced them. A grand reputation,' he says in one of these letters to Condorcet,' is not to be acquired more easily than by demonstrating how the globe was constructed, or describing a new species of bug.'

We understand better the importance which Voltaire's immediate disciples attached to their Academies than the revelation of the same sort of feeling in Condorcet's new biographer. In those days the philosophers had a serious battle to fight, and it was of vast consequence that the troops should know each other, have confidence in their officers, and omit no art to inveigle follies or neutralize influences. At present, as against the great original objects of hostility, the battle has been fought out and won-or if anything in the nature of a prejudice ecclesiastical, aristocratical, or monarchical, still shows a sign of life, there are facilities enough for assailing such obstinate remnants elsewhere than in assemblies professedly devoted to the advancement of scientific researches. At all events it was sufficiently so in France when M. Arago wrote this Life. Here no motives of the class now alluded to have ever been even suspected;_nor, until rather recently, were any of the educated classes of Englishmen apparently much given to those appetites for garrulous congregation and pompous exhibition that have from Julius Cæsar's time to President Buonaparte's distinguished the theatrical nation so near to us in locality and in everything but thought, sentiment, taste, and manners. We are at a loss to account for the change so visible, and not doubting that there is a mixture of good in almost every novelty, we own we on the whole continue to regret this one. You hear and read eternal vituperation of the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square; but, whatever may be the defects in its construction, we could wish to see certain great features of its practical system imitated by bodies which assume to be of statelier importance, and, unlike it, reserve their chairs for Cavoyes. The R.A.s work each at home in his own studio; once a-year they allow each other and all the world to see what they have been doing, and the Exhibition is opened with a dinner, to which they invite such grandees as have acquired a reputation for

what

what our antique friend Sir Thomas Urquhart calls 'an emacity' in the department of modern master-pieces, or for being likely, in case of any parliamentary cavilling, to indicate a just recollection of the turtle and the fraternal hour. These seem sensible arrangements. What good could come of meeting one night every week in the season to parade sketches and models? Does anybody suppose that a really fine statue or picture would gain by such a process? Does anybody doubt that at the end of the year there would be a fierce and degrading clamour about stolen hints? The system of hebdomadal manifestations and speechifications, with the autumnal interludes of provincial starring and mountebanking before women and weavers, will never, we hope, be emulated by our Michael Angelos, Bramantes, and Raphaels. The inevitable waste of time, worry of temper, lowering of tone, craving for excitement, exacerbation of shabby grudges and coddling of childish vanity, would not be atoned for by an endless chorus of newspaper applause, nor even by a profuser participation in the scientific honours of knighthood.

The camaraderie of the learned bodies was, as we have said, a matter of serious business in the earlier period of Condorcet; and the female society in which he and his friends mingled, was animated by the same spirit and conducive to the same ends. From the more bustling whirl of fashionable life he soon withdrew utterly. I had no relish,' he neatly says, 'for dissipation without pleasure, vanity without motive, idleness without repose.'

Another philosopher who had as little turn for the tumult and glitter of the beau monde was by twenty years his senior, but among the most intimate and, ere long, the most influential of his friends, M. Turgot. He was of a far more important family than Condorcet, but, being a third brother, hardly better off at the outset in point of fortune. Turgot was brought up at the Sorbonne, and inspired all his teachers there with the confidence that he would be one of the most distinguished lights of the Gallican church. The first performance that attracted notice beyond the walls was a Discourse on the Evidences of Christianity; it was extravagantly lauded by the clerical party, and moved in a corresponding proportion the bile of the wise men. But, whereas Dr. Chalmers appears, after being for several years a parish minister, to have first imbibed a real belief in revealed religion while preparing an article on the evidences for Sir D. Brewster's Encyclopædia, there seems reason to infer that a similar course of study had ended in a very different manner with Turgot. Shortly afterwards, to the confusion of his professors and heavy disappointment of his relations, he announced that he had changed his mind, and would not enter

into holy orders. He alleged to them modest distrust of his own qualifications, but to intimates said candidly-I cannot walk through all the days of my life with a mask on my face.' turned to the law-in due time obtained promotion-and for a course of years acted vigorously with the government minority in the parliament of Paris, and in opposition to the refractory majority which was headed by one of his own elder brothers, the President Turgot. This conduct led to the Intendancy of the Limousin, in which office he soon made himself remarkable by some excellent administrative reforms, but in the sequel still more so by the audacity of his proposals and plans for sweeping changes in the whole department of taxation and internal economy. He was among the first that adopted in France the new science of political economy, and he pushed its doctrines to extremes that never found favour with Adam Smith himself. Among the rest he was a strenuous church reformer-indicating more and more distinctly his opinion not only that all church property should be fairly taxed for state purposes, but that the property itself ought to be redistributed, small sees united, the emoluments of great ones cut down, monastic establishments of all sorts got rid of, and decent provision being made for existing lives-the general surplus considered and dealt with as at the command of the financial minister of the crown. These suggestions were in the beginning accompanied by constant professions of Turgot's sincere respect for religion and the church, whose real interests were, he continually reiterated, nearer to no man's heart than to his own. The true sentiments of the reformer, however, could hardly escape detection -provincial eyes are close watchers, and of all men Turgot was the most awkward in every thing but the use of his pen. None had less command over his countenance-none could less bear the trouble of affectation in small habits and daily things. The clergy about him soon understood the man, and they, as rural churchmen usually are, were too much in earnest to control their indignation. People at a distance, even the shrewdest of the Anti-clericals, seem to have been taken in at first. When the Intendant was about to visit Switzerland, D'Alembert gave him an introduction to Voltaire, in which he takes pains to assure the Patriarch that he might receive him with confidence- You will find him an excellent Cacouac, though he has reasons for not avowing it-la Cacouaquerie ne mène pas à la fortune. To which Voltaire replies by and bye- I have been charmed with Turgot -if you have three or four sages like this among you, I tremble for l'infâme. After having performed his kotow at Ferney, he redoubled his zeal in the ecclesiastical direction, but still observed as to his cacouaquerie a prudent reticence, which Voltaire now

appreciated

appreciated and often recommended to the Parisian conclave as exemplary. Your friend Turgot is admirable,' says he to Condorcet no man understands better how to shoot the arrow without showing the hand.'

We may pause for a moment to say that in general Condorcet's letters to Voltaire, like all the rest of the sect, are characterized by a humility of submission, an extravagance of adulation, worthy of the Cadis and Muftis of a Commander of the Faithful. But behind his back, in their epistles to each other, it is somewhat different. All alike—the grave D'Alembert, the austere Turgot, and the snowy Condorcet-are in raptures when Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse communicates to them, and insists on their handing over to their prime patroness, whom Arago styles 'la respectable Duchesse d'Enville,' the intelligence she, Mademoiselle, had just received from Geneva of a visit paid to Ferney by a Messaline de cette ville,' with some alarming consequences. It is like the merriment of a set of young monks on discovering a lapse of father Abbot. Again, Condorcet, when on a tour, writes to Turgot that he had been gratified in a country-house with the perusal of a Commentary on the Bible by Emilie (Mad. du Chatelet- Venus-Newton') in ten volumes; and adds that he thought he could detect here and there the assistance both of the 'Vieux de la Montagne' and 'son jeune amant'-i. e. St. Lambert. To which Turgot answers that he had himself many years ago seen 'Emilie's Bible,' but that it was then in four volumes, However,' adds he, there is no doubt that between le Vieux and son jeune amant Emilie was likely enough to expand her dimensions.' A cruel enough joke, when we recall the circumstances of her death in childbed, on which occasion her disconsolate husband, whom Lord Brougham calls a respectable man' (they are all honourable men), finding Voltaire and St. Lambert in tears together, said, 'Gentlemen, you best know which has the most reason to weep-I have at least this consolation, that I had no hand in the misfortune.'-Such were the morals and such the taste of this philosophical school!

6

We need not go deep into Turgot's history after 1774. Amidst the financial perplexities that surrounded the monarchy at the accession of Louis XVI., Maurepas, though personally distrustful of his views and intentions, was induced to invite him into the administration-it was judged necessary to conciliate the rising sect, and Turgot's birth and connexions were considered as pledges against his going into an actual revolution. The Biographie Universelle, in mentioning that and some similar appointments, says, 'this epoch marks the commencement of our hommes d'état écrivassiers ;' and it was truly the commencement de la