effroyable, et le chapeau du roi était percé: on envoya le porte-manteau en chercher un autre. Le porte-manteau donna le chapeau au Duc de Nismes, qui sert pour le D. d'Aumont, qui est en années. Le Duc de Nismes le présenta au roi; mais Mons. de la Rochefoucauld prétendit que c'était à lui de le donner, et que le D. de Nismes empiétait sur ses fonctions. Ceci a fait une assez grande affaire entre eux, quoiqu'ils fussent bons amis."

On one of his days of business, Louis XIV. (says Mme. de Maintenon's memoirs)" remained with this lady but a short time before the minister came in, and a still shorter time after he had gone out. His majesty went to the 'chaise percée,' returned to the bed of Mme. de Maintenon, where he stood for a few minutes, and then, wishing her good night, sat down to table."

The enumeration of facts like these is so far important:-when you see what the court was that governed the country, you may come pretty accurately to the conclusion that the country was very ill governed.

But for thinking of the country at all, as you read some hundreds of volumes, you are entirely indebted to a patriotic imagination. After the great fire which destroyed Rennes,

there were discovered among the ruins different coagulated masses, of various colours, out of which a vast number of pretty ornaments were made;—and it was from these useless trinkets on some ladies' dress, that the greater part of France became informed that the capital of a province had been destroyedSo, during the whole period I am speaking of, it is to some trumpery toy, to some paltry passion, to some miserable closet-wise intrigue, to some crafty confession of a still more crafty mistress, that we are to look, as the signs and tokens of a great people's destiny.

But if the memorialist was necessarily narrow in his range, he at all events contrived to give you some idea of the region he described. Not so the historian. While the one, impressed with the greatness of his subject, prosaically repeated the chit-chat of the royal nursery,pompously perorated upon the 'chaise percée' of a king—the other, passing in contemptuous silence over the character, the customs, the arts of the people he described, expended the fire of his genius in a tremendous outpouring of battles, sieges, victories, defeats, murders, and invasions. Quick over your mind rushed a deluge of dates and deaths; and the people who could count the greatest number of obscure

names upon their fingers, and cite an insignificant fact with the nicest accuracy, were deemed, by all reputed judges, the most accomplished possessors of historical lore.

Voltaire rescued history from Daniel and Griffet. The "Essai sur les Mœurs," in its marvellous combination of wit, research, and philosophy, is, perhaps, one of the most astonishing evidences on record of the power of the human mind; but, wonderful as a testimony of intelligence, it is more than imperfect as a history. It wants the power without which all history is lifeless-it wants the power which transports you to distant regions and to distant times, and which brings the dim face of weird antiquity plain and palpably before you; it wants the power which makes you look upon the things and mingle with the men that are described. What you see in Voltaire's history isVoltaire. His cynical, intelligent, and thoughtful face comes back to you from every page, as so many refractions of the same image from a broken mirror. You never get beyond the philosopher's study. Like Don Quixotein the Duke's castle, you pass through every atmosphere without stirring from the same place. It is the shrewd old gentleman of the eighteenth century talking to you most sagaciously about a number of

things which he has got carefully under lock and key, and will never let you get a glimpse of.

I forget who it is who says, that what is most visible in the history of every time, is the time of the historian writing. This, which is true of all the historians of the Voltairian school, is especially true of Voltaire. He looks at everything, and argues upon everything, with the eyes and with the feelings, not merely of his own age, but of his own country and his own clique.

We know that Herodotus relates of the Babylonian ladies, that they were all obliged, once at least in their lives, to prostitute themselves to strangers in the Temple of Milita or Venus. "Can any one," cries Voltaire, "believe in such a story? Is it likely, is it possible, that such a custom should exist among a people in any state of refinement? What is not natural is never true.""Now," says

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Grimm, it would be very difficult to say what is natural and if we were to strike out from history everything that seemed unnatural to us, there would only remain the chronicle of our own times." Did Grimm say the truth? Certainly, human sacrifices in any state of society are not very natural. Suicide, which was a fashion among one of the

most sensible nations in the world, was one of the most unnatural fashions that can well be imagined. It is not very long ago that it was the fashion in England for all young ladies to wear pads in order to make them appear with child; which, among a people who set the highest value on female chastity, was also very unnatural, surely. The law of Babylon was at least as natural as the vow of celibacy; nor are we to suppose that, if the Babylonian ladies were refined, their notions of refinement must necessarily have resembled those of the Parisians. But the best part of the story is, that, not above half a century after Voltaire. wrote, a person appeared in France, actually in France, who preached nearly the same doctrines in the Chaussée d'Antin that, Herodotus says, were followed in Babylon.* Nay, there was even a moment of doubt as to whether the father of this creed was not a true prophetmany have even still a faith in his success-so that, after all, what the Babylonian ladies practised as a solemn ceremony, the French ladies are not induced to shudder at from social usage. A man who says, 'what is not natural cannot be true,' and who looks at nature through the prism of his own epoch, cannot be a good historian; and Voltaire, with the in* Enfantin.