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Jesuitic connections, tenets, and zeal. The lady, not being interfered with at first, devoted her son by some formal act to the special service of the Virgin, and, the better to guard his consecrated infancy, had him clothed like a girl. Till his twelfth year he was constantly disguised in a white frock and petticoat, and had little misses for his only playmates-a probation sufficient, in M. Arago's opinion, to account for some peculiarities both in the physique and the morale of his manhood. The abstinence from all rude, boyish sports, we are told, checked the proper muscular development of his limbs; the head and trunk were on a large scale, but the legs were so meagre that they seemed unfit to carry what was above them, and in fact he never could partake in any strong exercises, or undergo the bodily fatigues to which healthy men willingly expose themselves. On the other hand, he had imbibed the tender-heartedness of a delicate damselretaining to the last, for example, a deep horror for inflicting pain on the inferior animals. M. Arago quotes more than one letter in which he signifies that tyrannical man makes free with the life of sheep and bullocks merely in consequence of the want of foresight on the part of those victims;-the inference would be that he never ate beef or mutton-but of such practice the history affords no trace. As to insects, says M. Arago, "he never would kill them, unless, indeed, they occasioned him particulur inconvenience;" but this, we suspect, might be said of every man in the world except Caligula and the entomologists.

He had become so enamored of science that
he resolved to devote his life to it. No argu-
ment was of the least avail. The plan of
taking orders was again urged by the mother,
and the Bishop now sided with her; but the
young gentleman had already adopted liberal
notions on the subject of religion, and would
on no account listen to them. In a letter to
Turgot, of 1775, he states that his creed was
settled by the age of seventeen. He appears
to have left the college in 1762, and an-
nounced his resolution to depend on his own
resources-from which it may be inferred
that he had seriously displeased the Bishop,
though they became good friends afterward.
The Biographie Universelle states that his
earliest patron was the Duke de la Rochefou-
cauld, and that through his influence he soon
obtained "some pensions:" but M. Arago,
though he more than once describes the Duke
as his "best friend," makes no allusion to
this circumstance of "pensions," which, if
true, is a rather important one.

D'Alembert had never, it seems, lost sight of him, and to his encouragement and advice he now owed much; but his talents were early ripened, and in fact within the next three years he placed his reputation as a man of science as high as it ever was to be. It is no wonder that most exalted anticipations were formed, and we think it quite possible that if he had adhered steadily to his first line of study he might have left a name worthy of ranking with the Lagranges and Laplaces; but there are, we believe, few who now, measuring his actual attainments, place him in the first class of mathematicians: ArWhen he had reached his twelfth summer, ago evidently does not. He had the advanthe episcopal uncle protested against the pet- tage of appearing at a season very favorable ticoats, and the gracility of his lower fabric for the exercise of ingenuity, when the Calwas for the first time revealed to common culus was in rapid development, and there eyes when he removed to the Jesuit seminary was something for any sharp eye to discover. at Rheims. The mother wished him to pre- These eras are the Californias of science: pare for a clerical career, but the Caritats a new source of wealth is opened which the strongly disapproved of this, and it was set- first comers gather-and then follows a petled that he should follow the paternal pro- riod of severer toil and slender gains until a fession of arms, of which, as the Bishop ob- fresh and unwrought region is again disclosed. served, many of the most illustrious orna- Condorcet was an eager adventurer, but he ments, Condé, for instance, had been trained found grains rather than lumps, and above under the Company of Jesus. At this school, all, he did not persevere. His chief efforts Condorcet made rapid progress-in mathe- were directed to extending the scope of the matics especially-and being transferred in Calculus-to bring it to bear upon cases in 1758 to the College of Navarre at Paris, he which it had previously proved unmanageathere also carried off the highest prizes year ble. Unfortunately, however, his most amafter year, and became decidedly the most bitious formula are precisely those of which distinguished of its alumni. One of his prize- the value is most doubtful. He never atessays was read in the presence of D'Alem-tempted to apply them himself, and we bebert, who prophesied that the youth would lieve they have not proved of the slightest by and bye be an honor to the Academy. service to the world. It may, we think, be

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asserted safely that science would have stood | implored Condorcet to find some substitute where it does if he had never lived. Skillful at the Academy, and undertake the care of analyst as he was, he discovered no new the invalid during a winter of Italy. The principle-no great step can be ascribed to Secretary agreed to make this sacrifice, and him. We observe that considerable impor- the pair started: but their reception at Fertance is still attached by some English wri- ney was so delightful that week after week ters to his Essay on the application of the passed away there until it was thought too Calculus to judicial questions. He was not late for crossing the Alps, or the restoration the first who worked on that ground-and of D'Alembert seemed to authorize a return if he went much more into detail than the to Paris. This introduction to Voltaire detwo or three who had preceded him, he has termined the future career of Condorcet. in the sequel been very largely distanced, From that time, if he did not lay aside his especially in our own time, by Poisson. His abstract science, at least he gave up all notreatise is very ingenious, and we may say tion of forwarding its march, and contented amusing, but there is a radical flaw in all himself with noting and recording, in a style tentamina of the class-there are not, and of distinguished excellence, the trophies never can be, real data for the application of erected by steadier enthusiasts. Voltaire had the mathematical theory of probabilities to been much struck with his literary facility, judicial decisions, or to any other questions and inoculated him effectually with the pasin which allowance must be made for the in- sion for philosophical proselytism. In a word, calculable variety in the talents, attainments, he was now to be one of the most active and moral qualities of men. But we do not contributors to the Encyclopédie; and Didepresume to dissert on a subject as to which rot, &c., became his most intimate companthose who wish to pursue it can consult a ions at Paris, while his correspondence with scientific authority so high as M. Arago's. Ferney continued to the close of Voltaire's We merely repeat that at best he exhibited life to be close and confidential. The King of sagacity in a comparatively new application Prussia in due time honored him with many of the theory of probabilities. What imme- flattering communications. He was recogdiately concerns us here is, that when hardly nized throughout Europe as among the ablest beyond the limit of manhood, he had already agents of the Anti-Christian Conspiracy. established a brilliant reputation. The Academy of Sciences soon chose him for their Assistant-Secretary. Having filled up with applause a large hiatus in the academical Eloges, he not long afterward was elect ed Perpetual Secretary—and in that capacity produced a very extensive series of similar panegyrics, some of which may still have a high degree of interest for a limited class of readers. The emolument of his office was not much, but the position was considered enviable-it gave him every opportunity of familiar intercourse with the lights of philosophy, and through them an easy introduction to the saloons and suppers of the influential ladies who had embraced the doctrines of the sect, and not a few of whom had condescended to form tender connections among its Coryphæi.

Until 1770 he had continued to give his more serious hours to his mathematics; but very unluckily as we believe for his ultimate fame-in the summer of that year his ambition received a new turn. D'Alembert had fallen into a condition of nervous irritability which afflicted all his friends, and grievously alarmed his celebrated amie, Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse. She urged on him the temporary abandonment of his diagrams, and

Voltaire's letters seem, in England at least, to be very little read in comparison with some other classes of his writings; and we wonder this should be so-for not only are they essential to the understanding of his actual proceedings, but many of them are hardly below any productions of his pen in the felicity of execution. When he is addressing a friend-not a King, or Prince, or great lady-we may almost always fancy that we hear him talking at his own fireside. The ease and also the elegance are consummate-they are on a par with the undisturbed self-esteem, the unwearied self-seeking, the untameable vivacity and the insatiable malignity of the man. The letters to Condorcet, and especially the new ones (which it is not difficult to account for Condorcet's suppression of during his lifetime), bring out some peculiar traits-illustrating very satisfactorily the profound self-control, without which no man cau maintain himself through a series of years as the head of an energetic party. What Condorcet says (in a note to Turgot) of some of his pamphlets, is especially true of his letters to the juniors of his sect: these things are not done pour la gloire, but pour la cause-we must not consider him as author, but as apostle;" his

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heart was in his pen he never lost sight of the purpose.

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

get 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 demeanor, 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."

M. Arago, whose conclusions as to the affairs of stars and their satellites few will question, extols the good nature of Voltaire as shown in these documents: we admire | back?" Each Encyclopedist was apt to forthe politeness, the good sense-the far-seeing impervertible adroitness of the venerated chief. He had long before this time commended the saying of a monarch who practiced what he preached-L'esprit des hommes puissans consiste à répondre une politesse à une impertinence;-but this was not a mere matter of manners. He was too wise not to appreciate the importance of such a resident at Paris as he had hit on in Mr. Secretary Condorcet-a sharp, cool-headed man-thoroughly imbued with écrasez l'infame, but certain, unless his own authorly self-love were involved, to see more clearly" than even an Argus at a distance could do, Among the inedited essays is one on the what would be the practical effect of any constitution of scientific bodies, which our specific publication at any specific time on secretary (still a young man) was good the mind of the Parisians. In every one in- enough to compose for the enlightenment stance, accordingly, when Condorcet suggests and direction of the Spanish government of a pause or an alteration, the great leader that day. Chiefly noticeable in our eyes as complies and that with such apparent a specimen of French presumption, M. Arago frankness and simplicity of tone that we lauds it for profound wisdom and dexterous have no doubt many contemporary astrono- logic, especially in arguing against any inmers put the same interpretation that M. Ara- quiry about the religious tenets of memgo does now on these astutest of rescripts. bers. Here the biographer finds nothing On the other hand, as M. le Marquis became but cause for admiration in his hero's brave more and more deeply engaged in the war- contempt for the whole system of opinion as fare of the Encyclopedists, it was not seldom well as law beyond the Pyrenees. the part of "le Vieux de la Montagne "-as descends, on the other hand, to allege conby a curious coincidence the founders of the sideration for the rooted prejudices of Spain future Mountain called him-to whisper cauas a sufficient excuse for Condorcet in advotion from his remote citadel. When he him- cating the admission into the proposed new self in these latter days was resolved to issue Academy of a class of noble amateurs. "It anything that he knew and felt to be pregnant would have been merely absurd," he says, with combustion, he never dreamt of Paris- "to plan a Spanish institution from which he had agents enough in other quarters, and Dukes of Osuna and Medina-Celi were to be the anonymous or pseudonymous mischief hopelessly excluded." M. Arago, while on was printed at London, Amsterdam, or Ham- this topic, reports a saying of Louis XIV., burgh, from a fifth or sixth copy in the hand-which we are tempted to repeat:-" Do you writing of some Dutch or English clerkthence 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

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know why Racine and M. de Cavoye, whom you see down there, 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 hour. These seem sensible arrangements. 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 scientfic 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 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 caviling, to indicate a just recollection of the turtle and the fraternal

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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 clamor 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 honors 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 correspoding 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

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very different manner with Turgot. Shortly afterward, to the confusion of his professors and heavy disappointment of his

relations, he announced that he had changed | though he has reasons for not avowing ithis mind, and would not enter into holy la Cuconaquerie ne mene pas à la fortune." orders. He alleged to them modest distrust To which Voltaire replies by-and-bye-"I of his own qualifications, but to intimates have been charmed with Turgot-if you said candidly-"I cannot walk through all have three or four sages like this among you, the days of my life with a mask on my face." I tremble for l'infame." After having perHe turned to the law-in due time obtained formed his kotow at Ferney, he redoubled promotion-and for a course of years acted his zeal in the ecclesiastical direction, but vigorously with the government minority in still observed as to his caconaquerie a pruthe parliament of Paris, and in opposition to dent reticence, which Voltaire now apprecithe refractory majority, which was headed ated and often recommended to the Parisian by one of his own elder brothers, the Presi- conclave as exemplary. "Your friend Turdent Turgot. This conduct led to the In- got is admirable," says he to Condorcettendancy of the Limousin, in which office he no man understands better how to shoot soon made himself remarkable by some ex- the arrow without showing the hand." cellent administrative reforms, but in the We may pause for a moment to say that sequel still more so by the audacity of his in general Condorcet's letters to Voltaire, proposals and plans for sweeping changes in like all the rest of the sect, are characterized the whole department of taxation and inter- by a humility of submission, an extravagance nal economy. He was among the first that of adulation, worthy of the Cadis and Muftis adopted in France the new science of political of a Commander of the Faithful. But beeconomy, and he pushed its doctrines to ex- hind his back, in their epistles to each other, tremes that never found favor with Adam it is somewhat different. All alike-the Smith himself. Among the rest, he was a grave D'Alembert, the austere Turgot, and strenous church reformer-indicating more the snowy Condorcet-are in raptures when and more distinctly his opinion not only that Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse communicates. all church property should be fairly taxed to them, and insists on their handing over for state purposes, but that the property to their prime patroness, whom Arago styles itself ought to be redistributed, small sees "la respectable Duchesse d'Enville," the inunited, the emoluments of great ones cut telligence she, Mademoiselle, had just redown, monastic establishments of all sorts ceived from Geneva of a visit paid to Ferney got rid of, and decent provision being made by a "Messaline de cette ville," with some for existing lives-the general surplus con- alarming consequences. It is like the merrisidered and dealt with as at the command of ment of a set of young monks on discovering the financial minister of the crown. These a lapse of father Abbot. Again, Condorcet, suggestions were in the beginning accom- when on a tour, writes to Turgot that he panied by constant professions of Turgot's had been gratified in a country-house with sincere respect for religion and the church, the perusal of a Commentary on the Bible whose real interests were, he continually by Emilie (Mad. du Chatelet-" Venus reiterated, nearer to no man's heart than to Newton ") in ten volumes; and adds that his own. The true sentiments of the he thought he could detect here and there reformer, however, could hardly escape de- the assistance both of the "Vieux de la tection-provincial eyes are close watchers, Montagne" and "son jeune amant "-i. e., and of all men Turgot was the most awkward St. Lambert. To which Turgot answers in everything but the use of his pen. None that he had himself many years ago seen had less command over his countenance-"Emilie's Bible," but that it was then in four none could less bear the trouble of affecta- volumes. 66 tion 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,

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 honorable 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

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