into a philosophic spirit, and break the fetters of superstition, we may per haps behold a singular phenomenon in the history of nations; a great people, after the decline of empire and the corruption of manners, recovering their former consequence and character. Such a phenomenon would effectually overturn that political hypothesis, chiefly founded on the fate of the Roman empire, that states which have reached their utmost height, like the human body, must necessarily tend to decay, and either experience a total dissolution, or become so insignificant as to excite neither envy nor jealousy.

In France, as I have already had occasion to show,(1) society attained its nighest polish before the close of the last century. But the misfortunes which clouded the latter years of Lewis XIV. threw a gloom over the manner of the people, and a mystical religion became fashionable at court. Madame de Maintenon herself was deeply penetrated with this religion, as was the celebrated abbé Fenelon, afterward archbishop of Cambray, preceptor to the duke of Burgundy, and author of the adventures of Telemachus, one of the finest works of human imagination. The fervour spread, especially among the softer sex; and Racine, in compliance with the prevailing taste, wrote tragedies on sacred subjects. The court, however, resumed its gayety under the regency of the duke of Orleans, notwithstanding the accumulated distresses of the nation. And his libertine example, with that of his minister, the cardinal du Bois, introduced a total corruption of manners; a gross sensuality, that scorned the veil of decency; an unprincipled levity, that treated every thing sacred and respectable with derision; and a spirit of dissipation, which, amid the utmost poverty, prevailed during the greater part of the reign of Lewis XV.

But this levity, which was chiefly confined to the court, did not hinder the body of the people from seriously attending to their civil and religious rights. And their firmness in maintaining both deserves to be particularly noticed, as it forms one of the most striking objects in the view of society, during the present century.

A furious dispute between the Jansenists and jesuits, concerning grace, free will, and other abstract points in theology, had distracted France in the brightest days of Lewis XIV. Many able men employed their pens on both sides. But the Jansenists, supported by the talents of a Nicole, an Arnaud, and a Pascal, had evidently the advantage both in raillery and reasoning. The controversy, however, was not to be determined by such weapons. The jesuits were supposed to be better Catholics; and as the conscience of the king had always been in their keeping, the leaders of the Jansenists were persecuted, and thrown into prison, or obliged to abandon their tountry. The jesuits, in order to complete their triumph, and the ruin of their religious antagonists, at length obtained the king's consent (through the influence of father le Tellier, his confessor) to refer the disputed points to the pope. They accordingly sent to Rome one hundred and three propositions for condemnation; and the holy office, in 1713, found one hundred and one of those to be heretical.

The bull declaring the condemnation of the opinions of the Jansenists, commonly known by the name of UNIGENITUS, from the word with which it begins, instead of composing the pious dispute, threw all France into a flame. The body of the people, the parliaments, the archbishop of Paris, fifteen other prelates, and many of the most respectable among the inferior clergy, violently opposed it, as an infringement of the rights of the Gallican church, and of the laws of the realm, as well as an insult on their private judgment. But the king, who was wholly governed by the jesuits, and spurred on to violent measures by his confessor, enforced its reception; and the whole kingdom was soon divided into acceptants and recusants. The death of Lewis XIV. put a stop to the dispute. And the duke of Orleans, while regent, ordered the persecution to cease, and at the same time enjoined the recusant bishops to accept the bull, accompanied with certain explications

(1) Letter XIX

They found themselves under the necessity of complying. Even the good cardinal de Noailles, archbishop of Paris, was induced to do violence to his sentiments, in 1720, for the sake of peace.

From that time to the year 1750, the bull unigenitus, though held in execration by the people, occasioned no public disturbance. Then it was resolved by the clergy to demand confessional notes of dying persons; and it was ordered that those notes should be signed by priests adhering to the bull, without which no viaticum, no extreme unction, could be obtained. And these consolatory rites were refused without pity to all recusants, and to such as confessed to recusants. The new archbishop of Paris engaged warmly in this scheme, and the parliament no less warmly in the cause of the people. Other parliaments followed the example of that at Paris; and all clergymen, who refused to administer the sacraments to persons in their last moments, were thrown into prison. The church complained of the interposition of the civil power; and Lewis XV. by an act of his absolute authority, forbid the parliaments to take cognizance of such matters.

These parliaments, as I have formerly had occasion to observe, are only the supreme courts of justice, not the states of the kingdom, or proper legislative body; yet have they continued, since the abolition of the national assemblies, to be the faithful guardians of the rights of the people, and to check the despotism of the crown, by refusing to register its oppressive edicts, as well as by remonstrating against them. (1) They have frequently interposed their authority, with advantage, in matters of religion.

The heads of the parliament of Paris, which has ever stood foremost in repressing both regal and ecclesiastical tyranny, therefore took the liberty, on this occasion, to remind the king, that their privileges, and the duty of their station, obliged them to do justice on all delinquents. They accordingly continued in the exercise of their several functions, without regard to the king's prohibition, and had actually commenced a prosecution against the bishop of Orleans, when they received from Versailles a letter de cachet, accompanied by letters patent, which they were ordered to register, commanding them to suspend all prosecutions relative to the refusal of the sacra ments. Instead of obeying these orders, the different tribunals of the parliament presented new remonstrances; and being referred for answers to the king's former declarations, they had the spirit to resolve, "That whereas certain evil-minded persons have prevented truth from reaching the throne, the chambers remain assembled, and all other business must be suspended." The king, by fresh letters patent, renewed his orders, and commanded the parliament to proceed to business; but all the chambers, far from complying, came to another resolution more bold than the former, importing, that they could not obey this injunction without violating their duty and their oath.

Matters being thus brought to extremity, the king banished, to different parts of the kingdom, in 1753, the members of all the chambers of the parliament, except those of the great chamber; and they, proving no more compliant than their brethren, also were banished. New difficulties and disputes ensued. In order to prevent an entire stop being put to the administration of justice by this violent measure, Lewis XV. established, by his letters patent, what was called a royal chamber, for the prosecution of suits civil and criminal. But the letters patent constituting that new court ought to have been registered by the parliament of Paris, which had no longer an existence. To remedy this difficulty, application was made to the inferior court of the chatelet, which refused to register the letters in question, even after one of its members had been committed to the bastile, and another obliged to abscond. Intimidated, however, by such a bold exertion of despotic power, the remaining members allowed the king's officers to enter the (1) No royal edict can have the force of a law, until registered in parliament; and although the French parliaments cannot absolutely refuse to register such edicts, if the royal authority be exerted in all its fulness, that is to say, when the king holds personally in parliament what is called a bed of justice; yet they may, even in that case, suspend the registry some time, and likewise remonstrate against the edict itself. These remonstrances, and their beneficial effects, have deservedly gained the French parliaments the highest veneration among the people

letters patent in their register. But they thought proper, on more mature deliberation, to retire from business, leaving an arret on the table, expressing their reasons for so doing.

The royal chamber was now the only court of law in Paris. The judges assembled, but they could find no advocates to plead. They were held in universal contempt, and the whole kingdom was filled with such a total suppression of justice, as threatened anarchy and confusion. Meanwhile, the clergy seemed to enjoy their victory amid the public disorder, and entered into associations for the support of their authority. But the king ceased to countenance them. At length, become sensible of their pride and obstinacy, as well as of the evils it had occasioned, he exhorted them to more moderation. He also recalled the parliament, which returned in triumph to Paris, in 1754, amid the acclamations of the people, who celebrated the event with the most extravagant demonstrations of joy. And the archbishop, who continued to encourage the priests in refusing the sacraments, was banished to his seat at Conflans. The bishops of Orleans and Troyes were, in like manner, banished to their country seats.

A temporary quiet was by these means produced; but it proved only a calm before a more violent storm. The archbishop of Paris, in retirement, continued his intrigues. He was banished to a greater distance from court. But the dispute in regard to the bull unigenitus, which he had revived, did not subside. The clergy persisted in refusing the sacraments, and the civil power in prosecuting them for such refusal; so that nothing was more common in those distracted times, than to see the communion administered by an arret of parliament !

The king, a second time drawn over to the ecclesiastical side of the question, referred the dispute to the pope. Benedict XIV., though a mild and moderate man, could not retract a constitution regarded as a law of the church he therefore declared, in a circular letter or brief, to all the bishops of France, that the bull unigenitus must be acknowledged as a universal law, against which none could make resistance "without endangering their eternal salvation."

The parliament of Paris, considering this brief as a direct attack upon the rights of the Gallican church, suppressed it by an arret or degree. The king, enraged at their boldness, as well as at their refusal to register certain oppressive taxes, resolved to hold a bed of justice. He accordingly went to the parliament on the 13th day of November, in the year 1756, attended by the whole body of his guards, amounting to ten thousand men, and ordered an edict to be read, by which he suppressed the fourth and fifth chambers of inquests, the members of which had been most firm in opposing the brief. He then commanded that the bull unigenitus should be respected, and prohibited the secular judges from ordering the administration of the sacrament. And he concluded with declaring, that he would be obeyed!-Fifteen counsellors of the great chamber lodged their resignation at the office next day. One hundred and twenty-four members of the different courts of parliament followed their example, and universal murmurings prevailed in the city and throughout the kingdom.

In the midst of these murmurings, the desperate fanatic, Francis Damien, stabbed the king in the manner already related; not, as he declared, with an intention of killing his sovereign, but only of wounding him, that God might touch his heart, and incline him to order the administration of the sacraments at the time of death. What effect this declaration had upon the mind of Lewis XV. it is impossible to say; but it is certain he a second time banished the archbishop of Paris, who had been recalled, and found it expedient to accommodate matters with the parliament, which again proceeded to business. But the grand triumph of the French parliaments was to come. The jesuits, the chief supporters of the bull unigenitus, having rendered themselves universally odious by their share in the conspiracy against the life of the king of Portugal, fell in France under the lash of the civil power, for certain fraudu lent mercantile transactions. They refused to discharge the debts of one of

their body, who had become bankrupt for a large sum, and who was supposed to act for the benefit of the whole society. As a monk, indeed, he must necessarily do so. The parliaments eagerly seized an opportunity of humbling their spiritual enemies. The jesuits were every where cited before those high tribunals, in 1761, and ordered to do justice to their creditors. They seemed to acquiesce in the decision, but delayed payment under various pretences. New suits were commenced against them in 1762, on account of the pernicious tendency of their writings. In the course of these proceedings, which the king endeavoured in vain to stay, they were compelled to produce their INSTITUTE; or the rules of their order, hitherto studiously concealed. That mysterious volume, which was found to contain maxims subversive of all civil government, and even of the fundamental principles of morals, completed their ruin. All their colleges were seized, all their effects confiscated; and the king, ashamed or afraid to protect them, not only resigned them to their fate, but finally expelled them the kingdom, by a solemn edict, and utterly abolished the order of Jesus in France.

Elated with this victory over ecclesiastical tyranny, the French parliaments attempted to set bounds to the absolute power of the crown, and seemed determined to confine it within the limits of law. Not satisfied with refusing, as usual, to register certain oppressive edicts, or with remonstrating against them, they ordered criminal prosecutions to be commenced against the governors of several provinces, acting in the king's name, who had enforced the registration of those edicts. But I must not here enter upon this subject, which is intimately connected with the body of history, and would lead us far into the affairs of latter times.

Notwithstanding these disorders, and the regal and spiritual disposition that occasioned them, the progress of improvement, and the enlargement of the human mind, has been very considerable in France, during the present century. If poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and architecture should be allowed to have attained their height in that kingdom under the reign of Lewis XIV., they have not since greatly declined, and many arts, both useful and ornamental, have been invented or improved; particularly the art of engraving in copper, which has been carried to such a degree of perfection as to rival painting itself; of making porcelain, plate-glass, fine paper, and paper toys; and of counterfeiting in paste, so ingeniously as to deceive the nicest eye, at a little distance, the diamond, the pearl, and all sorts of gems. The weaving of silk has been rendered more facile, while its culture has been extended; and a culture of still more importance to society, that of corn.

M. du Hamel, a member of the French academy, by philosophically investigating the principles of husbandry, has made it a fashionable study, and introduced a taste for agriculture, which has already been attended with the most beneficial effects. Nor is that worthy citizen the only man of learning in France, who has turned the eye of philosophy from mind to matter, and from the study of the heavens to the investigation of human affairs. This rational turn of thinking particularly distinguishes French literature under the reign Lewis XV.

At the head of the philosophers of REASON, of the instructers of their species in what concerns their most important interests, we must place the baron de Montesquieu. That penetrating genius, who may be termed the LEGISLATOR OF MAN, by discovering the latent springs of government; its moving principle, under all its different forms, and the spirit of laws in each, has given to political reasoning a degree of certainty, of which it was not thought capable. His countryman Helvetius, also endowed with a truly philosophical genius, has attempted to introduce the same degree of certainty into moral and metaphysical reasoning, though not with equal success.

Helvetius, systematical to a fault, but eccentric even in system, employs in vain his fine talents to convince mankind, that they are all born with equal capacity, or aptitude to receive and retain ideas, and that all their virtues and talents, as well as the different degree in which they possess them, are merely the effects of education, and other external circumstances. But his

zealous endeavours to destroy the hydra prejudice, by contrasting the mutual contempt of nations, the hatred of religions, and the scorn of different classes in the same kingdom for each other, must tend to humble pride and soften animosities. Nor can his generous efforts to rescue virtue from the hands of jesuitical casuists, and connect it intimately with government, by fixing it on the solid basis of PUBLIC GOOD, fail to benefit society; or his ingenuity in tracing the motives of human action, and in demonstrating the influence of physical causes upon the moral conduct of man, to be of use to poets, historians, and legislators.

While Montesquieu and Helvetius were thus contemplating the political and moral world, and investigating the powers and principles of man, as a member of society, with the effect of government and laws upon the human character, Buffon was employed in surveying the natural world; in examining the secret cells of generation, animal instinct, and animal life, in all their gradations, from a snail and the shell-fish up to man; the organization of the human frame, the original imperfection of the senses, and the means by which they are perfected; all accompanied with such just and sublime reflections, as leave the mind equally astonished at the vigour of his genius and the extent of his knowledge.

"Much has been written in this age," says Voltaire, "but genius belonged to the last." Had no other man of genius appeared, he himself would have furnished proof of the falsity of this assertion, and in more departments than one. If the Henriade is inferior to the Iliad, it is at least the finest poem of the epic kind that France has hitherto produced. The Zara, the Elzira, the Merope, are equal in diction and pathos to any tragedy of Racine; and the Mahomet is, beyond comparison, superior to the famous Cinna of Corneille. Voltaire possessed a more comprehensive range of thought than either of those writers; and that he acquired by his application to history and philosophy. His philosophical pieces are generally too free, and often have a pernicious tendency in a Christian community; yet have they served to promote inquiry, and to enlighten the human understanding. His Age of Lewis XIV., his History of Russia, and of Charles XII. of Sweden, are models of elegant composition and just thinking. A love of singularity has disfigured his General History with many impertinences; yet will the stamina remain an eternal monument of taste, genius, and sound judgment. He first conducted, with the chain of political and military events, the progress of literature, of arts, and of manners.

France produced many other men of genius, during the period under review. But it is not my purpose to speak of men of genius merely as such, otherwise I should dwell with particular pleasure on the beautiful extravagances of Rousseau, and endeavour to estimate the merit of his wonderful romance :I mention them only as connected with the progress of society. In this line I am happy to name D'Alembert and Diderot; to whom French literature is indebted for many truly classical productions, and the whole literary world for that treasure of universal science, the Encyclopédie.

Marmontel, who contributed liberally towards that great work, has farther enriched the literature of his country by a new species of fiction, in his enchanting Contes Moraux. More philosophical than the common novel, and less prolix than the romance, they combine instruction and amusement in a manner perhaps superior to every other species of fanciful composition. Nor must 1, in speaking of the improvers of French literature, omit the two Crebillons. The father has given to tragedy a force of character not found in Corneille or Voltaire; and the romances of the son are captivating but dangerous productions, in a new taste. This sportive and elegant mode of writing, with all its levities, digressions, and libertine display of sentiment, has been happily imitated in England, by the celebrated author of Tristram Shandy, commonly supposed to be original in his manner. Even the idea of the much admired Adventures of a Guinea is borrowed from the Sopha of the vounger Crebillon.

We must now, my dear Philip, turn our eyes immediately towards our own