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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

was carried to many convents, and among others toPort Royal, and all the inhabitants went in procession,and kissed it. Among them was a niece of Pascal,daughter of madame Perier. She had been long ill of afistula in an eye : she touched the wound with the relic,and it healed at once.* The news of this miracle wasspread abroad ; it was believed, and all Paris flocked tothe convent. A religious house, the scene of an actualmiracle, was considered too highly favoured by God tobe persecuted ; the nuns and the jansenists triumphed ;the jesuits were, for the time, silent and abashed. Toadd to their defeat, Pascal continued to write hisLetters to a Provincial, attacking the society with thearms of wit and eloquence. The jesuitical system ofmorality, full of mental reservation and ambiguity —its truckling to vice, and contradiction to the simplebut sublime principles of the gospel, afforded him a widefield for censure. He wrote not a mere controversialwork, interesting to theologians only, but a book ad-dressed to all classes. It gained immediate attention ;and its eloquence and beauty have secured its immor-tality.f

* Madame Perier, in the life she has written of her brother, mentionsthe miraculous cure of her daughter : “ This fistula,” she says, “ was ofso bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris considered it incurable.Nevertheless she was cured in a moment bythe touch of the holy thorn ;and this miracle was soauthentic, that it is acknowledged by every body.”Racine, in his fragment of a History of the Abbey of Port Royal, detailsthe whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most miraculous ver-sion of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that thoughthe cure took place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle forseveral days, and some time elapsed before it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Perier told him that hercure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appearshort, or so universal a belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to con-found the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad ; nor would her uncle,Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the sup-port of his testimony.

+ Boileau’s admiration for Pascal was unbounded. He declared the

Lettres Provinciales” to be the best work in the French language. Ma-dame de Sevigne , in her letters, narrates a whimsical scene that took placebetween him and some jesuits. Their conversation turning on literarysubjects, Boileau declared that there was only one modern book to be com-pared to the works of the ancients. Bourdaloue begged him to name it.Boileau evaded the request. “You have read it more than once, I amsure,” he said, “ but do not ask me its name.” Thejesuit insisted; andBoileau, at last, taking him by the arm, exclaimed, “ You are determinedto have it,father; well, it is Pascal.” “ Morbleu! Pascal!” cried Bour-daloue , astonished. “ Yes, certainly Pascal is as well written as any thingfalse can be.” “ False!” exclaimed Boileau, “ False! Know that he is as