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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN

inroads into the blessed fields of rational piety. Thismust be admitted and censured. Let some among usrise to drive him back and barricade him from his inva-sion on revealed religion ; but let us do this withoutrancour or scurrility, feeling grateful at the same timefor the good he did achieve, and acknowledging ouresteem for his motives and abilities. Let us, above all,in writing his life, show ourselves just and impartial.From the limited nature of this work, we can onlypresent the reader with a sketch of his labours andtheir effects ; it is our earnest desire that this sketchshould be one drawn from undoubted sources, and proveitself to the minds of all, a fair, exact, and impartialaccount of so great a man.

Francois-Marie Arouet was born at Chatenay , 20thof February, 1694. His enemies, in after life, dis-played their spite by promulgating that his father was apeasant—-an assertion without foundation. His fatherwas a notary by profession, and filled the situation oftreasurer of the chamber of accounts ; a lucrative place,which he occupied with such integrity as to save but a smallfortune, where others amassed great riches. His motherwas named Marguerite d’Aumont, of a noble family ofPoitou. The child was so feeble at the time of hisbirth that he was not expected to survive ; he washastily baptized in the house, nor considered sufficientlystrong to be carried to church until he was nine monthsold, when he was baptized over again by the parishcurate, from whom his age was concealed. Condorcet ,in his life, remarks the singularity that two illustriousmen of letters of that day, Voltaire and Fontenelle,were both born so feeble as not to be expected to sur-vive, and yet lived to extreme age. He might haveadded the more curious instance of their contemporary,the marshal de Richelieu, a six months’ child, fosteredin cotton and reared artificially, who enjoyed strongand robust health, and lived till a still more advanced

age-

The child was quick and sprightly; he had an elder