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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

count of the Quakers , — to demonstrate that dissent inreligion, joined to independence of thought and action,could accord with a peaceable fulfilment of the duties ofa subject. He commences with a humorous descriptionof a Quaker , to whom he was introduced, who receiveshim with his hat on, and without making a bow; speaksto him with the thee and thou, and defends the peculiartenets of his sect. He goes on to give the history of Foxand Penn. Other letters concern the parliament, the go-vernment, the encouragement given to literary men, andliterature itself, of the introduction of inoculation; andthen comes his main topic, — the discoveries of Newton,and the philosophy of Locke. It is a work that wouldhave excited no censure in England; but he was wellaware that both it and its author would be denounced inFrance . When he thought of publishing it, he at thesame time entertained the plan of expatriation; whenhe relinquished this, he meant to suppress his book; butit was published through the treachery of a bookseller.A lettre de cachet was granted against him, of which hereceived timely notice, and left Paris to conceal himselfat Cirey, while he gave out that he was in England.The volume itself was publicly burnt. He obtained acessation of the persecution by causing the edition tobe given up ; but he did not return to Paris , and con-tinued to inhabit the chateau of Cirey, in Champagne,a property of the marquis du Chatelet , where he andhis wife, and their illustrious friend, lived for the spaceof six years in seclusion and laborious study.

We have, from various sources, descriptions of thelife he led at Cirey; not a little instructive from thelight they throw on human nature, and on Voltaire ’sown character. Voltaire tells us, himself, in his “ Frag-ment of Memoirs,” that, weary of the idle, turbulentlife led at Paris , of the pretensions of the silly, thecabals of the wicked, and persecutions of bigots, he re-solved to pass some years in the country at the chateauof madame du Chatelet . This lady had received acareful education, was perfectly mistress of the Latin