76 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

anil spread abroad an appetite for injuring others byridicule, slander, and jests that wound. They renderedsociety more heartless and more cruel than ever.

Voltaire , himself, was visited by the effects of thedisturbed state of feeling he helped to engender. Hehad hoped to find a safe asylum in the Genevese terri-tories. But his attacks on their prejudices created ahost of enemies. He began to feel that the darkshadows of persecution were gathering round. Hefound that, although his presence in Paris would notbe permitted, he might, in safety, take up his abode in1762 . a remote part of Prance. He purchased, therefore, theestate of Ferney, on the French territory, within a6S - short distance of Geneva; and thus with a foot, as itwere, in two separate states, he hoped to find safety inone if threatened with hostility in the other.

He was more fortunate than he anticipated. Thepersecutions he afterwards endured were reduced tolittle more than threats, and were less than might beexpected by a man who first raised the voice of hostilityto, and resolved on, the destruction of a system of reli-gion supported by a powerful hierarchy which was inpossession of half the wealth of the nations who pro-fessed their faith, and which was regarded as the bul-wark of their power by the monarchs of Europe .Voltaire ’s poem on the law of Nature, and hisversion of Ecclesiastes, were burnt in Paris as deisticaland blasphemous, although the latter had no fault butthat of turning the sublime into commonplace. A poemon the earthquake at Lisbon was also produced atthis time ; and “ Candide ” was written and published.To collect together the most dreadful misfortunes, toheap them on the head of a single individual, and inone canvass to group all of disastrous that a fertileimagination can paint, and present this as a picture oflife, does not seem at first sight the most worthy occu-pation of a philosopher. Voltaire himself, though hehad met reverses, was a living refutation of "Candide .”But as, in truth, whether by sudden reverse or the