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LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

died while the cause was yet pending. He could nutobtain that the case should he tried in Paris . Theaccused were obliged to surrender to the parliament ofThoulouse. The principal people of that town hadbecome eager to exonerate themselves from the chargesof persecution and injustice which their former conducthad raised. The trial was carried on impartially, andSirven was acquitted. Seven years, however, hadelapsed before this tardy act of justice was completed.

Another instance of religious intolerance, more fright-ful in some of its details than the preceding, rousedVoltaire to combat the sanguinary clergy of his countrywith renewed zeal. But in this instance he could notsave the victims already immolated by the malignancy ofprivate enmity, and the cruel bigotry of public tribunals.

Some very young men resident at Abbeville had ren-dered themselves notorious for the freedom of their re-ligious opinions. They read and praised with enthu-siasm various infidel books then in vogue. They hadbeen known to sing blasphemous songs at their suppertable ; and once, on returning home late at night aftera drunken frolic, one struck with his cane a woodencrucifix placed by the road side. These acts, committed,as they were, by boys under twenty, deserved blame,and even it might be deemed punishment, but punish-ment suited to their few years and consequent thought-lessness ; hut it was a frightful exaggeration to considerthem criminals in the eye of the law, especially as noneexisted in France against misdemeanours of this nature,and they could only be punished by an act of arbitrarypower. This was exerted to punish them with abarbarity which is supposed to characterise the Spanishinquisition alone; though if we read the history of theGallican church, we find that the priests of its powerfulhierarchy were behind those of no nation in the spiritof sanguinary and merciless persecution. Unfortunately,in the present instance, one of the principal actors inthis foolish scene, a boy of seventeen, had a personalenemy. A rich and avaricious old man of Abbeville,