86 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

judgment is confirmed — and the nation bears it! Isthis the country of philosophy and luxury ? It is thatof St. Bartholomew . The inquisition had not daredto put in execution what these Jansenist judges haveperpetrated.”

Voltaire ’s horror could not save the victim, for theevil was committed before the news of the trial reachedhim. The populace, it is true, even before the execu-tion of the victims, returned to their senses, and Bel-leval was held in such execration that he was forced tofly from Abbeville, to avoid being torn to pieces. Butthe king and parliament of Paris refused to repair theirfault towards the survivors. Voltaire did what he could.He recommended one of the victims who had fled, thechevalier d’Etallonde, to the king of Prussia, whose ser-vice he entered ; and he endeavoured to open the eyesof government to the justice and propriety of repairingits crime. But the duke deChoiseul feared to act, and theparliament of Paris was a bigoted and intolerant body.

To his honour, w r e find that he was unwearied in hisendeavours. When Louis XVI . succeeded to thecrown, and a milder reign commenced, he renewed hisexertions. D’Etallonde had, from good conduct, beenpromoted in the Prussian army. He invited him toFerney, and endeavoured to interest the ministers ofLouis in his favour, and to prevail on them to revokehis sentence : in vain ; the government had not suffi-cient justice to avoid a fault, nor humanity to desire torepair it.

Such were the crimes committed in the outragedname of religion, that animated Voltaire with the de-sire of wresting the power of doing ill from the handsof the priesthood of his country, and which made himthe unwearied and active enemy of a system whichsanctioned such atrocities. In the present instance,something of fear added a sting to his feelings. The“ Philosophical Dictionary, " a work he denied havingwritten, but of which, in reality, he was the author,was mentioned among the books, a respect for which