pliances and littlenesses, which, in identifying them with men of the world, will contradict every fine thing they chuse to say on the canvas, and mingle the best of their reputation with bitterness. David, the finest artist of the neighbouring country, has a worldly mind and a passion for power, which have made him all things with all men, at least with all men in authority: at one minute he is a fierce republican, painting Brutuses and Anker. stroems, and sentencing to death every body who likes the word king at the next, he is an arrant courtier, painting coronations at Notre Dame and portraits of Sa Majesté le Roi de Vestphalie, and wearing the livery of his master the French Emperor. The con sequence is, that every wise man despises him and that many others have little less contempt for his art. The painter who lives with the great world, is too often induced to contribute to their crimes, not only like M. David by decorating ambition in its trappings and giving perpetuity to it's haughty looks, but by making his pencil subservient to the gayer vices, and sometimes even by winking at the opportunities that are taken of the great resort to his house. Such is the origin of those loose pictures which have disgraced some of the greatest artists, which fill the boudoirs of the luxurious and the houses of gloating old men, and are of more harm than use to the young artist himself who studies them for co lour and for beauty. Such too is the origin of those degrading stories, which have injured the character of more than one artist in our own times, and which did not spare Phidias himself, who was accused, and it is supposed with too much truth, of accommodating his house to the pleasures of his friend Pericles, on which account, in fact, he fled from Athens to Elis. Envy no doubt does much on these occasions, but appearances do much

more.

-Well, cries a young enthusiast full of the thoughts of being known and caressed, but may I not get rich by honourable me thods? Have I not as much right to acquire wealth as men of no taste, no genius, no virtue? You talk of philosophers: pray recollect the philosopher, who when he was found eating a good dish and was rallied for it, asked his reprovers with a smile, whe ther they thought that the good things of this world were intended for fools only.

My good friend, I do not say that you may not get rich, still less that you may not have a good joint upon your board with plenty of vegetables and a pudding. Men of genius and philo sophers are precisely the persons to enjoy the good things of this world-wisely. I only say that you must not acquire them by wrong means. But still there is a question, how far you go in your ideas of wealth and of good things? What do you under

stand

stand by getting rich? Do you mean rich for a painter, or rich for a duke?

-Rich for a painter! No, I mean rich for a rich man. I do not know what you mean by "rich for a painter." A painter, I should think, has at least as much right to acquire wealth as an intriguing politician, or as a money-hunter, or as a slayer of

Yes, as much right, and more; but by no means so much ne cessity. Let the hunters of money get what they sacrifice all their comfort to acquire; let the intriguing politicians and the slaugh terers of mankind recompense themselves, if they can, for their continual cares and bad passions, and let them afterwards, if they chuse, blow out their brains like my Lord Clive. Your mode of acquiring money is itself the great end of other men's pursuits; it is an enjoyment to you, it is happiness; and you should leave to inferior minds those busy desires which only serve to disturb it. People do not think of this when they complain that the foolish acquire wealth and titles, and that poets and philosophers

do not.

agree with you there. It is certainly the greatest of plea sures to be wrapped up in one's art, and I have no objection tò be a philosopher, since it will not make me hold my mault-stick less steadily, discolour my eye-sight, or derange my ideas. But one does not get rich, you know, for one's self only: there will be my wife, and then there will be my children: it is necessary they should be as comfortable as myself.—

So it is, and so they will be, if you make their comfort depen dent upon their own virtues and good sense. If your wife marry you for what she ought, she will not admire you the less for eat. ing out of crockery instead of silver: and if your children be as clever as their father, they will be enabled to get their own living in time with the little you may leave them, for the best legacy a father can leave to his offspring is the ability to conquer fortune, not the leisure to be corrupted by it.

Well: all that is very true; but if I am satisfied with loving my art and getting enough to make me comfortable, other artists are not; and if historical painters are comparatively poor, while flower painters and fish painters, confound 'em, get rich, what will the world say?

Ay;-here is half the secret of the wrong prospects to which the lovers of fame are apt to look forward. My good friend, it is a very difficult thing to ascertain what the world will say; but It is most probable, that by far the greater part of the world will say as little about you, as they do about Milton and Michael Angelo; and this consideration should make all of us, who are

fond

fond of fame, anxious to please the wise only. Let us pity those who admire flowers and fish in preference to men and minds; no person of taste will imitate them, and is it not better to be admired by twenty persons of taste, than by two hundred of none? Do you think that when judicions men are looking at your pic turês, they will say "This is a good figure, but it would have been better had the artist been rich"-" That is a fine idea, but it would have been much finer had he dined upon five courses?" If men of inferior genius are sometimes richer than others, they' are nevertheless much poorer in mental enjoyment, in the acquaintance and admiration of the sensible, and in lasting reputation and utility.

After all too, the artist may be assured that this reasoning is not merely speculative or only founded on the good feelings of those who adopt it. Whatever may have been the perversions of great talent, it's worldliness and it's degradations, it is neverthe less very true, and very inspiring to recollect, that men of the most exalted genius, generally speaking, have been men of the most exalted spirit. Witness the principal philosophers of old; witness in modern times, Columbus, the Duke de Sully, Milton, Dante, Michael Angelo, Locke, Newton, and the amiable D'Alem bert, who with one of the sincerest of hearts and soundest of minds, and a disposition equally tempered by gaiety and philoso phy, seems to have understood all that was necessary, practised all that was rational, and enjoyed all that was peaceable, in this chequered life. The noble sentiments of these great men equally tended to elevate them above misfortune, to perfect their talents, and to complete and immortalize their fame. Had Columbus been a man of the world, he would have begged to get rid of his unworthy fetters, and not have chosen to keep them on as con. trasting ornaments to his worth. Had Michael Angelo been a man of the world, he would never have put his profligate Cardinal in Hell, tormented by serpents. Had Locke and Newton been

men of the world, their faces would not have come down to us with that venerable influence, which divides our thoughts between what they wrote and what they practised, and makes us love ge. nius and virtue for the sake of each other.

ART.

ART. XVI.-The Travels of Reason.

Translated from the French of Voltaire, with a Continuation to the Present Time.

THERE is already, I have no doubt, a translation of Voltaire's Voyage de la Raison, though I have never met with one: but I was induced to translate it for the present publication, not only as one of the most spirited sketches of that great master of men and things, but as a curiosity in the present state of the political world. The continuation, which I have ventured to add by way of second chapter, serves at once as a commentary on the original and perhaps, though with far different colours and a meaner pencil, as a completion of the picture.-Voltaire, in receiving the homage of the most enlightened princes and in witnessing the rapid progress of toleration, was led into a sanguine prospect of European felicity, highly honourable to his feelings, but not altogether compatible perhaps with the general keensightedness of his philosophy. With regard to religious liberty, which forms his chief ground of exultation, events have proved him right even beyond his hopes; but the rational policy, for which he gave so much credit to the intentions of the great, never reached us at it's promised hour. He foresaw a great deal, and a great deal of what was extraordinary; but he did not foresee that princes and governments, selfish in the midst of all their improvements, would not go far enough; and that the people, hastily catching up the spirit which their superiors were afraid to pursue, would go too far. Europe has grown too wise for religious slavery; but it remains for some greater age, some still more potent philosophy, some millenium of Reason and Truth, to find it too wise for political slavery. In this little piece, however, we see the expectations as well as opinions of one of that celebrated body of men, which was supposed to have formed a combination against all the civil and religious governments of Europe; aud from this piece alone it is manifest, that they entertained no expectation-that they had formed even no supposition of the terrible convulsion that has since ploughed up the Continent. Nothing indeed but a sheer ignorance of the political opinions held by those individuals, an ignorance rendered careless and insolent by religious animosity, could have ventured upon such accusations.--Ref.]

CHAPTER

CHAPTER 1,

In the sixteenth century Erasmus wrote the eulogy of Folly; it is your wish that I should write the eulogy of Reason. * This Reason has not been welcomed among us till more than two hun dred years after her enemy, in many instances still later; and there are nations who have hitherto not even seen her. She was so utterly unknown to us in the time of our Druids, that she had not even a name in our language. Cæsar brought her neither to Switzerland, nor to Autun, nor to Paris, which was at that time a mere fishing-hamlet; and he himself knew little or nothing of her. He had such a multitude of great qualities, that Reason could find no room in the croud. This magnanimous madman left our wasted country to go and lay waste his own, and to receive twenty-three thrusts of the dagger from twenty-three other il. lustrious madmen, who were not half so good as himself.

Clodovich or Clovis, the Sicambrian, came about five hundred years after, to exterminate one half of our nation and to subdue the other. Nobody heard any thing about reason, either in his army or in our unhappy little villages, except it was about the reason of the strongest.

We remained stagnant for a long time in this miserable and de grading barbarism. Crusading did not extricate us :-of all fol lies, this was the most universal, the most atrocious, the most ridiculous, and the most wretched. To this remoter evil, succeed ed the abominable folly of civil and religious war, which exterminated so many people of the dialect of Oc and the dialect of Queil: Reason had no inclination to shew herself then. At that time Politics reigned at Rome: she had for ministers her two sisters, Imposition and Avarice, who sent Ignorance, Fanaticism, and Fury with their orders all over Europe, while Poverty fol

* The Voyage was supposed to be read before a literary academy. + Voltaire lets no opportunity pass of shewing his acquaintance with the pettiest or obscurest matters, but he does it with a sprightliness that dissipates all idea of pedantry. Oc and Queil, it is supposed, were a cant distinction between the dialects of two French districts south of the Loire. The former is still retained in the name of Languedoc, to the massacres in which country the author here alludes; and the latter is said to have anciently given the name of Languedoueil or Languedquil to the neighbouring district northward. The origin of this distinction is very obscure to the French themselves. The best conjecture seems to be, that the Gascons, who were of Gothic origin, pronounced the common word oui with a guttural harshness resembling ouic or oc, which provoked perhaps the ridicule of their po liter neighbours. See the Dictionnaire de Trevoux, p. 411, 412. Ed. 1774. Ref.