them; but the universal theologian, that pretended that general providence does is to say, the true philosopher, sees that not immediately interfere with the affairs it is contradictory for nature to act on of particular individuals; that it governs particular or single views; that it is ridi- ≥ allˇby universal laws; that Thersites and dulous to imagine God occupying him- Achilles were equal before it, and that self in forcing one man in Europe to obey neither Chalcas nor Talthybius ever had him, while he leaves all the Asiatics un- versatile or congruous graces. tractable; to suppose him wrestling with another man who sometimes submits, and sometimes disarms him, and presenting to another a help, which is nevertheless useless. Such grace, considered in a true point of view, is an absurdity. The pro-nity. digious mass of books composed on this subject, is often an exercise of intellect, but always the shame of reason. SECTION II. According to these philosophers, the dog-grass and the oak, the mite and the elephant, man, the elements and stars, obey invariable laws, which God, as immutable, has established from all eter SECTION III. If any one came from the bottom of hell, to say to us on the part of the devil, -Gentlemen, I must inform you, that our sovereign lord has taken all mankind for his share, except a small number of people who live near the Vatican, and its dependencies;--we should all pray of this deputy to inscribe us on the list of the privileged; we should ask him, what we must do to obtain this grace. All nature, all that exists, is the grace of God; he bestows on all animals the grace of form and nourishment. The grace of growing seventy feet high is granted to the fir, and refused to the reed. He gives to man the grace of thinking, speaking, and knowing him; he grants me the grace of not understanding a word If he were to answer, You cannot merit of all that Tournelli, Molina, and Soto, it, my master has made the list from the &c., have written on the subject of grace. beginning of time; he has only listened to The first who has spoken of efficacious his own pleasure, he is continually occuand gratuitous grace is, without contra- pied in making an infinity of pots-dediction, Homer. This may be astonish-chambre, and some dozen gold vases; it ing to a bachelor of theology, who knows you are pots-de-chambre, so much the no author but St. Augustin; but, if he worse for you. read the third book of the Iliad, he will see that Paris says to his brother Hector: "If the gods have given you valour, and me beauty, do not reproach me with the presents of the beautiful Venus; no gift of the gods is despicable-it does not depend upon man to obtain them.” Nothing is more positive than this passage. If we further remark that Jupiter, according to his pleasure, gave the victory, sometimes to the Greeks, and at others to the Trojans, we shall see a new proof that all was done by grace from on high. Sarpedon and, afterwards, Patroclus are barbarians, to whom by turns grace has been wanting. There have been philosophers who were not of the opinion of Homer. They have At these fine words we should use our pitchforks, to send the ambassador back to his master. This is, however, what we have dared to impute to God-to the eternal and sovereignly good being! Man has been always reproached with having made God in his own image, Homer has been condemned for having transported all the vices and follies of earth into heaven. Plato, who has thus justly reproached him, has not hesitated to call him a blasphemer; while we, a hundred times more thoughtless, hardy, and blaspheming than this Greek, who did not understand conventional language, devoutly accuse God of a thing of which we have never accused the worst of men. It is said that the king of Morocco, Muley Ismael, had five hundred children. What would you say, if a marabout of Mount Atlas related to you that the wise and good Muley Ismael, dining with his family, at the close of the repast, spoke thus? I am Muley Ismael, who have begotten you for my glory, for I am very glorious. I love you very tenderly, I shelter you as a hen covers her chickens; I have decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco; and for my other dear children, to the number of four hundred and ninety-eight, I order that one half shall be tortured, and the other burnt, for I am the Lord Muley Ismael. You would assuredly take the marabout for the greatest fool that Africa ever produced; but if three or four thousand marabouts, well entertained at your expense, were to repeat to you the same story, what would you do? would you not be tempted to make them fast upon bread and water until they recovered their senses! You will allege that my indignation is reasonable enough against the supra-lapsarians, who believe that the King of Morocco only begot these five hundred children for his glory; and that he had always the intention to torture and burn them, except two, who were destined to reign. But I am wrong, you say, against the infra-lapsarians, who avow that it was not the first intention of Muley Ismael to cause his children to perish; but that, having foreseen that they would be of no use, he thought he should be acting as a good father in getting rid of them by torture and fire. trious and infallible theologians, no one has more respect for your divine decisions than myself; but if Paulus Emilius, Scipio, Cato, Cicero, Cæsar, Titus, Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius, revisited that Rome to which they formerly did such credit, you must confess that they would be a little astonished at your decisions on grace. What would they say if they heard speak of healthful grace according to St. Thomas, and medicinal grace ac{cording to Cajetan; of exterior and interior grace, of free, sanctifying, co-operating, actual, habitual, and efficacious grace, which is sometimes inefficacious; of the sufficing which sometimes does not suffice, of the versatile and congruous-would they really comprehend it more than you {and I? What need would these poor people have of your instructions? I fancy I hear. them say : Reverend fathers, you are terrible genii; we foolishly thought that the eternal being never conducted himself by particular laws like vile human beings, but by general laws, eternal like himself. No one among us ever imagined that God was like a senseless master, who gives an estate to one slave and refuses food to another; who orders one with a broken arm to knead a loaf, and a cripple to be his courier. All is grace on the part of God; he has given to the globe we inhabit the grace of form; to the trees, the grace of making them grow; to animals, that of feeding them; but will you say, because one wolf finds in his road a lamb for his supper, while another is dying with hunger, that God had given the first wolf a particular grace? Is it a preventive grace to cause one oak to grow in preference to another, Ah, supralapsarians, infralapsarians, in which sap is wanting? If throughout free-gracians, sufficers, efficacians, janse-nature all being is submitted to general nists, and molinists-become men, and no longer trouble the earth with such absurd and abominable fooleries. SECTION IV. laws, how can a single species of animals avoid conforming to them? Why should the absolute master of all be more occupied in directing the interior of a single man than in conducting the Holy consultors of modern Rome, illus-remainder of entire nature. By what caprice would he change something in the heart of a Courlander or a Biscayan, while he changes nothing in the general laws which he has imposed upon all the stars. and refuses it to this; that such as had not grace yesterday shall have it to-morrow;-repeat not this folly. God has made the universe, and creates not new winds to remove a few straws in one corner of the universe. Theologians are like the combatants in Homer, who believed that the gods were sometimes armed for and sometimes against them. Was not Homer considered a poet, he would be deemed a blasphemer. It is Marcus Aurelius that speaks, and not I; for God, who inspires you, has given me grace to believe all that you say, all that you have said, and all that you will say. GRAVE-GRAVITY. What a pity to suppose that he is continually making, defacing, and renewing our sentiments! And what audacity in us to believe ourselves excepted from all beings! And further, is it not only for those who confess that these changes are imagined? A Savoyard, a Bergamask, on Monday, will have the grace to have a mass said for twelve sous; on Tuesday he will go to the tavern and have no grace; on Wednesday he will have a co-operating grace, which will conduct him to confession, but he will not have the efficacious grace of perfect contrition; GRAVE, in its moral meaning, always on Thursday there will be a sufficing grace corresponds with its physical one; it exwhich will not suffice, as has been already presses something of weight: thus, we said. God will labour in the head of thissay-a person, an author, or a maxim of Bergamask-sometimes strongly, some-weight, for a grave person, author, or times weakly, while the rest of the earth will no way concern him! He will not deign to meddle with the interior of the Indians and Chinese! If you possess a grain of reason, reverend fathers, do you not find this system prodigiously ridiculous? Poor miserable man! behold this oak which rears its head to the clouds, and this reed which bends at its feet; you do not say that efficacious grace has been given to the oak, and with-held from the reed. Raise your eyes to heaven; see the eternal Demiourgos creating millions of worlds, which gravitate towards one another by general and eternal laws. See the same light reflected from the sun to Saturn, and from Saturn to us; and in this grant of so many stars, urged onward in their rapid course; in this general obedience of all nature, dare to believe, if you can, that God is occupied in giving a versatile grace to Sister Theresa, or a concomitant one to Sister Agnes. { maxim. The grave is to the serious what Tum pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem Dryden. A decorous air should be always preserved, but a grave air is becoming only Atom, to which another foolish atom in the function of some high and importhas said, that the Eternal has particular ant office, as for example, in council. laws for some atoms of thy neighbour-When gravity consists, as is frequently hood; that he gives his grace to that one the case, only in the exterior carriage, frivolous remarks are delivered with a pompous solemnity, exciting at once ridicule and aversion. We do not easily pardon those who wish to impose upon us by this air of consequence and selfsufficiency. The Duke of Rochefoucauld said, "Gravity is a mysteriousness of body assumed in order to conceal defects of mind." Without investigating whether the phrase "mysteriousness of body" is natural and judicious, it is sufficient to observe, that the remark is applicable to all who affect gravity, but not to those who merely exhibit a gravity suitable to the office they hold, the place where they are, or the business in which they are engaged. A grave author is one whose opinions relate to matters obviously disputable. We never apply the term to one who has written on subjects which admit no doubt or controversy. It would be ridiculous to call Euclid and Archimedes grave authors. Gravity is applicable to style. Livy and De Thou have written with gravity. The same observations cannot with propriety be applied to Tacitus, whose object was brevity, and who has displayed malignity; still less can it be applied to Cardinal de Retz, who sometimes infuses into his writings a misplaced gaiety, and sometimes even forgets decency. The grave style declines all sallies of wit or pleasantry: if it sometimes reaches the sublime, if on any particular occasion it is pathetic, it speedily returns to the didactic wisdom and noble simplicity which habitually characterise it: it possesses strength without daring. Its greatest difficulty is to avoid monotony. A grave affair (affaire), a grave case (cas), is used rather concerning a criminal than a civil process. A grave disease implies danger. GREAT-GREATNESS. Of the Meaning of these Words. GREAT is one of those words which are most frequently used in a moral sense, 66 and with the least consideration and judg ment. Great man, great genius, great captain, great philosopher, great poet; we mean by this language, one who has far exceeded ordinary limits." But, as it is difficult to define those limits, the epithet great is often applied to those who possess only mediocrity. This term is less vague and doubtful when applied to material than to moral subjects. We know what is meant by a great storm, a great misfortune, a great disease, great property, great misery. The term large (gros) is sometimes used with respect to subjects of the latter description, that is, material ones, as equivalent to great, but never with respect to moral subjects. We say large property for great wealth, but not a large captain for a great captain, or a large minister for a great minister. Great financier means a man eminently skilful in matters of national finance; but gros financier expresses merely a man who has become wealthy in the department of finance. The great man is more difficult to be defined than the great artist. In an art or profession, the man who has far distanced his rivals, or who has the reputation of having done so, is called great in his art, and appears, therefore, to have required merit of only one description, in order to obtain this eminence; but the great man must combine different species of merit. Gonzalva, surnamed the Great Captain, who observed that “the web of honour was coarsely woven," was never called a great man. It is more easy to name those to whom this high distinction should be refused, than those to whom it should be granted. The denomination appears to imply some great virtues. All agree that Cromwell was the most intrepid general, the most profound statesman, the man best qualified to conduct a party, a parliament, or an army, of his day; yet no writer ever gives him the title of great man; because, although he possessed great qualities, he possessed not a single great virtue. This title seems to fall to the lot only GREAT GREATNESS. of the small number of men who have Great (grand), by itself, expresses some 597 more extensive and uncertain. We give this title of grand seigneur (seignor) to the Turkish sultan, who assumes that of pacha, to which the expression grand 66 great man," seignor does not correspond. The expression "un grand," a is used in speaking of a man of distinguished birth, invested with dignities, but it is used only by the common people. A person of birth or consequence never applies the term to any one. As the words great lord (grand seigneur) are commonly applied to those who unite birth, dignity, and riches, poverty seems to deprive a man of the right to it, or at Charles the Fifth confirmed the privi- least to render it inappropriate or ridiculeges of grandeeship on sixteen principal lous. Accordingly, we say a poor gennoblemen. That emperor himself after-tleman, but not a poor grand seigneur. Great (grand) is different from mighty wards granted the same honours to many others. His successors, each in his turn, {(puissant). A man may at the same have added to the number. The Spanish time be both one and the other, but puis"Grand" grandees have long claimed to be consi-sant implies the possession of some office dered of equal rank and dignity with the of power and consequence. electors and the princes of Italy. At the indicates more show and less reality: court of France they have the same ho- the "puissant" commands, the "grand" possesses honours. nours as peers. The title of great has been always given, in France, to many of the chief officers of the crown-as great seneschal, great master, great chamberlain, great equerry, great pantler, great huntsman, great falconer, &c. These titles were given them to distinguish their pre-eminence above the persons serving in the same departments under them. The distinction is not given to the constable, nor to the chancellor, nor to the marshals, although the constable is the chief of all the household officers, the chancellor the second person in the state, and the marshal the second officer in the army. The reason obviously is, that they had no deputies, no vice-constables, vice-marshals, vice-chancellors, but officers under another denomination, who executed their orders, while the great steward, great chamberlain, and great equerry, &c. had stewards, chamberlains, and equerries, &c. under them. Great (grand) in connection with seig- neur, There is greatness (grandeur) in mind, in sentiments, in manners, and in con{duct. The expression is not used in speaking of persons in the middling classes of society, but only of those who, by their rank, are bound to show nobility and elevation. It is perfectly true, that a man of the most obscure birth and connections may have more greatness of mind than a monarch. But it would be inconsistent with the usual phraseology "that merchant or that farmer to say, acted greatly" (avec grandeur); unless, indeed, in very particular circumstances, and placing certain characters in striking opposition, we should, for example, make such a remark as the following:"The celebrated merchant who entertained Charles the Fifth in his own house, and lighted a fire of cinnamon wood with that prince's bond to him for fifty thousand ducats, displayed more greatness of soul than the emperor." The title of "greatness" (grandeur) was formerly given to various persons |