tioner, nor inundate the earth with blood to support unintelligible sophisms?-that in which an ambiguous expression, a play upon words, and two or three supposed charters, should not suffice to make a sovereign and a God, of a priest who is often incestuous, a murderer and a poisoner?-which should not make kings subject to this priest?-that which should teach only the adoration of one God, justice, tolerance, and humanity?

SIXTH QUESTION.

It has been said, that the religion of the Gentiles was absurd in many points, contradictory, and pernicious : but have there not been imputed to it more harm than it ever did, and more absurdities than it ever preached?

Show me in all antiquity a temple dedicated to Leda lying with a swan, or Europa with a bull. Was there ever a sermon preached at Athens or at Rome, to persuade the young women to cohabit with their poultry? Are the fables collected and adorned by Ovid religious? Are they not like our Golden Legend, our Flower of the Saints? If some brahmin or dervish were to come and object to our story of St. Mary the Egyptian, who not having wherewith to pay the sailors who conveyed her to Egypt, gave to each of them instead of money what are called 'favours,' we should say to the brahmin-Reverend father, you are mistaken; our religion is not the Golden Legend.

We reproach the ancients with their oracles, and prodigies; if they could return to this world, and the miracles of our Lady of Loretto and our Lady of Ephesus could be counted, in whose favour would be the balance?

Human sacrifices were established among almost every people, but very rarely put in practice. Among the Jews, only Jeptha's daughter and king Agag were immolated; for Isaac and Jonathan were not. Among the Greeks, the story of Iphigenia is not well authenticated; and human sacrifices were very rare among the

ancient Romans. In short, the religion of the pagans caused very little blood to be shed, while ours has deluged the earth. Ours is doubtless the only good, the only true one; but we have done so much harm by its means, that when we speak of others we should be modest.

SEVENTH QUESTION.

If a man would persuade foreigners, or his own countrymen, of the truth of his religion, should he not go about it with the most insinuating mildness and the most engaging moderation? If he begins with telling them that what he announces is demonstrated, he will find a multitude of persons incredulous; if he ventures to tell them that they reject his doctrine only inasmuch as it condemns their passions; that their hearts have corrupted their minds; that their reasoning is only false and proud, he disgusts them-he incenses them against himself-he himself ruins what he would fain establish.

If the religion he announces be true, will violence and insolence render it more so? Do you put yourself in a rage, when you say that it is necessary to be mild, patient, beneficent, just, and to fulfil all the duties of society? No; because every one is of your own opinion. Why then do you abuse your brother when preaching to him a mysterious system of metaphysics? Because his sense irritates your self-love. You are so proud as to require your brother to submit his intelligence to yours; humbled pride produces the wrath; it has no other source. A man who has received twenty wounds in a battle, does not fly into a passion ; but a doctor wounded by the refusal of your assent, becomes furious and implacable.

EIGHTH QUESTION.

Must we not carefully distinguish the religion of the state from theological religion? The religion of the state requires that the imans keep registers of the circumcised, the vicars or pastors registers of the baptized; that there be mosques, churches, temples, days

consecrated to rest and worship, rites established by law; that the ministers of those rites enjoy consideration without power; that they teach good morals to the people, and that the ministers of the law watch over the morals of the ministers of the temples. This religion of the state cannot at any time cause any disturbance.

It is otherwise with theological religion: this is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances; it is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. A bonze asserts that Fo is a God, that he was foretold by fakirs, that he was born of a white elephant, and that every bonze can by certain grimaces make a Fo. A talepoin says, that Fo was a holy man, whose doctrine the bonzes have corrupted, and that Sommona-Codom is the true God. After a thousand arguments and contradictions, the two factions agree to refer the question to the dalai-lama, who resides three hundred leagues off, and who is not only immortal, but also infallible. The two factions. send to him a solemn deputation; and the dalai-lama begins, according to his divine custom, by distributing among them the contents of his close-stool.

The two rival sects at first receive them with equal reverence; have them dried in the sun, and enchase them in little chaplets which they kiss devoutly; but no sooner have the dalai-lama and his council pronounced in the name of Fo, than the condemned party throw their chaplets in the vice-god's face, and would fain give him a sound thrashing. The other party deend their lama, from whom they have received good ands; both fight a long time; and when at last they re tired of mutual extermination, assassination, and oisoning, they grossly abuse each other, while the lalai-lama laughs, and still distributes his excrement o whomsoever is desirous of receiving the good father lama's precious favours.

RHYME.

RHYME was probably invented to assist the memory, and to regulate at the same time the song and the

dance. The return of the same sounds served to bring easily and readily to the recollection the intermediate words between the two rhymes. Those rhymes were a guide at once to the singer and the dancer; they indicated the measure. Accordingly, in every country, verse was the language of the gods.

We may therefore class it among the list of probable, that is, of uncertain opinions, that rhyme was at first a religious appendage or ceremony; for, after all, it is possible that verses and songs might be addressed by a man to his mistress before they were addressed by him to his deities; and highly impassioned lovers indeed will say that the cases are precisely the same.

A rabbi who gave me a general view of the Hebrew language, which I never was able to learn, once recited to me a number of rhymed psalms, which he said we had most wretchedly translated. I remember two verses, which are as follows:

*Hibbitu clare vena haru

Ulph nehem al jeck pharu.

"They looked upon him and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed."

No rhyme can be richer than that of those two verses; and this being admitted, I reason in the following manner :—

The Jews, who spoke a jargon half Phenician and half Syriac, rhymed; therefore the great and powerful nations, under whom they were in slavery, rhymed also. We cannot help believing, that the Jews who, as we have frequently observed, adopted almost everything from their neighbours, adopted from them also rhyme.

All the orientals rhyme; they are steady and constant in their usages. They dress now as they have dressed for the long series of five or six thousand years. We may therefore well believe that they have rhymed for a period of equal duration.

Some of the learned contend, that the Greeks began with rhyming, whether in honour of their gods, their heroes, or their mistresses; but, that afterwards becoming more sensible of the harmony of their language,

*Psalm xxxiv. 5.

having acquired a more accurate knowledge of prosody, and refined upon melody, they made those exquisite verses without rhyme which have been transmitted down to us, and which the Latins imitated and very often surpassed.

As for us, the miserable descendants of Goths, Vandals, Huns, Gauls, Franks, and Burgundians,-barbarians who are incapable of attaining either the Greek or Latin melody,-we are compelled to rhyme. Blank verse, among all modern nations, is nothing but prose without any measure; it is distinguished from ordinary prose only by a certain number of equal and monotonous syllables, which it has been agreed to denominate < verse.

We have remarked elsewhere, that those who have written in blank verse have done so only because they were incapable of rhyming. Blank verse originated in an incapacity to overcome difficulty, and in a desire to come to an end sooner.

We have remarked, that Ariosto has made a series of forty-eight thousand rhymes without producing either disgust or weariness in a single reader. We have observed how French poetry, in rhyme, sweeps all obstacles before it, and that pleasure arose even from the very obstacles themselves. We have been always convinced, that rhyme was necessary for the ears, not for the eyes; and we have explained our opinions, if not with judgment and success, at least without dictation and arrogance.

But we acknowledge, that on the receipt at mount Krapak of the late dreadful literary intelligence from Paris, our former moderation completely abandons us. We understand, that there exists a rising sect of barbarians, whose doctrine is, that no tragedy should henceforward be ever written but in prose. This last blow alone was wanting, in addition to all our previous afflictions. It is the abomination of desolation in the temple of the muses. We can very easily conceive, that after Corneille had turned into verse the "Imitation of Jesus Christ," some sarcastic wag might menace the public with the acting of a tragedy in prose, by Floridor and