witness, grounded on hearsay, made use only of the What right had they to pretend that he

word blood.

spoke of human blood?

Des-Adrets died without honour, in an ignominious old age, equally despised by both parties, much unlike that baron Des-Adrets-quantum mutatus ab illo ! who had been dreaded as far as Rome; for they were apprehensive there that he would fit out a fleet to pay the pope a visit.

With respect to his children, Brantome says, that the younger was the king's page, of whom Mr Allard relates a very bold action. "The king ordered him one day to call his chancellor; this page found him at dinner, and, having told him that the king would speak with him, and the chancellor having answered, that after he had dined he would go and receive the king's orders:' How,' said the page, ' will you defer one moment when the king commands you ? And thereupon he took one end of the table cloth, and threw all that was upon it to the ground. This story was told the king by the chancellor himself, and his majesty, laughing, said only, that the son would be as violent and passionate as the father.'"

6

He

Des Adrets was at Turin during the massacre on St Bartholomew's day, but soon returned into Dauphiné, and, seeing, the small account they made of him, he retired to la Frette, in the Graisivodan. accompanied la Valette, who was sent into Dauphiné against Lesdiguieres, in the year 1585. At last, being tired with so many fatigues, oppressed with age, and extremely disgusted with the world, he retired again to la Frette, where he lived a year with visible marks of his return into the bosom of the church. He died therefore, a Catholic, after having made his will, the second of February, 1586, and was buried in a chapel of the parochial church, which belonged to his house. The countenance of Des Adrets discovered the fierceness of his temper. Thuanus,

who observed him so nicely, at Grenoble in the year, 1572, that he was able to delineate him by memory, so as any one might know him again, gives this description of him: "He was now quite grey headed, but of a vigorous and robust old age; he had fierce, sparkling eyes, a sharp nose, a lean visage, but flushed; so that you would say, as was observed in P. Corn. Sylla, that his face was sprinkled with a mixture of dirt and blood; for the rest of his bodily constitution, it was altogether military."

Arts. BEAUMONT and SERBellone.

PASCAL,

(His Mathematical Aptitude.)

THE manner in which Pascal learned the mathematics seems to be miraculous. His father perceiving in him an extraordinary inclination to matters of reasoning, was afraid that the knowledge of the mathematics would hinder his learning the languages. He resolved therefore to keep him, as much as he could, from all notions of geometry; he locked up all the books that treated of it, and refrained even to speak of it in his presence, with his friends. Yet he could not refuse this general answer to the importunate curiosity of his son: geometry is a science which teaches the way of making exact figures, and of finding out the proportions between them;" but at the same time he forbade him to speak or think of it any more. Upon this bare opening of the matter, the child set himself to muse at his house of recreation, and to make figures upon the chamber-floor with charcoal. He sought out the proportions of figures, he himself made definitions and axioms, and then demonstrations, and he carried his enquiries so far, that he came to the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid; for his father having surprized him one day in the midst of his

figures, and having asked him what he was doing, he told him he was searching for such a thing, which was just that proposition of Euclid. He asked him afterwards, what made him think of this, and he answered, that it was because he had found out such another thing; and so going backward and using the names of bar and round, he came at length to the definitions and axioms he had formed himself.

M. le Pailleur learning what had been just said, advised M. Pascal, the father, who told him of it, no longer to constrain his son. M. Pascal followed this advice, and gave Euclid's Elements to the child, who understood it all by himself alone, without ever needing any explanation, and he improved in it at first so far, that afterwards he was constantly present at the conferences which were held every week, where all the most ingenious men of Paris were assembled, either to bring thither their own works, or to examine those of others. Young Pascal kept his place there, as well as any other, either for examining or writing books. He carried thither, as often as any man, new things, and sometimes it happened, that he discovered faults in the propositions that were examined, which the rest did not perceive. Yet he employed only his time of recreation in the study of geometry, because he was then learning the languages which his father taught him. But finding in those sciences the truth, which he loved in all things with an extreme passion, he made such progress in the little time he spent upon them, that at the age of sixteen years he wrote a treatise on conic sections, which in the judgment of the most learned was accounted one of the greatest efforts of genius that can be imagined. M. Des Cartes, who had been in Holland for a long time, having read it, and having heard some say, that it was written by a child of sixteen years of age, chose rather to believe, that M.

Pascal the father, was the true author of it, who

willingly robbed himself of that glory which justly belonged to him, to transfer it to his son, than to be persuaded, that a child of that age, was capable of writing a book with such strength of reason; and by this backwardness to believe a thing which was very true, he shewed that it was in effect incredible and prodigious. At the age of nineteen years he invented that admirable machine of Arithmetic, which was esteemed one of the most extraordinary things that was ever seen: and afterwards at the age of twentythree years, having seen the Toricellian experiment, he invented and tried a very great number of other new experiments. We must not forget an early proof he gave of his great genius. "When he was yet but eleven years old, at table, a certain person having struck accidentally a fine earthen dish with a knife, he took notice, that it made a great sound, but as soon as the hand was laid upon it, the sound ceased. He wanted at the same time to know the cause of it; and this experiment having led him to make many others about sounds, he observed so many things about them, that he wrote a tract upon that subject, which was judged very ingenious and solid."-Art. PASCAL.

PEACE.

(The Opinion of Erasmus on)

ERASMUS was a lover of peace, and knew the value of it. One of the finest dissertations that can be

seen is that of Erasmus upon the proverb, "Want of experience makes war sweet." He makes it appear therein that he had profoundly weighed the most important principles of reason and the gospel, and the most common causes of wars. He proves that the wickedness of some particular persons, and the folly of the people, are the source of almost every war, and that a thing so blamable in its causes, is commonly

followed by a very pernicious effect. He pretends that those, whose professions ought to lead them to dissuade from war, are the instigators of it. "If any one would examine this matter more thoroughly, he would find, that all the wars in Christendom have been owing either to folly or to malice. Some inexperienced young men, misled by the ill example of former reigns, inflamed by historical traditions, propagated from fool to fool, or hurried on by the persuasion of flatterers, the instigation of lawyers and divines, with the connivance, and perhaps, influence of bishops, have engaged themselves in wars, more out of rashness than malice, and, from so powerful a calamity, learn that war is an ill, which ought by all possible means to be avoided. Others precipitate

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themselves into wars from hatred, others from ambition, and some from a savageness of mind. Nor is our Iliad any thing else but a detail of the quarrels of foolish princes and their subjects." He goes on, laws, statutes, privileges, are all silenced by the din of arms; princes then find a hundred ways of attaining to arbitrary power; whence it happens that some of them cannot endure peace. Some there are whose sole motive to war is, that it gives them an opportunity of exercising their tyranny over their own subjects with the greater ease; for in times of peace, the authority of a senate, the dignity of magistrates, the love of the laws, are no small curb to a prince's will. But in war, the management of all affairs is left to the caprice of a few. Those who are in their prince's favour are raised, those in displeasure are trampled on; supplies are demanded in an arbitrary manner; in a word, it is then they find themselves monarchs in reality. The chiefs in the mean time juggle together, till the poor people are totally robbed of their liberty. Can it be imagined that men of such a disposition would not willingly lay hold of the first opportunity of war which presented itself?" This