France by the jansenists of having been founded by St. Ignatius, expressly to destroy the love of God, warmly interfered at Rome in favour of the pure love of Fénélon. It happened to them as to M. de Langeais, who was pursued by his wife to the parliament of Paris, on account of his impotence, and by a girl to the parliament of Rennes, for having rendered her pregnant. He ought to have gained one of these two causes; he lost them both. Pure love, for which the jesuits made so much stir, was condemned at Rome, and they were always supposed at Paris to be against loving God. This opinion was so rooted in the public mind, that when, some years ago, an engraving was sold representing our Lord Jesus Christ dressed as a jesuit, a wit (apparently the Loustig of the jansenist party) wrote lines under the print, intimating that the ingenious fathers had habited. God like themselves, as the surest means of preventing the love of him:

Admirez l'artifice extrême

De ces peres ingénieux :

Ils vous ont habillé comme eux,

Mon Dieu, de peur qu'on ne vous aime.

At Rome, where such disputes never arise, and where they judge those that take place elsewhere, they were much annoyed with quarrels on pure love. Cardinal Carpegne, who was the reporter of the affairs of the archbishop of Cambray, was ill, and suffered much in a part which is not more spared in cardinals than in other men. His surgeon bandaged him with fine linen, which is called cambrai (cambric) in Italy as in many other places. The cardinal cried out, when the surgeon pleaded that it was the finest cambrai,"What! more cambrai still? Is it not enough to have one's head fatigued with it?" Happy the disputes which end thus! Happy would man be if all the disputers of this world, if heresiarchs, submitted with so much moderation, such magnanimous mildness, as the great archbishop of Cambray, who had no desire to be an heresiarch! I know not whether he was right in wishing God to be loved for himself alone,

but M. de Fénélon certainly deserved to be loved

thus.

In purely literary disputes there is often as much snarling and party-spirit as in more interesting quarrels. We should, if we could, renew the factions of the circus, which agitated the Roman empire. Two rival actresses are capable of dividing a town. Men have all a secret inclination for faction. If we cannot cabal, pursue, and destroy one another for crowns, tiaras, and mitres, we fall upon one another for a dancer or a musician. Rameau had a violent party against him, who would have exterminated him; and he knew nothing of it. I had a violent party against me, and I knew it well.

WHYS (THE).

WHY do we scarcely ever know the tenth part of the good we might do ?

It is clear, that if a nation inhabiting between the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the sea, had employed in ameliorating and embellishing the country a tenth part of the money it lost in the war of 1741, and one half of the men killed to no purpose in Germany, the state would have been more flourishing. Why was not this done? Why prefer a war, which Europe considered unjust, to the happy labours of peace, which would have produced the useful and the agreeable?

Why did Louis XIV, who had so much taste for great monuments, for new foundations, for the fine arts, lose eight hundred millions of our money in seeing his cuirassiers and his household swim across the Rhine; in not taking Amsterdam; in stirring up nearly all Europe against him? What could he not have done done with his eight hundred millions?

Why, when he reformed jurisprudence, did he reform it only by halves? Ought the numerous ancient customs, founded on the decretals and the canon law, to be still suffered to exist? Was it necessary that in the many causes called ecclesiastical, but which are in

reality civil, appeal should be made to the bishop; from the bishop to the metropolitan; from the metropolitan to the primate; and from the primate to Rome, ad apostolos,'? -as if the apostles had of old been the judges of the Gauls en dernier ressort'

Why, when Louis XIV was outrageously insulted by pope Alexander VII-Chigi-did he amuse himself with sending for a legate into France, to make frivolous excuses, and with having a pyramid erected at Rome, the inscriptions over which concerned none but the watchmen of Rome-a pyramid which he soon after had demolished? Had it not been better to have abolished for ever the simony by which every bishop and every abbot in Gaul pays to the Italian apostolic chamber the half of his revenue?

Why did the same monarch, when still more grievously insulted by Innocent XI-Odescalchi-who took the part of the prince of Orange against him, content himself with having four propositions maintained in his universities, and refuse the prayers of the whole magistracy, who solicited an eternal rupture with the court of Rome?

Why, in making the laws, was it forgotten to place all the provinces of the kingdom under one uniform law, leaving in existence a hundred different customs, and a hundred and forty-four different measures?

7

Why were the provinces of this kingdom still reputed foreign to one another, so that the merchandise of Normandy, on being conveyed by land into Brittany, pays duty, as if it came from England?

Why was not corn grown in Champagne allowed to be sold in Picardy without an express permission-as at Rome permission is obtained for three giuli to read forbidden books?

Why was France left so long under the reproach of venality? It seemed to be reserved for Louis XV to abolish the custom of buying the right to sit as judges over men, as you buy a country house, and making pleaders pay fees to the judge, as tickets for the play are paid for at the door.

Why institute in a kingdom the offices and dignities of* King's councillors:-Inspectors of drink

Inspectors of the shambles
Registrars of inventories
Comptrollers of fines
Inspectors of hogs

Peréquateur of tailles
Fuel-meters

Assistant-meters

Comptrollers of timber

Markers of timber

Coal-meters

Corn-sifters

Inspectors of calves

Comptrollers of poultry
Gaugers

Assayers of brandy

Assayers of beer

Rollers of casks

Unloaders of hay

Floor-clearers

Inspectors of ells

Inspectors of wigs?

These offices, in which doubtless consist the prosperity and splendour of an empire, formed numerous communities, which had each their syndics. This was all suppressed in 1719; but it was to make room for others of a similar kind, in the course of time.

Would it not be better to retrench all the pomp and luxury of greatness, than miserably to support them by means so low and shameful?

Why has a nation, often reduced to extremity and to some degree of humiliation, still supported itself in spite of all the efforts made to crush it? Because that nation is active and industrious. The people are like

The comptroller-general Pontchartrain, afterwards chancellor, was one of those who made the greatest use of these means of obtaining momentary support: it was he who said,-Providence watches over this kingdom; for no sooner has the king created an office, than God creates a blockhead to purchase it!—French note

the bees: you take from them wax and honey, and they forthwith set to work to produce more.

Why, in the half of Europe, do the girls pray to God in Latin, which they do not understand?

Why, in the sixteenth century, when nearly all the popes and bishops notoriously had bastards, did they persist in prohibiting the marriage of priests; while the Greek church has constantly ordained that curates should have wives?

Why in all antiquity was there no theological dispute, nor any people distinguished by a sectarian appellation? The Egyptians were not called Isiacs or Osiriacs. The people of Syria were not named Cybelians. The Cretans had a particular devotion for Jupiter, but were not called Jupiterians. The ancient Latins were much attached to Saturn, but there was not a village in all Latium called Saturnian. The disciples of the God of Truth, on the contrary, taking the title of their master himself, and calling themselves, like him, anointed,' declared, as soon as they were able, eternal war against all nations that were not ́ anointed,' and made war upon one another for upwards of fourteen hundred years, taking the names of Arians, Manicheans, Donatists, Hussites, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists, &c. Even the Jansenists and Molinists have experienced no mortification so acute as that of not having had it in their power to cut one another's throats in pitched battle. Whence is this?

Why does a bookseller publicly sell the Course of Atheism,' by the great Lucretius, printed for the dauphin, only son of Louis XIV, by order and under the direction of the wise duke of Montausier, and of the eloquent Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, and of the learned Huet, bishop of Avranches? There you find those sublime impieties, those admirable lines against Providence and the immortality of the soul, which pass from mouth to mouth, through all after ages :

England has not this consolation: the blockheads are born for the places which they prescriptively obtain by oligarchical arrangement; taking the place, and giving us nothing, or worse than nothing, in return.-T.