zettes, such as the Mercure Galant, until, in 1725, he published his epic poem, the "Henriade" (an odyssey in honor of Henry IV.), which placed him in the foremost rank among authors. It is said that on the strength of his renown he began to give himself airs, and to be a little too free in his witticisms upon persons in high places. Anyhow, he contrived deeply to offend a certain Chevalier de Rohan, who took the unmanly revenge of causing him to be waylaid at night and thrashed by footmen. Voltaire sent his aggressor a challenge; but the mean-spirited nobleman, after refusing to fight, exerted influence to get the poet flung into the Bastile, and once again Voltaire had to submit to six months' captivity. On his release he emigrated to England, where he spent three years, 1726-29. He said that France was no country for men who loved freedom; and he conceived an ardent attachment for the land in which he sought refuge, so that he never ceased to commend British institutions to the French as an example, and several times wrote, "If I could have had my choice of a birthplace, I would have chosen England."

On our shores Voltaire made the acquaintance of Collins, Tindal, Bolingbroke, and other celebrities, and was hospitably received in London society. It is singular that no mention of his visit is to be found in contemporary records. His intimacy with Bolingbroke procured for him the acquaintance of Pope, with whom he had before maintained a correspondence, and whom he was now in the habit of seeing. But, as Col. Hamley points out, "it is somewhat remarkable that, in all Pope's correspondence of these years with men to whom Voltaire was probably known, and who would certainly have received news of him with interest, there is no mention of his personal acquaintance with the French poet." Col. Hamley says that almost the only anecdote respecting Voltaire's sojourn in England is the well-known one of his visit to Congreve. When Voltaire told him of his desire to converse with so famous a dramatist, Congreve intimated that he preferred to be visited as a private gentleman. "If you were nothing but that," said Voltaire, "I should never have come to see you." But there is also a little known story connected with his efforts to master

the anomalies and intricacies of our English speech. In the "Reminiscences of Holland House" it is told of him that, while learning the English language, finding that the word "plague," with six letters, was monosyllabic, and "ague," with only the last four letters of "plague," dissyllabic, he expressed a wish that the "plague" might take one-half of the English language, and the "ague" the other.

To beguile his leisure in England, Voltaire indited some "Lettres Philosophiques (ou Anglaises)," which were published in the form of a periodical pamphlet, and amused the wits of the town vastly by their satire on French customs and court manners. However, having learned English and taken his fill of English praise, he thought he could venture back to his own country, and accordingly returned to Paris in 1730. He was lucky enough to make a big fortune immediately upon his arrival by a series of successful speculations in colonial companies; and at the same time he put his seal to his literary fame by his tragedy of "Zaïre" (1732) and by his History of Charles XII. of Sweden, which is justly regarded to this day as a model of style and impartial narrative. But now the turning-point in Voltaire's career was to come. He had learned the inexpediency of kicking against the powers that be; but the lesson had not cured him of his love for freedom and justice, so that he was suddenly impelled to publish a French addition of the "Lettres Philosophiques," which had excited so much amusement in London. The satire, however, proved too strong for the court of Louis XV. The Parliament of Paris ordered the book to be burned by the common hangmen, and Voltaire was obliged to fly to escape the pillory, besides a fresh confinement in the Bastile, which might have lasted for years. As he knew the clergy to be his chief detractors (he had made himself a bitter enemy of Bayer, Bishop of Mirepoix), he began to write of them henceforth in a tone of implacable raillery.

He went to live at Cirey, in Champagne; and now was commenced his long partnership of heart and mind with Mme. du Châtelet. One can do no more than allude here to Voltaire's relations with this gifted lady, who, whatever she may have been in

other respects, was, intellectually speaking, a congenial mate for a man of genius; for she sympathized deeply with all Voltaire's aspirations toward what was good and true, and spurred him on to assail abuses whereever he found them. In her society (173540) he wrote his history of the "Siècle de Louis XIV.," his "Essai sur les Moeurs," and "La Pucelle," a satire on Joan of Arc, -which was unworthy of his pen, and to which we shall presently refer, besides countless essays for the Encyclopédie, articles for the newspapers, and pamphlets on the current events of the day, in which he unceasingly attacked the Jesuits. Many of these effusions were anonymous, but the Jesuits knew well enough who had written them; and in 1740 it occurred to them that they would perhaps do well to try whether civility would not soften their indefatigable adversary. Voltaire had just paid a short visit to the court of Frederic the Great: he was invited to repair to Versailles, and was forthwith intrusted with a diplomatic mission to Berlin, which he conducted with signal success. Mme. de Pompadour, the king's mistress, then had him appointed "Historiographer of France" and "Gentle man of the Bed-chamber"; and she overruled the opposition which the king had twice offered to his entering the Académie Française. He was elected a member of that learned body in 1746, and for the next few years lived on terms of tolerable pleasantness with the court, thanks to Mme. de Pompadour, whom he cajoled with adroit flatteries.

**

But Louis XV. did not like Voltaire any more than he liked Rousseau; and, when the influence of the "Marquise" began to wane, the author of "Zaïre" was so much stung by the slights put upon him by servile courtiers, who affected to rank Crebillon's works above his, that he turned his back

*It is curious to note the mutual hatred and contempt of Rousseau and Voltaire. Rousseau said that Voltaire's talents, like his riches, only "nourished the depravity of his heart"; that he was "a badhearted buffoon"; that his soul was "vile and base"; that his influence would tend to "the ruin of manners, the loss of liberty"; that his alleged belief in God was a pretence; and that he had sincere faith only in the devil. Voltaire, for his part, pronounced Rousseau a fool, and a dangerous fool, an opinion on which the French Reign of Terror (Rousseau's books were on the table of the Jacobin Society) furnishes a significant and memorable comment. Rousseau's blood, he said, was composed of vitriol and arsenic. Rousseau was, in one word, "the Judas of the philosophical fraternity." Some things said by Voltaire of Rousseau are far too gross for quotation in these columns.

upon Versailles for good in 1749. In that year he suffered a great sorrow in the death of Madame du Châtelet, and it was chiefly this that induced him to accept Frederick the Great's invitation to go and settle at Berlin. Lodged in the Palace of Potsdam, he was to have 20,000 francs a year, and every honor he could wish, wrote his Prussian majesty, and, indeed, these promises were partially kept; but there were too many points of dissimilarity between the brilliant Frenchman and his royal host for them to agree long. Leaving Berlin in 1753, Voltaire travelled awhile, and then settled down on an estate which he bought at Ferney, on the confines of Switzerland. There he spent the last twenty years of his life, holding a sort of court, which was visited by the most distinguished men of all countries; and here he wrote his wondrous "Dictionnaire Philosophique." If it were worth while, it could be proved without difficulty that few men were ever so little of a republican as Voltaire. It was his passion all his life to be hand in glove with the great. He paraded his intimacy with dukes and marquises. He burned in the nostrils of Madame Pompadour the most exquisite incense of flattery. He never forgot that he held the office of Gentleman of the Chamber to Louis XV. His relations with Frederick the Great are an illustration of literary servility in all its phases.* Had the republic come in Voltaire's days, he would have been as much aghast at it as any irreconcilable old emigré who sought refuge in Austria or England. It is true that his was the most powerful hand that undermined the ancient régime. But he did society. He suuned himself in its light, and daz* Voltaire was himself the spoiled child of zied it by concentrating its rays. He was its idol, and he courted its idolatry. Far from breaking with authority, he loved the people as little as he loved the Sorbonne. The complaisant courtier of sovereigns and ministers, he could even stand and wait for smiles at the toilet of a French king's mistress, or prostrate himself in flattery before the Semiramis of the North; willing to shut his eyes on the sorrows of the masses, if the great would but favor men of letters. He it was, and not an English poet, that praised George I. of England as a sage and a hero who ruled the universe by his virtues; he could address Louis XV. as a Trajan; and, when the Fren h king took a prostitute for his associate, it was the aged Voltaire who extolled the monarch's mistress as an adorable Egeria. The populace which has its hands to live by,' - such are the words and such the sentiments of Voltaire, and, as he believed, of every land-owner, the people have neither time nor capacity for self-instruction, and they would die of hunger before becoming philosophers. It seems to me essential that there should be ignorant poor. Preach virtue to the lower classes: when the populace meddles with reasoning, all is lost."" - Bancroft.

not know what was coming, and would have been buried in the ruins himself had made.

It cannot be said that Voltaire was stinted of honors while he lived; for, though he was an exile from Paris, and indeed from France (having been proscribed by a decree dated 1753, which imputed treason to him for his relations with the Prussian Court), his fame was so wide-spread that princes, philosophers, and students went on pilgrimages to Ferney, in order to see him. His influence was also considerable; for he was enabled, by memoirs which he published, to secure the judicial rehabilitation of three unjustly executed men,-Calas, Sirven, and Lally Tallendal. At last, in 1788, Voltaire, yielding to pressing solicitations, resolved to revisit Paris. The decree of exile had not been cancelled; but, in face of the enthusiastic manifestations which greeted the great man at every stage of his journey, the government were afraid to enforce it, and Voltaire's progress through France was like the triumphal march of a conqueror.

In Paris the popular demonstrations were so cordial and noisy that they may be said to have killed the philosopher; for Voltaire never rallied from the emotion he under

went at the Théâtre Français during the performance of his tragedy of "Irène," when the public acclaimed him without ceasing during four hours, and insisted that the leading actress should go to his box and crown him with laurels. Voltaire died without the sacraments of the Church; and

Three years ago, when everybody was novel, "Robert Elsmere," there was widereading Mrs. Humphry Ward's powerful spread wonder whether out of it would grow any institution in London analogous to the "Brotherhood" so graphically described as founded by Elsmere among the London poor. The wonder is now satisfied: out of promising institution, not in all ways like the book there has grown a very useful and

the Elsmere "Brotherhood," but established for purposes partly religious (to educate the people in the principles of a more broad and rational Christianity) and partly philanthropic (to bring education, friendship, better social privileges, and every available kind of good into the lives and homes of the poor and neglected of that great city).

The leading spirit in the establishment of this new institution has been Mrs. Ward her

self; but she has been most efficiently aided by many others, particularly by the London

Unitarians. The name of the institution is

"University Hall," or the "University Hall Settlement." Its general character is much like that of the well-known Toynbee Hall Settlement founded eight or ten years ago the poor among of the Whitechapel re

His nephew, the Abbé Mignot, obtained leave to have him buried at the Abbey de Scellières, and it was not until 1791 that his remains were removed thence to the Pan

theon. When the Restoration came, the body of Voltaire was ignominiously cast out from the Pantheon, as that of Oliver Cromwell had been from Westminster Abbey. Paris refused his bones a permanent repose. In the month of May, 1814, in the secrecy of night, they were removed in a sack and buried in a deep hole, which had previously been dug for the purpose in a piece of waste ground outside the city, and all trace of this burial was obliterated.

Scarborough, Eng.

S. FLETCHER WILLIAMS.

Mrs. Ward has just printed an address in which she gives the history of the work done thus far by the new University Hall Settlement, and a statement of its needs and prospects for the future. The enterprise began, of course, in a small way, and naturally with some doubts and misgivings in the minds of its promoters. But, as time has gone on, the doubts and fears have one by one been dispelled; and now at the end of three years it is the feeling of all concerned that the movement may be pronounced a

success.

The location of University Hall is in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. Here a building was rented which affords accommodations

for public lectures and for classes of several kinds, besides rooms for some fifteen or twenty residents, young men desiring to devote more or less of their time to the philanthropic and educational work of the Hall. Here courses of lectures of one kind and another have been steadily in progress from the beginning.

But this is not all. This first centre of work has been supplemented by another. It was found that the original location, while well chosen for a certain part of the work to be carried on, did not bring the workers as immediately and closely into contact with the poorer classes of the people as was desirable. Accordingly, a little less than two years ago, a second building was rented in a very crowded and wretched section not far away,—namely, in Marchmont Street; and here it is (in what Mrs. Ward calls the "social annex") that the main social work among the poor has been done.

But the remarkable story can be best told in the words of Mrs. Ward. The following is from her address, condensed in some parts.

Says Mrs. Ward: "The work attempted naturally divides into two branches,-one connected with the endeavor to establish a centre for an improved religious teaching both of the advanced and of the popular sort, and the other with 'settlement' among the poor, such as Toynbee had already given us the pattern of.

"Let me first speak of our attempt at an improved teaching of the Bible and of the history of religion. It is to this end that a great part of the lecturing system of the Hall has been directed since we opened in 1890; and, incomplete as our lecture list must look to any one at all closely acquainted with the lie of this great field of knowledge, I may at least plead that we have been doing what no other educational centre in England has yet attempted. In a more or less systematic popular teaching of the Bible, under the light of criticism, yet with a view to religious reconstruction, we stand alone,— imperfect as we are.

"Let me run through our list of lectures. During these two years the Warden (Rev. P. H. Wicksteed) has given two long courses on Sunday afternoons on 'The Growth of a Nation's Religion'; that is to say, on Old

Testament History and Criticism. Prof. Carpenter of Oxford has lectured on the 'Theology of Isaiah'; M. Chavannes, a Leyden pastor and friend of Prof. Kuenen, on 'The Religious Value of the Old Testament'; and Mr. Moulton (well known in both England and America in connection with University Extension work), on 'The Literary Study of the Bible.' In the New Testament domain let me name first the wonderful series given by Dr. Martineau last year, extending, if I remember right, over some fourteen or fifteen lectures, and dealing nominally with the Gospel of Luke, but really with the whole group of problems suggested by the Synoptics, and winding up with one of the most eloquent vindications of the true spheres of faith and reason which have ever been spoken in our day. Sunday after Sunday the hall was crowded to the doors, and, I believe, by many to whom the line of thought followed in the lectures was of quite fresh help and service. And it will be long, indeed, before many of us forget the last Sunday,―the venerable form, the beautiful voice, the note of unconquerable hope as to the future of faith, and yet of unconquerable courage as to the rights of the mind! I, at least, shall always look back to that hour as to a moment of consecration for our young institution, disclosing to us at once its opportunities and its responsibilities.

"But, besides this memorable course, there has been much excellent work done. Prof. Estlin Carpenter, who has helped us throughout with that generous self-devotion he gives to everything which appeals to him in the great twin names of knowledge and religion, opened the week-day lecturing on the New Testament by a course on the Synoptics, to which Dr. Martineau's course was originally designed as a sequel. And since then Mr. Hargrove (Rev. Charles Hargrove of Leeds) has taken the Fourth Gospel; while last session, in place of the Warden's Sunday class in the Hexateuch, Mr. Jones, the librarian of Dr. Williams's library, took up the Synoptics again.

"Next year Mr. Hargrove has promised to return to us, and to take up the Fourth Gospel in greater detail. He will, perhaps, excuse me, if-without his leave-I dwell a little on these lectures of his which seem to me typical of what the Hall may do in

the future, both as evoking expert opinion and as teaching those who want to know. In the first place, no scholar can be better qualified to speak on this most pregnant and suggestive of all New Testament topics than he, a pupil of Dr. Westcott and Dr. Lightfoot, who has been for some fif teen or sixteen years constantly at work on the problems presented by the Johannine literature. A Cambridge man to begin with, and a friend of one of the most learned and most deeply mourned of all the recent sons of Cambridge, Mr. Henry Bradshaw, Mr. Hargrove spent nine years or so, after taking his degree, in the Church of Rome as a Dominican. Then, when the gradual development of thought obliged him to leave Rome, it was upon the Fourth Gospel and its interpretation that his adhesion to the Church of England turned. A student once more under Dr. Westcott and Dr. Lightfoot, he would gladly have adopted, if he could, the conclusions of teachers whom he reverenced and honored; but the verdict of the mind went otherwise. He has been now for some sixteen years in the Unitarian ministry, and during the whole of that time has been specially occupied as a scholar with the Fourth Gospel. We shall be doing work which peculiarly belongs to us at University Hall if we can induce him, and others like him, to put the material of such long and studious years into shape. Under the pressure of our great orthodox public, the room for such work in our midst, -work so ripe, free, and delicately balanced, and the audience it can hope to win, are not large; and, if the Hall can do something to increase them, we shall be rendering service to both knowledge and religion. Certainly, it would be difficult to find any English treatment of the subject more competent in point of knowledge, more attractive in handling, or more gently and scrupulously just than that which Mr. Hargrove pursued evening after evening last spring for our benefit-a small band of some thirty or forty listeners-in the lecture-room....

"I have dwelt a little upon this part of our work because these lectures of ours, such critical lectures as I have described, or such, again, as the course given last year by Mr. Armstrong on 'How Man may know God,' whether delivered to large or small audi

ences,-many of them indeed have been followed, week by week and session after session, by patient and serious workers, persons whom the Warden speaks of in a letter to me as 'genuine students and inquirers to whom the Hall is rendering a very valuable service,' -have for me an ideal meaning; and I shall never be satisfied until we have developed and extended them. The rapid expansion of our social work, which I have still to sketch, makes the work at Marchmont Hall (our social annex), the clubs, concerts, and popular lectures which go on there, very attractive to us all,—to committee, residents, and outside workers. But unless we guard and cherish this propagandist work of ours in the University Hall lecture-room, unless we remember that it is by the renewed and patient study of Christian fact alone that the new Christian spirit, the spirit which breathes through such lives and such learning as Dr. Martineau's or Prof. Green's or Arnold Toynbee's, can be saved from vagueness and led to pour itself into the new bottles which properly belong to such new wine, -unless we remember this, we shall fail in what we took to be our special task.

"But to turn to other parts of the scheme. In addition to the Biblical and religious lecturing, University Hall has become one of the best University Extension centres in London. Our original idea was to combine the study of religion with the study of social fact, and of literature in its more directly ethical and religious aspects. So that side by side with our Biblical course we have always had an economic or historical course, and very often a literary course. 'The lectures on social and economic subjects,' says the Warden, 'may be regarded with legitimate satisfaction, not to say pride. It has been the aim of the Committee not to propagate a set of social dogmas or to support any special school, and still less to ape impartiality by a colorless eclecticism or to convert the Hall into a debating club. Their aim has been to secure lecturers who would at least impress their hearers with the responsibilities of the student and with the magnitude of the problems of economics and of the interests they touch. They have fortunately been able to secure the services of more than one specialist of eminence; and these lectures, together with my own, have drawn together a small band of students