to the subject, and caused them to attack this wholly rigid ecclesiastical system, and along with it, incidentally, Christianity itself.' -vol. i. pp. 20-22. In the course of the seventeenth century, Hobbes had brought forward his new system of moral and political philosophy, in support of the military dominion of absolute power. This writer paved the way for the bold scoffers at all spiritual and temporal dominion, and in some sort, gave countenance to the demands of a free people against the pretensions and claims of their rulers. With him may be joined Harrington and Algernon Sidney, as political writers, who surpassed the boldest French authors of the eighteenth century. About the same time that the French school of licentious literature was extending its discipleship in England, appeared the new philosophy of Locke, whose doctrine of experience and observation, of reflection and calculation, as the sources of knowledge, and the means of applying it, came at length to pervade the whole system of external life, the rapid development of which, and the multiplication of wants and conveniences, were thereby not a little promoted. The universities and their teachers, indeed, were bitterly opposed to Locke, with whose system the orthodoxy of traditionary faith could be ill made to agree. In the year 1703 there was a meeting of the heads of the university of Oxford to censure the 'Essay on the Human Understanding, and to forbid the reading of it. Besides this, every one is aware of the fact alluded to by Pope in the 'Dunciad,' where he speaks of 'Each staunch polemic, stubborn as a rock, There were others, however, about this time, such as Boyle and Le Clerc, who ventured to go still further than Locke in the paths of doubt and scepticism. Boyle brought together every thing which the ancients and moderns had said against the prevailing system, and essayed to prove that the superstitions and tendencies to belief in miracles in his time, were absurd remnants of barbarism. The doctrines which had been discovered and developed in England, were cautiously introduced by Boyle and Le Clerc among the Dutch and French, who at length received and universally disseminated them. In the earlier half of the seventeenth century, Lord Herbert of Cherbury had made a bold attach upon Christianity; and Shaftesbury directed his wit and satire against the hierarchy decrees of councils and confessions of faith of the clergy. As writers to be classed in the same category, and either coeval with, or not long subsequent to Shaftesbury, we may mention Collins, Tindal, Chubb, Mandeville. and Morgan. Toland began his attack upon Christianity at a rather earlier period. His most celebrated work, 'Christianity not mysterious,' appeared in 1696, for which he was obliged to flee to Dublin, where he was almost as much persecuted as in England. Of the injury sometimes inflicted on the cause he wish to support, by noticing ill-founded and vulgar assaults, a striking instance is afforded in the case of Toland: 'Toland,' observes Schlosser, 'conducted himself very unskilfully; he was often vulgar, and gave way so completely to his humour and his momentary impulses, that his attack would have passed over altogether unheeded, if a number of other men, for the most part of good reputation, had not at the same time entered the lists against a theology and philosophy which had become antiquated, and which was nevertheless violently forced upon every man by wicked governments and heartless aristocracies, in order to hold the people in dependence by means of the hierarchies and sophists. * * Huet, Mosheim, and other learned and pious men, by their defence of Christianity against his attacks, first directed the attention of all those to Toland, whom the spirit of the age excited against Christianity.'-vol. i. p. 24. Our author bestows several sections of his first chapter on the English writers we have named, as well as on Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot, Pope, Swift, Addison, Steele, &c. That on Bolingbroke is an able and discriminating essay, so far at least as it professes to sum up his literary and philosophical character. We agree with Schlosser, that 'a solid work upon the life and writings of Bolingbroke, by an Englishman, is yet a great desideration.' The Memoirs by Cooke are altogether unsatisfactory even as regards his political life, and the theme is yet open to some writer of competent talents and impartiality. Having treated of the literature and philosophy of England down to a certain period in the eighteenth century, our author devotes his second chapter to the literary cultivation and intellectual life of the French, or rather the mental culture and improvement of the higher classes of Europe, from 1715 till something beyond the half of the century. The first name selected for discussion, as belonging to this era, is that of Voltaire, who brought into literature the tone and mental energy of the highly eulogised and clever societies of the last days of Louis XIV. It is well known that Voltaire and his associates, in the early times of their career, played a double game, and our author fails not to notice it. There was an esotoric and an exoteric doctrine; each member of their society played two characters; the one within the circle, for his own pleasure; the other outwardly, and for the people. In secret, they wrote abusive songs against the king and nobility; in public, they composed poems in praise of Louis, and in celebration of the feast of the Virgin Mary. It never occurred to any one, that the wantonness and the scorn of polite and fashionable loungers would ever reach the oppressed and labouring people, who were held in bonds of degradation and slavery by the priesthood, the public officials and nobility; it seemed beyond the hope or possibility of deliverance from temporal and spiritual tyranny; and therefore these people did homage in private to the very things which they publicly persecuted with unrelenting severity.' The enlightenment which Voltaire announced, as well as that which Bolingbroke and his friends advocated in England, was wanting in the solid foundations which secure an edifice against overthrow. Every reformation intended to be real, firm, and lasting, must be founded upon severe and strict morality. History as well as human nature furnishes abundant evidence, that without morality and a high zeal for truth, all attacks upon existing systems can only lead to mischief. Nothing can be effected for reformation when the conduct and principles of the reformers themselves are not free from selfishness, and from the empty vanity of mean or courtly souls. Voltaire came to England in 1726, and during his temporary sojourn here till 1729, the brothers Walpole, one of whom had completely gone over to the French school, were at the head of national affairs. During his stay in England and immediately afterwards, he reached the very summit of his European renown, and became the national idol of the French. That fact is, that his journey to England was attended with consequences scarcely dreamt of by the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of France. In the latter country there was a want of all that legal order which constitutes the rightful guardian of the middle and lower classes against the brutal insolence and oppression of the great. As appears from his 'English Letters,' Voltaire fled from a country in which despotism put down the law, and superstition superseded religion, and took refuge for a time in a land of freedom. The times seemed ripe for such a renovator as this, and he came forth to fulfil his mission of destructiveness. We are told, that the pious cardinal Fleury experienced to his horror what Louis the Fifteenth afterwards felt and could never pardon,that, notwithstanding, and in spite of all his state-prisons and Jesuits, his hired mercenaries and officials, an organ of the popular voice and of the spirit of the age had sounded; before which, sooner or later, the monarchy and the court would be obliged to give way. By the publication of his 'English Letters,' Voltaire introduced into France the religious philosophy, the literature, and views of life entertained at that time in our own country, precisely in the same manner as it is now sought to introduce there the opposite views from Germany; and they enjoyed the readier reception, and excited the greater attention, because Montesquieu had already awakened the people, and turned their regards from the system prevailing in France, to a mania for England. Montesquieu was not unconscious of the oppression and misery of the last years of Louis the Fourteenth's reign; and with a strong feeling of disapprobation, had communicated his thoughts to his contemporaries. Subsequently, he witnessed the times of the regency and of its demoralization; and wishing to speak his mind to the people, he chose the form of the novel as most suitable to his genius. Voltaire had directed his poetical satire against superstition and the priesthood; Montesquieu took the more political side of the subject, and kept in view ministerial despotism, and want of respect for the law and legal forms. We are now alluding to his 'Persian Letters,' which may be regarded in some respects as more important than any writing of Voltaire's, inasmuch as 'they enter into almost all the relations of life, and expose before the eyes of the people everything which was absurd or unnatural in their institutions, which the people were accustomed to admire, and the courts and governments to praise, as the highest perfection of fortune and wisdom. Before the appearance of the 'Persian Letters,' no one had ventured to blame the church and the government in prose, (satirical poetry had been the usual channel,)-and his work, therefore, assumed a special importance, and his boldness excited astonishment. He therein depicts the influence of the female sex, and prepares his readers for his new theory deduced from the example of England, of the true nature of modern constitutions, the theory of a religion without a priesthood, and of a monarchy without bayonets. ' In some of these letters', observes Schlosser, ' in which the principles of administration and the relation of luxury and industry to civilization, are discussed, the germs of that philosophy are visible which has since pervaded the whole of the French people; but which had at first slowly and unobserved given an entirely new colour to literature. This is the most remarkable feature in the activity and influence of Voltaire and of Montesquieu. These two, who were the greatest writers of the nation, both availed themselves of poetry and morals, of the forms of confidential correspondence and songs, in order to place in a clear light, and to hold up to the public contempt, the meanness and degradation of courtly, flattering, and mercenary writers. Those alone can judge how important a service this was, who are well acquainted with the condition of literature at that time.'-vol. i. p. 133. We pass by those writers in the French language, who, in the first half of the eighteenth century, were protected by Frederic the Second, as well as the 'learned Coteries in Paris, the French theatre, and the early German philosophers and writers, to each of which topics our author has devoted a section of his work, and arrive at some of the manifestations of English and French literature and philosophy during the latter half of the century. After a brief notice of Lord Chesterfield, the general character of whose writings is well known, we are led to the historian Hume, who was guided in the composition of his great work, according to his own express declaration, by the judgment and taste of his Parisian friends, the exclusive so-called philosophers. 'It will be readily seen besides, that this age required a species of history quite different from the former; and that after Voltaire and Bolingbroke and Montesquieu had spread the light of a sounder criticism, or bold negation, over the dead masses of historical knowledge, -dialectics, rhetoric, and sophistry, must necessarily be called in to aid, if the distinguished public which had been instructed by their writings was to be addressed.' If, however, we judge from the incredibly small circulation which his work at first obtained, we must be led to the conclusion that Hume was somewhat too early, at least in England, with a historical work, manifesting such bold scepticism, such keen criticism, and the art of using facts for the purpose of building up a particular system. To account for this limited circulation, it is more than probable, that the principles of the new philosophy which the work promulgated, had not yet much descended below the literary aristocratic coteries in England, of whom Hume, no less than his brother philosophers, Voltaire and Montesquieu, may be regarded as the leader and the organ. Of the two latter, it may indeed be said, that they were at the head of the history of the formulas of wisdom, which regulated the life of the distinguished and educated society of Europe. Montesquieu's journey to England, and his close intimacy with Englishmen, produced a considerable influence upon his writings posterior to the publication of the 'Persian Letters,' and especially upon his 'Spirit of Laws.' With regard to this latter work, some peculiar circumstances attending the second edition are worth mentioning. It appears that all who were influenced by an enlightened patriotism, and were concerned for the improvement of the condition of their countrymen, whether English, French, or Italians, assisted and supported the author by |