the injustice of the proposed censure, the conformity of Arnauld's sentiments with Scripture and the Fathers, and, above all, the duplicity of the Jesuitical party, or rather parties who united in their enmity against him, are admirably exposed. In the next six letters, he lays open the false morality of the Jesuits, by the recital of an interview with one of their casuists, who teaches him the maxims and opinions of their most approved writers, in their own words, which he is represented as hearing with astonishment and surprise. The remarks he is represented to make in the course of the conversation, and his additional observations to his friend, contain a complete developement of their iniquity, with the keenest satire,-in language at once elegant, correct, and intelligible to every capacity.

In the last eight letters, six addressed to the Jesuits themselves as a body, and two to the Father Annat, he replies to the objections which were made to the satirical turn of the former, defends himself from the imputations of unfairness, and of heresy, and treats the subject not only with seriousness, but with the most irresistible force of argument. Voltaire has justly observed, that the finest comedies of Moliere have not more point than the former of the Provincial Letters, nor the best

discourses of Bossuet more sublimity than the latter.

This courageous and successful exposure of the Jesuits, who were then in the height of their power, rendered them not only odious, but ridiculous. They had always been hated by their enemies, but now they became despised and suspected by their friends; and a foundation was laid for that general contempt and detestation into which they afterward fell, and which a production merely serious, would not have brought about. Ridiculum acri fortius ac melius plerumque secat res.

The author of their disgrace, however, continued unknown, and this added to their mortification. They could neither cite him before the Pope, nor expel him from the Sorbonne. They wrote, they preached, they raved, they tried to laugh, to threaten, to scorn, but it was all in vain. They had scarcely a man of eminent talents among them at the time when they needed one most. Their declamations scarcely any body heard; their answers nobody read, while the Provincials were perused with avidity by readers of every class. "This

masterpiece of pleasantry and eloquence," says D'Alembert, "diverted and moved the indignation of all Europe at their expense. In vain they replied, that the greatest part of the

Theologists and Monks had taught, as well as them, the scandalous doctrine they were reproached with their answers, ill written, and full of gall, were not read, while every body knew the Provincial Letters by heart. This work is so much the more admirable, as Pascal, in composing it, appears to have theologised two things, which seemed not made for the theology of that time, language and pleasantry. The (French) Language was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and. of which it is impossible to endure the reading. In the Provincial Letters there is not a single word that is grown obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday. Another attempt, no less difficult, was to make people of wit and good folks laugh at the questions of sufficient grace and next power, and the decisions of the casuists; subjects very little favourable to pleasantry, or, which is worse still, susceptible only of pleasantries that are cold and uniform, and capable, at most, of amusing only Priests and Monks. It was necessary, for avoiding this rock, to have a de

licacy of taste so much the greater, as Pascal lived very retired, and far removed from the commerce of the world. He could never have

distinguished, but by the superiority and delicacy of his understanding, the kind of pleasantry which could alone be relished by good judges in this dry and insipid matter. He succeeded in it beyond all expression: several of his bon-mots have even become proverbial in our language; and the Provincial Letters will be ever regarded as a model of taste and style."-Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France.

The encomiums Voltaire has bestowed on this production, coincide with those of his friend D'Alembert. Both of them, however, blame Pascal for not equally ridiculing the doctrines of the Jansenists, whom Voltaire falsely represents as being competitors with the Jesuits for political interest and power. But Voltaire cared nothing for any religious opinions they were all to him alike unimportant, and subjects only for mirth. Jesuitism and Jansenism, Popery and Protestantism, things sacred and things profane, were all taxed to make sport for this prince of buffoons.

Voltaire also complains that Pascal has unjustly ascribed to the whole Society of Jesuits, the extravagant and wicked maxims of a few individuals; and that he has attributed to the Society a design, which Voltaire affirms, no

Society ever had, or ever can have; namely, that of corrupting mankind. But in reply to this, it must be observed, that the extracts Pascal has made from the Jesuits, in the Provincial Letters, are taken from a great number of their best and most approved writers; and particularly from the twenty-four whom they agreed to call, by way of eminence, the four and twenty elders; and that none of their books were printed without the authority of the superiors of their order. To corrupt mankind was not indeed the ultimate object of the Jesuits, but it was the way they adopted, and the only way they could consistently have adopted, to attain their ultimate object; which was to acquire an universal empire of influence over the whole inhabited world:-a design that could only be carried into execution by accommodating their principles to all descriptions of men. For a Society, calling themselves religious, to corrupt mankind, it is not necessary they should endeavour to convert men from virtue to vice; it is quite sufficient if they tolerate the vices to which they find them already addicted. And this the Jesuits did-purposely did; and to do it more effectually, they did it under the garb of outward austerity, and sanctimonious strictness; oppressing the little, and, at the same time,