tributed to your killing some Turks. People say that, for a Christian, it is a work agreeable to God." But there are still finer specimens of his philanthropy. He had a special enmity against the Jews, because they seemed to furnish a standing proof of the truth of Christianity. Adverting to the fearful calamities exercised upon them in Spain in the fifteenth century, he says, "No one could pity them." Alluding to the exaggerated accounts of the crimes they perpetrated in the isle of Cyprus, during the reign of the emperor Trajan, he says, "they were punished, but not so severely as they deserved, since they still subsist." "It is said," he writes in another letter, "that the Rev. Father Maligridu has been broken on the wheel. God be praised!" "I have a letter saying that three Jesuits have at length been burned at Lisbon. This is very consolatory news.' So much for the tender mercies of infidelity. Who does not see here the germ of those crimes which polluted France during her great revolutionary convulsions at the close of last century.

The malignant, but cowardly and disingenuous Character of Voltaire. There is naturally little enthusiasm in Voltaire, except when Christianity is the subject of his pen. He is never cold when attacking the foundations of our faith. Here he applies himself in good earnest, like a man whose heart is in his work. Still in this exceptional case, the single passion which gives life and warmth to his enthusiasm is vanity.

"I am tired of hearing them say," he writes in 1761, "that but twelve men were required to found their religion. I will clearly show them that no more than one is required for its destruction." But deep as was his hatred to Christianity, he had not always the honesty to avow it. He would sometimes fall into a passion if a person accused him of infidelity. This, however, was only in keeping with his usual conduct. To disown some production of his pen, when it happened to be unpopular, was a common expedient. For example, he laboured for twenty years at a poem of a very improper nature, and at last he published it. The character of the work was such that Government took alarm, and threatened to prosecute its author. How did Voltaire contrive to escape the storm? In the easiest way imaginable. He declared the work was not his, and denounced all who asserted the contrary as base libellers. He speaks of the very idea that the work was written by him, as the crowning point of the infamous manoeuvres of his enemies. An unfortunate literary broker, believing the work to be the production of Voltaire, went and offered him fifty louis for the manuscript. Voltaire succeeded in getting the poor fellow put in prison for his supposed calumny. "In 1764, when his Philosophical Dictionary first began to be circulated in Paris, he wrote thus to D'Alembert: The moment there is any danger, I beseech of you to let me know, in order that I may disavow the work in all the public papers, with my ordinary candour and innocence.""

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So much for the candour and integrity of one who wished to be regarded as the regenerator of his age. It was quite in har

mony with such conduct for Voltaire to profess himself at times very religious. We should certainly not have expected, beforehand, to find this most enlightened sage among relic-hunters. When we are told that Voltaire had the pretended piety to solicit at the hands of the pope the hair shirt of St. Francis, and to obtain a dispensation for eating meat on Fridays, it is difficult to repress a smile of credulity. Yet so it was. We are justified by such facts in pronouncing his character to have been a tissue of falsehood. Truthfulness never gave him a moment's concern. When his assertions squared with facts, the agreement was, in a moral sense, accidental. He spoke the truth sometimes, undoubtedly, but then it was because it happened to suit him-not because he felt himself laid under any obligation to do so.

The overweening Self-conceit—the intolerable Vanity of Voltaire.

He is

Remember the prophet and precursor of that great reformation. Recal his person, so softly apparelled, his residence so delicately furnished. See him in his study. It is hung with the portraits and needlework of sovereigns. His portfolio is full of their correspondence. He is proud of nothing so much as of being a Gentleman of the Chamber. He delights to compare Louis the Fifteenth to Trajan. He will not bow to God, but he cringes to Madame de Pompadour. He receives a pension through her influence. enabled by her bounty to display the ostentation he delights in. He drives out every day in a gilt coach with four horses. He insists upon the inhabitants of Ferney, calling him "Monseigneur." He despises and tramples on "the canaille." The main offence of Christianity, in his eyes, is, that it is a religion of the people; the chief fault of the apostles, that they were not gentlemen. Yet this luxurious lord, who sapped all the authority that was above, and all the faith that was beneath him, could write about the tyranny of monarchs, and the evils of their sway. HON. G. SMYTHE.

The Voltaire Club, and the Art of Puffery.

If we wished for a mirror of the eighteenth century, we should find it in Voltaire: or, to choose a more appropriate figure, his life is a camera obscura in which we behold, surrounded with darkness, the forms and principles of the men who swayed in his time, the intellectual sceptre of France. With perfect candour we can say that the more we see of these men, and the better insight we obtain into their real character, the more heartily do we despise them. Condorcet, D'Alembert, Grimm, Diderot, Helvetius, Voltaire, and their colleagues of the Encyclopédie, were the chiefs of a conspiracy against everything which bore the name of religion, or could even remind men of the existence of God. In this unholy war, their tactics were as good as their principles, but no better. To strengthen their influence, they had to make themselves out great men. This was easily accomplished since they were all agreed. There was a tacit understanding that each should burn incense to all the rest, on condition that all the rest burnt incense to him. Their vanity was astounding.

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One is almost tempted to think that their impious hatred of the very name of God arose in part from a desire to secure all the worship of mankind for themselves. It is difficult to read without a blush the fulsome language in which they addressed each other. A specimen or two will suffice. "I was asked the other day,' writes Voltaire, 'what I thought of the Eloges of M. de Condorcet. I replied, by writing on the title-page, Justice, accuracy, learning, clearness, precision, taste, elegance, and nobleness.' Has he occasion to speak of Marmontel? Our age must have lain sweltering in the mud, had not the fifteenth chapter of Belisarius been written.' Has he to speak of La Harpe, on the announcement of a new piece from his pen Europe is waiting for Melanie,' says he. In his correspondence with D'Alembert, we find perpetually, My dear great man -my universal genius-adieu, thou man who art above thine age and country-adieu great man-adieu eagle,' and the like; the whole, to give higher relief to these magnificent expressions, amid familiarities and obscenities of all sorts." Only think of "the age" being rescued from ruin by a chapter of Marmontel, and all Europe standing in breathless expectation of a work by La Harpe! After this it was a poor compliment to D'Alembert, to say that he was above his age and country. Poor men their dust has long since mingled with its parent earth, and their very names are vanishing from the memory of mankind, while the inspired productions of the fishermen of Galilee are daily winning new converts to the cause of truth and righteousness. But, were they honest in thus flattering each other? According to our author, far from it. They did it, partly to create a fictitious reputation, which might be of service to the cause of infidelity, and partly to get themselves flattered. The compact was as hollow as it was profane.-Leisure Hour.

The Man-degrading Character of Unbelief.

By some it is denied, that "there is a spirit in man." The lofty distinction between mind and matter is confounded; and the organization of a clod is thought sufficient to give birth to reason and feeling; to all that dignifies the nature of man in comparison with the capacities of animals.

If a few allow that this frame, disorganized by death, shall live again by a resurrection, and thus only make death a parenthesis in our being, the majority take a wider sweep into speculative impiety, pluck off the crown of immortality which was placed upon the head of humanity by the Trinity in council; and doom him who in this life feels that he but begins to live, to live no more. Thus death is not the mere parenthesis, but the period of life: the volume closes at the preface; and vice exults at the news, that this portal of our present existence leads only to airy, empty nothingness.

Another stratagem of the philosophy which has no faith, is to persuade us that we are but atoms in the mass of beings; and that to suppose ourselves noticed by the Great Supreme, either in judgment or in mercy, is an unfounded, presumptuous conceit. With David there are persons who lead us to survey the ample cope of the fir

mament," the moon and the stars," which God hath ordained, and cry, not like him in adoring wonder at fact, but in the spirit of a base and grovelling unbelief,-" What is man, that " God "should be mindful of him?"

The word of God stands in illustrious and cheering contrast to all these chilling and vicious speculations. As to our moral condition, it lays us deep in the dust, and brings down every high imagination. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." In our unregenerate state we are represented as capable of no good, and incapable of no evil. But it never abases our nature itself. In this sacred record, this testimony of God, man is the head and chief of the system he inhabits, and the image of God. He is arrayed in immortality, and invested with high and even awful capacities both of good and evil. Nay, more; low as he may be reduced by sickness and poverty, his interest in his Maker's regards continues unbroken and unforfeited. So in the text, Job, poor, diseased, unpitied, and forsaken, sees the hand, yes, and the heart of God, in his trouble, and in a strain of devout gratitude exclaims, "What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him ?" WATSON.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

THIS is the most mighty, as well as most lofty, principle in the universe. You see its power in the individual, in the family, and in society, wherever it has free development. All the happiness of society and of families turns upon the extent to which this celestial principle has been developed among the individual members of which they consist. And yet, strange to say, there are many heads of families who, intent only on acting a dignified part, regard the indulgence of affection as an unpardonable weakness. "They will," as has been well observed, "return from a journey, and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendour of an iceberg, surrounded by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of these families without a heart. A father had better extinguish a boy's eyes than take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature's scenery, than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Cherish, then, your heart's best affections. Indulge in the warm and gushing emotions of filial, parental, and fraternal love. Think it not a weakness. God is love. Love God, everybody, and everything that is lovely. Teach your children to love; to love the rose; to love the robin; to love their parents; higher stillto love their God. Let it be the studied object of their domestic culture to give them warm hearts, ardent affections. Bind your whole family together by these strong cords. You cannot make them too strong. Religion is love-love to God, love to man.”

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THE FIRESIDE HAS ITS HEROES, AS WELL AS THE BATTLE-FIELD.

A writer in one of the leading journals of this great country, says, in allusion to the fearful cavalry charge at Balaklava, in the dreadful battle of the 25th of November last, that "The Roman citizen hardly rode more gallantly, more deliberately, into the fabled gulf in the Forum, than those devoted six hundred rushed to the place of their glorious doom. They went as fanatics seek the death that is to save them, and as heroes, have sought death in the thick of the fight, when they could no longer hope to conquer. But this was something more than individual prowess, or the enthusiasm of a crowd. There was organization and discipline; there was even experience and military skill, at least, enough to enable the chiefs to know the terrible nature of the deed. They saw, that in the execution of the order in their hands, they would have to run the gauntlet of batteries, ambuscades, reserves, enough for the destruction of an army, but they went with their eyes open, as if under a spell. It was a skilful, murderous, and powerful foe, that prepared the path for their destruction, and yet at that challenge, they went on and persevered to their doom. This was not war, as the French General said; it was a spectacle, and one worthy of the cloud of witnesses' that encompassed the performers. When our first horror and admiration have subsided, one feels a species of mystery in the deed, which interests us even more than the more important tidings that are now pouring in. What is the meaning of a spectacle so strange, so terrific, so disastrous, and yet so grand ?"

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So much for the heroes of the battle field, and never did gallant men more richly deserve such praise; but let us turn to the displays of more than mortal courage, which are sometimes witnessed in social life. We cannot do better than take the curate of St. Luke's, in the parish of St. James's, London, for our Mentor. "If a person," says the curate, were to start from the western end of Broad Street, and traversing its whole length on the south side, from west to east, to return as far as the brewery, and then going down Hopkins' Street, and up New Street, to end by walking through Pulteney Court, he would pass successively forty-five houses, of which only six, escaped without a death, during the recent outbreak of Cholera in that neighbourhood. According to a calculation based upon the late Census, these forty-five houses, contained a population of about 1000; out of that number, 103 perished by the pestilence!" a proportion of mortality, more than twice as great as that inflicted on the allies at Alma; and more than equal to that sustained by the Autocrat, in the affair at Balaklava. And it was a sudden infliction, which enveloped the people almost instantly in its full horrors. One half of the deaths occurred during

the first four days.

But the shower of iron and of fire at Balaklava, was not sustained more heroically by our troops, than the fell attacks of the invisible destroyer by the heroines, who during these awful days, watched by the side of the dead, and of the dying. There was no panic-terror;