i

behold the faggots which are to consume your body to ashes."

The melancholy impressions made by this article would have been somewhat alleviated, had it been in the editor's power to relate with truth, that the vile Capitoul, a Franciscan, and two or three White Penitents, had been hanged.

Where and when have I seen, and by what artist, a painting in which a groupe of persons are exhibited as contemplating a picture of the tragedy which forms the subject of my present article, and exemplifying its effect, on different tempers and dispositions?

The man of violent passions, with fury in his countenance, and an extended arm, is pouring forth execrations against the remorseless bigots; another gentleman of exquisite sensibility is silently wiping the tear from his cheek; a connoisseur seems to be admiring the painter's performance, without being apparently affected by the subject of it; and a jolly fellow, who appears to have understood and practised the pleasures of the table, sits undisturbed before the picture, buried in fat, indolence, and stupidity.

Various have been the efforts of human wisdom to correct the excesses of intolerant supersti

tion ; in many instances these efforts have been successful, but like à race horse, pushing for the goal, they have often been carried further than was intended.

The zealous, and perhaps at first and before his passions are inflamed the well-meaning Catholic, who would punish a man's body for the salvation of his soul, ultimately degenerates into that bloodiest and most cruel of all tyrannies, a tyranny over the mind.

On the contrary, the liberalminded man of feeling and philanthrophy, unless guided by prudence and expediency, becomes a latitudinarian, and a sceptic, and would ultimately introduce the most irrational and unfeeling of all despotisms.

The following letter addressed to Mr. Voltaire from the late empress of Russia, during his spirited conduct in favour of the family of Calas, must have highly gratified that ingenious French

man :

SIR,

The brightness of the northern star is a mere Aurora Borealis; but the, private man, who is an advocate for the rights of nature, and a defender of oppressed innocence, will immortalize his name.

You have attacked the great enemies

enemies of true religion and science, fanaticism, ignorance, and chicane may your victory be complete.

You desire some small relief for the family; I should be better pleased if my inclosed bill of exchange could pass unknown; but if you think my name, unharmonious as it is, may be of I use to the cause, I leave it to your discretion.

CATHARINE.

It is a melancholy truth, that while this disgraceful tragedy was performing, another instance of superstitious intolerance, and like this, ending in the death of two innocent persons, was exhibited in the same province at Castres, little more than forty miles from Thoulouse.

Adjoining to that city, on a little farm which they owned and occupied themselves, lived the family of Sirven, consisting of the farmer, his wife, and three daughters, of whom one was married and pregnant, her husband by his employment being called to a distant province.

Although of the Protestant religion, the youngest of his single daughters had been taken by force from her father's house, put into a convent and told that she must conform to the Catholic faith, which was the only true religion.

Finding the poor girl naturally attached to the tenets in which she had been educated, her instructors told her it was the high road to hell, and insisting that it was necessary to punish the body to save the soul, they taught her their better catechism, whipped her severely, and shut her up in a solitary cell.

In a few weeks, in consequence of their persevering in what they called wholesome discipline, the poor creature lost her senses, and escaping from her keepers, threw herself headlong into a well.

It was immediately insisted on by the Catholics, and passed currrent, that her own family had destroyed her, it being an established rule with Protestants to murder every one who is suspected of any inclination to the Catholic faith.

The populace was inflamed, Sirven did not dare to make his appearance, and having heard of the transaction at Thoulouse, was anxious to avoid similar treatment, as his house had been twice attacked.

Expecting to be torn to pieces, he took an opportunity, when his infuriate enemies were retired to rest, from their persecutions, to leave his house with his family.

At the dead of night, on foot, in the severity of winter, and with a deep snow on the ground, , they

they fled from their savage neighbours, and took the road to Switzerland, though scarcely knowing whither to go. To add to Sirven's afflictions, his daughter was delivered of a dead child during the journey, evidently killed by the over-fatigue and horrors of its parent; urged forward by their remorseless hunters, the frantic mother could not be persuaded that her child was dead, and travelled on, closely embracing the clay-cold infant

in her arms.

It is not easy to describe the exasperated fury of the zealots at Castres, when they found their intended victims had escaped, they reproached each other for not having kept a guard during the night; to prove what they wished to do, the whole family were burnt in effigy; a process was issued against Sirven, his goods seized, his property confiscated, and the memory of an industrious, harmless, and much injured family, loaded with infamy and reproach.

The fugitives travelling by night, and concealing themselves in the day time, fortunately escaped the tygers, but did not consider themselves as safe till they reached Switzerland.

In another respect they were not less fortunate; the benevolent friend and advocate of the family of Calas heard of Sirven's misfortunes, and powerfully in

terfered in their favour, but was shocked on being told that their cause should be re-heard, and that possibly they might be pardoned; a virtuous, decent, innocent family reduced to beggary and ruin, with two individuals of it murdered, for so in fact it was, is told it may be pardoned!

But the active benevolence of Voltaire did not rest satisfied. with this answer, which seemed to be adding injury to insult; Mr. de Beaumont, who nobly and successfully defended the Calas family, also strongly interested himself, and tardy justice ultimately took place.

Perhaps the editor of this collection may be asked, as he formerly was, why introduce stale narratives of popish persecution at a period when the Catholics, at least the majority of them, are tolerant, liberal, and disavow many of the obnoxious, political and ecclesiastical maxims of the old superstition?

My reply then was and now is, that from the persons so described there is nothing to fear, but with the majority of the lower classes the case is far otherwise; the seeds of bigotry, intolerance, and rancour, are deeply sown, and if the emancipation so much talked of and so ardently desired in our sister kingdom was granted, I have not a doubt, that in a few years a sub

a subversion of protestant power, a revolution, and if we may judge by the late rebellion, another massacre would be the consequence.

At the same time I am convinced, that the proceedings of the petitioners arise from the best, the purest, and the most patriotic motives; honest themselves, they think better of their fellow-men than they deserve; differing widely in opinion with me as to the effects of the object of their hopes, they expect from a gratification of them the happiest consequences.

of

But the experience and wisdom ages is against them, as well as expediency and the present perverted and debauched state of men's minds.

Independently of the proposed liberation being expressly contrary to the king's coronation oath, no sincere, hearty, honest Catholic can in his heart agree, that professors and preachers of the true religion of the holy Catholic church should be subordinate in power, profit and emolument to hereticks, hateful to God and man, particularly when the hereticks are the minority, in the proportion I believe of one to fifteen.

brated theologian and eminent divine with harshness and indecorum, and have received a long, an anonymous, but a well written letter on the subject, from the country in which his doctrines first predominated.

I am told by the writer, and in latin which would not have discredited the correct and fluent pen of Calvin, whose Institutes and the dedication of them exhibit some of the best modern Latin I ever perused; I am told that the Geneva reformer, when establishing the everlasting foundations of his faith, knew well what he was doing, and proved himself not only an orthodox theologist treading closely in the footsteps of the evangelists, but a rel philosopher, well acquainted with the deep-seated motives of action, master of the human heart, and weil skilled in conducting that wild beast called man (I copy or rather soften my learned correspondent's words, homines naturâ omnium belluarum ferocissimos) through a land of temptation, to a tribunal which is to determine on his happiness or misery for all eternity.

"But it is not merely on his unanswerable arguments and his undeviating coincidence with scripture, that I rest the claim of Calvin, (magistri nostri claris

simi) to superior excellence and sagacity (continues this this energetic writer); I appeal without fear and without wishing to offend, to stubborn facts which present themselves on all sides, and to every day's experience in human life.

"In the immense metropolis of Great Britain, in your populous cities, and in your wealthy provincial towns, where let me ask is primitive christianity, where are correct morals to be found? I answer, in those societies and in those communities where the doctrines of Calvin, unweakened and unsophisticated, are regularly preached, vigorously enforced, and implicitly believed. "Where is the religious education of the rising generation so unceasingly attended to? where in general do children's entrance into life compensate for the pains bestowed? where do they in general prove a solace and a comfort to their parents?-I answer, in pure calvinistic societies, against which Arius, Socinius, and Hell, have leagued in vain. "With us as with you, in proportion as we depart from the unaccommodating orthodoxy of our immortal reformer, we lapse into laxity of morals, and impurity of life.

"Be assured Angle (my very pen itches, but I must not put in the adjective) nam

collectanea cui titulus, &c. &c. et prosunt et oblectant; be assured that no discipline but the rigid one our master enjoins, will be found effectual in keeping a creature like man (“cui stomachus vesani leonis") steady in the path of duty; in restraining his vicious appetites, in raising up and supporting fallen man."

With this extract I close the article, for such reasoning, if supported by fact, who can answer?

It is not the least of the singularities in this fervent letter, that the pious writer should quote Lucretius, and apply to the reforming, the persecuting Calvin, a panegyric pronounced by the Roman poet on a brother' philosopher, to whom an article is assigned in the present volume.

Gentibus humanis

Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro præclarius.

Nec sanctum magis, et mirum, carumque videtur.

Carmina quinetiam divini pectoris ejus

Vociferantur, et exponunt præclara reperta,

Ut vix humana videatur stirpe