known for the beauty
of his genius and the superiority of his talents, than for the
persevering and implacable war which for sixty years he had waged
against the Lord and his Christ." They cursed in solemn phrase the
"revolting blasphemies" of Raynal's _History of the Indies_, and
declared that the publication of a new edition of that celebrated book
with the name and the portrait of its author, showed that the most
elementary notions of shame and decency lay in profound sleep.

In the midst of those prolonged cries of distress, we have no word of
recognition that the only remedy for a moral disease is a moral remedy.
The single resource that occurred to their debilitated souls was the
familiar armoury of suppression, menace, violence, and tyranny. "Sire,"
they cried, "it is time to put a term to this deplorable lethargy." They
reminded the king of the declaration of 1757, which inflicted on all
persons who printed or circulated writings hostile to religion, the
punishment of death. But "their paternal bowels shuddered at the sight
of these severe enactments;" all that they sought was plenty of rigorous
imprisonment, ruinous fining, and diligent espionage.[197] If the reader
is revolted by the rashness of Diderot's expectation of the speedy decay
of the belief in a God,[198] he may well be equally revolted by the
obstinate infatuation of the men who expected to preserve the belief in
a God by the spies of the department of police. Much had no doubt been
done for the church in past times by cruelty and oppression, but the
folly of the French bishops, after the reign of Voltaire and the
apostolate of the Encyclopaedia, lay exactly in their blindness to the
fact that the old methods were henceforth impossible in France, and
impossible for ever. How can we wonder at the hatred and contempt felt
by men of the social intelligence of Diderot and D'Alembert for this
desperate union of impotence and malignity?

[197] See for abundant matter of the same kind, M. Rocquain's
_L'Esprit Revolutionnaire avant la Revolution_, bk. x. pp. 382, 390,
etc.

[198] Montesquieu more sensibly had given the Church not more than
five hundred years to live. _Let. Pers._, 117. One hundred and fifty
of them have already passed.

The band of the precursors was rapidly disappearing. Grimm and Holbach,
Catherine and Frederick, still survived.[199] D'Alembert, tended to the
last hour by Condorcet with the lovable reverence o