een posthumous. With him it was
immediate and splendid. Into the secret of this extraordinary
circumstance we need not here particularly inquire. He was an
unsurpassed master of the art of literary expression in a country where
that art is more highly prized than anywhere else; he was the most
brilliant of wits among a people whose relish for wit is a supreme
passion; he won the admiration of the lighter souls by his plays, of the
learned by his interest in science, of the men of letters by his
never-ceasing flow of essays, criticisms, and articles, not one of which
lacks vigour and freshness and sparkle; he was the most active, bitter,
and telling foe of what was then the most justly abhorred of all
institutions--the Church. Add to these remarkable titles to honour and
popularity that he was no mere declaimer against oppression and
injustice in the abstract, but the strenuous, persevering, and
absolutely indefatigable champion of every victim of oppression or
injustice whose case was once brought under his eye.

It is not difficult to perceive the fascination which Voltaire, with
this character and this unrivalled splendour of public position, would
have for a man like Condorcet. He conceived the warmest attachment to
Voltaire, and Voltaire in turn the highest respect for him. Their
correspondence (1770-1778) is perhaps as interesting as any letters of
that period that we possess: Voltaire is always bright, playful, and
affectionate; Condorcet more declamatory and less graceful, but full of
reverence and loyalty for his 'dear and illustrious' master, and of his
own peculiar eagerness for good causes and animosity against the
defenders of evil ones. Condorcet was younger than the patriarch of
Ferney by nearly half a century, but this did not prevent him from loyal
remonstrances on more than one occasion against conduct on Voltaire's
part in this matter or that, which he held to be unworthy of his
character and reputation. He went so far as actually to decline to print
in the _Mercure_ a letter in which the writer in some fit of spleen
placed Montesquieu below D'Aguesseau. 'My attachment,' he says, 'bids me
say what will be best for you, and not what might please you most. If I
loved you less, I should not have the courage to thwart you. I am aware
of your grievances against Montesquieu; it is worthy of you to forget
them.' There was perhaps as much moral courage in doing this as in
defying the Men of the Mountain in the