world, and treat (without any rational cause, that has been assigned)
those who were most his friends, as if he considered them to be his
bitterest enemies. He was far more jealous of the reputation obtained by
his contemporaries, than delighted with the approbation he personally
received. Considered as a _philosopher_, he was paradoxical; as a
_moralist_, dangerous and licentious; as a _parent_, unnaturally
abandoning his offspring; as a _friend_, suspicious and ungrateful. As
_pride_ was the ruling passion of Rousseau, so was _vanity_ beyond
dispute the grand characteristic of _Voltaire_, (the proximity of Fernay
may excuse my here comparing him with Rousseau,) and this passion
induced him to pervert transcendent talents to the most pernicious and
fatal purposes.

The hostility of Voltaire to the _Christian dispensation_ has been
compared to the enmity rather of a rival than of a philosopher. He is
thought to have wished its overthrow, not so much because he entertained
any solid objections to its sublime theories, or had real doubts as to
the miracles by which it is attested; as because his _vanity_ led him to
think, that if he once could persuade men to the abolition of
Christianity, he might himself become the founder of a new system of
_moral indulgence_. The Abbe Raynal, in 1791; _already repented_ of the
philosophic principles, which he had so sedulously inculcated, and
expressed his conviction, that the consequence of the theories then so
finely fancied, would be a general pillage, for that their authors
wanted experience, to reduce their speculations to a practical system.
The Abbe was right in _this last_ expectation, and from the French
Revolution, so destructive in most respects, there has at least resulted
this advantage; it has furnished the most satisfactory comment upon the
_grand experiment_ of the philosophers, and proved most folly that it is
_religion alone_ that possesses authority to silence the clamours of
interest, to control the passions, and to fetter the ambition of
mankind. The same year (1778) is memorable for the deaths both of
Voltaire and Rousseau; the first is represented as exhibiting on his
_death bed_ the most melancholy spectacle of horror and remorse that can
be possibly conceived; the latter is thought to have committed _suicide_
at Ermenonville, where he found an asylum, after having been banished
successively from many states. This opinion is founded chiefly on the
authority of