ance itself. The crisis produced by the irruption of this terrible
column into the centre of the French army, exactly resembles a similar
attack at Aspern and Wagram, and the last onset of the Imperial Guards
at Waterloo. The account of the progress of the English column, and the
means by which its advance was at length arrested, might pass for a
narrative of the penetrating of the Austrian centre by the French column
under Lannes, on the second day of Aspern, or the famous advance of the
Old and Middle Guard against the British right centre, on the evening of
the 18th June 1815. Both these formidable attacks were defeated, and by
means precisely similar to those by which Marshal Saxe stopped the
English column at Fontenoy. At Wagram, also, the heavy mass of infantry
led by Macdonald was arrested by the dreadful cross-fire of the Austrian
batteries; and if the Archduke Charles had evinced the same tenacity and
resolution as Marshal Saxe, the result would probably have been the
same, and Wagram had been Waterloo!

Of the effects of the irreligious fanaticism, the natural result of the
tyranny and oppressive conduct of the Church of Rome, which pervaded
France for half a century before the Revolution, our author gives the
following interesting account:--

"Another powerful cause of dissolution existed in French society at this
period. The vast conspiracy against Christianity, of which Voltaire was
the chief, daily developed itself in a more alarming manner. A body of
men styling themselves philosophers--that is, lovers of wisdom--set up
for reformers of the human race. They professed to be the enemies of
prejudice; they had for ever in their mouths the words 'humanity,' and
'philanthropy;' their object was declared to be to restore the dignity
of man, and with that view they proposed to substitute certain
conventional virtues for the precepts of Christianity. They pleaded
tolerance, and soon they became themselves intolerant. Misfortune
excited their pity; they ever undertook its defence, when there was a
noise to be made, celebrity to be acquired by doing so. By these means,
they acquired a great renown; to philosophise was continually in their
mouths and their writings. It is no wonder it was so; for to
philosophise, in their estimation, was to attack all the received
opinions, and annihilate them under the weight of public contempt; to
persecute fanaticism without perceiving that the irreligious passion
soon acquired