the character of the worst species of fanaticism.

"Voltaire, endowed by nature with immense talent, had, from his earliest
years, the steady will and unshaken determination which were necessary
to make him a leader of thought. He laboured at it all his life, and his
mental qualifications enabled him to keep pace with the public desires
in all their branches. The age was frivolous, and he excelled in
fugitive pieces; it was libertine, and he had obscene verses at command;
the _esprits forts_ had a leaning to incredulity, and he put himself at
the head of the movement, and made use of it to turn into ridicule all
that men had been most accustomed to revere. Gifted with extraordinary
powers of raillery and sarcasm, he faithfully reflected in his writings
the graces and the vices of the brilliant and profligate society in
which he lived. He kept some measure in his publications as long as he
had any hope of obtaining in France a political station; but from the
very beginning, the acerbity of his disposition displayed itself in his
ceaseless attacks on the mysteries of religion, in the elegant society
which sought him, and of which he was the delight. 'He had the art,'
says Vilmain, 'of throwing discredit on a dogma by a happy couplet; by a
philosophic sentence he refuted a syllogistic argument.'"--(Vol. ii. pp.
61, 62.)

The correspondence of Voltaire with the King of Prussia, the bond of
union in which was their common antipathy to Christianity, forms not the
least curious part of the lives of both these eminent men. Nearly all
the sovereigns of the Continent, at this period, were led away by this
mania, destined to produce such fatal effects to themselves and their
children. Catherine of Russia was peculiarly active in the infidel
league. De Tocqueville gives the following interesting account of the
almost incredible extent to which this mania prevailed in the age which
preceded the French Revolution:--

"Voltaire and the King of Prussia resembled two lovers who were
continually quarreling and making up their differences. The royal hero
could never dispense with the renown which the praises of the Patriarch
of Incredulity gave to him. Catherine II. of Russia kept up a close
correspondence with him; his expressions to her were confiding, even
tender. She required that trumpet to celebrate her exploits, and
palliate the crimes committed in the pursuit of her ambition. 'My
_Catau_ (his name for the Empress) loves the phil