upon which he has treated. His style is clear, simple, easy, and in
which we may remark a certain urbanity, that leads us to be sure that
he was not an obscure individual, nor one to whom good company and
polished society were unfamiliar. But what especially distinguishes
this work, and which should endear it to all good and virtuous people,
is the signal honesty which pervades and characterizes it from the
very beginning to the end. It is impossible to read it without
conceiving the highest idea of the author's probity, whoever he may
have been--without desiring to have had him for a friend, to have
lived with him, and, in a word, without rendering justice to the
rectitude of his intentions, even when we do not approve of his
sentiments. The love of virtue, universal benevolence, respect to the
laws, an inviolable attachment to the duties of morality, and, in
fine, all that can contribute to render men better, is strongly
recommended in these Letters. If, on the one hand, he completely
overthrows the ruinous edifice of Christianity, it is to erect, on the
other hand, the immovable foundations of a system of morality
legitimately established upon the nature of man, upon his physical
wants, and upon his social relations--a base infinitely better and
more solid than that of religion, because sooner or later the lie is
discovered, rejected, and necessarily drags with it what served to
sustain it. On the contrary, the truth subsists eternally, and
consolidates itself as it grows old: _Opinionum commenta delet dies,
naturae judicia confirmat_.[2]

[2] "Time effaces the comments of opinion, but it confirms the
judgments of nature."--CICERO.

The motto affixed to many of the manuscript copies of these letters
proves that the worthy man to whom we owe them did not desire to be
known as their author, and that it was neither the love of reputation,
nor the thirst of glory, nor the ambition of being distinguished by
bold opinions, which the priests, and the satellites subjected to them
by ignorance, denominate _impieties_, which guided his pen. It was
only the desire of doing good to his fellow-beings by enlightening
them, which actuated him, and the wish to uproot, so to speak,
religion itself, as being the source of all the woes which have
afflicted mankind for so many ages. This is the motto of which we
spoke:--

"Si j'ai raison, qu'importe a qui je suis?"
(If reason's mine, no matter who I am.)

It is a verse