r are
such as perhaps you are satisfied with, and think sufficient; but I am
not; they are only the cold depositions of disinterested and unconcerned
witnesses, upon a strict examination. When, upon a trial, a man calls
witnesses to his character, and that those witnesses only say that they
never heard, nor do not know any ill of him, it intimates at best a
neutral and insignificant, though innocent character. Now I want, and you
ought to endeavor, that 'les agremens, les graces, les attentions', etc.,
should be a distinguishing part of your character, and specified of you
by people unasked. I wish to hear people say of you, 'Ah qu'il est
aimable! Quelles manieres, quelles graces, quel art de Claire'! Nature,
thank God, has given you all the powers necessary; and if she has not
yet, I hope in God she will give you the will of exerting them.

I have lately read with great pleasure Voltaire's two little histories of
'Les Croisades', and 'l'Esprit Humain'; which I recommend to your
perusal, if you have not already read them. They are bound up with a most
poor performance called 'Micromegas', which is said to be Voltaire's too,
but I cannot believe it, it is so very unworthy of him; it consists only
of thoughts stolen from Swift, but miserably mangled and disfigured. But
his history of the 'Croisades' shows, in a very short and strong light,
the most immoral and wicked scheme that was ever contrived by knaves, and
executed by madmen and fools, against humanity. There is a strange but
never-failing relation between honest madmen and skillful knaves; and
whenever one meets with collected numbers of the former, one may be very
sure that they are secretly directed by the latter. The popes, who have
generally been both the ablest and the greatest knaves in Europe, wanted
all the power and money of the East; for they had all that was in Europe
already. The times and the minds favored their design, for they were dark
and uniformed; and Peter the Hermit, at once a knave and a madman, was a
fine papal tool for so wild and wicked an undertaking. I wish we had good
histories of every part of Europe, and indeed of the world, written upon
the plan of Voltaire's 'de l'Esprit Humain'; for, I own, I am provoked at
the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general: one
would think by them that the whole human species consisted but of about a
hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very
undeservedly too) by the