Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hairs, and ideas; and a period arrives when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair, and ideas.

It is contradictory to say that yesterday should not have been; or that to-day does not exist; it is just as contradictory to assert that which is to come will not inevitably be.

Could you derange the destiny of a single fly there would be no possible reason why you should not control the destiny of all other flies, of all other animals, of all men, of all nature. You would find in fact that

you were more powerful than God.

Weak-minded persons say, my physician has brought my aunt safely through a mortal disease; he has added ten years to my aunt's life. Others of more judgment say, the prudent man makes his own destiny.

Nullum numen abest, si sit Prudentia, sed te
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam coloque locamus.

JUVENAL, sat. x. v.365.

We call on Fortune, and her aid implore,
While Prudence is the goddess to adore.

But frequently the prudent man succumbs under his destiny instead of making it; it is destiny which makes men prudent. Profound politicians assure us, that, if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton, and a dozen other parliamentary leaders had been assassinated eight days before Charles I. had his head cut off, that king would have continued alive and have died in his bed; they are right; and they may add, that if all England had been swallowed up in the sea, that king would not have perished on a scaffold before Whitehall. But things were so arranged, that Charles was to have his head cut off.

Cardinal d'Ossat was unquestionably more clever than an ideot of the petites maisons; but is it not evident that the organs of the wise d'Ossat were differently formed from those of that ideot?-Just as the organs of a fox are different from those of a crane or a lark.

Your physician saved your aunt, but in so doing he certainly did not contradict the order of nature, but followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not prevent

her birth in a certain place, that she could not help being affected by a certain malady, at a certain time; that the physician could be in no other place than where he was, that your aunt could not but apply to him, that he could not but prescribe medicines which cured her, or were thought to cure her, while nature was the sole physician.

A peasant thinks that it hailed upon his field by chance; but the philosopher knows that there was no chance, and that it was absolutely impossible, according to the constitution of the world, for it not to have hailed at that very time and place.

There are some who, being shocked by this truth, concede only half of it, like debtors who offer one moiety of their property to their creditors, and ask remission for the other. There are, they say, some events which are necessary, and others which are not so. It would be curious for one part of the world to be changed and the other not; that one part of what happens should happen inevitably, and another fortuitously. When we examine the question closely, we see that the doctrine opposed to that of destiny is absurd; but many men are destined to be bad reasoners, others not to reason at all, and others to persecute those who reason well or ill.

Some caution us by saying, "Do not believe in fatalism, for if you do, everything appearing to you unavoidable; you will exert yourself for nothing; you will sink down in indifference; you will regard neither wealth, nor honours, nor praise; you will be careless about acquiring any thing whatever; you will consider yourself meritless and powerless; no talent will be cultivated, and all will be overwhelmed in apathy."

Do not be afraid, gentlemen; we shall always have passions and prejudices, since it is our destiny to be subjected to prejudices and passions. We shall very well know that it no more depends upon us to have great merit or superior talents than to have a fine head of hair, or a beautiful hand; we shall be convinced that we ought to be vain of nothing, and yet vain we shall always be.

I have necessarily the passion for writing as I now do; and, as for you, you have the passion for censuring me; we are both equally fools, both equally the sport of destiny. Your nature is to do ill, mine is to love truth, and publish it in spite of you.

The owl, while supping upon mice in his ruined tower, said to the nightingale, "Stop your singing there in your beautiful arbour, and come to my hole that I may eat you." The nightingale replied, "I am born to sing where I am, and to laugh at you.'

You ask me what is to become of liberty: I do not understand you; I do not know what the liberty you speak of really is. You have been so long disputing about the nature of it that you do not understand it. If you are willing, or rather, if you are able, to examine with me coolly what it is, turn to the letter L.†

DEVOTEE.

THE word devout (devot) signifies devoted (devoué), and in the strict sense of the term can only be applicable to monks, and to females belonging to some religious order and under vows. But as the gospel makes no mention of vows or devotees, the title ought not in fact to be given to any person: the whole world ought to be equally just. A man who calls himself devout, is like a plebeian who calls himself a marquis; he arrogates a quality which does not belong to him; he thinks himself a better man than his neighbour. We pardon this folly in women; their weakness and frivolity render them excusable; they pass, poor things, from a lover to a spiritual director with perfect sincerity, but we cannot pardon the knaves who direct them, who abuse their ignorance, and establish the throne of their

*We guess from this passage that Voltaire wrote it when at hide and seek in some of his various skirmishes with power and priestcraft.—T.

A pleasant and popular exposition of the doctrine of necessity, which properly understood forms the foundation of the soundest system of morals; and at once of the most firm and the most feeling and considerative policy.-T.

pride on the credulity of the sex. They form a snug mystical harem, composed of seven or eight elderly beauties subjugated by the weight of inoccupation, and almost all these subjects pay tribute to their new master. No young women without lovers; no elderly devotee without a director.-Oh, how much more shrewd are the orientals than we! A pacha never says,-We supped last night with the agar of the janissaries, who is my sister's lover; and with the vicar of the mosque, who is my wife's director!*

DIAL.

Dial of Ahaz.

It is well known that every thing is miraculous in the history of the Jews; the miracle performed in favour of king Hezekiah on the dial of Ahaz is one of the greatest that ever took place: it is evident that the whole earth must have been deranged, the course of the stars changed for ever, and the periods of the eclipses of the sun and moon so altered as to confuse all the ephemerides. This was the second time the prodigy happened. Joshua had stopped the sun at noon on Gibeon, and the moon on Askalon, in order to get time to kill a troop of Amorites already crushed by a shower of stones from heaven.

The sun, instead of stopping for king Hezekiah, went back, which is nearly the same thing, only differently described.

In the first place Isaiah said to Hezekiah, who was sick, "Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live."

Hezekiah wept and God was softened, he signified to him, through Isaiah, that he should still live. fifteen years, and that in three days he should go to the temple; then Isaiah brought a plaster of figs and

* An amusing hit at the construction of French society under the ancient regime, and particularly at that feminine assumption of devotion by females, when une peu passée, so pleasantly explained in the Sentimental Journey of Sterne.-T.

put it on the king's ulcers, and he was cured- et curatus est."

Hezekiah demanded a sign to convince him that he should be cured. Isaiah said to him, "Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees?" And Hezekiah answered, "It is a light thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees; let the shadow return backward ten degrees." And Isaiah the prophet cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow ten degrees backwards from the point to which it had gone down on the dial of Ahaz.

We should like to know what this dial of Ahaz was; whether it was the work of a dial-maker named Ahaz, or whether it was a present made to a king of that name, it is an object of curiosity. There have been many disputes on this dial; the learned have proved that the Jews never knew either clocks or dials before their captivity in Babylon; the only time, say they, in which they learned anything of the Chaldeans, or the greater part of the nation began to read or write. It is even known that in their language they had no words to express clock, dial, geometry, or astronomy; and, in the book of Kings, the dial of Ahaz is called the hour of the stone.

But the grand question is to know how king Hezekiah, the possessor of this clock, or dial of the sunthis hour of the stone,-could tell that it was easy to advance the sun ten degrees. It is certainly as difficult to make it advance against its ordinary motion as to make it go backward.

The proposition of the prophet appears as astonishing as the discourse of the king: Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go back ten degrees? That would have been well said in some town of Lapland, where the longest day of the year is twenty hours; but at Jerusalem, where the longest day of the year is about fourteen hours and a half, it was absurd. The king and the prophet deceived one another grossly. We do not deny the miracle, we firmly believe it; we only remark that Hezekiah and Isaiah knew not what they said. Whatever the hour, it was a thing equally