self to the storm with rashness, but rarely did he brave it with constancy; and these intervals of temerity and weakness have frequently afflicted his friends and afforded unworthy cause of triumph to his cowardly foes. In weighing the peccadilloes of any man due consideration must be had for the period in which he lived, and of the nature of the society amidst which he was reared. Voltaire was in his twentieth year when Louis XIV. died, and consequently his very precocious adolescence was spent during the reign of that pompous and celebrated actor of majesty. How that season was characterized as to morals and the tone of Parisian good company, an epitome of the private life of Louis himself will tell. The decorum and air of state with which Louis sinned was rather edifying than scandalous, and his subjects faithfully copied the grand monarch. Gallantry became the order of the day throughout France, with a great abatement of the chivalrous sentiment that attended it under the regency of Anne of Austria, but still exempt from the more gross sensuality that succeeded Louis under the regency of the duke of Orleans.
It has been observed that Voltaire was altogether a Frenchman, and the remark will be found just, whether applied to the character of the man or the genius. By increasing to intensity the national characteristics, social, constitutional and mental, we create a Voltaire. These are gayety, facility, address, a tendency to wit, raillery, and equivoque;
