derstanding, only he has played the fool until he cannot be serious ;use has become nature to him, and he has run his first and second childhood all into one. His "gentle dullness ever loves a joke;" and much of his drollery, it must be confessed, savours of superannuation. Thus, when he is introduced to a new acquaintance, he will simper and smirk so as to display his two rows of false teeth in their whitest and most adolescent attitude; anon he turns his back, whips the whole ratelier out of his mouth, and comes mumbling and mowing in all the childishness of toothless senility. Sometimes he asks his friends to dinner, always taking care to add-" Mais vous prendrez le hasard du pot"-you must take pot luck; which he does not stipulate in the vain ostentation of Gripe, "Who asks to pot-luck and displays a grand treat, 'Tis to choke us with envy, not tempt us to eat :" but that he may have a literal excuse for depositing upon the table certain porcelain vases, much more commonly seen in dormitories than in dining-rooms. From time to time he places a huge portfolio under his arm, totters into a stage-coach and betakes himself to the Stock Exchange at Paris, where so strange an apparition exclaiming " Spanish bonds! Spanish bonds!" soon brings all the bulls and bears to his side; with whom he discourses in a tone of infinite gravity touching Spanish, Neapolitan and French stock; attempts, of course, no transaction; and returns to his friends at Versailles exclaiming, "Eh bien ! j'ai fait toutes mes affaires à la Bourse, et sans risque c'est le seul moyen." which, he rubs his hands with an air of infinite self-gratulation. That he should be an inveterate punster is one of the charters by which he held his office; and not even royal authority can tempt him to violate it. His quibbles are sometimes bad enough to be good; which is the less wonderful, as all his impromptus are profoundly studied. After cautiously laying the train of a pun, he makes a visit for the express purpose of its explosion, remains till he can signalize his departure by a second, and renews the same process when he is prepared with a third. After Other drolls and buffoons may easily exceed him in humour; but the preposterousness in this instance consists in the anachronism of the whole personage, in the official character of his folly, and the strange jumble of boyish and frolicsome levity with decrepitude and old age. To see a man with one foot in the grave cutting capers with the other, making a mockery of the world which he must so shortly quit, and jingling his bells when his fellow-ancients are counting their beads, may be supposed a melancholy spectacle; but there is so much naiveté and genuine benevolence in his aspect, apparently so sincere a conviction that he is labouring in his vocation, and cannot employ his residuum of life better than in contributing to the innocent amusement of others, that, far from having the heart to quote against him-“ How ill grey hairs become a fool and jester !" one feels tempted to wish that the day may be still remote when the sculptor shall be called upon to execute his orders by inscribing upon his tombstone-" Here lies the last of the Fools!" H. la Sorbonne antique, Séjour de noise, antre théologique, Où la Dispute et la Confusion Ont établi leur sacré domicile, Et dont jamais n'approcha la Raison."-VOLTAIRE. Ir was in search of a picture of David's, the same indeed that is now exhibiting in London, that I first visited the Place de la Sorbonne. I was directed thither to some deserted atelier, then full of the forbidden works of the celebrated artist; nor did an idea of the famed university and its decrees ever occur to me, till the front and portico of its chapel presented themselves as I entered the place. Contempt and indignation were the sentiments I should have expected to arise in my breast on beholding this chief court of bigotry; but, alas! even sticks and stones with a look of misery disarm resentment. The walls were dark with age and dirty with neglect; the door, stopped up with rubbish and filth, had most likely never been opened since the revolutionary gang had burst them open to destroy the beautiful mausoleum of Cardinal Richelieu within. And no object appeared to remind one that this was once the palace of sacred knowledge, save a few book-stalls laden with old expurgated editions of the classics, the Eloges of Thomas, and the Confessions of St. Augustin. The Sorbonne, however, it was ; so, determined on seeing more of it, I wandered down a side-street, and at length gained admission to the court. It was an oblong square, grass-grown, surrounded by buildings as ruinous as the exterior: the upper part of it towards the chapel was much higher than the rest, elevated like a dais, and ascended by steps, owing perhaps to the declivity of the soil alone, or perhaps to some arrangement for distinguishing the grades and dignity of its ancient tenants. Theology itself in France had not fallen into more lamentable decay, than this its chosen temple, which, as far as I could learn, had been handed over to a committee of some one of the Fine Arts. Artists, however, unlike beavers, prefer ornamenting any place rather than their home. So it appeared, at least, with the Sorbonne ;-it was the very palace of Decay, and might have furnished an allegorical poet, if such were read now-a-days, with a whole canto, invention-free. How apt a scene, thought I, for a "dialogue of the dead." Here might Pascal and Voltaire meet and rejoice over the fall of their enemies-here might the Jansenist and the Deist pay a fit visit to modern times, and learn, to their great astonishment, that the very name of Jansenism was forgotten, and that Deism had become, to say the best of it, common-place. What would be their conversation in such a case, is a problem worthy of solution by a Fontenelle or Lord Littleton. But for me I dare not "call these spirits from the vasty deep." I hate encyclopædic learning, so shall not spend any time in ascertaining by whom or in what year the Sorbonne was instituted. In her bosom, no doubt, Abelard and the scholastic doctors wrangled: many a witch and heretic suffered at the stake by her order: it was under the pretext of one of her decrees that the English burned Joan of Arc; and, I believe, she shares with the most Holy Inquisition the guilt and ridicule of having condemned Galileo, and of issuing an edict against emetic as unnatural-certes on no illogical grounds. But with all their claims, the Sorbonne would have inspired little interest, were it not connected with names of genius and literature-like Troy, it owes its fame to its enemies. Pascal is the first great name that draws it into notice. "From the Provincial Letters of Pascal," says Gibbon, "which almost every year I perused with new pleasure, I learned to manage the weapon of grave and temperate irony." They are certainly a masterpiece of logic, and the dry wit with which they are seasoned is admirable. "The Sorbonne," say they, "prefer censuring to replying; and, doubtless, it is easier for them to find monks than reasons. Voltaire, who has insulted and acted unfairly by the memory of Pascal, in the mutilated edition which he gave of the "Pensées" accompanied with poor and impertinent notes, does justice to the merit of the "Provinciales." "The best comedies of Molière," says he, "have not more salt than the first letters, Bossuet nothing more sublime than the later ones." Pascal had the better of his adversaries in logic, but it is to be doubted if he had it in reason. The field of polemics is so dangerous and uncertain, that the first who advances and takes up a position is almost certain to come off worst in an encounter ; and the sect that differs and protests from another, having had time to reconnoitre and observe all the weak points of its enemy, wields with a double advantage the weapons either of reason or of ridicule. The great difficulty of supporting any creed, and the great care with which the negation of other creeds is supported, were never more evident than in this quarrel. The Jansenists believed in predestination; the Molinists, the Jesuits, and the Sorbonne did not-but the latter, not contented with disbelieving, pretended to explain the exact way in which Providence influenced man and did not influence him; and they invented for this purpose their grace suffisante, grace efficace et congruente. They thus gave but handles to ridicule-they made the advance and were beaten, ignorant, as they were, of that great principle of polemical tactics, laid down in irony by Pascal himself, "Que les plus habiles d'entre eux sont ceux qui intriguent beaucoup, qui parlent peu, et qui n'écrivent point." It is curious how liberality and bigotry, like other moral contraries, change places in the world's opinion. To plead the divine right of kings now would be monstrous; there was a time when such an argument was truly liberal, and advanced in the cause of independence. In 1614, it was pleaded by the tiers état, the commons in France, that the king held his crown from God alone (it was immediately after the assassination of Henry IV.); and the clergy opposed the maxim as too popular, too republican, and as subversive of the state. In the same manner we abhor the Jesuits; the very name is a bugbear to our ears; while of old they were certainly the most liberal of religious sects. Look at their conduct in South America and China; they seem the only Christians of that age, in whom religion had not extinguished common sense. Even in their quarrels with Jansenism, it was that turbulent sect of fanatics which was intolerant, not the Jesuits; and if the Provincial Letters triumph over the latter, and overwhelm them with ridicule, it is simply because the good fathers and the Sorbonne sought to give peace to the church by the convenient method of accepting one term of the confession of faith by five or six different sig nifications. Such is religious controversy, that all the persecution of Louis XIV. and his Confessor but propagated Jansenism, while the Regent laughed at them, and they were never heard of more. The learned body of the Sorbonne soon found more dangerous adversaries in the wits and philosophers of the eighteenth century. There is scarcely a work of one of their pens, which it has not condemned. The mode of puffing a book now is very well understood. The mode then was to mingle in it a considerable portion of impiety; the Sorbonne took it into consideration, and ordered it to be burned by the hangman. Three months' continual advertisement in the Times, with an article in each periodical, could not attract so much attention to a volume. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alembert, &c. all advertised their works through the means of the Sorbonne and the Parliament. To the first of these wits, in particular, the learned body formed a source of everlasting fun. "Since the invention of printing," say Voltaire's Kehl editors, "the faculty of Paris have arrogated to themselves the right of uttering their opinion in bad Latin on every book that displeases them." Once in the case of the "Emile," I believe, they thought proper to extend this privilege, by translating their condemnation from bad Latin into worse French. When the "Belisaire" was published (in 1767), the learned doctors were shocked to find, that any author dared to think, far less print as an opinion, that all the heroes and sages of antiquity were not damned. The Sorbonne, in consequence, thundered censures in barbarous Latin and blundering French, and by so doing supplied the wags with fun and epigram for a month. Voltaire wrote on this occasion his "Trois Empereurs en Sorbonne." These three Emperors are -Trajan, Titus, et Marc Aurele, Quittant le beau séjour de la gloire immortelle, Pour venir en secret s'amuser dans Paris. Quelque bien qu'on puisse être, on veut changer de place; L'esprit est inquiet, et de tout il se lasse; Souvent un bienheureux s'ennuie en paradis." The Emperors are shown all the lions of Paris, are presented and con ducted every where. "Ils voulurent enfin tout voir et tout connaître ; L'école où Loyola corrompit la raison, Les quatre facultés, et jusqu'à la Sorbonne. Ils entrent dans l'étable où les docteurs fourrés Estropiait alors un discours en latin. Quel latin, juste ciel! les héros de l'empire Se mordaient les cinq doigts pour s'empêcher de tire." The old Romans find no favour among the theologians, and are astonished to find themselves damned and condemned to all eternity. After some witty expostulation they make their retreat, while their guides excuse themselves by having mistaken the mansion, "Nous pensions en effet vous mener en Sorbonne ; Et l'on vous a conduit aux Petites-maisons." But French philosophy is not indebted to the Sorbonne for its famebestowing censures alone: as an university it produced Turgot and Morellet. There are few books more delightful to the man of letters than retrospective glances and recollections of school and college: even the simple account by Marmontel of his country college, where his maintenance and education cost his parents the serious sum of four or five louis a-year, is interesting. The account of the Sorbonne, in the commencement of Morellet's Memoirs, threw for me an interest over those ruins, which more than out-balanced all odious association with its bigot decrees. The Abbé's description of the life he led there, his connexions with Turgot and the Briennes, recall those happy times of one's own life, when study was a business, forming the serious subject of thought and topic of conversation-when the world of philosophy and literature was fresh before us, our only world in view-before we had learned its petty history, and tasted of its passions-before we had fathomed its shallow waters, and found its depths but in sophism and invective. Had the ignorant wretches of the Revolution known even of the name of Turgot as connected with the Sorbonne, they would have respected it as little as that of Richelieu. Indeed they were not guided so much by indignation against any name, as by the mere itch to destroy. "So full of valour, that they smote the air For breathing in their faces." The year 1820 was, I believe, the æra of my first visit to the Sorbonne, and of my consequent meditations. A year or two rolled over the pilgrim's head in other climes and peregrinations, and the beginning of 1823 found him once more in Paris, and in company with his literary friends. They spoke of Villemain, of his genius, and of his eloquence as a lecturer, and I determined to hear him. It was in the Sorbonne he gave his course, and I arrived there an hour before the time in order to procure admittance-and lo! the Sorbonne was gay, spruce, and in full repair green was no longer the livery of its court-yard, nor sooty gloom that of its walls; and a neat and elegant hall lately fitted up, was crammed even to suffocation with all the young students in Paris that could gain admission. Villemain was all the rage, and here were united at his audience the various characters of the metropolis-the unkemped, spectacled head of the student of the Pays Latin-the young, Anglicified Exquisite of the Chaussée d'Antin-the Englishman himself, with his blank gravity of countenance, standing and perspiring in the crowd, for the sake of the' have to say,' and the German with his unmistakeable square countenance. At the foot of the lecturer's seat were chairs for the most distinguished auditors. It was just after the disturbances among the students, the dissolution of the School of Medicine, and the destitution of all the liberal professors. Expressions of censure or applause were strictly forbidden. In spite of this, the entrance of General Foy excited a considerable tumult, and the cheers of his admirers could not be kept down. Soon after, the Duc de Montmorency made his appearance he had lately read a recantation of the liberal opinions he had professed at the beginning of the Revolution--and the Duke was saluted by a general hem, and laugh, that disconcerted him much more than any hissing could have done. Villemain at length made his appearance-an insignificant, meanlooking personage, with his head thrown back. He was the image of Curran, and his eye was as piercing and as full of genius as that of the |