The Sun.
London, England, 1824-04-24 00:00:00

IIELVETIUS.

For this Philosopher the term galant homine
ought to have been invented, if it had not been
before in the French langnage. lie was its very
prototype. Just, indulgent, with all ;the milk of,
human kindness, daightfnl in social intercourse,:
he owed the virtues which he possessed to the
opinions which he had formed of human nature;
it appeared to him as .unreasonable.to be angry
with a bad man whom he might meet, as with a
stone which we might fall in with on a road.:,—
The habit he had contracted of abstraction, and
of taking a comprehensive view of things, making
him inditierent.sometimes_tO.good, had made him
the, most pliant of men; • but - his toleration was
confined to the particular faults of society; for as
.
to the authors of public evils, he hung or burnt
them. without mercy. .In every instance he was
a friend to strong remedies, and never admitted,
any palliative.
His father died first physician to the Queen,
who was very fond of him, and protected his son
till 'he published his Esprit, and was obliged to
resign his office of Maitre d'llotel. At the Col-
lege of Louts XIV. he gave but little promise of
future vigour, being ;object to frequent colds in
the head, which gave him a stupid look ; he was,
however, very successful and expert in bodily
achievements, and shone a brilliant figure in the
dance ; so passionately fond was he of this-exer-
cise, that he is said to have danced at the Opera
in the room of a celebrated dancer. He was pro.
moted When young to the office of Farmer-Gene-
rat, which was common promotion to the Court
Physicians of'his-:age. Endowed with every ex-
terior advantage, and with a noble fortune, he
spent his yoUth in pleasures, and seemed destined
to lead the easy vol,uptions life of an amiable man,
and one of those rich men of Paris, who assembled
a good circle around them, and entertain them
with good cheer. He was particularly ge-
nerous, node, and beneficent. lie could not
help making his fortune in his oaice, but
lie made a liberal use of it, and without
taking from his pleasures, he was continually
giving away his substance, and in the noblest
and most ingenuous manner. lie lived much
with men of letters, and many of them lived
upon him, and yet, a little while before* his death,
he complained to the Baron d'Holbach that he
had kept up but little connection, with his old
friends without any fault of his own . I replied,
the Baron never did any thing for my friends,
and I have lived always with them upon the best
.of terms for these ;20 years. The ruling passion of
if. was for women, to whose service .he devoted
all his youth, and his graceful figure comniandett
NUCCes. 11 is first campaign of chivalry was under
the auspices of a dulciuea, who boasted or
Atheism as others of Jansenism, &c. This Epi'
Curtail in love could not conceive Platonic love; .
or any other but. the love which is natural to
Men uho have devoted the chief of their ;wen= I
lion to Women of intrigue. Any other sort of
women was to him a prodigy ; and .he could not
for the life of him imagine, that any thing but
stupid prejudice could ascribe such an infinite va-
riety of characters as there is variety in the organs.
In the midst, however, of a life of a plvasurv, he
was suddenly overtakeni with .a love of fame.
'['he reputatiOu of three great men, AI AupEßTuls,
VOLTAIRE, and AION'i'ESQUIEIi, roused him to
emulate them in their brilliant career, am
outing to the first, Geometry was then' al
the vogue, even with the ladies. liet.vvmus ob

served one day MATJPERTIUS, Who was fond of
ccefitricitv, and courted notoriety by his oddity
h dress at the Tuileries, surrounded and caressed
by all the ladies of the court, notwithstanding his
strange appearance, and from that moment H.
resolved to study Geometry ; but his rage for
that soon passed off like that of the fashion, and
at the court of Russia, seeinz Vourm au triumph-
ant, he thought to triumph with him as a Poet ; he
composed a poem upon happiness, which was
highly praised by V. but was in itself a weak
composition.

All these essays were only proofs of •the un-
easiness which was preying upon his mind in the
midst oral! his pleasures, but the great epoch in
his life was the period when he published • his
Esprit, which made more than one revolution
in the minds of men. This work. he conceived
from the E.spn't des Lois of MopuresQurEu, which
. was published in 1749. In 1750, he devoted
himself to study, and, resigning his office,
he -married a lady of quality, of no fortune,
but of elegant person and manners, and after•
his marriage he retired to his estate, where
he divided his time between literature and plea-
sures of . the chase, and the company of his
wife, with occasional visits from a few •of his
friends. He spent only a few of the winter
months in Paris. I can impute his retirement to
motives of: jealotlsy, but he most probably was
influenced by a:higher principle, by the hope to
raise a monument to himself by the side of MoN-
TESQUIEU, but here he failed. His Esprit ap-
peared 10 years after the Esprit des Lois. fie
did not attract that fame with which he flattered
himself, and owed all his reputation_ to the per-
secution which it brought upon him. At Court
.he was •looked upon as the Son of Perdition, and
the pious Queen lamented over his unfortunate
mother for giving birth to Antichrist. The Jesuits

were the first to sound the alarm, though he had
always treated them with deference, and relied

upon them

_ .
They ettaged him to sign a recantation of his
work as most degrading to him, and when the Hon
. _

once betrayed this weakness, every ass thought
it a good. opportunity to give hirna. blow. The
Jansenists joined with the Priests in their ana-
themas against him : and the Parliament was
brought with the greatest difficulty to burn the
book without bringing the author before them.
It is said that, this book is full of immoral doc-

tri►►es but this Is said by them who do not un-
derstand the true mean►ng of the language in
which it is written. Besides, it is not in the power
of any book to corrupt morals, as it is not in the

•
power of a Philosopher, however eloquent, to bring
them to perfection. They chiefly depend for
their perfpction or corruption upon Governrne►nt
and Legislation., in their action and re-action.
Poor H. was astonished to see himself treated
as a vender of
~poison having tried only

to wander from the beaten road—with no other
crime than the desire to present to the public, in
a new point of viewi sfubjeCts limn which so many
men, both of a ',superior and- moderate ability,
have been so Jong engaged. He fell into para-
doxes, which gave no favourable symptom of thu
depth or accuracy ;of his reflection, and certainly
not of any depravity of hear(. 11e only wanted
genius, that tormenting demon, without which,
hoWever,it is impossible to write for immortality.
M. de Buffon used to say that H. ()tight to have
made one more lease, and one book less—a severe
reproof from the lips of a friend.
Yet if the Esprit de Lois had changed his mode
of life, the fate of his Esprit changed his charac-
ter entirely. Ite hoped to enter by it into the
Academy.; but deriving from it only persecution,
he became a cynic, but yet retained much of his
good nature. The storm lasted six months, and
then subsided, like many others, in a place of
vicissitudes, like Ow French Court. But yet
so Much was he. astonished at the sudden revo-
lution, that for a long time he could not be per-
suaded but that the Court, the Jesuits, and *the
Jansenists, were" thinking of nothing but his
book. He was ignorant of men and business ;
and no one, who was not like him accustomed to
abstraction, could imagine, on hearing him rea-
son, that he was any other than a- madman,
speaking what came first into his head. He was
neither brilliant nor agreeable in conversation:;
but he was a gnod hasbatul,- father, and friend.
He was very subject to
the gout, and, if report
speaks true, played tricks with a very robust
constitution. lie was always passionately fond
of the English, whom he visited, and was de-
lighted with. There' was ptiblished after his
Esprit a postlititn-ous Work upon Man, &c., of
the same extent with the other, the boldness of
which would have compromised his character if
it had appeared • in his:. lifetime, and certainly
did not deserve the esteem in which his former
!York was held,--.though in that Work he re-
duces the spirit of man to the brutes that perish
—all the great and leading moral duties and
wishes to mere self,interest—and his pre-emi-
nence in the creation to the use of hands.
To shew his goodness and mercy, there is an
anecdote recorded of him,----that though he used
to be severe to poachers upon his estate, one day,
when one of them was thrown into prison, and
condemned to pay a .tine, he went privately to
Lim, for fear of his Lady, who• was always con-
tending for making an example of such men, and
on taking the man's word that he would not say
any thing about it, gave him his release, and all
his expellees back again. His good. Lady, too,
repenting of her severity, said to his childrett.
" I am the cause of your poor father's ruin. I
return you the sum, with all the costs," which
the countryman received, and carefully kept his
promise to say not a word about
On another occasion, in Paris, 11. being stopper'
in his carriage by a cart, in a passion he calla-
the carter a rascal. "-True," said the man, "

am a rascal_ and. you 'a GentiPman ; for I am
on foot and you in a carriage." Friend," said he,
cc i ask your plrdon, and thank you for yourles-
son with sonwthing-more than thanks, with these
six francs."

Notwithstandin.the treatmen.t of the Jesuits,
, and particularly of one .who had been most un=
grateful to his bounty and his confidence,and had
been the means of raising the storm aw-ainst him
on account of his book; when he heard that be
was languishing in th extremes of poverty, he
told one of his- friends to carry 50 louis to the
Father, but not to► tell frOm whence they came,
because he would he offended and humbled to
receive the succour fi.Om hirn,
SAURIIV was Oiie among the numerous men
of letters who • received 1,000 crowns a-year
from his bounty ; but since his marriage they
were not so intimate, though M. S. always be-
haved very well to his benefactor, who, in re-
turn, never thought that • his benefactor would
disturb the equality of friendship, and M. S.
dared to dedicate a Play to his patron, even im-
mediately after the hue and cry_ which his book
had raised against him. All his clients, how-
ever, were•• not so grateful. L'Abbe SABATTEII.
n isEr e etA S
s pensioned him to cid-
tireatEtesr,z whop
ainted
-his • benefactor in the
most odious colours, in his portrait (of the Ca-
lumny)
.of Three Agens. of our. Literature.
IlmArTnis was fond -of literary disputes, not
from a spirit of contradiction, but, as he says
himself, because he, delighted to go out hunting
for ideas.
The above extracts, from my reading and ob-
servations, I take the liberty to send you for
your Paper, which.is the general vehicle of use-
ful intelligence upon .all subjects, and may, per-
haps, become, in this instance, of practical utility
to some of TIELVEi'IIIS'S profesSiOn, ,who kept
his theory of self-interest -out of the line of his
practice, and was free, generous, and unsuspect-
ing,.in spite of the .opinion which he held of the.

slavery, meannes2,.and'intspicion of frail human

nature.

DAatria RonuEnoc.---A daring . robbery was
yesterday committed,. bet Ween. one and two
o'clock in the afternoon„in the house of the Right
Honourable the Earl.ofcoirENTitY, in Piccadilly.
The butler had just prepared the tray with lunch
for 'the faMily,.on which were .tiVe silVer forks,
five.dessert spoons, two table spoons, and a silver
mustard pot ; he laid the .tray on a table in his
pantry, close to the window of the area, and
went into .an adjoining 'room for something he
wanted, previous to taking it up stairs. The
valet, passing along the passage towards the pan-
try, saw a man with a basket under his arm, who
had 'the appearance of a hawker of fruit, with
his other arm and body partly through the win-
dow of the pantry ; conceiving that he was on
some business with the butler, he took no notice
of him. Shortly after he .met the butler, and
asked him what he had been doing with the man
that was talking to him through, the area win-
dow ? The butler replied, that he had been
talking with
.no man, and hurried into the pantry,
where he was alarmed at finding that the pro-
perty,
as enumerated above, had been carried off.
The most diligent search was instantly set on
foot for the robber, but as yet no trace whatever
has been discovered of him.