Year: 1878

GUO u6W 1Idly udNC COuNuClCO HUI "AeAS@S AS'G from Voltaire, while other fOrcesfar more pos tive and constructive than he ever held, have gone into the reconstruction of these nations.

 As to his historical position, we must allow him place among the leaders of the Renals- sance in the eighteenth century and the cham pions of the privileges of citizenship, culture and freedom which were so long withheld by absOlutism. We Americans cannot easily bring home to ourselves the intensity and gravity of this struggle with this dynasty, since we con tended with England only for certain political rights, and our social and religious liberto was left unharmed, and we had very much the same domestic usages and religious order as before our Revolution. Yet a careful study of the interior of American history for the last hundred and fifty years will showu us where in our leading thinkers might have been pro- veked bv foreign and domestic usurpatioD to something of Voltaire's wrath against absOlu- tism It is evident that the uprising of Amer ican thought was not under the rigid rule ot the old Puritan theocracy, but outside of 1t, and that our strongest men went went for cit- izenship, education, and the right of personal development under the civic order, with good will to religion and the Church, but not at the mercy of the priesthood. It was in this spirit that Franklin, who was probably on the whole our most comprehensive and able statesman, not only teacher of tine true policy and prin- ciple of the rising nation, but an actual con structor of the ediice, paid his cordial respects to Voltare the very month of the old poets death. Voltaire and Franklin were both pres ent at the Academy of Sciences April 9, ITS when the assembly cried out that they should be introduced to each other. Upon this they bowed and spoke to each other. But this was not enough, and the clamor increased until Voltaire and Franklin embraced and kissed each other, and the cry went through France, ''How charming it was to see Solon and Soph- ocles embrace each other !" CondOrcet is our authority for another interview between the twe when Franklin presented his grandson for benediction, and Voltaire said: 'God and liberty-the only benediction suitable for grandson of Franklin" Yet Franklin with all of his sympathy with some of his views of deism, had nsne of Voltaire's hatred of Chris tianity He never wholly forgot his own Pu- ritan baptism in the Old South Church, BOs- ton, and he was friend of institutional relig- ion in it's devotion and charity. The prayer book that he compiled is not nearly what we need for full Christian worship, but it is a bet ter offering of faith than VOltaire's poor little chapel which at Ferney still bears his own name with the name of God, and which, when we saw it, was filled with hay, as if in fitting expression of the sharpness of the scythe that cut the hay, and the dryness of the fodder at symbol of the religion of that pagan wit who knew little or nothing ofthe soul of the Chris tianitv which he satiriZed. In his religion VOltaire did not do justice to the best of his own convictions and his often shameful cari- catures of Christianity were not in the temper of what he sometimes taught as the true cul- ture "After all, my dear friend" he once wrote, ''it is right to give every possible form to our soul. It is flame that God has entrust- ed to us; we are bound to feed it with all that Gv,A Whaf a naOfpcSiOO for the defamer of the Maid of Orleans, the author of the filthy and ungOdly ''Candide," and the viliier of the whole New Testament idea which offers to men life and peace by grace not of themselves, but of God! This is our American notion, that what is most pre- cious is not our own wit or work.

 Voltaire was one of the luckiCst as well as the shrewdest of men, and he made even his mishaps tell in his favor. He used his ene- mics to advertise his power and provoke his strength he made money in all situations; Inc throve alike by the smiles and the ursesof the courts, and even death itself seemed to ac- commodate his thirst for fame. Eighty-four years old he came to Paris to be crowned and | to die. He appeared at the theatre in mag | nificent costume and met with a reception that made the homage to royalty insignificant. He did not ride home, but was carried home by his admirers, to whom he said: You wish to stif1e me with roses" The Church refused to bury him in spite of his desire to make peace with it's authority by obedience. and thirteen years afterward the people made up for the slight to his fame by taking his body from it's tomb in the Abbey of Scellieres and removing it with public honors to the Pantheon.

 France to-day offers it's tribute to his mem- ory, and in spite of the opposition of the rul- ing prelates the demonstration headed by Vic tor Hugo will be enthusiastic and significant.

 Here in America we shall take little if any no- tice of this event, for Votaire is not one of our cherished names and he differs from us not only in his opinions, but in his type of mind and character. We belong to the ceof Wycliffe and Hooker, Shakespeare and Milton, Goethe and Schiller and he did not. Nor was he lover of Fenelon and of Pascal, as we are. His very prose lacks inwardness, and his poetry tells more by the measured beat of his wings than by the inherent music of it's voice. He was a strong more than great man, and he did not speak from the deeps to the deeps of the human soul and the mind and heart of the ages Wehonor him for his stand against despots and his defence of the poor and persecuted, while we do not see that he pro- vided for them any permanent relief against tyranny in settled institutions, with liberty guarded by law. The Americans have had better intellectual leaders than Voltaire and Rousseau, and much of our present sympathy with the French people grows out of the fact that they are learning by sad experience to feel as we do, and even to teach us wisdom and prudence in the temptations of our posi- tion. In this feeling we present our respects to Victor Hugo and his associates at this cen tenary of Voltaire teddy. O.

 New York, May 3Oth, 1878.