 Cili Novels by Lady Novelists by George Alliad This is a LibriVoxy Cording or LibriVoxy Cording around a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Shaleefa Mulliam Cili Novels by Lady Novelists by George Alliad Cili Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them. The frothy, the brosi, the pious, order pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these, a composite order of feminine fatuity that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind and millenary species. The herion is usually aneres, probably appears in her own ride, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquees as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adoras dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling. Her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity. She has a superb contralto, and a superb intellect. She's perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious. She dances like herself and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that a herion is not aneres, that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient, but she infallibly gets into high society. She has a prime for refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other, as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Ray Kishman either bites their lips in imputant confusion at her raporties, or are touched to penitence by her reprws, which on appropriate occasions rise to a lofty strange of rhetoric. Indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodise at some lengths when she reties to her bedroom. In her recorded conversations, she is amazingly eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty. She's understood to have depths of insight that looks through and through the shallow theories of philosophers, and her superior instincts are a sort of dial by which men have only to set their clocks and watches, and all will go well. The men play a very subordinate part by his side. You are consoled now and then by hint that they have affairs which keeps you in mind that working day business of the world is somehow being carried on. But, ostensibly, the final cause of their existence is that they made company to Herrin on her starring expedition through life. They see her at a ball, and are dazzled at a flower show, and they are fascinated. On a riding excursion, and they are wedged by her noble horsemanship, a church, and they are awed by the sweet solemnity of a demeanor. She is the ideal woman in feeling's faculties and flounces. For all this, she has often as not married the wrong person to begin with, and she suffers terribly from the plots and intrigues of the vicious baronet. But even death has a soft place in his heart for such a paragon, and remedies all mistakes for her just at the right moment. The vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed, requesting his wife, as a particular favour to him, to marry the man she loves best, and having already dispatched to know to the lover informing him of a comfortable arrangement. Before matters arrive at this desirable issue, our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and gifted Herrin passeth through many mauve moments, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are weft into embroidered pocket handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclies on a very best appalled story, and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo from being dashed out of her carriage, to having her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of them all with a complexion more blooming and locks more redundant than ever. We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved from a serious grubber by discovering that silly novels by lady novelists rarely introduce us into any other than very lofty and fashionable society. We had imagined that destitute women turned to novelists as they turned to governesses, because they had no other lady-like means of getting their bread. On this supposition, vacillating syntax and improbable incident, had a certain pay toss for us, like extremely super-erogatory pink cushions and ill-device night-caps that are offered for sale by blind man. We felt a commodity to be a nuisance, but we were glad to think that the money went to relieve the necessities, and we picked it to ourselves, lonely women struggling for a maintenance, or wives and daughters devoting themselves to the production of copy out of pure heroism, perhaps to pave the husband's debts or to purchase luxuries for sick father. Under these impressions we shrank from criticising a lady's novel. Her English might be faulty, but, we said to ourselves, her motives are irreproachable. Her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience is untiring. Emty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated by tears. But no! This ethereal vow, as like many other British theories, has had to give way before observation. Women's silly novels, we are now convinced, are written under totally different circumstances. The fair writers have evidently never talked to tradesmen except from a carriage window. They have no notion of the working classes except as dependents. They think five hundred a year are miserable pittons. Belgravia and baronial halls are their primary tools, and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if not a prime minister. It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-coloured ink and ruby pen, that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains. It is true that we are constantly struck with the wonderful assimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live, but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life. If their peers and puruses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople and cottages are impossible, and the intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness. There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen something of children under five years of age, yet in compensation, a recent novel of the mind of millinery species which calls itself a story of real life, we have a child of four and a half years old talking in this oceanic fashion. Oh, I am so happy, dear Grandma Ma. I have seen. I have seen such a delightful person. He is like everything beautiful, like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben LeMau. I know better than that. He is like what I think of and see when I'm very, very happy, and is really like Mama too when she sings, and his forehead is like that distant sea. She continued pointing to the blue Mediterranean. There seemed no end, no end, or like the clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm fine night. Don't look so. Your forehead is like Loch Lomor when the wind is blowing and the sun has gone in. I like the sunshine best when the lake is smooth, so now I like it better than ever. It is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has gone over it when the sun suddenly lights up all the colours of the forests and shining purple rocks, and it is all reflected in the waters below. We are not surprised to learn that a mother of this infant phenomenon, who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those of adolescents, repressed by Jin, is herself a phoenix. We are assured again and again that she had a remarkably original mind, that she was a genius and conscious of her originality, and she was fortunate enough to have a lover who was also a genius and a man of most original mind. This lover, we read, though wonderfully similar to her in powers and capacity, was infinitely superior to her in faith and development. And she saw in him the agephe, so rare to find, of which she had to write and admire demeaning in her Greek testament, having, from her great facility in learning languages, read the scriptures in their original tongues. Of course, Greek and Hebrew are mere play to her, Heron. Sanskrit is no more than ABC to her, and she can talk with perfect correctness in any language except English. She is a Paul King polyglot, a cruiser in crinoline. Poor men, there are so few of you who know even Hebrew. You think it's something to boast of, like Bollingbroke. You only understand that sort of learning and what is written about it. And you are perhaps adoring women who can think slightly of you in all the Sematic languages successively. But then, as you are almost invariably told, that Heron has a beautiful small head, and as a rinterlect has probably been early invigorated by an attention to costume and deportment, we may conclude that she can pick up the Oriental tongues, to say nothing of their dialects, with the same aerial facility that a butterfly sips nectar. Beside, there can be no difficulty in conceiving the depths of the Heron's erudition when that of the authoress is so evident. In Laura Gay, another novel of the same school, the Heron seems less at home in Greek and Hebrew, but she makes up for the deficiency by quite a play for familiarity with the Latin classics, with the dear old Virgil, the grace of horrors, the humane Cicero, and a pleasant Levy. Indeed, it is such a matter of course with her to quote Latin, that she does it at a picnic in a very mixed companion. Having, we are told, no conception that a noblisex were capable of jealousy on this subject, and if indeed, continues the biographer of Laura Gay, the wisest and noblest portion of that sex were in the majority, no such sentiment would exist, but while Ms Wyndham's and Mr Redford's abound, great sacrifices must be made to their existence. Such sacrifices, we presume, as abstaining from Latin quotations, of extremely moderate interest and applicability, which the wider noble minority of the other sex would be quite as willing to dispense with as a foolish and ignoble majority. It is as little the custom of well-bred men as of well-bred women to quote Latin in mixed parties. They can contain their familiarity with the humane Cicero, without allowing it to boil over in ordinary conversation, and even references to the pleasant Levy are not absolutely irrepressible. But the Seronian Latin is a mildest form of Ms Gay's conversational power. Being on the palatine with her part of sightseers, she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark. Truth can only be pure objectively, for even in the creed to where it predominates, being subjective and parceled out into portions, each of these necessarily received a hue of idiosyncrasy, that is, attained a superstition more or less strong, while in such creed as the Roman Catholic, ignorance, interest, the buys of ancient idolatries, and the force of authority have gradually accumulated on the pure truth, and transformed it, at last into our master's superstition for the majority of its surgeries. And how few are there, alas, whose zeal, courage and intellectual energy are equal to the analysis of this accumulation, and is a discovery of the pearl of great prize which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish. We have often met with women much more novel and profound in their observations than Laura Gay, but rarely was any so in opportunity long-winded. A clerica-lord, who is half-in-love with her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect that she is inclined to free-thinking. But he is mistaken, when, in a moment of sorrow, he delicately back-sleeved to recall to her memory a depot of strength and consolation and reflection, which, until we are heart-breast by the trials of life, we are too apt to forget. We learn that she really has recurrence to that sacred depot, together with a teapot. There is a sort of flavour of orthodoxy mixed with the parade of fortunes and fine carriages in Laura Gay, but it is an orthodoxy mediated by study of the humane cisero, and by an intellectual disposition to analyse. Compensation is much more heavily dosed with doctrine, but then it has a troubled amount of snobbish wordliness and absurd incident to tickle the palette of pious frivolity. Linda, the heroine, is still more speculative and spiritual than Laura Gay, but she has been presented and has more and far grander lovers. Very wicked and fascinating women are introduced, even a French Leon and no expense is spared to get up as exciting a story as you will find in the most immoral novels. In fact, it is a wonderful potpourri of almecs, Scotch, a second site, Mr Rogers' breakfasts, Italian brigands, deathbed conversions, superior authorises, Italian mistresses and attempts at poisoning old ladies. They all served up with a garnish of talk about faith and development and most original minds. Even Miss Susan Barton, the superior authorise, whose pen moves in a quick decided manner which is composing, declines the finest opportunities of marriage, and though old enough to be Linda's mother, says we are taught that she refused Linda's father, has her hand sought by young Earl, the heroine to reject her lover. Of course genius and morality must be backed by illegible offers, or they would seem rather a dull affair, and piety, like other things, in order to be comely full, must be in society and have admittance to the best circles. Rankend beauty is a more frothy and less religious variety of the mind and millinery species. The heroine, we are taught, if she inherited her father's pride of birth and her mother's beauty of person, has in herself a tone of enthusiastic feeling that perhaps belongs to her age, even in the lowlyborn, but which is refined into the highest spirit of wild romance only in the far descended who feel that it is their best inheritance. This enthusiastic young lady, by dint of reading the newspaper to her father, falls in love with a prime minister, who, through the medium of leading articles and the resume of debates, shines upon her imagination as a bright particular star, which has no parallax for her, living in a country as simple as a windham. But she falls with, becomes the baronist's umfraville in her own right, as sonnishes the world with the beauty and accomplishments, when she bursts upon it from her mansion in Spring Gardens, and as you foresee, will presently come into contact with the unseen objet et me. Perhaps the word's prime minister suggests to you a wrinkled or obese sectarian, but pray dismissed the image. Lord Robert Conway has been called to us still almost a youth to the first situation, which a subject can hold in the universe, and to even leading articles and a resume of debates have not conjured up a dream that surpasses the fact. The door opened again, and Lord Robert Conway entered. Evelyn gave one glance. It was enough, she was not disappointed. It seemed as if a picture on which he had long gaze was subtly instinctuous life, and had stepped from its frame before her. His tall figure, the distinguished simplicity of his air. It was a living van dyke, a cavalier, one of his noble cavalier ancestors, or one to whom her fancy had always likened him. Who long of your head was an unfravill, fought a panaman far beyond sea. Was his reality? Very less unlike it, certainly. By and by it becomes evident that a ministerial heart is touched. Lady unfravill is on a visit to the Queen at Windsor, and the last evening of her stay, when they returned from riding, Mr Windham took her and a large party to the top of the keep to see the view. She was leaning on the batamans gazing from that stately hide at a brospic beneath her, when Lord Robert was by his side. What an unrivaled view, exclaimed she. Yes, it would have been wrong to go without having been up here. You are pleased with your visit. Enchanted, a queen to live and die under, to live and die for. Ha! cried he with sudden emotion, and with a eureka expression of countenance, as if he had indeed found a heart in unison with his own. The eureka expression of countenance. You see it wants to be prophetic of marriage at the end of the third volume. But before that desirable consummation, there are very complicated misunderstandings arising chiefly from the vindictive plotting of Sir Lothra Witcherley, who is a genius, a poet, and in every way a most remarkable character indeed. He has not only a romantic poet, but a hardened rake, and a cynical wit. Yet his deep passion for Lady Unfravel has so impoverished his epic romantic talent that he cuts an extremely poor figure in conversation. When she rejects him, he rushes into the shrubbery and rolls himself in the dirt, and on recovering, devotes himself to the most diabolical and labourous schemes of vengeance, and a course of which he disguises himself as a quag physician, and enters into general practice for seeing that Avelyn will fall ill and that he shall be caught in to attend to her. At last, when all his schemes are frustrated, he takes leave of her in a long letter, written, as you will perceive from the following passage, entirely in the style of an eminent literary man. O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, will you ever cast one thought upon the miserable being who addresses you? Will you ever, as your gilded galley is floating down the unruffled stream of prosperity? Will you ever, while lulled by the sweetest music, then own praises? Heard a far off sigh from that world to which I am going. On the whole, however, frothy as it is, we rather prefer rank and beauty to the two other novels we have mentioned. The dialogue is more natural and spirited. There is some frank ignorance and no pedantry, and you are allowed to take the herrings astounding intellect upon trust without being called on to read her conversational refutations of skeptics and philosophers or her rhetorical solutions of the mysteries of the universe. Writers of the Mind and Millinery School are remarkably unanimous in their choice of diction. In their novels, there is usually a lady or gentleman who is more or less of a upestry. The lover has a manly breast, minds are redolent of various things, hearts are hollow, events are utilised, friends are consigned to the tomb, infancy is an engaging period, the sun is a luminary that goes to his western couch or getters drain drops into his refulgin bosum, life is a melancholy boon, albion and skosia are conversational epithets. There was a striking resemblance too in the character of their moral commons such for instance as that it is a fact no less true than melancholy that all people more or less richer or poorer are swayed by bad example. That books however trivial contain some subjects from which useful information may be drawn, that vice can too often borrow the language of virtue, that merit and ability of nature must exist to be accepted for clamour and pretension cannot impose upon those too well-wretting human nature to be easily deceived, and that in order to forgive we must have been injured. There is doubtless a class of readers to whom these remarks appear peculiarly pointed and pungent, for we often find them doubly and drably scored with a pencil, and delicate hands giving them their determined adhesion to these hardly novelties by distinct trefrae emphasised by many notes of exclamation. The colloquial style of these novels is often marked by much ingenious inversion and a careful avoidance of such cheap radiology as can be heard every day. Angry young gentleman exclaim, it is ever thus me thinks, and in the half hour before dinner a young lady informs the next neighbour that the first day she read Shakespeare she stole away into the park and beneath a shadow of the greenwood tree devoured with rapture the inspired page of the great magician. But the most remarkable efforts of the mighty millinery writers lie in their philosophic reflections. The authors of Laura Gay, for example, having married her hero and heron, improvised event by observing that, if those skeptics whose eyes have so long gazed on matter that they can no longer see all tales in men could once enter with heart and soul into such bliss as this, they would come to say that a soul of man and a polypus are not of common origin or of the same texture. Lady novelists, it appears, can see something else beside matter. They are not limited to phenomena but can relieve their eyesight by occasional glimpses of the numenon and are therefore naturally better able than anyone else to confound skeptics, even of that remarkable but as unknown school which maintains that a soul of man is of the same texture as a polypus. The most pitiable of all silly novels by lady novelists are what we may call the oracular species. Novels intended to expand writers, religious, philosophical or moral theories. There seems to be a notion of broad among women, rather akin to the superstition that the speech and actions of idiots are inspired and that a human being most entirely exhausted of common sense is a fittest vehicle of revelation. To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that an amazing ignorance both of science and of life is a best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the notiest moral and speculative questions. Apparently, their recipe for solving all such difficulties is something like this. Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature, chopped small, and with a false notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day and serve a pot in feeble English when not required. You will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide in theological questions who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church parties, who does not see precisely how it is that men have gone wrong hitherto and pity philosophers in general that they have not had the opportunity of consulting her. Great writers who have modestly contented themselves with putting their experience into fiction and have thought it quite a sufficient task to exhibit men and things as they are, she sighs over as deplorably deficient in the application of their powers. They have solved no great questions and she is ready to remedy their omission by setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity in a love story where ladies and gentlemen of good family go through gentile vicissitudes to the utter confusion of deists, puseists and ultra-protestants and to the perfect establishment of that particular view of Christianity which either condenses itself into a sentence of small caps or explodes into a cluster of stars on the 330th page. It is true, the ladies and gentlemen will probably seem to you remarkably letter-like any you have had the fortune or misfortune to meet with for, as a general rule, the ability of a lady novelist to describe actual life and her fellow men is in inverse proportion to her confident elegance about God and the other world and the means by which he usually chooses to conduct you to the true ideas of the invisible is a totally forced picture of divisible. As typical a novel of the irregular kind as we can hope to meet with is the enigma, a leaf from the chronicles of the walkily house. The enigma which thus novelist to solve is certainly one that demands powers no less gigantic than those of lady novelist being neither more nor less than the existence of evil. The problem is stated and the answer dimly foreshadowed on the very first page. The spirited young lady with a raven hair says, All life is an inextricable confusion and the meag young lady with urban hair looks at a picture of the Madonna which is copying and there seemed a solution of that mighty enigma. The style of this novel is quite as lofty as its purpose, indeed some passages on which we have spent much patience study quite beyond our reach in spite of the illustrative aid of italics and small caps and we must await further development in order to understand them. Of Ernest, the modern young clergyman who said everyone right on all occasions we read that he held not of marriage in the marketable kind after social desecration that on one event or night sleep had not visited his divided heart where tumultuated in very type in combination the aggregate feelings of grief and joy and that for the marketable human article he had no toleration be it of what sort or set for what value it might whether for worship or class his upright soul abhorred whose ultimatum the self-deceiver was to him the great spiritual lie living in a vain show deceiving and being deceived since he did not suppose to feel actually and enlarge border on the garment to be merely a social trick. The italics and small caps are the authors and we hope they assist to read his comprehension. Officer Lionel, the model old gentlemen, we are taught that the simple ideal of the middle age apart from its anarchy and decadence in him most truly seem to live again when the ties which are knit meant together were of heroic cast the first born colours of pristine face and truth engraven on the common soul of man and blend into the wide arc of brotherhood where the primeval law of order grew and multiplied each perfect after his kind and mutually interdependent. You see clearly of course how colours are first engraven on a soul and then blend into a wide arch on which arch of colours apparently rainbow the law of order grew and multiplied each apparently the arc and the law perfect after his kind. If after this you can possibly want any further aid towards knowing what Sir Lionel was we can tell you that in his soul the scientific combinations of thought could reduce no fewer harmonies of the good and the true than lay in the primeval pulses which floated as an atmosphere around it and that when he was sealing a letter lo, the responsive throb and that good man's bosom echoed back in simple truth the honest witness of a heart that condemned him not as his eye bedewed with love rested too with something of ancestral pride on the undim tomato de family loyotie the slightest matters have their vulgarity fumigated out of them by the same elevated style commonplace people would say that a copy of Shakespeare lay on a drawing room table but the author is of the enigma bent on edifying paraphrases tells you that there lay on the table that fund of human thought and feeling which it teaches the heart through the little name Shakespeare a watchman sees light burning in an upper window rather longer than usual and things that people are foolish to sit up late when they have an opportunity of going to bed but less of this fact should seem too low and common it is presented to us in the following striking and metaphysical manner he marveled as man will sing for others in a necessarily separate personality consequently though it is allowing it in false mental premise how differently he should act how clearly he should rise there are so lightly held of within a footman an ordinary jeans which larger calves and aspirated vowels answers the doorbell and the opportunity is seized to tell you that he was a type of the large class of pampered means who followed a curse of cane vagabonds on the face of the earth and whose estimate of the human class varies in a graduated scale of money and expenditure these and such as these O England be the false light of thy morbid civilisation we have heard of various false lights from Dr Cymru to Robert Owen from Dr Pussy to the Spiritraffers but we never before heard of the false light that emanates from plush and powder in the same way very ordinary events of civilised life are exalted into the most awful crisis and ladies in full skirts and mangers a la chinoise conduct themselves not unlike the Harrions of Sanguinary melodramas Mrs Percy a shallow woman of the world wishes her son Horace to marry the urban haired Grace she being an heiress but he after the manner of sons falls in love with the raven haired Kate the heiress's portionless cousin and moreover Grace herself shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace in such cases sons are often sulky or fiery mothers are alternately manoeuvring and waspish and the portionless young lady often lies awake at night and cries a good deal we are getting used to these things now just as we are used to eclipses of the moon which no longer set us howling and beating tin cattles we never heard of a lady in a fashionable front behaving like Mrs Percy under these circumstances happening one day to see Horace talking to Grace at a window without an elite knowing what they are talking about or having the least reason to believe that Grace was mistress of the house and a person of dignity would accept her son if he were to offer himself she suddenly rushes up to them and clasps them both saying was a flushed countenance and in an excited manner this is indeed happiness for may I not call you so Grace my Grace my Horace's Grace my dear children the son tells her she is mistaken and that she is engaged to Kate whereupon we have the following scene and tableau gathering herself up to an unprecedented height her eyes lightening forth the fire of her anger wretched boy she said hoarsely and scornfully and clenching her hand take then the doom of your own choice bow down your miserable head and let her mother's curse not spake a deep low voice from behind and Mrs Percy started scared as though she had seen a heavily visitant appear to break upon her in the midst of her sin meantime Horace had fallen on his knees at a feet and hit his face in his hands who then is she who truly his guardian spirit heth a stepped between him and the fearful words which however unmarried it must have hung as a pole over his future existence a spell which could not be unbound which could not be unsaid of an earthly paleness but calm was his still iron bound calmness of death the only calm one there Catherine stood and her words smote on the ear in tones as appallingly slow and separate intonation wrung on the heart like the chill isolated hauling of some fatal knell he would have plighted me his faith but I did not accept it you cannot therefore you dare not curse him and here she continued raising her hands to heaven with her large dark eyes also rose with a charstant glow which for the first time suffering had lighted him those passionate orbs here I promise come well come wo that Horace Walkley and I do never interchange vows without his mother's sanction without his mother's blessing here and throughout the story we see that confusion of purpose which is so characteristic of silly novels written by women it is a story of quite modern drawing room society a society in which polkas are played ampusioism discussed yet we have characters and incidents and trades of manner introduced which are mere struts from the most heterogeneous romances we have a blind Irish harper relic of the picturesque Bards of Yor sartlingers at a Sunday school festival of tea and cake in an English village we have a crazy gypsy in a scarlet cloak singing snatchers of romantic song and revealing a secret on a deathbed with a testimony of a dwarfish middlely merchant who salutes strangers with a curse and a daflish laugh goes to prove that Ernest to model young clergyman is Kate's brother and we have an ultra-virtious Irish Barney discovering that a document is forged by comparing the date of the paper with the date of the alleged signature although the same document has passed through court of law and occasioned a fatal decision the hall in which is a line and lives is a venereal countryside of an old family and this we suppose sets the imagination of the author as flying to dungeons and battlements where low the water blows his horn for as the inhabitants are in their bedrooms certainly within the recollection of placement ten and a breeze springs up which were first taught was feint and then that it made the old setters bow their branches to the greensword she falls into this medieval vein of description the italics are ours the banner unfurled it at the sound and shook its guardian wing above while the startled owl flapped her in the ivy the firmament looking down at the target's eyes ministers of heaven's mute melodies and low two strokes told from out the water tower and two o'clock re-accote its interpreter below such stories as this of the enigma reminders of the pictures clever children sometimes draw out of their own head where you will see a modern villa under ride two knights and helmets fighting in the foreground and a tiger grinning in a jungle on the left the several objects being rolled together because the artist thinks each pretty and perhaps still more because he remembers seeing them in other pictures but we like the author is much better on her medieval stilts than on her oracular ones when she talks of the ix and of the subjective and objective and lays down the exact line of Christian verity between right-hand excesses and left-hand declensions persons who deviate from this line are introduced with a patronising air of charity of a certain Miss Intigan she informs us with all the lucity of italics and small caps that function not form as the inevitable outer expression of the spirit in this tabernacle age weakling roster and apropos of Miss Major nifilngallic lady who is little too apt to talk of her visits to sick women and the state of their souls we are taught that a model clergyman is not one to disallow through the super crust the only current towards good in the subject or the positive benefits nevertheless to the object we imagine a double refined accent and protrusion of chin which are feebly represented by the italics and the lady sentences we abstain from quoting any of her oracular doctrinal passages because they refer to matters too serious for our pages just now the episode silly may seem impertinent applied to a novel which indicates so much reading and intellectual activity as a enigma but we use this episode advisedly if, as a world has long agreed a very great amount of instruction will not make a wise man still let will a very mediocre amount of instruction make a wise woman the most mischievous form of feminine silliness is a literary form because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against a more solid education of women when men see girls wasting their time in consultations about bonnets and bold dresses and in giggling or sentimental love confidences or middle aged women mismanaging their children and soliciting themselves with accurate gossip they can hardly help saying for heaven's sake let girls be better educated let them have some better objects of thought some more solid occupations but after a few hours conversation was an oracular literary woman or a few hours reading of her books they are likely enough to say after all when a woman gets some knowledge see what you she makes of it her knowledge remains acquisition instead of passing into culture instead of being subdued into modesty simplicity by a larger acquaintance with thought and fact she has a feverish consciousness of retainments she keeps a sort of mental pocket mirror and is continually looking in it at her own intellectuality she spoils a taste of one's muffin by questions of metaphysics puts down men at a dinner table with the superior information and seizes the opportunity of a soiree to catatisise on the vital question of the relation between mind and matter and then look at her writings she mistakes vagueness for depth bombasse for eloquence and the factation for originality she struts on one page rolls her eyes on another grimaces in a third and is hysterical in a fourth she may have read many writings of great men and a few writings of great women but she's unable to discern the difference between her own style and theirs as Yorkshire man is a discerned difference between his own English and Londoners Rhoda Montaid is a native accent of her intellect no, the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a soil to bear much tillage it is only fit for the very lightest crops it is true that a man who come to such a decision on such a very superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the world but have not now to contest their opinion we are only pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect we do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by associating with a woman of true culture whose mind had absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it a rarely cultured woman like a rarely cultured man is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself she neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of men but because of that mode of exhibiting her memory and eternity does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful she does not write books to confound philosophers perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them in conversation she is the least formidable of women because she understands you without wanting to make you aware that you can't understand her she does not give you information which is a raw material of culture she gives you sympathy which is its subtlest essence a more numerous glass of silly novels than the oracular which are generally inspired by some form of high church or transcendental Christianity is what we may call the white neck cloth species which represent a tone of thought and feeling in the evangelical party this species is a kind of gentle tract on a large scale intended as a sort of medicine or sweetmeat for low church young ladies an evangelical substitute for the fashionable novel as the main meetings are a substitute for the opera even quaget children one would think and hardly have been denied the indulgence of a doll but it must be a doll dressed in a drap gown and a co-settled bonnet not a worldly doll in gaws and spangles and there are no young ladies who imagine unless they belong to the church of united brethren in which people are married without any love making who can dispense with lost stories thus for evangelical young ladies there are evangelical lost stories in which the vicities of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of regeneration and the atonement these novels differ from the oracular ones as a low church woman often differs from a high church woman there are a little less supercilious and a great deal more ignorant a little less correct in their syntax and a great deal more vulgar the Orlando of evangelical literature is a young curate looked at from the point of view of the middle class where cambrick bands are understood to have as a thrilling in effect in the hearts of young ladies as epulates have in the classes above and below it in the ordinary type of these novels the hero is almost sure to be a young curate frowned upon perhaps by worldly mamars but carrying captive the hearts of their daughters who can never forget that sermon tender classes are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the opera box data-deds are seasoned with quotations from scripture instead of quotations from depotes and questions as to the state of the herons affections are mingled with anxiety as to the state of her soul the young curate always has a background of well-dressed and wealthy if not fashionable society for evangelical silliness is a snobbish as any other kind of silliness and the evangelical nadie novelist while she explains to you the type of the scapegoat on one page is ambitious on another to represent the manners and conversation of aristocratic people her pictures of fashionable society are often curious studies considered as efforts of the evangelical imagination but in one particular the novels of the whiteneck cloth at school are meritoriously realistic their favourite hero the evangelical young curate is always rather an insipid personage the most recent novel of this species that we happen to have before us is the old grey church it is utterly tame and feeble there is no one set of objects on which a writer seems to have a stronger grasp than on any other and we should be entirely at a loss to conjecture among what phases of life her experience has been gained but for certain vulgarisms of style which sufficiently indicate that she has had the advancement though she has been unable to use it of mingling truthfully with men and women whose men as in characters have not had all their bosses and angles rubbed down by refined conventionalism it is less excusable in an evangelical novelist than in any other graciously to seek a subject among titles and carriages the real drama of evangelicalism and it has abundance of fine drama for any other who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it lies among the middle and lower classes and are not evangelical opinions understood to give in a special interest in the weak things of the earth rather than in the mighty why then cannot our evangelical lady novelists show as the operation of the religious views among people there really are many such in the world who keep no carriage not so much as a brass bound giver not so much as a brass bound giver who even managed to eat their dinner without a silver fork and in whose mouse the authorises questionable English would be strictly consistent why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's pictures of religious life among the negroes instead of this pious ladies nauseate as with novels which are reminders of what we sometimes see in a way of thinking and reminders of what we sometimes see in a wordly woman recently converted she is as fond of a fine dinner table as before but she invites clergymen instead of bows she thinks as much of a dress as before but she adopts a more so with choice of colours and patterns her conversation is as trivial as before but it's a reality is flavoured with gospel instead of gossip in the old great church we have the same sort of angelical travesty of the fashionable novel and of course the vicious intriguing baronet is not wanting it is worth while to give a sample of the style of conversation attribute to this high-born reg a style that lets profuse italics and palpable innuandos is worthy of Miss Squire's in an evening visit to the ruins of the Colosseum Eustis, the young clergyman has been withdrawing the heroine Miss Lushington from the rest of the party for the sake of a tear-to-tear the baronet is jealous and Ventus peak in this way there they are and Miss Lushington no doubt quite safe for she is under the holy guidance of Poet Eustis the first who has of course been delivering to her and identifying homily on the wickedness of the heathens of yw who as tradition tells us in this very place let loose a wild beasties on poor St Paul oh no by the by I believe I am wrang and betraying my want of clergy that it was not at all seen poor nor was it here but no matter it would equally serve as a text to preach from and from which to diverge to the degenerate heathen Christian of the present day and all the naughty practices and so and was an exhortation to come out from among them and to be separate and I am sure Miss Lushington you have most scrupulously conformed to that injunction this evening for we have seen nothing of you since our arrival but everyone seems agreed it has been a charming part of pleasure and I am sure we all feel much indebted to Miss Gray for having suggested it and as he seems so capitalist I hope you will think of something else equally greeble at all this driveling kind of dialogue and equally driveling narrative which like a bad drawing represents nothing and to barely indicate what is meant to be represented is a transfer through the book and we have no doubt is considered by the amiel authors to constitute an improving novel which Christian mothers will do well to put into the hands of their daughters but everything is relative we have met with American vegetarians his normal diet was dry meal and who when their appetite wanted stimulation tickled it with wet meal and so we can imagine that there are evangelical circles in which the old great church is devoured as a powerful and interesting fiction but perhaps the least readable of silly women's novels are the modern antique species which in full to us the domestic life of gents and jambers the private love affairs of Sennigryp or the mental struggles and ultimate conversion of Demetrius the silversmith from most silly novels we can at least extract a laugh but those of the modern antique school have a ponderous a letting kind of fatuity under which we groan what can be more demonstrative of the inability of literary women to measure of their own powers than their frequent assumption of a task which can only be justified by the rarest concurrence of a requirement with genius the finest effort to reanimate a past is of course only approximative is always more or less an infusion of the modern spirit into the ancient form what you call the spirit of time that is the reason the master's own spirit in which the time is perceived admitting that genius which has familiarised itself with all the relics of an ancient period can sometimes by the force of its sympathetic divination restored a missing note in the music of humanity and reconstruct the fragments into a home which will really bring the remote past nearer to us and interpret it to our duller apprehension this form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest because it demands as much accurate and minute knowledge as creative vigor yet you find ladies constantly choosing to make the mental mediocrity more conspicious by closing it in a much greater rate of ancient names by putting their feeble sentimentality into the amounts of Roman vestals or Egyptian princesses and attributing their rhetorical arguments to Jewish high priests and Greek philosophers a recent example of this heavy imbecility is Adonija a tale of the Jewish dispersion which forms part of a series Uniting we are told taste, humour and sound principles Adonija we presume exemplifies a tale of sound principles the taste and humour are to be found in other members of the series we are told on the cover that the incidents of this tale are fraught with unusual interest and the preface winds up thus to those who feel interested in the disperse of Israel and Judea these pages may afford perhaps information on an important subject as well as amusement since the important subject on which this book is to afford information specified it may possibly lie in some esoteric meaning to which we have no key but if it has relation to the disperse of Israel and Judea at any period of their history we believe a tolerally well informed school girl already knows much more of it than she will find in this tale of the Jewish dispersion Adonija is simply the feeble's kind of love story supposed to be instructive we presume because a hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman Vestal because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the society for promoting the conversion of the Jews and because instead of being written in plain language it is endawned with that peculiar style of grandi locrans which is held by some lady novelists the given antique colouring and which we recognise at once in such phrases as these there's blended regnals hellands undoubtedly possessed by the emperor Nero the expiring Zion of lofty stem the verges partner of his couch ah by Vestal and I tell thee Roman among the quotations which serve at once for instruction and ornament on the cover of this volume there is one from Miss Sinclair who informs us that works of imagination are avowedly read by men of science wisdom and piety from which we suppose to read us together to cheering infearance the Dr. Dawbney Mr. Mill or Mr. Maurice may openly indulge himself with the perusal of Adonisia without being obliged to secrete it among the sofa cushions or read it by snatchers under the dinner table be not a baker if your head be made of butter homie provab which being interpreted may mean that no woman writing to print who is not prepared for the consequences we are aware that our remarks are in a very different tone from that of the reviewers who with the perennial recurrence of precisely similar emotions only paralleled we imagine in the experience of monthly nurses tell one lady novelist after another that they hail her production with delight we are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed to be told in a choicest phraseology of puffery that their pictures of life are brilliant the characters well drawn their style fascinating and their sentiments lofty but if they are inclined to resent our plainins of speech we ask them to reflect for a moment on a jerry phrase and often captures playing panagyrists give to writers whose works are on the way to become classics no sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent than she received a tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticised by a peculiar themometric adjustment when a woman's talent is at zero journalistic approbation is at a boiling pitch when she attains mediocrity it is already at no more than summer heat and if ever she reaches excellence critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point Harriet Martinot Cara Bell and Mrs Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men and every critic who forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately take a literature will on principle abstain from any exceptional indulgence towards the productions of literary women as we play into everyone who looks impartially and extensively into feminine literature that its greatest deficiency are due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literally excellence patient diligence a sense of responsibility involved in publication and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art in the majority of women's books you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard that fertility an immisial combination or feeble imitation which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to baroness just as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune while a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent the foolish vanity of wishing to appear and print instead of being counter balanced in the consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation implied of futile authorship seems to be encouraged by the extremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman on this ground we believe that the average intellect of women is unfairly represented by the miles of feminine literature and that while the few women who write well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex women who write ill are very far below it so that after all the severe critics are fulfilling its chivalrous duty and depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction and then recommending women of mediocre faculties as at least a negative service they can render their sex to abstain from writing the sterling apology for women who become righteous without any special qualification is that society shuts them out from other spheres of occupation society is a very culpable entity and has to answer for the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities from bad piggles to bad poetry but society like matter and Her Majesty's Government and other lofty abstractions has a chair of excessive blame as well as excessive praise where there is one woman who writes from necessity we believe there are three women who write from vanity and besides there is something so antiseptic and a mere healthy fact of working for one's bread that the most drashy and rotten kind of feminine literature is not likely to have been produced under such a circumstances in all labour there is profit but lady's silly novels we imagine are less the result of labour than of busy idonness happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a department of literature in which women can after they kind fully equal men a cluster of great names both living and dead rushed to our memories and evidence that women can produce novels not only fine but among the very finest novels too that have a precious speciality lying quite apart from aculent aptitudes and experience no educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements like crystalline marzes it may take any form and yet be beautiful we have only to pour in derived elements genuine observation humour and passion but it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement that constitutes the fatal seduction of novel writing to the incompetent women ladies are not want to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered and incompetence inevitably breaks down every art which has its absolute technique is to a certain extent guarded from the intrusions but in novel writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery and so we have again and again the old story of Lafontaine's hours who puts his nose to the flute and finding that he elicits some sound exclaims moi aussi je jude la flute a favour which we commend as parting to the consideration any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of silly novels by lady novelists and of silly novels by lady novelists by George Eliot telegrams the telephone from business hence for men and women by Alfred Rocheford Calhoun this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Bolognau Times telegrams the telephone by Alfred Rocheford Calhoun to send a telegram you or your messenger must take what you have written to the nearest telegraph office you may write a telegram on any kind of paper provided always that the writing is plain all telegraph offices are provided with regular blank forms which may be had without cost and it is better to use these when they are available the blank is properly ruled with lines for the date for the address of the one to whom it is to be sent and for the message charges the telegraph company charges a fixed sum for a message of say 10 words these words do not include the name and address of the sender the amount of the charge is always dependent on the distance between the office for which the message is sent and the one at which it is received every word over 10 in the message pays an extra fee dependent again on the distance getting just what you mean into 10 words may seem difficult when you have a lot to say but it is surprising how you can foil the message down when each additional word costs 5 or more cents it may pay to practice this if it is actually necessary to make your meaning clear by the addition of more words do not hesitate at the cost if you are known at the telegraph office you can send a message to be collected from the receiver never permit the receiver to send a message that is exclusively on your own business always make and keep a copy of every important telegram to send away do not neglect this if you have neglected to keep a copy of a telegram or having made one have lost it you may get a copy from the telegraph office provided the application be made within 6 months of the sending of the message telegrams are delivered by the company's messengers you must give receipt to the messenger on the delivery of a telegram where the receiver lives a long distance from the telegraph office it is customary to pay the messenger an additional fee depending on the distance the charges for telegrams to be sent at night and delivered in the morning are much lower than for day messages additional charge less than the original messages may be repeated back to ensure their accuracy read over to the official or still better have him read your message over in your presence that you may be sure he understands it as written you cannot hold others responsible for your own mistakes telegrafing money you can telegraph money with as much safety as you can send it through a bank in handling money in this way the telegraph company does not act as a banker but as a carrier telegraph money orders are a great convenience when one wants to send cash to a distant point in a hurry country telegraph offices do not as a rule transmit money that function is left to the offices in the larger centres the method one wishing to wire money will find at the telegraph office suitable blanks they are furnished gratis on lines provided for the purpose and properly indicated as in a postal order form write the name and address of the person to receive the money with the amount this paper properly signed is handed to the clerk with the money to be sent and the fee for transmission the fee is doubled that charge the message of the same link if for any reason the person to whom the money is sent cannot be found within 48 hours the money is returned to the sender but the fees are retained as the company is not to blame for failure the receiver of a money order if unknown must identify himself as he would at a bank and he must receipt for the money if the person to receive the money is an entire stranger in the place to which the money is sent the sender knows it and he provides for the situation by signing on the reverse of the application an order to the distant operator to pay the money to the person named within without further identification when a telegraph operator receives a money order he at once seeks out the person to whom it is sent and pays the money in accordance instructions as to identification the telephone the telephone local and long distance is fast superseding the telegraph as a medium for speedy business communications its use is not confined to large cities as at first nearly every village is now in communication with the outer world through the telephone the world has just awakened to the needs of its food producer the farmer in Norway which is not a rich country the telephone has been introduced on the farms the rates are low and the benefits are inestimable on our large farms in the west telephones have been in use for some time as an essential part of the machinery now there is a move on foot to make them available for every farmer in the more settled regions while business can be conducted over the telephone as if the speakers stood face to face yet such transactions not being recorded will not stand in law if one of the parties should dispute the other's word end of telegrams the telephone by Alfred Rocheford Calhoun Monsieur de Voltaire by John Watts this is a Librivox recording all Librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org reading by Greg Marguerite Monsieur de Voltaire by John Watts Francois-Marie Araway better known by the name of Voltaire was born at Châtenay on the 20th of February 1694 by assuming the name of Voltaire young Araway followed the custom at that time generally practiced by the rich citizens and younger sons who, leaving the family named to the heir assumed that of a thief or perhaps of a country house the father of Monsieur de Voltaire was treasurer to the chamber of accounts and his mother Margaret Domart was of a noble family of Poitou the fortune which the father enjoyed enabled him to bestow a first-class education upon the young Araway who was sent to the Jesuit who was sent to the Jesuit college where the sons of the nobility received their education while at school Voltaire began to write poetry and gave signs of a remarkable genius his tutors father Poire and Jay from the boldness and independence of his mind predicted that he would become the apostle of deism in France this prediction he fulfilled Voltaire was says Lord Brom through his whole life a sincere believer in the existence and attributes of the deity he was a firm and decided and an openly declared unbeliever in Christianity but he was without any hesitation or anti-intermission a theist his open declaration of disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible and his total rejection of the dogmas of Christianity laid him open to the malignant attacks and misrepresentations of the priesthood and the bigots of Europe so strong were they that his life was continually in danger Lord Brom and his men of letters of the time of George III says Voltaire's name is so intimately connected in the minds of all men with infidelity in the minds of most men with irreligion and in the minds of all who are not well informed with these qualities alone that whoever undertakes to write his life and examine his claims to the vast reputation which all the hostile feelings excited by him against himself have never been able to destroy or even materially to impair as to labour under a great load of prejudice and can hardly expect by any detail of particulars to obtain for his subject even common justice at the hands of the general reader Voltaire was born in a corrupt age and in a capital where it was fashionable to be immoral when he left college he was introduced by his own godfather to the Abbey de Chathaneuf and the notorious Ninon de Lanclos who at her death left him by will two thousand leavers to purchase books in estimating the character of Voltaire a due consideration must be had for the period in which he lived and of the nature of the society amidst which he was reared he lived twenty years under the reign of Louis XIV and during the whole of the reign of the infamous Louis XV when kings, courtiers and priests set the example of the grossest immorality it was then as Voltaire said that to make the smallest fortune it was better to say four words to the mistress of a king than to write a hundred volumes Voltaire's life from his youth upwards was a stormy one after he left college his father finding him persisting in writing poetry and living at large forbade him his house he insisted upon his son binding himself to an attorney but his restless disposition quite unfitted him for regular employment and he soon quitted the profession he early made the acquaintance of the most celebrated man of his time but his genius, his wit and his sarcasm soon raised up numerous enemies at the age of 22 he was accused of having written a satire upon Louis XIV who was just dead and was thrown into the Bastille but he was not cast down it was here that he sketched his poem of the league corrected his tragedy of Oedipus and wrote some merry verses on the misfortune of being a prisoner the regent Duke of Orleans being informed of his innocence restored him to freedom and granted him a recompense I thank your royal highness said Voltaire for having provided me with food but I hope you will not hear after trouble yourself concerning my lodging Voltaire with his activity of mind and living to so great an age must necessarily produce many works they are voluminous consisting of history, poetry and philosophy his dramatic pieces are numerous and many of which are considered second only to Shakespeare's Oedipus, Zaddig, Ongenu Zaire, O'n Rhian Irene, Tancred, Mohammed Mareop, Saul Alzier, Lee Fanatismi Mariamni, Gaston de Foir Enfronc Pôd de Jieu Bousiel de Orleans and Essay on Fire The Elements History of Charles XII Lectures on Man Letters on England, Memoirs Voyage of Sacramentado Micromegas, Made of Orleans Brutus, Adelaide, Death of Caesar Temple of Taste Essays on the Manors and Spirit of Nations Llamination of the Holy Scriptures and the Philosophical Dictionary are works that emanated from the active brain of this wit, poet, satirist and philosopher In 1722 while at Brussels Voltaire met Jean-Baptiste Rousseau whose misfortuns he deplored and whose poetic talents he esteemed Voltaire read some of his poems to Rousseau and he in return read to Voltaire his Oed address to posterity which Voltaire it is asserted told him would never arrive at the place to which it was addressed The two poets parted irreconcilable foes In 1725 Voltaire was again shut up in the Bastille through attempting to revenge an insult inflicted upon him by a courtier At the end of six months he was released but ordered to quit Paris He sought refuge in England in 1726 He was the guest in that country of a Mr Falcon of Wandsworth whose hospitality he remembered with affection so long as life lasted Voltaire was known to most of the wits and free thinkers of that day in England At this early age he was at war with Christianity His visit to England says La-Martine gave assurance and gravity to his incredulity for in France he had only known libertines In England he knew philosophers He went to visit Congress who had the affection to tell him that he, Congrive valued himself not on his authorship but as a man of the world to which Voltaire administered a just rebuke by saying I should have never come so far to see a gentleman Voltaire soon acquired an ample fortune much of which was expended in aiding men of letters and in encouraging such youth as he thought discovered the seeds of genius The goose he made of riches might prevail on envy itself to pardon him of their acquirement His pen and his purse were ever at the service of the oppressed Calais an infirm old man living at Toulouse accused of having hung his son to prevent his becoming a Catholic The Catholic population became inflamed and the young man was declared to be a martyr The father was condemned to the torture and the wheel and died protesting his innocence The family of Calais was ruined and disgraced Voltaire assuring himself of the innocence of the old man determined to obtain justice for the family To this end he labored incessantly for three years In all this time he said a smile did not escape him from which he did not reproach himself as for a crime His efforts were successful nor was this the only cause in which he was engaged on the side of the weak and the wronged against the powerful and the persecuting His whole life, though maligned as an infidel and a scoffer was one long act of benevolence On learning a young niece of Corniel languished in a condition unworthy of his name Voltaire in the most delicate manner invited her to his house and she there received an education suitable to the rank that her birth had marked for her in society It is the duty of a soldier he said to succour the niece of his general Voltaire lived for a time at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia and for many years carried on a correspondence with that monarch He quarreled with the king and left the court in a passion an emissary was dispatched to him to request an apology who said he was to carry back to the king his answer verbatim Voltaire told him that the king might go to the devil on being asked if that was the message he meant to be delivered Yes, he answered and add to it that I told you that you might go there with him In his memoirs he has drawn a most amusing picture of his Prussian majesty He also says priests never entered the palace and in a word Frederick lived without religion without a council and without a court Weeried with his rambling and unsettled mode of living Voltaire bought an estate at Farne in the Pades ex where he spent the last 20 years of his life He rebuilt the house, laid out gardens kept a good table and had crowds of visitors from all parts of Europe removed from whatever could excite momentary or personal passion he yielded to his zeal for the destruction of prejudice which was the most powerful and active of all the sensations he felt This peaceful life seldom disturbed except by the threats of persecution rather than persecution itself was adorned by those acts of enlightened and bold benevolence which, while they relieve the suffering of certain individuals are of any service to the whole human race He was known to Europe as the sage of Farne After an absence of more than 27 years he revisited Paris in the beginning of 1778 He had just finished his play of Irene and was anxious to see it performed His visit was an ovation He had outlived all his enemies After having been the object of unrelenting persecution by the priests and corrupt courtiers of France for a period of more than 50 years he yet lived to see the day when all that was most eminent in station or most distinguished in talents all that most shown in society or most ruled in court seemed to bend before him At this period he for the first time saw Benjamin Franklin they embraced each other in the midst of public acclamations and it was said to be Solon who embraced Sophocles Voltaire did not survive his triumph long His unwirried activity induced him at his great age to commence a dictionary upon a novel plan which he prevailed upon the French Academy to take up his labors brought on spitting of blood followed by sleeplessness to obviate which he took opium in considerable quantities Condorcid says that the servant mistook one of the doses which threw him into a state of lethargy from which he never rallied He lingered for some time but at length expired on the 30th of May 1778 in his 85th year It was the custom in those days and prevails to a considerable extent even in our own time for the religious world to fabricate horrible deathbeds of all free thinkers Voltaire's last moments were distorted by his enemies after the approved fashion and nonwithstanding the most unqualified denial on the part of Dr Burrard and others who were present at his death there are many who believe these falsehoods at this moment Voltaire died in peace with the exception of the petty annoyances to which he was subjected by the priests the philosophers too who wished that no public stigma should be cast upon him by the refusal of Christian burial persuaded him to undergo confession and absolution this to oblige his friends he submitted to but when the cure one day drew him from his lethargy by shouting into his ear Do you believe the divinity of Jesus Christ? Voltaire exclaimed in the name of God sir speak to me no more of that man but let me die in peace this put to flight all doubts of the pious and the certificate of burial was refused but the prohibition of the bishop of Troy came too late Voltaire was buried at the monastery of Salaris in Champagne of which his nephew was a habit afterwards during the first French Revolution the body at the request of the citizens was removed to Paris and buried in the pantheon Lamartine in his history of the gerodinists page 149 speaking of the ceremony says on the 11th of July the departmental and municipal authorities went in state to the barrier of Sharonton to receive the mortal remains of Voltaire which were placed on the ancient site of the Bastille like a conqueror on his trophies his coffin was exposed to public gaze and a pedestal was formed for it the stones torn from the foundations of this ancient stronghold of tyranny and thus Voltaire when dead triumphed over those stones which had triumphed over and confined him when living on one of the blocks was the inscription receive on this spot where despotism once fettered thee the honors decreed to thee by thy country the coffin of Voltaire was deposited between those of Descartes and Mirabeau the spot predestined for this intermediary genius between philosophy and policy between the design and the execution the aim of Voltaire's life was the destruction of prejudice and the establishment of reason Deists said W. J. Fox in 1819 have done much for toleration and religious liberty it may be doubted if there be a country in Europe where that cause has not been advanced by the writings of Voltaire in the preface and conclusion to the examination of scriptures Voltaire says the ambition of domineering over the mind is one of the strongest passions a theologian, a missionary or a partisan of any description is always for conquering like a prince and there are many more sex than there are sovereigns in the world to whose guidance shall I submit my mind must I be a Christian because I happen to be born in London or in Madrid must I be a Muslim because I was born in Turkey as it is myself alone that I ought to consult the choice of a religion is my greatest interest one man adores God by Mohammed another by the Grand Lama and another by the Pope weak and foolish men adore God by your own reason I have learnt that a French vicar of the name of John Messilier who died a short time since prayed on his deathbed God would forgive him for having taught Christianity I have seen a vicar in Dorsetshire relinquish a living of 200 pounds a year and confess to his parishioners that his conscience would not permit him to preach the shocking absurdities of the Christians but neither the will nor the testament of John Messilier or the declaration of this worthy vicar are what I consider decisive proofs Uriel Acosta, a Jew publicly renounced the Old Testament however, I pay no more attention to the Jew Acosta than to parson Messilier I will read the arguments on both sides of the trial with careful attention not suffering the lawyers to tamper with me but will wait before God the reasons of both parties and decide according to my conscience I commence my being my own instructor I conclude that every sensible man every honest man ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence the great name of theist which we can never sufficiently revere is the only name we ought to adopt the only gospel we should read is the grand book of nature written with God's own hand and stamped with his own seal the only religion we ought to profess is to adore God and act like honest men it would be as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce evil as it would be for Christian fanaticism not to produce it but what shall we substitute in its place say you what? a fferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives I tell you to rid yourself of this beast and you ask me what shall you put in its place is it you that put this question to me then you are a hundred times more odious than the pagan pontiffs who permitted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their ceremonies and sacrifices who did not attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas who never disputed the powers of the magistrates and who introduced no discord among mankind you have the face to ask what you must substitute in the place of your fables as will be seen by his exclamation on his deathbed Voltaire was no believer in the divinity of Christ he disbelieved the Bible in Toto the accounts of the doings of the Jewish kings as represented in the Old Testament he has unsparingly ridiculed in the drama Saul the quiet irony of the following will be easily appreciated divinity of Jesus the Sosinians who are regarded as blasphemers do not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ they dare to pretend with the philosophers of antiquity with the Jews with the Mohammedians and most other nations at the idea that God man is monstrous that the distance from God to man is infinite and that it is impossible for a perishable body to be infinite, immense or eternal they have the confidence to quote Eusebius Bishop of Cassaria in their favor who in his ecclesiastical history book I chapter 9 declares that it is absurd to imagine the uncreated and unchangeable nature of almighty God taking the form of a man they cite the fathers of the church Justin and Tertullian who have said the same thing Justin in his dialogue with Trifonius and Tertullian in his discourse against Praxeus they quote Saint Paul who never calls Jesus Christ God and who calls him man very often they carry their audacity so far as to affirm that the Christians passed three entire ages informing the apothesis of Jesus and that they only raised this astonishing edifus by the example of the pagans who had deified mortals at first according to them Jesus was only regarded as a man inspired by God and then as a creature more perfect than others they gave him some time after a place above the angels as Saint Paul tells us every day added to his greatness he in time became an emanation proceeding from God this was not enough he was even born before time at last he was God consubstantial with God Crelius, Vocalceus, Natalis, Alexander and Hornbeck have supported all these blasphemies by arguments which astonish the wise and mislead the weak above all, Faustus socinius spread the seeds of this doctrine in Europe and at the end of the 16th century a new species of Christianity was established there were already more than 300 philosophical dictionary volume I, page 405 though a firm and consistent believer in the being of God Voltaire was no bigot the calm reasoning of the following passage does honour to its author faith divine faith about which so much has been written is evidently nothing more than incredulity brought under subjection for we certainly have no other faculty than the understanding by which we can believe and the objects of faith are not those of the understanding we can believe only what appears to be true and nothing can appear true but in one of the three following ways by intuition or feeling as I exist I see the sun or by an accumulation of probability amounting to certainty as there is a city called Constantinople or by positive demonstration as triangles of the same base and height are equal faith therefore being nothing at all of this description can no more be a belief a persuasion than it can be yellow or red it can be nothing but the annihilation of reason a silence of adoration at the contemplation of things absolutely incomprehensible plus speaking philosophically no person believes the trinity no person believes that the same body can be in a thousand places at once and he who says I believe these mysteries will see beyond the possibility of a doubt if he reflects for a moment on what passes in his mind that these words mean no more than I respect the mysteries I submit myself to those who announce them for they agree with me that my real reason their own reason believe them are not but it is clear if my reason is not persuaded I am not persuaded and my reason cannot possibly be two different things it is an absolute contradiction that I should receive that as true which my understanding rejects as false faith therefore is nothing but submissive or deferential incredulity but why should this submission be exercised when my understanding principally recoils the reason we well know is that my understanding has been persuaded that the mysteries of my faith are laid down by God himself all then that I can do as a reasonable being is to be silent and adore that is what divine call external faith and this faith neither is nor can be anything more than respect for things incomprehensible in consequence of the reliance I place on those who teach them if God himself were to say to me thought is of an olive colour the square of a certain number is bitter I should certainly understand nothing at all from these words I could not adopt them either as true or false but I will repeat them if he commands me to do it and I will make others repeat them at the risk of my life this is faith it is nothing more than obedience in order to obtain a foundation then for this obedience it is merely necessary to examine the books which require it our understanding therefore should investigate the books of the old and new testament just as it would Plutarch or Levy and if it finds in them incontestable and decisive evidences evidences obvious to all minds and such as would be admitted by men of all nations that God himself is their author then it is our incumbent duty to subject our understanding to the yoke of faith Ibid, page 474 prayer we know of no religion without prayers even the Jews had them although there was no public form of prayer among them before the time when they sang their canticles in their synagogues which did not take place until a late period the people of all nations whether actuated by desires or fears have summoned the assistance of the divinity philosophers however more respectful to the supreme being and rising more above human weakness have been habituated to substitute for prayer resignation this in fact is all that appears proper and suitable between creature and creator but philosophy is not adapted to the great mass of mankind it soars too highly above the vulgar it speaks a language they are unable to comprehend to propose philosophy to them would be just as weak as to propose the study of conic sections to peasants or fish women among philosophers themselves I know of no one besides Maximus Tyreus who has treated of this subject the following is the substance of his ideas upon it the designs of God exist from all eternity if the object prayed for be conformable to his immutable will it must be perfectly useless to request of him the very thing which he has determined to do if he is prayed to for the reverse of what he has determined to do he is prayed to be weak fickle and inconsistent such a prayer implies that this is thought to be his character and is nothing better than ridicule or mockery of him you either request of him what is just and right in which case he ought to do it and it will be actually done without any solicitation which in fact shows distrust of his rectitude or what you request is unjust and then you insult him you are either worthy or unworthy of the favor you implore if worthy he knows it better than you do yourself if unworthy you commit an additional crime in requesting that which you do not merit in a word we offer up prayers to God only because we have made him after our own image we treat him like a pacha or sultan who is capable of being exasperated and appeased in short all nations pray to God the sage is resigned and obeys him let us pray with the people and let us be resigned to him with the sage we have already spoken of the public prayer of many nations and of those of Jews that people have had one from time immortal which deserves their attention from its resemblance to the prayer taught us by Jesus Christ himself this Jewish prayer is called the catish and begins with these words oh God let thy name be magnified and sanctified make thy kingdom to prevail let redemption flourish and the Messiah come quickly as this radish is recited in Chaldey it has induced the belief that this is as ancient as the captivity and that it was at that period that the Jews began to hope for a Messiah a Liberator or Redeemer who they have since prayed for in the Ihi seasons of their calamities Ibit Vol. I Page 350 Voltaire's contempt for the Bible led him to use the language of Holy Ridd in the courses of jokes though perhaps with such material the jokes could not well be otherwise than course the following letter he addressed to M. Bayan Intendent of Lyon on account of a poor Jew taken up for uttering contraband goods this kind of writing obtained for Voltaire the title of scoffer Blessings on the Old Testament which gives me this opportunity of telling you that amongst all those who adore the new there is not one more devoted to your service than myself a certain descendent of Jacob a peddler as all these gentlemen are whilst he is waiting for the Messiah waits also for your protection which at present he has the most need of some honest men of the first trade of St. Matthew who gather together the Jews and Christians at the gates of your city have seized something in the breeches pocket of an Israelite-ish page belonging to the poor circumcised who has the honour to tender you this billet with all proper submission and humility I beg leave to join my amen to his at a venture I but just saw you at Paris as Moses saw the deity and should be very happy in seeing you face to face if the word face can any ways be applied to me preserve some remembrance of your old eternal humble servant who loves you with that chaste and tender affection which the religious Solomon had for his 300 Shuhomites Voltaire's prodigious wit and sarcasm were so exuberant that he expended them upon all people and all subjects even himself when occasion admitted of it in one of his letters addressed to the Elector Palantene September 9th, 1761 he gives this excuse for not attending at the court I should really make an excellent figure amidst the rejoicings of your Electoral Highness it was only I think in the Egypt of antiquity that skeletons were admitted to a place in their festivals to say the truth my lord it is all over with me I laugh indeed sometimes but am forced to acknowledge that pain is an evil it is a comfort to me that your highness is well but I am fitter for an extreme unction than a baptism may the peace serve for an era to mark the prince's birth and may his august father preserve and accept the profound respects of his little Swiss, Voltaire in politics Voltaire was not very far advanced he seems to have had no idea of a nation without a king a monarch who should not commit any very flagrant acts of tyranny was as much as he appeared to desire he evidently did not foresee the great revolution that was so soon to burst forth in France but that he mainly contributed by his writings to bring it about there can be no doubt his influence upon the men of his time both in France and Europe is ably depicted by such writers as Lamartine, Queenie and Brom Voltaire's was the one great mind of his day whose thoughts engrossed the attention of all men he was great by his learning his genius and his benevolence and this man was the champion of reason, the enemy of superstition and an infidel Queenie in his lectures on the Romish church says I watch for 40 years the reign of one man who is in himself the spiritual director not of his country but of his age from the corner of his chamber he governs the kingdom of spirits intellects are every day regulated by his one word written by his hand traverses Europe princes love and kings fear him they think they are not sure if he be not with them whole nations on their side adopt without discussion and emulously repeat every syllable that falls from his pen who exercises this incredible power which had been nowhere seen since the middle ages is he another Gregory II is he a pope? no, Voltaire we conclude our sketch with the eloquent words of Lamartine who describes in a few sentences rendered to free thought and intellectual progress by the sage of Farnay if we judge of men by what they have done then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe no one has caused through the powerful influence of his genius alone and the perseverance of his will so great a commotion in the minds of men his pen aroused a world and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne or a peon empire of a theocracy his genius was not force but light heaven had destined him not to destroy but to illuminate and wherever he trod light followed him for reason which is light had destined him to be first her poet then her apostle and lastly her idol end of Monsieur de Voltaire by John Watts