The sermons of Barlet and Maillard are all framed after this model, and were delivered half in bad Latin, and half in bad French. The Italian sermons were in the same taste; and the German were still worse. This monstrous medley gave birth to the _macaroni_ style, the very climax of barbarism. The species of oratory, worthy only of the Indians on the banks of the Missouri, prevailed even so lately as the reign of Louis XIII. The Jesuit Garasse, one of the most distinguished enemies of common sense, never preached in any other style. He likened the celebrated _Theophile_ to a calf, because Theophile's family name was _Viaud_, something resembling _veau_ (a calf). "But," said he, "the flesh of a calf is good to roast and to boil, whereas thine is good for nothing but to _burn_." All these allegories, used by our barbarians, fall infinitely short of those employed by Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, which proves that if there be still some Goths and Vandals who despise ancient fable they are not altogether in the right. ALMANAC. It is of little moment to know whether we have the word _almanac_ from the ancient Saxons, who could not write, or from the Arabs, who are known to have been astronomers, and to have had some acquaintance with the courses of the planets, while the western nations were still wrapped in an ignorance as great as their barbarism. I shall here confine myself to one short observation. Let an Indian philosopher, who has embarked at Meliapour, come to Bayonne. I shall suppose this philosopher to be a man of sense, which, you will say, is rare among the learned of India; to be divested of all scholastic prejudices--a thing that was rare everywhere not long ago--and I shall suppose him to meet with a blockhead in our part of the world--which is not quite so great a rarity. Our blockhead, in order to make him conversant with our arts and sciences, presents him with a Liège almanac, composed by _Matthew Lansberg_, and the Lame Messenger (_Messager boiteux_) by _Anthony Souci, astrologer and historian_, printed every year at Basle, and sold to the number of 20,000 copies in eight days. There you behold the fine figure of a man, surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac, with certain indications most clearly demonstrating that the _scales_ preside over the _posteriors_, the _ram_ over the _head_, the _fishes_ over the _feet_, etc. Each day of the moon informs you when you must take _Le Lièvre's_ balm of life, or _Keiser's_ pills; when you must be bled, have your nails cut, wean your children, plant, sow, go a journey, or put on a pair of new shoes. The Indian, when he hears these lessons, will do well to say to his guide that he will have none of his almanac.