reproached “with acknowledging no other God but the king.” Thus they represented them at once as idolaters of despotism, in order to render them vile, and as preachers of regicide, in order to render them odious: these two accusations might appear a little contradictory, but the business was not to speak the exact truth; it was to say of the Jesuits as much ill as possible. Lastly, what completed the power and glory of the society was, that under Louis XIV. the Jesuits succeeded in destroying, or at least in oppressing in France the Protestants and the Jansenists, their eternal enemies; the Protestants, by contributing to the revocation of the edict of Nantes, that source of depopulation and of evils to this kingdom; the Jansenists, by depriving them of the ecclesiastical dignities, by arming the bishops against them, by forcing them to go and preach, and write in foreign countries, where even these unfortunate people still found persecution. Under this very reign in which the Jesuits were so powerful, and so formidable, the most terrible strokes were given them, more terrible perhaps than any they had felt till that time. The pleadings of Pasquier and Arnaud were but bombast satyrs, and in a bad taste: the _Provincial Letters_ gave them a wound much more deadly: this master-piece of pleasantry and eloquence diverted and moved the indignation of all Europe at their expense. In vain they replied, that the greatest part of the theologists and monks had taught, as well as them, the scandalous doctrine which they were reproached with: their answers, ill written, and full of gall, were not read, while every body knew the _Provincial Letters_ by heart. This work is so much the more admirable, as Paschal in composing it appears to have divined two things, which seemed not made for divination, language, and pleasantry. The language was very far from being formed, as we may judge by the greater part of the works published at that time, and of which it is impossible to endure the reading: in the _Provincial Letters_ there is not a single word that is grown obsolete; and that book, though written above a hundred years ago, seems as if it had been written but yesterday. Another attempt, no less difficult, was to make people of wit and good folks laugh at the questions of _sufficient grace_, _next power_, and the decisions of the casuists; subjects very little favourable to pleasantry, or, which is worse still, susceptible of pleasantries that are cold and uniform, and capable at most of amusing only priests and monks. It was necessary, for avoiding this rock, to have a delicacy of taste so much the greater, as Paschal lived very retired, and far removed from the commerce of the world: he could never have distinguished, but by the superiority and delicacy of his understanding, the kind of pleasantry which could alone be relished by good judges in this dry and insipid matter. He succeeded in it beyond all expression: several