of his bon-mots have even become proverbial in our language, and the _Provincial Letters_ will be ever regarded as a model of taste and style. It is only to be feared, that the expulsion of the Jesuits, lessening the interest which we took in this book, may render the perusal of it less poignant, and perhaps make it be one day forgot. This is a fate which the most eloquent author has to apprehend, if he writes not on subjects that are useful to every nation, and to all ages: the duration of a work, whatever merit it may have in other respects, is almost necessarily connected with that of its object. The _Thoughts of Paschal_, greatly inferior to the _Provincials_, will live perhaps longer, because there is all reason to believe (whatever the humble society may say of it) that Christianity will last longer than they. The _Provincials_ would be perhaps more assured of the immortality which they merit in so many respects, if their illustrious author, that genius so elevated, so universal, and so little formed for taking an interest in scholastick trumpery, had turned alike both parties into ridicule. The shocking doctrine of Jansenius, and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for it as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez. Every work, in which we sacrifice with success to the publick laughter fanaticks who worry one another, subsists even after those fanaticks are no more. I might venture to foretell this advantage to the chapter _on Jansenism_, which we read with so much pleasure in the excellent _Essay on General History_, by the most agreeable of our philosophical writers. The irony is scattered in that chapter to the right and left, with a delicacy and ease which must cover both the one and the other with indelible contempt, and make them weary of cutting one anothers’ throats for nonsensical fancies. Methinks I see Fontaine’s cat[10], before whom the rabbit and the weasel bring their suit on the subject of a pitiful hole which they contend for; and who, by way of decision, Jettant des deux côtés la griffe en même tems, Met les plaideurs d’accord en croquant l’un & l’autre. No body is perhaps fitter than this illustrious writer, to form a history of theological quarrels, in order to render them at once both odious and ridiculous, and thereby deliver mankind for ever from this shameful and terrible scourge.