In another place he writes: "Oh, how generous, how magnanimous are our princes! They have again issued a pardon from which none are excluded save those who have rebelled against them. It reminds me of a psalm in praise of the exploits of the Hebrew God. He has slain this one and that, for His mercy endureth for ever; He has drowned Pharaoh and all his hosts, for His mercy endureth for ever; He has smitten the first-born of Egypt with death, for His mercy endureth for ever, &c. &c." "You do not appear to be democratic. Like you, I believe fraud and frenzy to be at the bottom of the Revolutionist's heart. But I prefer the fraud and frenzy which pulls down prisons, abolishes titles and such like imbecilities, and places all religious day-dreams upon the same footing, to the fraud and madness which would maintain and consecrate that monstrosity produced by grafting the barbaric stupidity of the Hebrew upon the barbaric ignorance of the Vandal." "The more one thinks it over, the less is one able to imagine any possible good reason for the existence of this foolish thing we call the world. I understand neither the intention, nor the master-builder, nor the artist, nor the figures in this _Laterna Magica_ of which I have the honour to form a part. Shall I understand any better when I have disappeared from the small, dark globe on which it amuses I know not what unseen power to have me dance, whether I will or no? I cannot say. But I fear the secret will prove, like that of the Freemasons, to be a thing of no value except in the estimation of the uninitiated." Having read these extracts, it does not surprise us to know that the book _On Religion_, planned at the close of the century to effect the same object from a Protestant standpoint that Chateaubriand aimed at from a Catholic, namely, the revival of the religious spirit in France, had originally a very different character from that which it finally acquired. If the first part were published as it was originally written, entirely in the eighteenth-century manner, it would indicate in its author exactly the stage of mental development indicated in Chateaubriand by his book on the Revolutions. In the form in which it has taken its place in French literature the work is remarkable for its calm, passionless style, its unprejudiced views, and an erudition not common at that period. Its weaknesses are its total lack of warmth and the general indecision of its principles.