French literature had now come the length of representing Voltaire, the man who time after time struck the sword out of the hands of the Catholic executioners and extinguished the flames in which they were preparing to burn innocent victims, as a man specially cut out for the trade of executioner. And so careless had the champions of orthodoxy become that they forgot his obstinate faith in God, and, desiring to paint the devil as black as possible, represented him as an atheist. Now, whatever else Satan and his comrades may be, they neither are nor can be atheists.[1] Let us turn from Chateaubriand's hell to his Paradise. It is always difficult to describe heaven. We all know what hell is, but when heaven is in question a certain feeling of embarrassment comes over us. Information is scarce, as a French lady said. And to describe it was doubly difficult at the time when Parny, in his _Guerre des Dieux_, had, so to speak, produced in anticipation a parody of any such attempt that might be made. Fragments of Parny's graceless poem were still in all men's minds. Its best scenes, such as the arrival of the Trinity at Mount Olympus, and the return visit paid in heaven by the gods, are really witty, although the style, instead of corresponding to the imposing title, is as smooth and polished as the paintings of "Velvet" Breughel. Yet even Parny's scurrility did not make the heaven of orthodoxy as comical as it is made by Chateaubriand's enthusiasm. "In the centre of the created worlds, in the midst of the innumerable stars which serve as ramparts, roads and avenues, is suspended the great city of God, of which no mortal tongue can tell the marvels. The Almighty himself laid its twelve foundation stones, and surrounded it with that wall of jasper which the beloved disciple saw the angel measuring with the golden reed. Clothed with the glory of the Most High, Jerusalem is adorned like a bride for her bridegroom.... Richness of material vies with perfection of form. Here hang in mid-air galleries of sapphires and diamonds, which the genius of man feebly imitated in the gardens of Babylon. There rise triumphal arches, built of dazzling stars. Arcades of suns traverse the endless spaces of the firmament...." A native of Copenhagen is irresistibly reminded by all this of the glories of "Tivoli" as they revealed themselves to his childish eyes on evenings when the grounds were illuminated.