No such interest attaches to the "Life of Voltaire." His most serious adventure was being shut up in the Bastille for a pasquinade, and being set free again on his solemn protestation, true or false, that he never wrote it. It is an old story, told a thousand times, with all its gloss, if it ever had any, quite worn off. The "Life of Franklin," which, on the whole, we think the best of Parton's biographies, was full of interest and instruction of another kind. It was the life of a builder,--of one who gave his great powers to construction, to building up new institutions and new sciences, to the discovery of knowledge and the creation of national life. Voltaire was a diffuser of knowledge already found, but he had not the patience nor the devotion of a discoverer. His gift was not to construct good institutions, but to destroy bad ones,--a work the interest of which is necessarily ephemeral. No wonder, therefore, that Mr. Parton, with all his practiced skill as a biographer, has not been able to give to the story of Voltaire the thrilling interest which he imparted to that of Franklin and of Jackson. We gladly take the present opportunity to add our recognition of Mr. Parton's services to those which have come to him from other quarters. A writer of unequal merit, and one whose judgment is often biased by his prejudices, he nevertheless has done much to show how biography should be written. Of all forms of human writing there is none which ought to be at once so instructive and so interesting as this, but in the large majority of instances it is the most vapid and empty. The good biographies, in all languages, are so few that they can almost be counted on the fingers; but these are among the most precious books in the literature of mankind. The story of Ruth, the Odyssey of Homer, Plutarch's lives, the Memorabilia of Xenophon, the life of Agricola, the Confessions of Augustine, among the ancients; and, in modern times, Boswell's "Johnson," the autobiographies of Alfieri, Benvenuto Cellini, Franklin, Goethe, Voltaire's "Charles XII.," and Southey's "Life of Wesley" are specimens of what may be accomplished in this direction. It has been thought that any man can write a biography, but it requires genius to understand genius. How much intelligence is necessary to collect with discrimination the significant facts of a human life; to penetrate to the law of which they are the expression; to give the picturesque proportions to every part, to arrange the foreground, the middle distance, and the background of the panorama; to bring out in proper light and shadow the features and deeds of the hero! Few biographers take this trouble. They content themselves with collecting the letters written by and to their subject; sweeping together the facts of his life, important or otherwise; arranging them in some kind of chronological order; and then having this printed and bound up in one or two heavy volumes.