If Mr. Parton resembles Macaulay in some respects, in one point, at least, he is like Carlyle: that is, that his last hero is the least interesting. From Schiller and Goethe to Frederic the Great was a fall; and so from Franklin to Voltaire. Carlyle tells us what a weary task he had with his Prussian king, and we think that Mr. Parton's labors over the patriarch of the eighteenth-century literature must have been equally distressing. At a distance, Voltaire is a striking phenomenon: the most brilliant wit of almost any period; the most prolific writer; a successful dramatist, historian, biographer, story-teller, controversialist, lyrical poet, student of science. "Truly, a universal genius, a mighty power!" we say. But look more closely, and this genius turns into talent; this encyclopædic knowledge becomes only superficial half knowledge; this royalty is a sham royalty; it does not lead the world, but follows it. The work into which Voltaire put his heart was destruction--the destruction of falsehoods, bigotries, cruelties, and shams. It was an important duty, and some one had to do it. But it was temporary, and one of which the interest is soon over. If Luther and the other reformers had aimed at only destroying the Church of Rome, their influence would have speedily ceased. But they rebuilt, as they destroyed; the sword in one hand, and the trowel in the other. They destroyed in order to build; they took away the outgrown house, to put another in its place. Voltaire did not go so far as that; he wanted no new church in the place of the old one.