He lived many years at Cirey with the Marchioness of Châtelet; the marquis, her husband, accepting the curious relation without any objection. Then followed the still stranger episode of his residence with Frederic the Great, their love quarrels and reconciliations. After this friendship came to an end, Voltaire went to live near Geneva in Switzerland, but soon bought another estate just out of Switzerland, in France, and a third a short distance away, in the territory of another power. Thus, if threatened in one state, he could easily pass into another. Here he lived and worked till the close of his life, an untiring writer. He was a man of infinite wit, kind-hearted, with little malignity of any sort, wishing in the main to do good. His violent attacks upon Christianity may be explained by the fact of the corruptions of the Church which were around him. The Church of France in that day, in its higher circles, was a persecuting Church, yet without faith: greedy for wealth, living in luxury, careless of the poor, and well deserving the attacks of Voltaire. That he could not look deeper and see the need of religious institutions of a better sort was his misfortune. This work is a storehouse of facts for the history of Voltaire and his time. We do not think it will materially alter the judgment pronounced on him by such critics as Carlyle, Morley, and the majority of French writers in our day. Voltaire was a shining light in his age, but that age has gone by, and can never return. RALPH WALDO EMERSON[44] MATT. vi. 23.--_If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light._ It is natural and fit that many pulpits to-day should take for their theme the character and influence of the great thinker and poet who has just left us; for every such soul is a new revelation of God's truth and love. Each opens the gateway between our lower world of earthly care and earthly pleasure into a higher heavenly world of spirit. Such men lift our lives to a higher plane, and convince us that we, also, belong to God, to eternity, to heaven. And few, in our day, have been such mediators of heavenly things to mankind as Ralph Waldo Emerson.