Those ingenious gentlemen, the metaphysicians, who have enlightened the world by explaining away the fundamental doctrines of religion, and the principles of human actions and convictions, among other startling discoveries, have introduced a theory on good and evil actions, exceedingly applicable, comfortable, and welcome to all mankind; as it does away with conscience and duty, and makes virtue and vice affairs of physical temperament or organization--in other words, that a man’s merit or demerit is not, as they hold, to be estimated by his deeds, but by the amount of inclination with which he commits them. Men, according to those philosophers, are born with particular inclinations, which lead them insensibly and directly to particular vices or virtues, or, with some peculiar organizations, to all the vices or all the virtues. By this reasoning it appears that it is as difficult for one man to commit a certain crime, as for another to forbear; and, as a natural consequence, that since a man is not accountable for his inclination, the guilt incurred by committing it, is of very unequal account; and that if a man be not praiseworthy for abstaining from a crime towards which he has no inclination, neither is a man blameable for committing it, if he is strongly inclined to it. Nature, not man, ought to be blamed or commended; and the being able to lay the sin of vice or crime to the account of organization, will materially facilitate the completion of it. ❦ Stoves, in Germany, produce on one the effect of living in company with a person blind. ❦ [Sidenote: Christina, Queen of Sweden.] In the year 1657, these walls (Fontainebleau) were polluted by a crime which had no parallel in the records of modern times. The murder of Monaldeschi, and all its particulars, as related so naïvely by Le Père Lobel, are too well known to make it necessary to detail them: but the letter that the haughty Christina wrote to the minister Mazarin, when the king’s displeasure was signified by him to her, is less frequently quoted. It is a masterpiece of effrontery and insolence; yet, a fortnight after receiving it, both the king and cardinal paid a solemn visit of reconciliation to the royal murderess. _Letter of Christina, Queen of Sweden to Cardinal Mazarin._ “Monsieur Mazarin, “Those who have detailed to you the affair of Monaldeschi, my equerry, were very ill-informed. I think it strange that you should compromise so many people in order to inform yourself of a fact which does not concern you. I ought not to be astonished at your conduct, however absurd it may be; but I could have scarcely credited, that either you or your proud young master, would have dared to exhibit towards me any marks of resentment.