Bayle commences his Life of Pascal by declaring him to be “one of the sublimest geniuses that the world ever produced.” Seldom, at least, has the world ever seen such a combination of excellences in one man. In him we are called to admire the loftiest attributes of mind with the loveliest simplicity of moral character. He is a rare example of one born with a natural genius for the exact sciences, who applied the subtlety of his mind to religious subjects, combining with the closest logic the utmost elegance of style, and crowning all with a simple and profound piety. Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont, 19th June, 1623. His family had been ennobled by Louis XI., and his father, Stephen Pascal, occupied a high post in the civil government. Blaise manifested from an early age a strong liking for the study of mathematics, and, while yet a child, made some astonishing discoveries in natural philosophy. To these studies he devoted the greater part of his life. An incident, however, which occurred in his thirty-first year—a narrow escape from sudden death—had the effect of giving an entire change to the current of his thoughts. He regarded it as a message from heaven, calling him to renounce all secular occupations, and devote himself exclusively to God. His sister and niece being nuns in Port-Royal, he was naturally led to associate with those who then began to be called Jansenists. But though he had several of the writings of the party, there can be no doubt that it was the devotion rather than the theology of Port-Royal that constituted its charm in the eyes of Pascal. His sister informs us, in her memoirs of him, that “he had never applied himself to abstruse questions in divinity.” Nor, beyond a temporary retreat to Port-Royal des Champs, and an intimacy with its leading solitaries, can he be said to have had any connection with that establishment. His fragile frame, which was the victim of complicated disease, and his feminine delicacy of spirit, unfitting him for the rough collisions of ordinary life, he found a congenial retreat amidst these literary solitudes; while, with his clear and comprehensive mind, and his genuine piety of heart, he must have sympathized with those who sought to remove from the Church corruptions which he could not fail to deplore, and to renovate the spirit of that Christianity which he loved far above any of its organized forms. His life, not unlike a perpetual miracle, is ever exciting our admiration, not unmingled, however, with pity. We see great talents enlisted in the support, not indeed of the errors of a system, but of a system of errors—we see a noble mind debilitated by superstition—we see a useful life prematurely terminating in, if not shortened by, the petty austerities and solicitudes of monasticism. Truth requires us to state, that he not only denied himself, at last, the most common comforts of life, but wore beneath his clothes a girdle