He is, unfortunately, too much in the right when he reproaches Corneille with having dedicated _"Cinna"_ to the financier Montoron, and said to that receiver. "What you most especially have in common with Augustus is the generosity with which," etc., for, though Augustus was the most wicked of Roman citizens, it must be confessed that the first of the emperors, the master, the pacificator, the legislator of the then known world, should not be placed absolutely on a level with a clerk to a comptroller-general in Gaul. The same Louis Racine, in justly condemning the mean adulation of Corneille, and the baseness of the aged Horace and Virgil, marvellously lays hold of this passage in Massillon's _"Petit Carême!"_ "It is no less culpable to fail in truth towards monarchs than to be wanting in fidelity; the same penalty should be imposed on adulation as on revolt." I ask your pardon, Father Massillon; but this stroke of yours is very oratorical, very preacher-like, very exaggerated. The League and the Fronde have, if I am not deceived, done more harm than Quinault's prologues. There is no way of condemning Quinault as a rebel. _"Est modus in rebus."_ Father Massillon, which is wanting in all manufacturers of sermons. AVIGNON. Avignon and its country are monuments of what the abuse of religion, ambition, knavery, and fanaticism united can effect. This little country, after a thousand vicissitudes, had, in the twelfth century, passed into the hands of the counts of Toulouse, descended from Charlemagne by the female side. Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, whose forefathers had been the principal heroes in the crusades, was stripped of his states by a crusade which the pope stirred up against him. The cause of the crusade was the desire of having his spoils; the pretext was that in several of his towns the citizens thought nearly as has been thought for upwards of two hundred years in England, Sweden, Denmark, three-fourths of Switzerland, Holland, and half of Germany. This was hardly a sufficient reason for _giving_, in the name of God, the states of the count of Toulouse to the first occupant, and for devoting to slaughter and fire his subjects, crucifix in hand, and white cross on shoulder. All that is related of the most savage people falls far short of the barbarities committed in this war, called holy. The ridiculous atrocity of some religious ceremonies always, accompanied these horrid excesses. It is known that Raymond VI. was dragged to a church of St. Giles's, before a legate, naked to the waist, without hose or sandals, with a rope about his neck, which was held by a deacon, while another deacon flogged him, and a third sung _miserere_ with some monks--and all the while the legate was at dinner. Such was the origin of the right of the popes over Avignon.