(Signed) BURARD.” Another slander appears to emanate from the Abbé Barruel, who was so well informed about Voltaire that he calls him “the dying Atheist,” when, as all the world knows, he was a Deist. “In his last illness he sent for Dr. Tronchin. When the doctor came, he found Voltaire in the greatest agony, exclaiming with the utmost horror--‘I am abandoned by God and man.’ He then said, ‘Doctor, I will give you half of what I am worth, if you will give me six months’ life.’ The doctor answered, ‘Sir, you cannot live six weeks.’ Voltaire replied, ‘Then I shall go to hell, and you will go with me!’ and soon after expired.” When, the clergy are reduced to manufacture such contemptible rubbish as this, they must indeed be in great straits. It is flatly contradicted by the evidence of every contemporary of Voltaire. My readers will, I think, be fully satisfied that Voltaire neither recanted nor died raving, but remained a skeptic to the last; passing away quietly, at a ripe old age, to “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,” and leaving behind him a name that brightens the track of time. GEORG BRANDES ON VOLTAIRE By Julius Moritzen. It is hardly to be expected that 144 years after the death of Francois de Voltaire any new and startling facts should have been discovered anent the career of one of the greatest Frenchmen that ever lived. But there is that in the writings of Georg Brandes that when this Danish critic and internationalist undertakes a task like that of writing a new history of Voltaire we are very sure to find an old subject given a new interpretation. That Brandes’ “Francois de Voltaire” is today considered perhaps the most picturesque presentation of a personality whose influence on the history of France has been most profound is but a natural corollary considering what the author of “William Shakespeare, a Critical Study,” did in the case of England when analyzing the character of Shakespeare. Georg Brandes places Voltaire in the various environments that went to widen the horizon of the French satirist, and it is quite apart from his literary achievements that Voltaire rises before the reader’s mind as having done so much for making nations better acquainted with each other. Himself a man with an international vision, Brandes for this reason emphasizes Voltaire’s English education and what English culture of that period did toward infusing the spirit of liberalism into a France surcharged with the dominance of a Louis XV through an arrogant court circle. Whether or not Voltaire led the way for the Revolution that swept aside a regime that became unbearable, the fact is not to be denied that his last stay at Ferney saw him prepare unconsciously for an event that he had inspired while he himself was far from being revolutionary in spirit.