trayed the absurdity of his pretensions better than the most studied argument. The ridicule of the Pagan theology scattered through the works of Lucian is a perpetual demonstration of the incongruity of abstract propositions, by means of sensible images. Yet persecuting, narrow sectarians have not thought it beneath their dignity to claim this writer as a believer, and to use his arguments against their opponents, though they bitterly execrate Swift and Voltaire for treading in his steps.

It is this peculiar efficacy of ridicule, that has made its use so objectionable to partizans and exclusionists. The happiness of its illustration renders truths popular, which would remain the exclusive property of the learned, as long as the error to which they are opposed was involved in the intricacy of an abstract argument. The sensible image is a stepping stone to the judgment of those, who, unused to dialectics, cannot thread the labyrinth of involuted ideas. Those who are interested in the eredit of any particular doctrine are, in general, ready enough to compound for the dissent of the cultivated few: and they can bear with patience an argument which, being beyond the calibre of the vulgar, is not likely to make many proselytes: but ridicule, being within the scope of all, brings absurdity home to the conviction of the meanest understanding. This is the secret of that hostility which the law manifests in the midst of its seeming candour, against certain attacks on the establishment. They are intelligible to all the world; and it is feared that their influence may be proportionate.

Whatever is incongruous and absurd, cannot emanate from a being pre-eminently wise and good. The internal evidence of such incongruity, is decisive against the pretensions of any religious system

in which it exists. Ridicule, therefore, goes to the fountain-head of all false pretensions; and as one religion alone can be a real revelation from Heaven, it follows, that the partizans of all the others have an immediate interest in putting down the use of a ready instrument for measuring their several errors. What is the sum of their argument? You may put forth cogent and conclusive reason as long as you please; but beware of ridicule; for that proves nothing. This excess of candour and forbearance is not entitled to the slightest credit. It may, perhaps, be objected, that ridiculous no-proofs will pass current with the lower classes for valid argument. To this I reply, first, that the lower classes are not so innocent and helpless: or if they are, let them be better taught and secondly, that they are much more frequently the dupes of grave and plausible no-proofs, than of humorous misrepresentation and that the argument, if good for any thing, goes against all discussion whatever.

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The defenders of absurdity and error are not always in the same story: for they always cry out against the argument which happens to press them the most closely. The counsel of Geneva censured Rousseau's gravity in attacking their religious notions; and asserted, in the teeth of the English law-maxim, that, "books, only written to turn into ridicule, are not, by a great deal, so reprehensible, as those which, without stepping on one side, go at once to the attack by dry reasoning." So much for the honesty of state dogmatists!

In advocating the lawfulness of ridicule, it is not necessary to advocate every instance in which it is employed. It is bad taste and buffoonery to put

*Lettres écrites de la Montagne.

forward ludicrous ideas, out of season; and it is both bad feeling and bad policy, to insult the believer by a profane jest. A man is not, however, to be committed to Newgate on a point of taste, or treated like a felon for not having read the institutes of Quintilian. Those who would thus proscribe ridicule in their opponents, are by no means slow in using it against them. Not only ridicule, but scurrility and invective, are daily lavished against those who are objects of religious rancour. What was

reprehensible in Voltaire becomes laudable in Piron: what was strong in Swift was right in Rennell. A Protestant bishop may crack a joke upon two non-ascendant religions with a single antithesis; but wo betide the man who is facetious upon the thirty-nine articles.

Within this sophism the lawyers have entrenched themselves, upon being driven, by public opinion, from an open and barefaced defence of persecution. By its assistance they are still enabled to fine or imprison any one who presumes to question the truth of law-established dogma. It has taken some centuries to storm the outwork; how many will it take to capture the citadel!

LEGISLATIVE LITERATURE.

LORD C-FN was very amusing to-day: every thing he said was very cleverly said; full of informa tion, and abounding in curious historic anecdote. I observe, that the elders of the English aristocracy have an amazing mass of historical knowledge. History is the mirror of aristocratical amour-propre.

How I should read history if I were a Howard, or a Stanley, or a Russel! The knowledge of history is, besides, a part of the qualifications for an hereditary legislator; and, of necessity, it engages the attention of those nobles, who are not above, or beneath, all sense of duty and propriety. The mischief of it is, that their tastes and education lead them rather to anecdote, than to philosophy; and their knowledge consists more in facts, than in deductions. The ecclesiastical education of our English universities is at war with philosophy; and the great reject all philosophy that is not genteel and within bounds, like Paley's. Dugald Stewart is their ne plus ultra. Of physiological philosophy, the philosophy of fact, they are usually ignorant. A single page of De Tracy would scare the whole House of Lords. Though they may very generally read the Heloise, they do not the less reject Rousseau's other works, as too philosophical,-Rousseau, the least philosophical of thinkers, and as vehement a hater of philosophers, as the author of the Metromanie himself! "If," said Lord L

to his old friend, General C-, who wanted him to purchase a duplicate set of Voltaire's works-“i I were to let your Voltaire into my house, I should expect the roof to fall and crush me." Another lord, to compare great things with small, actually burned my France, having first called in his household to witness the solemnity. From the beginning of time this flaming argument has been the favourite court moyen with the powers that be. In this they

do but follow that natural instinct which leads us to fear whatever we do not understand. Philosophy is, in truth, but a democratical piece of business: it knows nothing of castes and privileges: its object is only the happiness of mankind at large; and it

mounts not to the sublimity of vested rights, the transcendentals of politics. But anecdotes, facts, and dates, the sayings and doings of our ancestors, are so useful, so imposing, so applicable to every thing and to nothing, they are so ornamental in discourse, and they so set off a debate!! What a figure they made in the discussions on the Catholic question the arguments of the E.'s and the eloquence of the W.'s.

VICE-REGAL PROGRESSES.

"Les ambassadeurs envoyés en France par les princes étrangers, faisoient à Paris une entrée pompeuse et solemnelle. Cet usage a subsisté jusque vers le milieu du dernier siècle: on ignore pourquoi il a été aboli."*

Dict. des Etiquettes, par M. de Genlis.

I THINK, however, one may guess! The age of pompous and solemn ceremonies, like the age of chivalry, is over, and for ever; both belonged to times of ignorance and barbarism: and long before the great explosion from the revolutionary crater took place, public opinion and private comfort were undermining that mass of cumbrous forms, which weighed upon the feelings, tastes, and enjoyments of the victims whose rank obliged them to submit to their galling infliction. If any now submit to the gêne of gorgeous state, it must be in the irremediable dulness which produces the lowest order of pride,

* 66 Foreign ambassadors formerly made a pompous and solemn entry into Paris. This usage subsisted until the middle of the last age: we know not why it was abolished."