travelling in those woods, with such Lions and such Dogs. And then the sparsely scattered HUMAN Creatures (so we may call them in contrast, persons of Quality for most part) are not always what they should be. The grand mansions you arrive at, in this waste-howling solitude, prove sometimes essentially Robber-towers;—and there may be Armida Palaces, and divine-looking Armidas, where your ultimate fate is still worse.

'Que le monde est rempli d'enchanteurs, je ne dis rien d'enchanteresses!'

To think of it, the solitary Ishmaelite journeying, never so well mounted, through such a wilderness: with lions, dogs, human robbers and Armidas all about him; himself lonely, friendless under the stars:—one could pity him withal, though that is not the feeling he solicits; nor gets hitherto, even at this impartial distance.

"One of the beautiful creatures of Quality,—we hope, not an Armida,—who came athwart Voltaire, in these times, was a Madame du Chatelet; distinguished from all the others by a love of mathematics and the pure sciences, were it nothing else. She was still young, under thirty; the literary man still under forty. With her Husband, to whom she had brought a child, or couple of children, there was no formal quarrel; but they were living apart, neither much heeding the other, as was by no means a case without example at that time; Monsieur soldiering, and philandering about, in garrison or elsewhere; Madame, in a like humor, doing the best for herself in the high circles of society, to which he and she belonged. Most wearisome barren circles to a person of thought, as both she and M. de Voltaire emphatically admitted to one another, on first making acquaintance. But is there no help?

"Madame had tried the pure sciences and philosophies, in Books: but how much more charming, when they come to you as a Human Philosopher; handsome, magnanimous, and the wittiest man in the world! Young Madame was not regularly beautiful; but she was very piquant, radiant, adventurous; understood other things than the pure sciences, and could be abundantly coquettish and engaging. I have known her scuttle off, on an evening, with a couple of adventurous young wives of Quality, to the remote lodging of the witty M. de Voltaire, and make his dim evening radiant to him. [One of Voltaire's Letters.] Then again, in public crowds, I have seen them; obliged to dismount to the peril of Madame's diamonds, there being a jam of carriages, and no getting forward for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves and our books?

"Madame was of high quality, one of the Breteuils; but was poor in comparison, and her Husband the like. An old Chateau of theirs, named Cirey, stands in a pleasant enough little valley in Champagne; but so dilapidated, gaunt and vacant, nobody can live in it. Voltaire, who is by this time a man of ample moneys, furnishes the requisite cash; Madame and he, in sweet symphony, concert the plans: Cirey is repaired, at least parts of it are, into a boudoir of the gods, regardless of expense; nothing ever seen so tasteful, so magnificent; and the two withdraw thither to study, in peace, what sciences, pure and other, they have a mind to. They are recognized as lovers, by the Parisian public, with little audible censure from anybody there,—with none at all from the easy Husband; who occasionally even visits Cirey, if he be passing that way; and is content to take matters as he finds them, without looking below the surface. [See (whosoever is curious) Madame de Grafigny, Vie Privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet (Paris, 1820). A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there in various respects,—extremely ill off for fuel, among other things. Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest, and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it. Published, fourscore years after, under the above title.] For the Ten Commandments are at a singular pass in cultivated France at this epoch. Such illicit-idyllic form of life has been the form of Voltaire's since 1733,"—for some three years now, when Friedrich and we first make acquaintance with him. "It lasted above a dozen years more: an illicit marriage after its sort, and subject only to the liabilities of such. Perhaps we may look in upon the Cirey Household, ourselves, at some future time; and"—This Editor hopes not!