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that immense field , whatever best suited his grandiose style ! How did he despise whatever refused to lend itself to his pomp of language !" Diderot and Montesquieu had little better sympathy with nature ;
Boileau , in his pictures of nature , invariably recurs to his melon-beds ; even Eacine , in the account of a journey to the South of France , was most sensibly struck by the horrible bitterness of the olives , and Voltaire ' s impressions of the country beyond the Rhine seems limited to the strong beer .
The age was one of " Renaissance . " Corneille and Eacine wrote fine plays on the Greek and Soman models , but without pourtraying either Greeks or Romans . People were taught to cut their trees into pyramids , and their groves on the plan of geometrical diagrams , harmonizing with the general tendency to assist nature . They could see little beauty in the lily till they had called for their pallet and brushes ; the violet , too , needed a trifling extra perfume ; and no
gold could in their eyes dispense with the last touch of the gilders . All mediaeval art was despised ; the cathedrals and other noble monuments of past ages were crumbling to dust ; no philosopher dared , if even he wished , to put forward a hand for their preservation . Voltaire suggested the old church of Notre Dame should be pulled down , and another more worthy temple substituted in its place . " Is it not of a barbarous architecture ? " he writes . " London was not so rich
as Paris when its aldermen erected St . Paul ' s , which is the second church in Europe , and seems to reproach us with our Gothic cathedral . " Did not his countrymen act wisely in raising his monument under the dome of w hat doubtless he would have called the third church in Europe ?
The same times produced a multitude of great names , that will stand in the estimate of this generation far above those we have selected as best calculated to mark the era of academical worship , and a classical renaissance that dressed Attila as a French marquis , and crowned the heroes of Greek and Roman story with well-powdered perruques . "InCinna , " says Voltaire , " Augustus was seen
entering with the strut of a bully ^ covered with a square wig reaching to his waist . This wig was stuck over with laurel leaves , and topped with a big hat , over which again nodded a double range of red feathers . " Pit illustration of the times that put into the mouths of Plato and Socrates the ravings of the encyclopaedists—an absurdity they could not see , but quite as apparent as the red feathers which they could all deride .
These times are happily past ; Voltairism is as much exploded as Tom-Painism . Infidelity has shifted its ground , as it ever must , till eventually driven wholly from the field . To be sure , we still have men who pride themselves on the ability to laugh at what others believe , and of whom it was once wisely remarked , that if they
refused to credit anything but what they fully understood , their creed was likely to prove of the shortest ; but with whom , nevertheless , there is generally found a superabundance of credulity when they forge systems for themselves , von . i . 3 l
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Untitled Article
that immense field , whatever best suited his grandiose style ! How did he despise whatever refused to lend itself to his pomp of language !" Diderot and Montesquieu had little better sympathy with nature ;
Boileau , in his pictures of nature , invariably recurs to his melon-beds ; even Eacine , in the account of a journey to the South of France , was most sensibly struck by the horrible bitterness of the olives , and Voltaire ' s impressions of the country beyond the Rhine seems limited to the strong beer .
The age was one of " Renaissance . " Corneille and Eacine wrote fine plays on the Greek and Soman models , but without pourtraying either Greeks or Romans . People were taught to cut their trees into pyramids , and their groves on the plan of geometrical diagrams , harmonizing with the general tendency to assist nature . They could see little beauty in the lily till they had called for their pallet and brushes ; the violet , too , needed a trifling extra perfume ; and no
gold could in their eyes dispense with the last touch of the gilders . All mediaeval art was despised ; the cathedrals and other noble monuments of past ages were crumbling to dust ; no philosopher dared , if even he wished , to put forward a hand for their preservation . Voltaire suggested the old church of Notre Dame should be pulled down , and another more worthy temple substituted in its place . " Is it not of a barbarous architecture ? " he writes . " London was not so rich
as Paris when its aldermen erected St . Paul ' s , which is the second church in Europe , and seems to reproach us with our Gothic cathedral . " Did not his countrymen act wisely in raising his monument under the dome of w hat doubtless he would have called the third church in Europe ?
The same times produced a multitude of great names , that will stand in the estimate of this generation far above those we have selected as best calculated to mark the era of academical worship , and a classical renaissance that dressed Attila as a French marquis , and crowned the heroes of Greek and Roman story with well-powdered perruques . "InCinna , " says Voltaire , " Augustus was seen
entering with the strut of a bully ^ covered with a square wig reaching to his waist . This wig was stuck over with laurel leaves , and topped with a big hat , over which again nodded a double range of red feathers . " Pit illustration of the times that put into the mouths of Plato and Socrates the ravings of the encyclopaedists—an absurdity they could not see , but quite as apparent as the red feathers which they could all deride .
These times are happily past ; Voltairism is as much exploded as Tom-Painism . Infidelity has shifted its ground , as it ever must , till eventually driven wholly from the field . To be sure , we still have men who pride themselves on the ability to laugh at what others believe , and of whom it was once wisely remarked , that if they
refused to credit anything but what they fully understood , their creed was likely to prove of the shortest ; but with whom , nevertheless , there is generally found a superabundance of credulity when they forge systems for themselves , von . i . 3 l