days, and procured themselves a gentle and quiet passage into another state All the rest will be insufficient without this (a frugal diet); and this alone will suffice to carry on life as long as by its natural flame it was made to last, and will make the passage easy and calm, as a taper goes out for want of fuel.

"There are some cases wherein a vegetable and milk diet seems absolutely necessary, as in severe and habitual gouts, rheumatisms, cancerous, leprous, and scrofulous disorders; extreme nervous colics, epilepsies, violent hysteric fits, melancholy, consumptions, and like disorders, and toward the last stages of all chronic distempers I have seldom seen such a diet fail of a good effect at last.

"To see the convulsions, agonies, and tortures of a poor fellow-creature, whom they cannot restore nor recompense, dying to gratify luxury, and tickle callous and rank organs, must require a rocky heart, and a great degree of cruelty and ferocity. I cannot find any great difference, on the foot of natural reason and equity only, between feeding on human flesh and feeding on brute animal flesh, except custom and example.

"My regimen, at present, is milk with tea, coffee, bread and butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits and seeds of all kinds, with tender roots (as potatoes, turnips, carrots), and, in short, everything that has not life, dressed or not, as I like it, in which there is as much or a greater variety than in animal foods, so that the stomach need never be clogged. I drink no wine or any fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food being liquid, moist, or juicy.

"It is now about sixteen years since, for the last time, I entered upon a milk and vegetable diet. At the beginning of this period, this light food I took as my appetite directed, without any measures, and I found myself easy under it. After some time I found it became necessary to lessen this quantity, and I have lately reduced it to one-half, at most, of what I at first seemed to bear; and if it should please God to spare me a few years longer, in order to preserve, in that case, that freedom and clearness which by his presence I now enjoy, I shall probably find myself obliged to deny myself one-half of

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1671-1743.

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my present daily sustenance, which, precisely, is three Winchester pints of new milk, and six ounces of biscuit, made without salt or yeast, and baked in a quick oven."

CHAPTER VI.

VOLTAIRE. 1694-1776.

"COME now, and let us reason together."-Isaiah.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”—Paul.

Voltaire is one of the most remarkable names in the history of French literature. Born at Chatenay, near Sceanx, on the 20th of February, his parents belonged to the higher middle class. His mother was a very intelligent, witty, and attractive woman, but died before her illustrious son had reached his twentieth year. The god-father and first teacher of Voltaire-the Abbe de Chateanneuf-was a free-thinking skeptic, and under his tuition the plastic mind of the young pupil acquired a mental breadth and outlook which was rarely tolerated in those days, but which cut young Voltaire entirely loose from the restraint of conservatism. He completed his preliminary studies at the Jesuits' College of Louis XIV. One of his instructors-Pierre Le Jay-predicted he would one day be the Coryphæus of Deism in France. He gained an unusual number of prizes in college, and finally became celebrated in the eighteenth century as the great master of wit and sarcasm. His genius was many-sided, which gave him a range over nearly the whole field of literature-poetry, fiction, history, criticism, philosophy, etc.

Among Voltaire's numerous productions may be men

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1694-1776.

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tioned "Henriade, or the League," the "Little Big Man" (satire), "Brutus," "La Mort de Cæsar," "Zaire" (tragedy), "Letters on the English," "Zadig" (romance), the "Age de Louis XIV," "Candide" (romance), "Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations" (history), the "Philosophici de l'Histoire," "Defense of My Uncle" (ironical), and the "Princess of Babylon." He also made liberal contributions to the first great encyclopedia issued in France, founded by Diderot and Alembert.

Voltaire's wit and irony frequently gave offense to the clergy, court, and aristocracy, for which he more than once spent several months in the bastile. But his rare genius made him a favorite in all the best literary circles, not only in France, but in England and Germany as well. While being severely persecuted in France, Lord Bolingbroke invited him to England, where he enjoyed a close intimacy with the most eminent men of letters, and was among the first to introduce the Newtonian philosophy to his countrymen.

Voltaire was a guest at the Court of Frederick the Great for three years, but he and Frederick were so much alike that they finally quarreled. The king wrote verses which Voltaire was to correct and criticise, a perilous undertaking for a wit like Voltaire. He called these verses the "dirty linen which the king was wont to send him to wash." Voltaire had once delighted to call Frederick the Solomon and Alexander of the North, but living in the palace with him three years divested him of the illusion.

The most admirable aspect of Voltaire's character was his deep, heart-felt pity, and indignation which he felt toward every act of cruelty and oppression, whether enacted against his fellow-man or the lower animals.

Speaking of the Hindus, he writes:

"The Hindus in embracing the doctrine of the metempsychosis had one restraint the more. The dread of killing a father or mother, in killing men and other animals, inspired in them a terror of murder and every other violence, which

became with them a second nature. Thus all the peoples of India, whose families are not allied either to the Arabs or to the Tartars, are still at this day the mildest of men. Their religion and the temperature of their climate make these peoples entirely resemble those peaceful animals whom we bring up in our sheep-pens and our dove cots for the purpose of cutting their throats at our good will and pleasure.

"The Christian religion which these primitives (the Quakers) alone follow out to the letter is as great an enemy to bloodshed as the Pythagorean. But the Christian peoples have never practiced theirs, and the ancient Hindu castes have always practiced theirs. It is because Pythagoreanism is the only religion in the world which has been able to educe a religious feeling from the horror of murder and slaughter."

Amabed, a young Hindu, writes from Europe to his affianced mistress, his impressions of the Christian sacred books, and in particular of Christian carnivorousness :

"I pity those unfortunates of Europe who have, at the most, been created only 6,940 years; while our era reckons 115,652 years, (the Brahminical computation). I pity them more for wanting pepper, the sugar-cane, and tea, coffee, silk, cotton, incense, aromatic, and everything that can render life pleasing. It is said at Calicut they have committed frightful cruelties only to procure pepper. It makes the Hindu nature, which is in every way different from theirs, shudder; their stomachs are carnivorous; they get drunk on the fermented juices of the wine, which was planted, they say, by their Noah. Father Fa-Tutto (a missionary), polished as he is, has himself cut the throats of two little chickens; he has caused them to be boiled in a cauldron, and has devoured them without pity. This barbarous action has drawn upon him the hatred of all the neighborhood, whose anger we have appeased only with much difficulty. May God pardon me! I believe this stranger would have eaten our sacred cows, who give us milk, if he had been allowed to do so. A promise has been extorted from him that he will commit no more murders of hens, and that he will content himself with fresh eggs, milk, rice, and with our excellent fruits and vegetables-dates, cocoanuts, almond cakes, biscuits, bananas, oranges, and with everything which our climate produces, blessed be the Eternal!"