seat, which has derived increased celebrity from his demeanour-a youth of enterprise-a manhood of brilliant success-and "honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," encircling his later years-mark him out for veneration to every son of that country, whose name he has exalted throughout Europe. We need not speak here of those graces of mind and of character, that have thrown fascination over his society, and made his friendship a privilege. Our rod of office drops from our hand;—we remember the warning-we trust not too rashly disregarded—

"Nec tu divinam Æneida tenta,

Sed longe sequere, et vestigia semper adora!"

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

AUGUST, 1844.

ART. I.-Lettres écrites à un Provincial par Blaise Pascal, précédées d'un Eloge de Pascal, par M. BORDAS DEMOULIN, Discours qui a remporté le Prix décerné par l'Académie Française, le 30 Juin 1842, et suivies d'un Essai sur les Provinciales, et le style de Pascal. Par FRANCOIS DE NEUFCHATEAU. Paris, 1843.

In looking back on the great events by which civilization and knowledge have been advanced, and in estimating the intellectual and moral energies by which their present position has been attained, we cannot fail to perceive that the master-steps in our social condition have been the achievement of a few gifted spirits, some of whose names neither history nor tradition has preserved. We do not here allude to the progress of individual states, struggling for supremacy in trade or in commerce-in arts or in arms, but to those colossal strides in civilization which command the sympathy and mould the destinies of mankind.

Every nation has its peculiar field of glory-its band of heroes -its intellectual chivalry-its cloud of witnesses; but heroes however brave, and sages however wise, have often no reputation beyond the shore or the mountain range which confines them; and men who rank as demigods in legislation or in war, are often but the oppressors and the corrupters of their more peaceful and pious neighbours. Traced in the blood of their victims, and emblazoned in acts of strangled liberty, their titles of renown have not been registered in the imperishable records of humanity. Without the stamp of that philanthropy and wisdom which the family of mankind can cherish, their patents of nobility are not

VOL. I. NO. II.

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passports to immortality. The men who bear them have no place in the world's affections, and their name and their honours must perish with the community that gave them.

But while there are deeds of glory which benefit directly only the people among whom they are done, or the nation whom they exalt, they may nevertheless have the higher character of exercising over our species a general and an inestimable influence. When Regulus sacrificed his life by denouncing to the Roman senate the overtures of Carthage, he was as much a martyr for truth as for Rome, and every country and every age will continue to admire the moral grandeur of the sacrifice. When Luther planted the standard of the Reformation in Germany, and confronted the Pope, wielding the sceptre of sovereign power, he became the champion of civil and religious liberty in every land; the assertor of the rights of universal conscience-the apostle of truth, who taught the world to distinguish the religion of priestcraft from the faith once delivered to the saints. Hence may the Roman patriot become the guide and the instructor of civilized as well as of barbarous nations; and the hero of the Reformation, the benefactor of the Catholic as well as of the Protestant Church.

It is not easy to estimate the relative value of those noble bequests, which man thus makes to his species. Deeds of Roman virtue and of martyr zeal are frequently achieved in humble life, without exciting sympathy or challenging applause; but when they throw their radiance from high places, and cast their halos round elevated rank or intellectual eminence, they light up the whole moral hemisphere, arresting the affections of living witnesses, and, through the page of history, commanding the homage and drawing forth the aspirations of every future age.

It has not been permitted to individuals to effect with their single arm those great revolutions which urge forward the destinies of the moral, the intellectual, and the political world. The benefactors of mankind labour in groups, and shine in constellations; and though their leading star may often be the chief object of admiration, yet his satellites must move along with him, and share his glory. Surrounded with Kepler, and Galileo, and Hook, and Halley, and Flamsteed, and Laplace, Newton completes the seven pleiads by whom the system of the universe was developed. Luther, and Calvin, and Zuingle, and Knox, form the group which rescued Christendom from Papal oppression. Watt, and Arkwright, and Brindley, and Bell, have made water and iron the connecting links of nations, and have armed mechanism with superhuman strength, and almost human skill. By the triple power of perseverance, wisdom, and eloquence, Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and Fox, have wrenched from the

slave his manacles and fetters; and we look forward with earnest anticipation to the advent and array of other sages, who shall unshackle conscience and reason-unlock the world's granaries for her starving children-carry the torch-light of education and knowledge into the dens of ignorance and vice—and, with the amulet of civil and religious liberty, emancipate immortal man from the iron-grasp of superstition and misrule.

Although we have glanced at some of the principal groups of public benefactors, yet there are others which, though less prominent in the world's eye, are, nevertheless, interesting objects, both for our study and imitation. In one of these stands preeminent the name of PASCAL, possessing peculiar claims on the love and admiration of his species. As a geometer and natural philosopher, his inventive genius has placed him on the same level with Newton, and Leibnitz, and Huygens, and Descartes. As a metaphysician and divine, he baffled the subtlety and learning of the Sorbonne; as a writer, at once powerful and playful, eloquent and profound, he shattered the strongholds of Jesuitism; and as a private Christian, he adorned the doctrine of his Master with lofty piety, inflexible virtue, and all those divine graces which are indigenous in the heart which suffering and self-denial have abased.

The celebrated Bayle has affirmed, that the life of Pascal is worth an hundred sermons, and that his acts of humility and devotion will be more effective against the libertinism of the age, than a dozen of missionaries. The observation is as instructive as it is just. During the brief interval which we weekly consecrate to eternity, the impressions of Divine truth scarcely survive the breath which utters them. The preacher's homily, however eloquent, is soon forgotten; and the missionary's expostulation, however earnest, passes away with the heart-throb which it excites; and if a tear falls, or a sigh escapes, amid the pathos of severed friendship, or the terrors of coming judgment, the evaporation of the one, and the echo of the other, are the only results on which the preacher can rely. It is otherwise, however, with the lessons which we ourselves learn from illustrious examples of departed piety and wisdom. The martyr's enduring faith appeals to the heart with the combined energy of precept and example. The sage's gigantic intellect, purified and chastened with the meek and lowly spirit of the Gospel, becomes a beacon-light to the young, and an anchor to the wavering. And when faith is thus ennobled by reason, reason is hallowed in return; and under this union of principles, too often at variance, hope brightens in their commingled radiance, and the unsettled or distracted spirit rests, with unflinching confidence, on the double basis of secular and celestial truth. Even in a heathen age, the doubts and

fears of Diocles were instantly dissipated, when he saw Epicurus on his bended knees, doing homage to the Father of Gods and

men.

There is, perhaps, no period in the history of our faith, when the life and labours of Pascal-his premature genius and his brilliant talents-his discoveries and his opinions-his sorrows and his sufferings-his piety and his benevolence-his humility and his meekness-could be appealed to with more effect, than that in which our own lot is cast. When a political religion is everywhere shooting up in rank luxuriance, as the basis of political institutions;-when the temple of God has become the haunt of the money-changers, and the sacred offices of the ministry are bought and sold like the produce of the earth:—when the wealth which God himself conferred, and the intellectual gifts which he gave, are marshalled in fierce hostility against the evangelism of his word :-in such an age, it may be useful to hold up the mirror to a Roman Catholic lavman-to the sainted and immortal Pascal-to reflect to all classes, to priest and people, a photogenic picture of a life of bright example, pencilled by celestial light-and, as time obliterates its shaded groundwork, developing new features for our love and admiration.

Blaise Pascal was born at Clermont on the 19th June 1623. His family, who had been ennobled by Louis XI. about 1478, held from that time important offices in Auvergne; and his father, Stephen Pascal, was the first President of the Court of Aides at Clermont-Ferrand. His mother, Antoinette Begon, died in 1626, leaving behind her one son, Blaise, and two daughters, Gilberte, born in 1620, and Jacqueline, born in 1625. But though thus deprived of those inestimable instructions which maternal fondness can alone supply, the loss was, to a great extent, compensated by the piety and affection of their remaining parent. Abandoning to his brother his professional duties in Auvergne, that he might devote all his time to the education of his family, Stephen Pascal took up his residence in Paris in 1631. Here he became the sole instructor of his son in literature and science, and of his two daughters in Latin and in belles-lettres; and with the lessons of secular wisdom he blended that higher learning which formed so conspicuous a feature in the future history of his family.

It was now the spring-tide of science throughout Europe, and Stephen Pascal was one of its most active promoters. His knowledge of geometry and physics had gained him the friendship of Descartes, Gassendi, Roberval, Mersenne, Carcavi, Pailleur, and other philosophers in Paris, who assembled at each other's houses to impart and receive instruction. This little band of sages maintained an active correspondence with the congenial spirits of other lands, and in this interchange of discovery, the