waiting-maids of Lily; but the fourth, more beautiful than any of the rest, was an unknown fair one, and in sisterly sportfulness she hastened with them through the Temple, and mounted the steps of the Altar.*

"Wilt thou have better trust in me another time, good wife!" said the man with the Lamp to the fair one: "Well for thee, and every living thing that bathes this morning in the River!"

The renewed and beautified old Woman, of whose former shape no trace remained, embraced with young eager arms the man with the Lamp, who kindly received her caresses. "If I am too old for thee," said he, smiling, "hou mayest choose another husband to-day; from this hour no marriage is of force, which is not contracted anew."

He was walking straight to the door of the Temple, when all at once in the middle of the court, he halted, and was fixed to the ground. He stood there like a strong colossal statue, of reddish glittering stone, and his shadow point ed out the hours, which were marked in a circle on the floor around him. not in numbers, but in noble and expressive emblems.

Much delighted was the King to see the monster's shadow turned to some useful purpose; much astonished was the Queen; who, on mounting from within the Altar, decked in royal pomp with her virgins, first noticed the huge figure, which almost closed the prospect from the Temple to the Bridge.

Meanwhile the people had crowded after the Giant, as he ceased to move; they were walking round him, wondering at his metamorphosis. From him they turned to the Temple, which they now first appeared to notice,† and

"Dost thou not know, then," answered she, "that thou too art grown younger ?"—" It delights me if to thy young eyes I seem a hand-pressed towards the door. some youth: I take thy hand anew, and am well content to live with thee another thousand years."+

The Queen welcomed her new friend, and went down with her into the interior of the altar, while the King stood between his two men, looking towards the bridge, and attentively contemplating the busy tumult of the people.

At this instant the Hawk with the mirror soared aloft above the dome; caught the light of the sun, and reflected it upon the group, which was standing on the altar. The King, the Queen, and their attendants, in the dusky concave of the Temple, seemed illuminated by a heavenly splendour, and the people fell upon their faces. When the crowd had recovered and risen, the King with his followers had descended into the Altar, to proceed by secret passages into his palace; and the multitude dispersed about the Temple to content their curiosity. The three Kings that were standing erect they viewed with astonishment and reverence; but the more eager were they to discover what mass it could be that was hid behind the hangings, in the fourth niche; for by some hand or another, charitable decency had spread over the resting-place of the Fallen King a gorgeous curtain, which no eye can penetrate, and no hand may dare to draw aside.

The people would have found no end to their

multitude would have even suffocated one another in the Temple, had not their attention been again attracted to the open space.

But his satisfaction did not last; for ere long he saw an object which excited his displeasure. The great Giant, who appeared not yet to have awoke completely from his morning sleep, came stumbling along the Bridge, producing great confusion all around him. As usual, he had risen stupified with sleep, and had meant to bathe in the well-known bay of the River; instead of which he found firm land, and plunged upon the broad pavement of the Bridge. Yet although he reeled into the midst of men and cattle in the clumsiest way, his presence, wondered at by all, was felt by none; but as the sunshine came into his eyes, and he raised his hands to rub them, the sha-gazing and their admiration, and the crowding dows of his monstrous fists moved to and fro behind him with such force and awkwardness, that men and beasts were heaped together in great masses, were hurt by such rude contact, and in danger of being pitched into the River.t The King, as he saw this mischief, grasped with an involuntary movement at his sword; but he bethought himself, and looked calmly at his sceptre, then at the Lamp and the Rudder of his attendants. "I guess thy thoughts," said the man with the Lamp; "but we and our gifts are powerless against this powerless moner. Be calm! He is doing hurt for the last time, and happily his shadow is not turned to us." Meanwhile the Giant was approaching nearer; in astonishment at what he saw with open eyes, he had dropt his hands; he was now doing no injury, and came staring and agape into the fore-court.

Mark what comes of bathing in the TIME-River, at the entrance of a New Era :-D. T.

And so REASON and ENDEAVOUR being once more married, and in the honey-moon, need we wish them joy-D. T.

Thou rememberest the Catholic Relief Bill; witnessest the Irish Education Bill? Hast heard, five hundred times, that the "Church" was "in Danger," and now at length believest it 3-D. T.-Is D. T. of the Fourth Estate, and Popish-Infidel, then ?-O. Y.

Unexpectedly some gold-pieces, as if falling from the air, came tinkling down upon the marble flags; the nearest passers-by rushed thither to pick them up; the wonder was repeated several times, now here, now there. It is easy to conceive that the shower proceeded from our two retiring Flames, who wished to have a little sport here once more, and were thus gaily spending, ere they went away, the gold which they had licked from the members of the sunken King. The people still ran eagerly about, pressing and pulling one another, even when the gold had ceased to fall. At length they gradually dispersed, and went their way; and to the present hour the Bridge is swarming with travellers, and the Temple is the most frequented on the whole Earth.

* Bravo!-D. T.

Now first; when the beast of a SUPERSTITION-Giant has got his quietus. Right!-D. T.

It is the Temple of the whole civilized earth. Finally, may I take leave to consider this Mührehen as the deepest Poem of its sort in existence; as the only true Prophecy emitted for who knows how many centuries 1 -D. T-Certainly: England is a free country.-O. 1.

DIDEROT.

[FOREIGN QUArterly Review, 1833.]

of both sexes; or else, what were far better, sweep their Novel-fabric into the dust-cart, and betake them with such faculty as they have to understand and record what is true,— of which, surely, there is, and will for ever be, a whole Infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to us! Poetry, it will more and more come to be understood, is nothing but higher Knowledge; and the only genuine Romance (for grown persons) Reality. The Thinker is the Poet, the Seer: let him who sees write down according to his gift of sight; if deep and with inspired vision, then creatively, poetically; if common, and with only uninspired, every-day vision, let him at least be faithful in this and write Memoirs.

THE Acts of the Christian Apostles, on which, as we may say, the world has now for eighteen centuries had its foundation, are written in so small a compass, that they can be read in one little hour. The Acts of the French Philosophes, the importance of which is already fast exhausting itself, lie recorded in whole acres of typography, and would furnish reading for a lifetime. Nor is the stock, as we see, yet any wise complete, or within computable distance of completion. Here are Four quite new Octavos, recording the labours, voyages, victories, amours, and indigestions of the Apostle Denis: it is but a year or two since a new contribution on Voltaire came before us; since Jean Jacques had a new Life written for him; and then of those Feuilles de Grimm, On us still so near at hand, that Eighteenth what incalculable masses may yet lie dormant century in Paris presenting itself nowise as in the Petersburgh Library, waiting only to be portion of the magic web of Universal Hisawakened and let slip!-Reading for a life-tory, but only as the confused and ravelled time? Thomas Parr might begin reading in long-clothes, and stop in his last hundred and fiftieth year without having ended. And then, as to when the process of addition will cease, and the Acts and Epistles of the Parisian Church of Antichrist will have completed themselves; except in so far as the quantity of paper written on, or even manufactured, in those days being finite and not infinite, the business one day or other must cease, and the Antichristian Canon close for the last time, we yet know nothing.

mass of threads and thrums, ycleped Memoirs, in process of being woven into such,-imposes a rather complex relation. Of which, however, as of all such, the leading rules may be happily comprised in this very plain one, prescribed by Nature herself: to search in them, so far as they seem worthy, for whatsoever can help us forward on our own path, were it in the shape of intellectual instruction, of moral edification, nay of mere solacement and amusement. The Bourbons, indeed, took a shorter method, (the like of which has been often recommended elsewhere;) they shut up and hid the graves of the Philosophes, hoping that their lives and writings might likewise thereby go out of sight, and out of mind; and thus the whole business would be, so to speak, sup

pressed. Foolish Bourbons! These things

Meanwhile, let us nowise be understood as lamenting this stupendous copiousness, but rather as viewing it historically with patience, and indeed with satisfaction. Memoirs, so long as they are true, how stupid soever, can hardly be accumulated in excess. The stupider they are, let them simply be the sooner cast into the oven; if true, they will always instruct more or less, were it only in the way of confirmation and repetition; and, what is of vast moment, they do not mis-instruct. Day after day looking at the high destinies which yet await Literature, which Literature will ere long address herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfil, it grows clearer to us that the proper task of Literature lies in the domain of BELIEF; within which "Poetic Fiction," as it is charitably named, will have to take a quite new figure, if allowed a settlement there. Whereby were it not reasonable to prophesy that this exceeding great multi-bandmen these were. For which reason, be tude of Novel-writers, and such like, must (in a new generation) gradually do one of two things either retire into nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semi-fatuous persons

1. Mémoires, Correspondance, et Ouvrages inédits de Diderot; publiés d'après les manuscrits confiés, en mourante, par l'auteur à Grimm. 4 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1831.

2. Euvres de Denis Diderot; procedees de Mémoires

historiques et philosophiques sur sa Vie et ses Outrages, par J. A. Naigeon. 22 tom. 8vo. Paris, 1821.

were not done in a corner, but on high places, before the anxious eyes of all mankind: hidden they can in nowise be to conquer them, to resist them, our first indispensable preliminary is to see and comprehend them. To us, indeed, as their immediate successors, the right comprehension of them is of prime necessity; for, sent of God or of the Devil, they have plainly enough gone before us, and left us such and such a world: it is on ground of their tillage, with the stubble of their harvest standing on it, that we now have to plough. Before all things then, let us understand what ground it is; what manner of men and hus

all authentic Philosophe-Memoirs welcome, each in its kind! For which reason, let us now, without the smallest reluctance, penetrate into this wondrous Gospel according to Denis Diderot, and expatiate there to see whether it will yield us aught.

In any phenomenon, one of the most import the Eighteenth or Philosophe-century was proant moments is the end. Now this epoch of

As to this Diderot, had we once got so far that we could, in the faintest degree, personate him; take upon ourselves his character and his environment of circumstances, and act his Life over again in that small Private-Theatre of ours, (under our own Hat,) with moderate Il lusiveness and histrionic effect, that were what, in conformity with common speech, we should name understanding him, and could be abundantly content with.

perly the End; the End of a Social System | reaches downwards and up vards, unsurveywhich for above a thousand years had been able, fading into the regions of Immensity and building itself together, and, after that, had of Eternity. Life everywhere, as woven on begun, for some centuries, (as human things that stupendous ever-marvellous “ Loom of all do,) to moulder down. The mouldering Time," may be said to fashion itself of a woof down of a Social System is no cheerful busi- of light indeed, yet on a warp of mystic darkness either to form part of, or to look at: how-ness: only he that created it can understand it. ever, at length, in the course of it, there comes a time when the mouldering changes into a rushing; active hands drive in their wedges, set to their crowbars; there is a comfortable appearance of work going on. Instead of here and there a stone falling out, here and tnere a handful of dust, whole masses tumble down, who.e clouds and whirlwinds of dust: torches too are applied, and the rotten easily takes fire: so what with flame-whirlwind, what with dust-whirlwind, and the crush of falling towers, the concern grows eminently interesting; and our assiduous craftsmen can encourage one another with Vivats, and cries of Speed the work. Add to this, that of all labourers, no one can see such rapid extensive fruit of his labour as the Destroyer can and does: it will not seem unreasonable that measuring from effect to cause, he should esteem his labour as the best and greatest: and a Voltaire, for example, be by his guild-brethren and apprentices confidently accounted "not only the greatest man of this age, but of all past ages, and perhaps the greatest that Nature could produce." Worthy old Nature! She goes on producing whatsoever is needful in each season of her course; and produces, with perfect composure, that Encyclopedist opinion, that she can produce no more.

In his manner of appearance before the world, Diderot has been, perhaps to an extreme degree, unfortunate. His literary productions were invariably dashed off in hottest haste, and left generally, (on the waste of Accident,) with an ostrich-like indifference. He had to live, in France, in the sour days of a Journal des Trevoux; of a suspicious, decaying Sor bonne. He was too poor to set foreign presses, at Kehl, or elsewhere, in motion; too headlong and quick of temper to seek help from those that could: thus must he, if his pen was not to lie idle, write much of which there was no publishing. His Papers accordingly are found flying about, like Sybil's leaves, in all corners of the world: for many years no tolerable collection of his Writings was attempted; to this day there is none that in any sense can be called perfect. Two spurious, surreptitious Amsterdam Editions," or rather formless, blun dering Agglomerations," were all that the world saw during his life. Diderot did not hear of these for several years, and then only, it is said, "with peals of laughter," and no other practical step whatever. Of the four that have since been printed, (or reprinted, for Naigeon's of 1798, is the great original,) no one so much as pretends either to be complete or selected on any system. Brière's, the latest, of which alone we have much personal knowledge, is a well-printed book, perhaps better

Such a torch-and-crowbar period of quick rushing down and conflagration, was this of the Siècle de Louis Quinze; when the Social System having all fallen to rottenness, rainholes, and noisome decay, the shivering native resolved to cheer their dull abode by the questionable step of setting it on fire. Questionable we call their Manner of procedure; the thing itself, as all men may now see, was inevitable; one way or other, whether by prior burning or milder methods, the old house must needs be new-built. We behold the business of pulling down, or at least of as-worth buying than any of the others; yet sorting the rubbish, still go resolutely on, all over Europe: here and there some traces of new foundation, of new building up, may now also, to the eye of Hope, disclose themselves. To get acquainted with Denis Diderot and his life were to see the significant epitome of all this, as it works on the thinking and acting soul of a man, fashions for him a singular element of existence, gives himself therein a peculiar hue and figure. Unhappily, after all that has been written, the matter still is not luminous: to us strangers, much in that foreign economy, and method of working and living, remains obscure; much in the man himself, and his inward nature and structure. But, indeed, it is several years since the present Reviewer gave up the idea of what could be called understanding any Man whatever, even himself. Every Man, within that inconsiderable figure of his. contains a whole spiritkingdom and keflex of the ALL; and though to the eye but some six standard feet in size,

without arrangement, without coherence, pur. port; often lamentably in need of commentary: on the whole, in reference to the wants and specialities of this time, as good as unedited. Brière seems, indeed, to have hired some person, or thing, to play the part of Editor: or rather more things than one, for they sign themselves Editors in the plural number; and from time to time, throughout the work, some asterisk attracts us to the bottom of the leaf, and to some printed matter subscribed "EDITS." but unhappily the journey is for most part in vain; in the course of a volume or two, we learn two well that nothing is to be gained there; that the Note, whatever it professedly treat of, will, in strict logical speech, mean only as much as to say: "Reader! thou perceivest that we Editors, to the number of at least, two, are alive, and if we had any in formation would impart it to thee.-Enirs." For the rest, these" EDITs." are polite people; and with this uncertainty (as to their being

or remembered not as Man, but merely as Philosophic-Atheistic Logic-Mill? Did not Diderot live, as well as think? An amateur reporter in some of the Biographical Dictiona ries declares that he heard him talk one day, in nightgown and slippers, for the space of two hours, concerning earth, sea, and air, with a fulgorous impetuosity almost beyond human, rising from height to height, and at length finish the climax by "dashing his nightcap against the wall." Most readers will admit this to be biography; we, alas, must say, it comprises nearly all about the Man Diderot that hitherto would abide with us.

persons or things) clearly before them, continue, to all appearance, in moderately good spirits. One service they, or Brière for them, (if, indeed, Brière is not himself they, as we sometimes surmise,) have accomplished for us: sought out and printed the long-looked-for, long-lost Life of Diderot by Naigeon. The lovers of biography had for years sorrowed over this concealed Manuscript, with a wistfulness from which hope had nigh fled. A certain Naigeon, the beloved disciple of Diderot, had (if his own word, in his own editorial Preface, was to be credited) written a Life of him; and, alas! whither was it now vanished? Surely all that was dark in Denis the Fatalist had there been illuminated; nay, was there not, probably, a glorious "Light-street" carried through that whole Literary Eighteenth Cen-years; unhappily only love-letters, and from a tury? And was not Diderot, long belauded as "the most encyclopedical head that perhaps ever existed," now to show himself as such in, the new Practical Encyclopedia, philosophic, economic, speculative, digestive, of LIFE, -in three score and ten Years, or Volumes? Diderot too was known, as the vividest, noblest talker of his time: considering all that Boswell, with his slender opportunities, had made of Johnson, what was there we had not a right to expect!

Here, however, comes “Paulin, PublishingBookseller," with a quite new contribution: a long series of Letters, extending over fifteen

married sexagenarian; yet still letters from his own hand. Amid these insipid floods of tendresse, sensibilité, and so forth, vapid, like longdecanted small-beer, many a curious biographic trait comes to light; indeed, we can hereby see more of the individual Diderot, and his environment, and method of procedure there, than by all the other books that have yet been published of him. Forgetting or conquering the species of nausea that such a business, on the first announcement of it, may occasion, and By Brière's endeavour, as we said, the con- in many of the details of it cannot but confirm, cealed Manuscript of Naigeon now lies, as the biographic reader will find this well worth published Volume, on this desk. Alas! a looking into. Nay, is it not something of written life, too like many an acted life, where itself, to see that Spectacle of the Philosophe hope is one thing, fulfilment quite another! in Love, or, at least, zealously endeavouring Perhaps, indeed, of all biographies ever put to fancy himself so? For scientific purposes together by the hand of man, this of Naigeon's a considerable tedium, of "noble sentiment" is the most uninteresting. Foolish Naigeon! (and even worse things) can be undergone. We wanted to see and know how it stood with How the most encyclopedical head that perthe bodily man, the clothed, boarded, bedded, haps ever existed, now on the borders of his working, and warfaring Denis Diderot, in that grand climacteric, and already, provided with Paris of his; how he looked and lived, what wife and child, comports himself in that trying he did, what he said: had the foolish Biographer circumstance of preternuptial (and, indeed, at so much as told us what colour his stockings such age, and with so many "indigestions,” were! Of all this, beyond a date or two, not a almost preternatural) devotion to the queens syllable, not a hint! nothing but a dull, sulky, of this earth, may, by the curious in science, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on (who have nerves for it,) be here seen. There Atheistic Philosophy; how Diderot came upon is besides a lively Memoir of him by MadeAtheism, how he taught it, how true it is, how moiselle Diderot, though too brief, and not very inexpressibly important. Singular enough, the true-looking. Finally, in one large Volume, zeal of the devil's house hath eaten Naigeon up. his Dream of d'Alembert, greatly regretted and A man of coarse, mechanical, perhaps intrin- commented upon by Naigeon; which we could sically rather feeble intellect; and then, with have done without. For its bulk, that little the vehemence of some pulpit-drumming Memoir is the best of the whole. Unfortunately, Gowkthrapple," or "precious Mr. Jabesh as hinted, Mademoiselle, resolute of all things Rentowel," only that his kirk is of the other to be piquante, writes, or rather thinks, in a complexion! Yet must he too see himself in smart, antithetic manner, nowise the fittest for a wholly backsliding world, where much the- clearness or credibility: without suspicion of ism and other scandal still rules; and many voluntary falsehood, there is no appearance times Gowkthrapple Naigeon be tempted to that this is a camera-lucida picture, or a perweep by the streams of Babel. Withal, how-trait drawn by legitimate rules of art. Such ever, he is wooden; thoroughly mechanical, as if Vaucanson himself had made him; and that singularly tempers his fury.-Let the reader, finally, admire the bounteous produce of this Earth, and how one element bears nothing but the other matches it: here have we not the truest odium theologicum, working quite demonologically, in a worshipper of the Everlasting Nothing! So much for Naigeon; what we looked for from him, and what we have got.

Must Diderot then be given up to oblivion,

resolution to be piquant is the besetting sin of innumerable persons of both sexes, and wofully mars any use there might otherwise be in their writing or their speaking. It is, or was, the fault specially imputed to the French: in a woman and Frenchwoman, who besides has much to tell us, it must even be borne with. And now, from these diverse scattered materials, let us try how coherent a figure of Denis Diderot, and his earthly Pilgrimage and Performance, we can piece together.

thought of complaining."

66

In the ancient Town of Langres, in the presses in while soine crowd is entering, and month of October, 1713, it begins. Fancy sets off running at full speed; the porter gets Langres, aloft on its hill top, amid Roman at him with a sort of pike he carried, and ruins, righ the sources of the Saone and of the wounds him in the side: the boy will not be Marne, with its coarse substantial houses, and driven back; arrives, takes the place that befifteen thousand inhabitants, mostly engaged longed to him: prizes of all sorts, for composiin knife-grinding; and one of the quickest, tion, for memory, for poetry, he obtains them clearest, most volatile, and susceptive little all. No doubt he had deserved them; since figures of that century, just landed in the even the resolution to punish him could not World there. In this French Sheffield, Dide- withstand the sense of justice in his superiors. rot's Father was a Cutler, master of his craft; Several volumes, a number of garlands had a much-respected and respect-worthy man; fallen to his lot; being too weak to carry them one of those ancient craftsmen (now, alas! all, he put the garlands round his neck, and, nearly departed from the earth, and sought, with his arms full of books, returned home. with little effect, by idyllists, among the "Scot- His mother was at the door; and saw him tish peasantry," and elsewhere) who, in the coming through the public square in this school of practice, have learned not only skill equipment, and surrounded by his school-felof hand, but the far harder skill of head and lows: one should be a mother to conceive of heart; whose whole knowledge and virtue, what she must have felt. He was feasted, he being by necessity a knowledge and virtue to was caressed but next Sunday, in dressing do somewhat, is true, and has stood trial: him for church, a considerable wound was humble modern patriarchs, brave, wise, sim-found on him, of which he had not so much as pie; of worth rude, but unperverted, like genuine unwrought silver, native from the mine! Diderot loved his father, as he well might, and regrets on several occasions that he was painted in holiday clothes, and not in the workday costume of his trade, "with apron and grinder's-wheel, and spectacles pushed up," even as he lived and laboured, and honestly made good for himself the small section of the Universe he pretended to occupy. A man of strictest veracity and integrity was this ancient master; of great insight and patient discretion, so that he was often chosen as umpire and adviser; of great humanity, so that one day crowds of poor were to "follow him with tears to his long home." An outspoken Langres neighbour gratified the now fatherless Philosopher with this saying "Ah, Monsieur Diderot, you are a famous man, bu you will never be your father's equal." Truly, of all the wonderful illustrious persons that come to view in the biographic part of these six-and-twenty Volumes, it is a question whether this old Langres Cutler is not the worthiest; to us no other suggests himself whose worth can be admitted, without lamentable pollutions and defacements to be deducted from it. The Mother also was a loving-hearted just woman: so Diderot might account himself well-born: and it is a credit to the man that he always (and sometimes in the circle of kings and empresses) gratefully did so.

The Jesuits were his schoolmasters: at the age of twelve, the encyclopedical head was 'tonsured." He was quick in seizing, strong m remembering and arranging; otherwise flighty enough; fond of sport, and from time to time getting into trouble. One grand event. significant of all this, he has himself commemorated: his Daughter records it in these terms.

"He had chanced to have a quarrel with his comrades: it had been serious enough to bring on him a sentence of exclusion from college on some day of public examination and distribution of prizes. The idea of passing this important time at home, and grieving his parents, was intolerable: he proceeded to the collegegate; the porter refused him admittance; he

One of the sweetest moments of my life," writes Diderot himself, of this same business, with a slight variation, "was more than thirty years ago, and I remember it like yesterday, when my Father saw me coming home from the college, with my arms full of prizes that I had carried off, and my shoulders with the garlands they had given me, which, being too big for my brow, had let my head slip through them. Noticing me at a distance, he threw down his work, hastened to the door to meet me, and could not help weeping. It is a fine sight, a true man and rigorous falling to weep!"

Mademoiselle, in her quick-sparkling way, informs us, nevertheless, that the school-victor, getting tired of pedagogic admonitions and infictions, whereof there were many, said "one morning" to his father, "that he meant to give up school!"-"Thou hadst rather be a cutler, then ?"-"With all my heart."-They handed him an apron, and he placed himself beside his father. He spoiled whatever he laid hands on, penknives, whittles, blades of all kinds. It went on for four or five days; at the end of which he rose, proceeded to his room, got his books there, and returned to college,-and having, it would appear, in this simple, manner sown his college wild-oats, never stirred from it again.

To the Reverend Fathers, it seemed that Denis would make an excellent Jesuit; wherefore they set about coaxing and courting, with intent to crimp him. Here, in some mi. Is, á certain comfortable reflection on the diabolic cunning and assiduity of these Holy Fathers, now happily all dissolved and expelled, will suggest itself. Along with which may another melancholy reflection no less be in place: namely, that these Devil-serving Jesuits should have shown a skill and zeal in their teaching vocation, such as no Heaven-serving body, of what complexion soever, anywhere on our earth now exhibits. To decipher the talent of a young vague Capability, who must one day be a man and a Reality; to take him by the hand, and train him to a spiritual trade, and set him up in it, with tools, shop, and good