another, and Rousseau in a third; just as in the practical crder, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many methods.*"

The Revolution, he goes on to tell us, "emphatically belongs" to the "class of great religious and moral movements." It is, in fact, he would have us understand, "a new gospel"‡ and a better one; and he delights in decorating it with the terms. consecrated by the usage of the old. Thus, in one place he speaks of Rousseau, as "our spiritual father that begat us." § Elsewhere he styles Hume, Rousseau, Diderot," the fathers of the new Church," and Condorcet, Mirabeau, Robespierre, its "fiery apostles." Robespierre is also pronounced to be "the great preacher of the Declaration of the Rights of Man;" and the Encyclopædists are described as "a new order," ** bound by the new Vows of "poverty, truth, and liberty," †† and destined, happily, to replace the Society of Jesus.‡‡ "The best men of the eighteenth century," Mr. Morley avers, were possessed by "a furious and bitter antipathy against the Church, its creeds, and its book;"§§ just as the best men of the first century had their spirits stirred within them when they saw fair cities wholly given to idolatry. He describes

*Rousseau, vol. i. p. 1. Ibid. p. 136.

Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 42. ** Diderot, vol. i. pp. 17, 130.

Ibid. p. 18.

† Ibid. p. 4.

§ Ibid. p. 5

Ibid. vol. i. p. 48.

†† Ibid. p. 125.

§§ Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 12.

Catholicism a hundred years ago, in language which recalls St. Paul's account of the heathen world, as "a true Chimera, a monster sodden in black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be no terms."* He is of opinion that

"the Church was the most justly abhorred of all institutions."+ On the other hand, as St. Peter discerned in his disciples "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood," "called out of darkness into marvellous light," so does Mr. Morley discern in Diderot and his allies "the great party of illumination," "a ‡ a new priesthood," § upon whose "lawful authority" he insists, attributing to them

more generous moral ideas and higher spirituality." || Does the astonished reader stare and gasp at seeing "moral ideas" and " "moral ideas" and "spirituality"

ascribed to libidinous materialists like Diderot and his crew? Let him possess his soul in peace awhile. We shall see by-and-bye that in the new gospel the words "spirituality" and "morality" have a new

sense.

Pass we on to observe that Mr. Morley considers the aspiration of the gluttonous and obscene blasphemers, who assembled round the Baron d'Holbach's table, for the destruction of "not merely the superstitions which had grown round the Christian dogma, but every root and fragment of theistic conception," to be "a not ungenerous

*Voltaire, p. 224. Diderot, vol. i. p. 9. || Ibid. p. 131.

† Miscellanies, vol. ii. p. 172. § Ibid. p. 129.

III.] MDLLE. CANDEILLE "OF THE OPERA." 69

hope.' And his chief complaint against the original leaders of the Revolution is, that their means to this end were not well chosen, but "led to a mischievous reaction in favour of Catholicism." + But I must quote Mr. Morley at some length on this subject, for so alone can justice be done to the vigour of his thought and the charm of his manner. On the 10th of November 1793—or, out of compliment to Mr. Morley, let us give the date of the revolutionary calendar, the 20th of Brumaire, year II.—took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame the famous Feast of the Goddess of Reason, ordained by the Commune of Paris at the instance of Chaumette. It is hardly necessary for me to recall the details of the function; how a well-known prostitute, Mdlle. Candeille, "of the Opera," personated the goddess, and was exhibited on a cloud made of pasteboard, with a pike in her hand, and the sacred red night-cap on her head-it was almost her only clothing—as the living image of the new divinity; how a lamp, symbolizing Truth, burned before her; how her breechesless adorers (les sans culottes) sang in her honour a hymn written by Chenier, to a tune composed by one Gossec, a musician much in vogue then; how they proceeded subsequently to celebrate mysteries, "seemingly of a Cabiric or even

* Rousseau, vol. ii. p. 256.

† Diderot, vol. ii. p. 165. At p. 187 of the same volume he expresses the opinion that "the smoke of the flaming châteaux went up as a savoury and righteous sacrifice to heaven.".

Paphian character," writes the historian, which following his prudent example, I will "leave under the veil." I need not say that Chaumette and his friends of the Commune-worthy predecessors of the present municipal rulers of Paris-did not confine themselves to thus persuasively recommending "the more generous moral ideas and higher spirituality" of the new gospel. They also vigorously resorted to the civil sword. And now let us hear Mr. Morley upon them:

"In the winter of 1793 the Municipal party, guided by Hébert and Chaumette, made their memorable attempt to extirpate Christianity in France. The doctrine of D'Holbach's supper-table had for a short space the arm of flesh and the sword of the temporal power on its side. It was the first appearance of dogmatic atheism in Europe as a political force. This makes it one of the most remarkable moments in the Revolution, just as it makes the Revolution itself the most remarkable moment in modern history. The first political demonstration of atheism was attended by some of the excesses, the folly, the extravagances that stained the growth of Christianity. On the whole, it is a very mild story compared with the atrocities of the Jewish records or the crimes of Catholicism. The worst charge against the party of Chaumette is, that they were intolerant, and the charge is deplorably true; but this charge cannot lie in the mouth of persecuting churches. Historical recriminations, however, are not very edifying. . . . . Let us raise ourselves into clearer air. The fault of the atheists is, that they knew no better than to borrow the maxims of the churchmen; and even those who agree with the dogmatic denials of the atheists-if such there be― ought yet to admit that the mere change from superstition to reason is a small gain, if the conclusions of reason are still to be enforced by the instruments of superstition. Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way. Now some of the opinions of

Chaumette were full of enlightenment and hope. He had a generous and vivid faith in humanity. One can understand how an honest man would abhor the darkness and tyranny of the Church. But then, to borrow the same absolutism in the interests of new light, was inevitably to bring the new light into the same abhorrence as had befallen the old system of darkness. . . . Instead of defying the Church by the theatrical march of the Goddess of Reason under the great sombre arches of the cathedral of Our Lady, Chaumette should have found comfort in a firm calculation of the conditions.

"You,' he might have said to the priests-' you have so debilitated the minds of men and women by your promises and your dreams, that many a generation must come and go before Europe can throw off the yoke of your superstition. But we promise you that they shall be generations of strenuous battle. We give you all the advantages that you can get from the sincerity and pious worth of the good and simple among you. We give you all that the bad among you may get by resort to the poisoned weapons of your profession and your traditions-its bribes to mental indolence, its hypocritical affectations in the pulpit, its tyranny in the closet, its false speciousness in the world, its menace at the deathbed. With all these you may do your worst, and still humanity will escape you; still the conscience of the race will rise away from you, still the growth of brighter ideals and a nobler purpose will go on, leaving ever further and further behind them your dwarfed finality and leaden moveless stereotype. We shall pass you by on your flank, your fieriest darts will only spend themselves on air. We will not attack you as Voltaire did; we will not exterminate you; we shall explain you. History will place your dogma in its class, above or below a hundred competing dogmas, exactly as the naturalist classifies his species. From being a conviction, it will sink to a curiosity; from being the guide to millions of human lives, it will dwindle down to a chapter in a book. As History explains your dogma, so Science will dry it up; the conception of law will silently make the conception of the daily miracle of your altars seem impossible; the mental climate will gradually deprive your symbols of their nourishment, and men will turn their backs on your system, not because they confuted it, but because, like