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spared all those lamentable conflicts and party strifes which, during the last twenty years, have retarded the education of the people.

From the want of this revision, and the spirit fostered by the perpetration of things as they are, churchmen frown on any attempt to call into requisition Lay agency. The dread of laymen stretching themselves beyond their province, and the jealousy of their being too successful, is so great, that under the present system Anglican laymen are, and are likely to be, dumb dogs that cannot bark, loving to slumber. The secret wish and desire of many clergymen is that it should be so. As truly as Wolsey said, "Ego et rex meus,' so the clergy, as a body, say, "Ego et ecclesia." The first consideration with the beneficed clergy is their own position, their own order, the rights of their patrons, or of their successors. If these privileges and immunities are duly preserved, then there is scope for lay activity in secular matters; but the clerical mind generally has willed it that it is far better for nothing. to be done by the laity, and nothing attempted, than that one jot or tittle of clerical prerogative should be placed in jeopardy. The consequence is, that thousands of laymen feel themselves doomed to involuntary inactivity. They cannot move without exciting suspicion, alarm, and distrust in the hearts of their spiritual pastors. Every churchman may well blush to think how widely, in contrast with the Free Church of Scotland, and Wesleyan Methodists in England, the church of the Prayer Book deviates from the church of the Bible. It may be added, that the number of candidates who presented themselves for holy orders in 1860 is computed at one hundred less than it was in 1840. Much of this is due to the unsettling of men's minds by the subtle Romanism of the Caroline revisionists, and by the reactionary influence of rationalism, but the greater part is due to the cruel neglect with which the church of the Prayer Book has treated those who held fast the principles of the Reformation. When the father and the son have been cradled and nurtured, have laboured, lived, and died in clerical poverty, it is high time that the grandson, if the will of God be so, should serve his generation in some way which does not entail irrevocable obligations and unavoidable straitness. There have been those who, for many years past, have discouraged those who were destitute of private resources from taking orders, unless they were disposed to devote themselves to colonial service or missionary toil. The present lack of eligible candidates for the ministry will probably be felt more and more for years to

come.

We regret, with Mr Stoughton (p. 434), that social ecclesiastical caste perpetuates to this hour much of the evil that was done by the Act of Uniformity, and by the Conventicle and Five Mile Acts.

W.

ART. VII.-Literature of Pascal's Thoughts.

(PRINCIPAL EDITIONS OF THE PRESENT CENTURY.)

Pensées de Pascal, avec les Notes de Condorcet et de Voltaire. 2 vols. in 24. de Bure. Paris, 1823.

Pensées de Blaise Pascal, avec Tables Analytiques, et Préface de l'edition de 1669. EMLER, editeur. Paris, 1828.

Pensées, Fragments, et Lettres de Blaise Pascal, publiés pour la première fois
conformément aux MSS. originaux, en grande partie inedits, par P. FAU-
GERE. 2 vols. in 8vo. Andreaux, Paris, 1814.

Pensées de Pascal, publiés dans leur texte authentique, avec un Commentaire,
suivi d'une étude littéraire, par E. HAVET. Dezobry, Paris, 1852.
Pensées de Pascal, suivant le plan de l'auteur, d'après les textes originaux
avec les additions, et les variantes de Port-Royal, par J. M. FRANTIN. 2d
edition. Lagay, Paris, 1853.

Pensées de Pascal, disposées selon un plan nouveau. Edition complète d'après
les derniers travaux critiques, avec des Notes. un Index, et une Préface, par
J. F. ASTIE. 2 vols. in 24. Lausanne. G. Bridel, 1856.

Pensées de Pascal. Edition variorum d'après le texte du MS. autographe, par
CHARLES LAUANDRE, in 18. Paris. Charpentier, 1861.

“C'est méchant signe pour ceux qui ne liront pas ce livre."
MAD. DE LA FAYETTE.

Two hundred years ago the friends of an illustrious man, just
deceased, received the following invitation :-" You are invited
to attend the convoy, funeral service, and burial of the deceased
Blaise Pascal, Esquire, when living, son of the late Messire
Estienne Pascal, Councillor of State, and President of the Court
of Aydes of Clermond Ferrand, deceased in the house of M.
Perrier, his brother-in-law, and councillor in the said court of
Aydes, upon the Fossés of the Porte St Marcel, near the fathers
of the Christian doctrine, which will take place on Monday the
21st day of August 1662, at 10 o'clock in the morning, in the
Church of St Estienne du Mont, his parish, and the place of
his burial, where ladies may attend if they please." *

We have now to make an inventory of the literary labours which have been heaped on this tomb within the last fifty years. The mere reading over of the list at the end of this

* This precious relic was sent to the Journal de Paris on the 4th of April 1703, by a person who avers that "he has seen it in the library of a magistrate, along with Descartes's funeral card, under a glass.”—V. Faugère, “ Abrégé de la vie de Jésus, par Pascal," p. 71.

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article may perhaps astonish our readers, when they see the large fortune France is accumulating, as compared with the few small treatises published in England. What is the reason of this enormous difference? Dr Thomas M'Crie, in his elegant translation of the "Provincial Letters," attributes the semioblivion in which these letters are buried to something else than "a want of taste among us for the beauties and excellencies of Pascal" (Johnston's edition, 1851, p. 8). And he points to the imperfections of the three preceding translations. As for the "Thoughts," we cannot accuse the translator-(is there one?)—but we must just say that the small space they occupy in Great Britain is due to the. English method of dealing much more in external evidence than Pascal does. Were the equilibrium established in English apologetics, and moral proofs brought more fully into relief (without falling into the errors of Maurice's school), Pascal would have as many friends in England as he has in France. May these lines obtain a few for him.

We have already said that it is a bibliography, with some notes, that we wish to write, and that we intend restricting our remarks to the principal works which have appeared within the last few years.

Victor Cousin has the glory of opening the list with his remarkable Report before the French Academy "Upon the necessity of a new edition of Pascal's Thoughts," 1842. It was known that the autograph MS. of the Thoughts had been deposited at the then Royal Library of Paris. It is a large MS. in folio, of 491 pages numbered.

"Upon the greater number of these pages are pasted, or carefully framed round (where they are written on both sides) papers of all sizes, which come, one after another, pêle-mêle, confusedly. Pages constituting a part of the same subject are inverted or detached at greater intervals. There are even pages, the two halves of which are separated the one from the other; thoughts which have no relation to one another are traced consecutively on the same page. The manuscript is almost entirely in Pascal's own handwriting."— (Flotte's "Etudes sur Pascal," p. 76.)

"The writing of Pascal," says Cousin, "always difficult to decipher, is sometimes illegible, from its extreme smallness and the multiplication of the most capricious abbreviations. One cannot help a feeling of a painful emotion at the sight of this large MS. in folio, where the faltering hand of Pascal has traced, during the agony of his four last years, the thoughts which presented themselves to his mind."-(" Des Pensées," p. 10.)*

Besides this autograph, the library possesses two copies of the MS. of the "Thoughts," both of the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. These two copies were confided to Charles Bossut, to serve for the

It is on this autograph that the illustrious philosopher worked.† His "Report" was therefore quite an event in the French literary world.

Evidently Cousin was tolling the funeral bell of all the preceding editions. "After reading the new book," said Vinet, "I look sadly at my two copies of the Thoughts,' and say to myself, I have not got Pascal there at all."" Neither the edition Princeps, given by Pascal's own family, under the inspiration of his friend Antoine Arnauld (printed by Després, 1669), nor that of Desmolets, nor that of the Bishop of Montpellier, nor that of Condorcet § and of Voltaire,|| nor even that of Bossut, (upon which so many other editions have been founded), had succeeded in giving us the true Blaise Pascal.

With the idea that sound criticism teaches us upon the sacred duties of an editor, how are we to explain this literary anomaly? We answer, through fear of the Jesuits, the Messieurs de Port-Royal, Arnauld, Nicole, Etienne Perrier, the Duke de Roannez, &c., suppressed and adulterated a great number of the "Thoughts." But let us beware of judging Pascal's friends with the just severity which an editor of our times would deserve. Who knows, besides, whether a clever critic was not right in saying, "It is to be presumed that the later

edition of the "Thoughts" that he was preparing. The first is numbered 3002 bis, "Supplement to French MSS. ;" the second, No. 176 of the same. There exist still two other MSS., one of which, in folio, is from the Oratoire Library, No. 160, containing numerous letters of Port Royal and of Pascal. The other (Supplément Français," No. 1485) is a collection of memoirs by Marguerite Perrier, Pascal's niece, with new letters of Port-Royal and Pascal.

† Notwithstanding this, the conscientious editor of the "Thoughts and Fragments," Prospère Faugère, reproaches M. Cousin with having in this "committed serious unfaithfulness, in following the partial copy of the autograph MS. instead of studying the MS. itself."—(Letter to the Courier Français, 17th Dec. 1844.)

The Père Desmolets ("Supplément aux Pensées), published in 1728, inedited "Thoughts," after a MS. belonging to the family; he is, on the whole, a faithful editor.

The "Eulogium of Blaise Pascal," by Condorcet, London, 1776, furnishes its little contingent of new thoughts, and contains remarkable notes, although they aim at effacing all religion and edification from the "Thoughts," and leaving only the philosophical idea.

"Remarks of Voltaire on Pascal's Thoughts," in 8vo. Geneva, 1778.

"Discourse upon the Life and Works of Pascal," by the Abbé Bossut, with the "Elogium of Pascal," by Nicole (Latin). Edition of 1779. 5 vols. in Svo. The same discourse, with corrections and additions (1781). Bossut, the friend of d'Alembert, and a distinguished geometrician, has the merit of having gathered into one work all the "Thoughts" that had appeared since 1669, and other new ones, taken from sources which he does not indicate. But his work is done only from the copies, on the whole faithful, of the Abbé Guerrier, Bossut retains all the adulterations of the edition of 1669, preserving even the thoughts which are neither in the MS. nor in the two copies. Bossut establishes also an arbitrary order in his division. 1st, Thoughts relating to philosophy, ethics, and belles-lettres. 2d, Thoughts relating to religion. As if Pascal troubled himself with literature.

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changes which Pascal's Thoughts' have undergone would have been approved of, and perhaps executed by Pascal himself, if he had lived ?" One thing is sure, and that is, that in the seventeenth century the idea of respecting the form of an author's work did not come into any one's mind. Individuality was thought very little of then, particularly at Port-Royal, where authors did not sign their works. The Port-Royalists meant, apparently, to render the same service to Pascal, in perfecting his book, that they had done to another, to St Cyran, in mutilating his "Considérations sur les Dimanches et les jours de Fêtes." Were there not lines to be continued in the Pensées, and others to be effaced, under the pain of giving scandal? Was that indeed a book, "this shapeless rough draught, these improvisations of a sudden but deeply preoccupied mind, which is every moment proposing objections, without taking the time to answer them, and without even knowing whether he will answer them?" So thought the friends of Pascal. This is proved by the following letter of Arnauld to M. Perrier, of the 20th November 1668, a year before the "Thoughts" appeared :

:

"Sir, suffer me to tell you that you must not be ill to please, nor so superstitious in leaving a work as it has come from the hands of the author, when it is to be exposed to public censure. We cannot be too particular, knowing that we have to do with enemies so bitter as ours. It is much better to prevent cavils by some little change, which only softens an expression, than to be reduced to the necessity of making apologies. This is the conduct we have held touching the considerations upon Sundays and festival days' by the late M. de Saint Cyran."

Arnauld then takes up a passage upon justice in the Thoughts which offends him, and he concludes:

"I must tell you plainly I think this place is untenable, and beg you to seek among M. Pascal's papers, if something cannot be found to put in place of it."†

What did these friends wish to do? To give to the "Thoughts" the perfection of the Provincial letters, the eighteenth of which they said had been written over thirteen times, and all their mutilations were, in their eyes, "only embellishments and explanations. But let us hear them :

"As what has been done does not in any way change the sense and the expressions of the author (!), but only explains and embellishes them (and it is certain that if he were still living he would, withont any difficulty, subscribe to these little embellishments and

* Charles Modier, "Bulletin du Bibliophile," 1843, p. 107.

+ Cousin; Pensées, pp. 76-77.

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