.
No heart, not much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak
its language: his forte was Belles-lettres, painting, and sculpture.
In these he was the oracle of the society, and as such, was the
Empress Catharine's private correspondent and factor, in all things not
diplomatic. It was through him I got her permission for poor Ledyard to
go to Kamschatka, and cross over thence to the western coast of America,
in order to penetrate across our continent in the opposite direction
to that afterwards adopted for Lewis and Clarke: which permission she
withdrew after he had got within two hundred miles of Kamschatka, had
him seized, brought back, and set down in Poland. Although I never heard
Grimm express the opinion directly, yet I always supposed him to be
of the school of Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach; the first of whom
committed his system of atheism to writing in '_Le Bon Sens_,' and the
last in his '_Systeme de la Nature_? It was a numerous school in
the Catholic countries, while the infidelity of the Protestant took
generally the form of theism. The former always insisted that it was
a mere question of definition between them, the hypostasis of which on
both sides, was '_Nature_,' or 'the _Universe_': that both agreed in the
order of the existing system, but the one supposed it from eternity,
the other as having begun in time. And when the atheist descanted on
the unceasing motion and circulation of matter through the animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, never resting, never annihilated,
always changing form, and under all forms gifted with the power of
reproduction; the theist pointing 'to the heavens above, and to the
earth beneath, and to the waters under the earth,' asked, if these did
not proclaim a first cause, possessing intelligence and power; power
in the production, and intelligence in the design, and constant
preservation of the system; urged the palpable existence of final
causes; that the eye was made to see, and the ear to hear, and not that
we see because we have eyes, and hear because we have ears; an answer
obvious to the senses, as that of walking across the room, was to
the philosopher demonstrating the non-existence of motion. It was in
D'Holbach's conventicles that Rousseau imagined all the machinations
against him were contrived and he left, in his Confessions, the most
biting anecdotes of Grimm. These appeared after I left France; but I
have heard that poor Grimm was so much afflicted