, detested the mass of the clergy, although they protected its
faith and its decrees. The nobility, warlike, corrupted, and ignorant,
leaned entirely to the unbelief which freed it from all morality.
Finally, the _bourgeoisie_, well-informed or learned, prefaced the
emancipation of the third estate by the insurrection of the new
condition of ideas.

Such were the elements of the revolution in religious matters. Voltaire
laid hold of them, at the precise moment, with that _coup d'oeil_ of
strong instinct which sees clearer than genius itself. To an age young,
fickle, and unreflecting, he did not present reason under the form of an
austere philosophy, but beneath the guise of a facile freedom of ideas
and a scoffing irony. He would not have succeeded in making his age
think, he did succeed in making it smile. He never attacked it in front,
nor with his face uncovered, in order that he might not set the laws in
array against him; and to avoid the fate of Servetius, he, the modern
AEsop, attacked under imaginary names the tyranny which he wished to
destroy. He concealed his hate in history, the drama, light poetry,
romance, and even in jests. His genius was a perpetual allusion,
comprehending all his age, but impossible to be seized on by his
enemies. He struck, but his hand was concealed. Yet the struggle of a
man against a priesthood, an individual against an institution, a life
against eighteen centuries, was by no means destitute of courage.

VII.

There is an incalculable power of conviction and devotion of idea, in
the daring of one against all. To brave at once, with no other power
than individual reason, with no other support than conscience, human
consideration, that cowardice of the mind, masked under respect for
error; to dare the hatred of earth and the anathema of heaven, is the
heroism of the writer. Voltaire was not a martyr in his body, but he
consented to be one in his name, and devoted it during his life and
after his death. He condemned his own ashes to be thrown to the winds,
and not to have either an asylum or a tomb. He resigned himself even to
lengthened exile in exchange for the liberty of a free combat. He
isolated himself voluntarily from men, in order that their too close
contact might not interfere with his thoughts.

At eighty years of age, feeble, and feeling his death nearly
approaching, he several times made his preparations hastily, in order to
go and struggle still, and die at a dista