uent circumstances,
and always surrounded by a large circle of the best men of the day,
D'Holbach died on January the 21st, 1789, being, then sixty-six years
of age. The priests have never pictured to us any scene of horror
in relation to his dying moments. The good old man died cheered and
supported in his last struggle by those men whom he had many times
assisted in the hard fighting of the battle of life. J. A. Naigeon,
who had been his friend for thirty years; paid an eloquent tribute
to D'Holbach's memory, in an article which appeared in the "Journal de
Paris" of February the 9th, 1789, and we are not aware that any man has
ever written anything against D'Hol-bach's personal character.

EXTRACTS FROM "THE SYSTEM OF NATURE."

Although we may not attempt to express a decided opinion as to the
authorship of "Le Systeme de la Nature," we feel it our duty to present
some of its principal arguments to the consideration of our readers. The
author opens his work with this passage:--

"Man always deceives himself when he abandons experience to follow
imaginary systems. He is the work of nature. He exists in nature. He is
submitted to her laws. He cannot deliver himself from them. He cannot
step beyond them even in thought. It is in vain his mind would spring
forward beyond the visible world: an imperious necessity ever compels
his return--for a being formed by Nature, who is circumscribed by her
laws, there exists nothing beyond the great whole of which he forms a
part, of which be experiences the influence. The beings his imagination
pictures as above Nature, or distinguished from her, are always
chimeras formed after that which he has, already seen, but of which it
is utterly impossible he should ever form any correct idea, either as to
the place they occupy, or their manner of acting--for him there is
not, there can be nothing out of that nature which includes all beings.
Instead, therefore, of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings
who can procure him a happiness denied by Nature, let him study this
nature, learn her laws, contemplate her energies, observe the immutable
rules by which she acts."

Speaking of the theological delusions under which many men labor, and of
the mode in which man has been surrounded by those delusions, he says:--

"His ignorance made him credulous: his curiosity made him swallow large
draughts of the marvellous: time confirmed him in his opinions, and he
passed his conjectures