e, and he took up his
abode in a retired part of France. He wrote his "_Encyclopedia_" which
was severely condemned. In 1788, in his eighty-fourth year, he returned
to Paris, bringing with him a newly-written tragedy. His new life in
Paris was not good for him, and he died at the end of May.

This was the man who, in the years that followed him, ruled, as it were,
the intellect of Paris and France. He was a mighty man, and the fact
that he was bitterly persecuted, gave him a hold upon the sympathies of
succeeding generations. The conduct of the church toward him was
shameful, and he made the sad mistake of rejecting all religion, the
true as well as the false.

His plays and writings abound with shocking sentiments, and some of his
writings are exceedingly coarse. These scoffs, coming from an ordinary
man, would have wrought little harm; but from the great Voltaire, who
was worshiped by the French people, they possessed an astonishing power
to work iniquity. A New Englander can scarcely credit his senses in
Paris when he finds the estimation in which Voltaire and his writings
are held by a vast class of the most intelligent Parisians. In religious
America he is regarded as a monster of iniquity; in France as a great
poet, philosopher, and advocate of human liberty.

* * * * *

THE GREAT COMIC WRITER.

The place where Moliere, the great comic writer of France, lived in
Paris, was pointed out to me one day while near the Rue St. Honore; and
I have often noticed on one of the prominent streets a very neat
monument to the memory of the great man. It is a niche, with two
Corinthian columns, surmounted by a half-circular pediment, which is
richly ornamented. A statue of Moliere is placed in the niche in a
sitting posture, and in a meditative mood. In front of the columns on
each side, there are allegorical figures--one representing his serious,
the other his comic plays. Each bears a scroll which contains--one, his
comic plays, arranged in chronological order; and the other, his serious
plays, arranged in like manner. The basement is beautifully sculptured.
The inscriptions are as follows: "_A. Moliere. Ne a Paris, le 15
Jauvier, 1622, et mort a Paris, le 17 Fevrier, 1673_." The monument is
over fifty feet in height, and cost one hundred and sixty-eight thousand
francs. It was erected in 1844, with a great deal of attendant ceremony
when it was finished.

Moliere is one of the nam