ial Letters" now, which the successive numbers of the
series, appearing at brief irregular intervals, communicated to the
eagerly expecting French public, at a time when the topics discussed
were topics of a present and pressing practical interest. Still, with
whatever disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must give our readers a
taste of the quality of Pascal's "Provincial Letters."

We select a passage at the commencement of the Seventh Letter. We use
the translation of Mr. Thomas M'Crie. This succeeds very well in
conveying the sense, though it necessarily fails to convey either the
vivacity or the eloquence, of the incomparable original. The first
occasion of the "Provincial Letters" was a championship proposed to
Pascal to be taken up by him on behalf of his beleaguered and endangered
friend Arnauld, the Port-Royalist. (Port Royal was a Roman-Catholic
abbey, situated some eight miles to the south-west of Versailles, and
therefore not very remote from Paris.) Arnauld was "for substance of
doctrine" really a Calvinist, though he quite sincerely disclaimed being
such; and it was for his defence of Calvinism (under its ancient form of
Augustinianism) that he was threatened, through Jesuit enmity, with
condemnation for heretical opinion. The problem was to enlist the
sentiment of general society in his favor. The friends in council at
Port Royal said to Pascal, "You must do this." Pascal said, "I will
try." In a few days, the first letter of a series destined to such fame,
was submitted for judgment to Port Royal and approved. It was
printed--anonymously. The success was instantaneous and brilliant. A
second letter followed, and a third. Soon, from strict personal defence
of Arnauld, the writer went on to take up a line of offence and
aggression. He carried the war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as
teachers of immoral doctrine.

The plan of these later letters was, to have a Paris gentleman write to
a friend of his in the country (the "provincial"), detailing interviews
held by him with a Jesuit priest of the city. The supposed Parisian
gentleman, in his interviews with the supposed Jesuit father, affects
the air of a very simple-hearted seeker after truth. He represents
himself as, by his innocent-seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher
on to make the most astonishingly frank exposures of the secrets of the
casuistical system held and taught by his order.

The Seventh Letter tells the story of how Jesuit