merits
of the stormy, disenchanting eighteenth century, which was the mother
of our own, and upon which the world is likely to remain hopelessly
divided. But whatever we may think of its final outcome, it can hardly
be denied that this period, which in France was so powerful in ideas, so
active in thought, so teeming with intelligence, so rich in philosophy,
was poor in faith, bankrupt in morals, without religion, without poetry,
and without imagination. The divine ideals of virtue and renunciation
were drowned in a sea of selfishness and materialism. The austere
devotion of Pascal was out of fashion. The spiritual teachings of
Bossuet and Fenelon represented the out-worn creeds of an age that
was dead. It was Voltaire who gave the tone, and even Voltaire was
not radical enough for many of these iconoclasts. "He is a bigot and a
deist," exclaimed a feminine disciple of d'Holbach's atheism. The gay,
witty, pleasure-loving abbe, who derided piety, defied morality, was
the pet of the salon, and figured in the worst scandals, was a fair
representative of the fashionable clergy who had no attribute of
priesthood but the name, and clearly justified the sneers of the
philosophers. Tradition had given place to private judgment and in its
first reaction private judgment knew no law but its own caprices. The
watchword of intellectual freedom was made to cover universal license,
and clever sophists constructed theories to justify the mad carnival of
vice and frivolity. "As soon as one does a bad action, one never fails
to make a bad maxim," said the clever Marquise de Crequi. "As soon as a
school boy has his love affairs, he wishes no more to say his prayers;
and when a woman wrongs her husband, she tries to believe no more in
God."

The fact that this brilliant but heartless and epicurean world was
tempered with intellect and taste changed its color but not its moral
quality. Talent turned to intrigue, and character was the toy of the
scheming and flexible brain. The maxims of La Rochefoucauld were the
rule of life. Wit counted for everything, the heart for nothing. The
only sins that could not be pardoned were stupidity and awkwardness.
"Bah! He has only revealed every one's secret," said Mme. du Defand to
an acquaintance who censured Helvetius for making selfishness the basis
of all human actions. To some one who met this typical woman of her
time, in the gay salon of Mme. de Marchais, and condoled with her upon
the death of h