earance in the streets and highways, in rags and
riot, with the axe for the pen, and blood for the ink, and trampled the
whole polished race of scoffers in the mire of Revolution.

The _Encyclopedie_ was the great text-book of the literary faction, and
Diderot and D'Alembert were the editors of its first seven
volumes--D'Alembert writing the preliminary discourse upon the progress
of the sciences. But the latter mixed caution with his courage; for on
the issue of the government prohibition of the work, he abandoned the
editorship and left it to Diderot.

At length, in 1752, the King of Prussia, who, with all his fame, had the
weakness of being emulous of French flattery, offered him an appointment
at Berlin, with an allowance of five hundred pounds a-year, and the
reversionary office of president of the academy. But this royal offer he
refused, on the ground of his reluctance to quit Paris, and the fear
that the employment would be inconsistent with his freedom. At this
period his fixed income seemed to be about seventy pounds a-year; yet,
when we suffer ourselves to be astonished at the apparent magnanimity of
the refusal, we are to remember that this sum, a hundred years ago, and
in Paris, would be about equivalent to two hundred pounds a-year in
England at the present day; that, like all Frenchmen, he hated Germany;
that Frederic's dealings with Voltaire gave by no means a favourable
specimen of his friendships; and that, to a Frenchman of that day,
Paris was all the world. But, ten years after, the Empress Catharine
made him the much more tempting offer of the tutorship of her son,
afterwards the unfortunate Emperor Paul. The salary was to be
magnificent, no less than four thousand pounds a-year; still he refused
the offer, and preferred remaining in Paris.

Whether we are to applaud his magnanimity, or blame his habits, on this
occasion, may fairly be a question. The possession of the four thousand
pounds a-year, even if it were limited to the period of tuition, would
have made him opulent; and his opulence would undoubtedly have given him
the means of extensive benevolence, of relieving private distress, of
assisting his less fortunate literary brethren, of promoting public
objects, and ultimately, perhaps, of founding some valuable institution
which might last for ages. But D'Alembert, and men like him, seem to
live only for themselves. It would have cost him an absence from Paris
for a certain period to have o