sources of a fruitful imagination: to a knowledge of men and manners, the talent of depicting them in their various aspects; to the gift of just thinking, the art of writing with taste, and of fixing the attention of his hearers, even in the driest details," Barbier's Bibl. d'un Homme de Goût, vol. 2, p. 458,

NICOLE (Pierre).

Essais de Morale et autres Ouvrages, 25 vols. 12mo. Paris, 1741.

"Nicole, in his Essais de Morale, has no pretensions to the formation of a system of ethics. He has founded the basis of his precepts upon divine Revelation, and not upon the frailty of human reason. Religion finds, in his precepts, a reflection of its own purity."—Rapports de l'Institut de France, sur les ouvrages admis aux Concours pour les Prix décenneaux, p. 35, (Classe de la Langue et de la Littérature Françaises.)

Madame de Sévigné was a great admirer of Nicole, and when under the influence of chagrin, she had him constantly at her elbow; on one of these occasions she writes in her peculiar style, "I must then continue with this Morale in my hands, and hold it, like a vinaigrette to the nose, for fear of fainting."

Noć (M. de).

Euvres de Marc-Antoine de Noé, ancien Evêque de Lescar, contenant des discours, mandemens et traductions, précédés d'une Notice historique, &c. Paris, 1818, 1 vol. 8vo. This volume is deserving of attention from its containing the sublime discourse which this prelate composed for the Assembly of the Clergy, in 1785, remarkable for the energetic, striking, and prophetic picture it contained of the French Revolution,

PASCAL (Blaise).

Les Provinciales, ou Lettres écrites par Louis Montalte (Blaise Pascal) à un Provincial de ses amis, au sujet du relâchement de la morale des RR. PP. Jésuites. Cologne, De La Vallée (Elzevir) 1657, 12mo. First edit. The justly celebrated Lettres Provinciales were originally published in separate feuilles in 4to. The Dutch printers being in the habit of re-printing French works of merit in a superior manner, soon put this work to press, and produced, in 1657, a very neat edition of the Provinciales, bearing the imprint of Cologne, (Elzevir.) This edition was soon sold, and another succeeded from the same press; but in this edition, the printer has had the good taste to take for his copy a later impression, corrected by the author. It might doubtless be supposed that this corrected edition would eclipse the one immediately preceding, but two or three words altered in the second edition, to wit, Religieux in the place of Moines, page 3;moins considérable instead of méprisable, led the public to believe that the new edition was mutilated; no one, perhaps, cared about ascertaining the truth; and the Booksellers have always recommended, and amateurs have always enquired for the edition, which they ought, in truth, to have rejected. The jest may be well applied here: "Thank Heaven, I have the best edition, I mean that which contains the error !"

The edition of the Provinciales, published in 1815, by Renouard, is among the best modern editions. To it is added, the Decree of the Conseil d'Etat, condemning the Provincial Letters to be burnt.

In the year 1655, Pascal had repaired to Port Royal des

Champs, a convent, near Paris, where Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were then living. These, as well as many other sensible persons of those times, were highly exasperated against the Jesuits. Pascal, who imbibed the sentiments of his friends, wrote these eighteen letters, which appeared in 1656-7, and gave almost the death-blow to the Jesuits. The dissoluteness of this Order was the principal object of his attacks. The manly eloquence of these letters delighted every one, and called forth admiration, even from his adversarics. The Order called Parliament and the Pope to its aid; but this only increased the evil, for the proscriptions caused the Letters to be more generally read, and there is no doubt that they contributed towards the abolition of the Order of Jesuits, in France, in the year 1762. These letters are remarkable in another point of view; with them begins a new era in the history of the French lan guage, and Voltaire dates from their appearance, the installation of the modern French tongue.

The Chancellor d'Aguesscau asserted that-" the Fourteenth Letter was a chef d'œuvre of eloquence, which might dispute. the palm with the finest compositions of the ancients."

Bossuet was asked of which of the French works he would have preferred being the writer; he replied-Les Lettres Provinciales.

"The Provincial Letters, (says the Abbé Goujet,) were revised by Arnauld and Nicole. The latter corrected the 2d, 6th, 7th, and 8th, in 1656, at the Hotel des Ursins; he also sketched the 9th, 11th, and 12th, at the house of one Amelin, in the faubourg St. Jacques; he revised the 13th, and supplied some portion of matter for the 16th, 17th, and 18th, the last being similar to the third disquisition, which Nicole printed in Latin, in 1656, under the cognomen of Paul Irénée.”—Sca PASCAL, Œuvres Complètes,

Les Pensées de Blaise Pascal. Paris, 1812, 2 vols. 12mo.

This Edition, arranged according to the order so judiciously established by Bossut, in the collection of Pascal's works, 1779, is more complete than any which has preceded it, Renouard adds, "This edition has been corrected with the greatest care, I had the good fortune to decypher, in the almost illegible maRuscript, what had escaped my first examination, (and that of many others besides me,) viz. that Article 3, of the second part, De l'Existence de Dieu, which Voltaire and Condorcet seized upon, to endeavour to prove that Pascal, on his death-bed, was tormented by religious scruples, is nothing more than a series of objections, to which are affixed their replies. In order to prove this, I had only to print this chapter exactly as Pascal has written it; and by the simple addition of the letters A. and B. I have satisfactorily shewn the existence of the dialogue."

The Pensées of Pascal contain the germ of all that can be said for or against the Christian Religion. "This small collection," says the Abbé Trublet, is a great volume in the hands of an intelligent reader."

"To have the best edition of the Pensées, it is necessary to procure the complete works of Pascal, edited with so much zeal and accuracy by the Abbé Bossut. There are one or two rather important deviations from the Text, in the edition of the Pensées, by Condorcet, published in 1776."-Barbier's Bibl. vol. 5, p. 389.

"There are few passages more valuable to the student of Philosophy, than the second and third articles of the first part of Pascal's Thoughts, especially the eight rules for definitions, axioms, and definitions formed from the example of geometricians, but in some degree applicable to all reasoning, which

seem to us admirable, for their simplicity and perspicuity, and for a sort of homely usefulness, which is one of the rarest merits of a metaphysician."-Edinburgh Review, vol. 36, p. 262.

PHÉLIPEAUX (L'Abbé).

Relation de l'origine, du progrès, et de la condamnation du Quiétisme, répandu en France. Paris, 1732, 2 parts, 12mo.

We abridge the following curious particulars relative to this book, and in reference to the History of Quietism, from a note in the Histoire Générale de l'Eglise pendant le dix-huitième siècle, par l'Abbé Guillon :—

The Abbé Phélipeaux, Bossuet's grand vicar, and his agent at Rome, wrote a relation of Quietism, which was communicated to, and approved of by Bossuet. This relation was published 20 years after the death of the Abbé (according to his injunction) and was very offensive to the friends and relatives of Fenelon, who had interest enough to procure a rigorous sentence against the work. This, along with the Lettres Provinciales, and the first volume of the Anecdotes sur l'état de la religion dans la Chine, became the subject of the most singular condemnation upon record. The Lieutenant of Police (Hérault) was authorised in the process by a simple Lettre de Cachet. On the 24th April, 1733, Gabriel Deliège, a bookseller, with his son and three journeymen, were seized by the Police of the town of Sainte Menehould. Copies of the three works were also taken possession of at the same time. Deliège and those arrested with him were brought to Paris and confined in the Bastille. Seven months after, a commission was formed in that prison to try the parties. Sentence was pronounced on the 29th of December. The wife of Deliège, whom the Lieutenant of Police had implicated in the affair, was discharged, and Deliège and his companions were sentenced to be exposed in the pillory, in the public square of