for and obtains from the pope the high dignity of temporal father of the order of the capuchins! It at least serves to demonstrate the influence of that man all over Europe, to say nothing of the great liberality of the head of popish Christendom, that such an office should have been bestowed on a notorious infidel.

There are a few incidents in Voltaire's history which may be seized on as proofs of weak Veneration, to which we the more willingly advert, that they can be easily explained. When about twenty years of age, he was confined for a year in the Bastille for having written, or being suspected to have written, which in France at the time was the same thing,— some piece against the government, and jested upon its conductors. If he did so, which is not stated as certain, it was before one ray of court-sunshine had come his way to excite his venerative feelings; and, at the most, seems to have been directed against the conductors of the government, the ministers; against whom the intense force of his selfishness would, in the shape of envy, naturally enough excite hostile feelings. He had powerful tendencies to satire,* and his enormous Self-esteem and love of distinction are quite sufficient to have induced him to make so high a venture. But when, on his liberation, he brought out his " Edipus," and the Regent sent for him and told him "to be prudent, and he would take care of him," which was the moment from which his intercourse with crowned heads began, we hear no more of his satires on the French ministers.

He got into the Bastille for six months again in consequence of a private quarrel. Interest was used against him by the Cardinal de Rohan, because of his threatening to revenge with his sword an affront put upon him by the young Chevalier de Rohan, who had caused him to be caned in open day. But Voltaire had a lofty Self-esteem and violent irascibility, which would furnish him with quite countervail

* Destructiveness and Wit large, which they are in the bust,

ing motive enough for suspending his Veneration for so very considerable a puppy as the young Chevalier de Rohan must have been.

Again, on his admission into the Academy of Sciences, in 1746,"it was to his honour," says Dr Aikin, "that he was "the first who, in his discourse at reception, deviated from the "custom of repeating the stale praises of the Cardinal de Riche"lieu."

The

Now, be it remembered, that the Cardinal de Richelieu had, in 1746, been dead just one hundred and four years. This is itself something in the account of Veneration. cardinal would take no offence at the omission, and the premier for the time would, if he was curious in comparisons, take less; so that the innovation was most probably a refined act of adulation to the existing powers. At all events, the bold act was universally applauded; Voltaire's Love of Approbation," his ruling passion," was gratified; and no harm was done to his interest. But, be all this as it may, Veneration is but one feeling, and Voltaire had several other powerful passions which would, in the course of his life, act often, both singly and combined, more powerfully than his Veneration. The existence of this last feeling is much more clearly demonstrated by its manifestation in the ordinary conduct of life, than its non-existence by occasional acts of pride and violence, when Veneration was for the time overmastered.

So much for the question of Voltaire's Veneration. But as we cannot dismiss his bust without making use of it as a positive testimony, to the truth of Phrenology, we shall conclude with a few observations on his character at large. It is trite phrenological doctrine, that the selfishness of great Self-esteem and Love of Approbation cannot brook a rival, and especially hates one exactly similarly furnished with these engrossing and exclusive feelings. In perfect conformity with this view, the self-esteeming and vain Voltaire became acquainted early in life, at Brussels, with that morbid and expanded piece of self-love, Jean Jacques Rousseau; and the

two worthies hated each other as intuitively as cordially at first sight, and in all time thereafter. Voltaire is farther well known to have hated and scrupulously avoided the poet Piron, who, as a satirist, cut as deep as himself, not sparing even the patriarch of Ferney.

The satire and sarcasm of Voltaire, his risus Sardonicus,of which last his visage presents the beau ideal,—and all his ill-nature and malignity,* are features of character identified with his very name." In this warfare," says Dr Aikin, " he makes use of every advantage he can derive from his talent "of placing things in a ludicrous light, unrestrained by a re"gard to truth or decency. (Conscientiousness small, and the "whole brute part of him' excessive.) It was said by Mon"tesquieu, When Voltaire reads a book he makes it, and "then he writes against what he has made.' And this is the "real secret of much of his wit; which, however, from its supreme art of raising a laugh, and making it stand for argument, was highly successful with light and frivolous minds." Voltaire had all the unhappiness of an ill-regulated mind; "an impatience and restlessness of disposition and a morbid "irritability of temper continually tormented him." This is in strict accordance with the organization, which indicates strong animal and selfish feelings, combined with, but preponderat. ing over moral and social faculties, also of considerable power. There is no repose in the propensities when the masters: they are ever craving, and never satisfied. "There is no rest for the wicked." Benevolence is placid and kindly, Hope contented and happy,† Veneration elevated and serene, and Justice calm and dignified. While vanity is insatiable, fidgetty, and easily mortified, pride is unsocial and gloomy; hatred, jealousy, rage, and revenge, are the tormentors of the bosom they inhabit; and sensuality offers not to the retrospective eye one spot of self-respect, self-approbation, or peace. It is difficult to imagine a being more tormented by sensuality and selfishness,-more incapable of satisfaction, contentment, and

* Wit acting through Destructiveness, with the additional poison of large Self-esteem and deficient Conscientiousness. So in the bust.

+ We mean Hope in good company; for, with Acquisitiveness, and without check from the better feelings, it is the curse of the gamester.

genuine happiness, than Voltaire. About six years ago, the Parisian press produced a volume of memoirs, by Madame Grafigny, of the private life of Voltaire for the six months, when, driven from Paris for his irreligious writings, he resided with the abandoned Madame de Chatelet at Cirey.* He lived in open adultery with this woman, while the degraded husband dwelt in the house and herded with the servants. The apartments used by the selfish and guilty pair were fitted up with perfect comfort and almost oriental magnificence, while the rest of the chateau, in which they accommodated or rather discommoded their visitors, was scarcely wind and water tight. Madame Grafigny, author of the Peruvian Letters, took a two-months' refuge with them from the brutality of her husband. She had to submit to every species of degradation and insult; and, worst of all, was taxed with her contingent of the most fulsome and constant praise of the idol, as Voltaire was styled. A little piece sent her by a friend she durst not show at Cirey till she herself had interpolated it with some wretched verses of her own in praise of the idol.† "Sometimes, how"ever, in spite of her idolatry," says the Quarterly Review, "she lets us see, though obscurely, the personal bigotry, the persecuting jealousy, the cruel and tyrannical vanity of this great enemy of bigotry, persecution, and tyranny; and it is not, as we have already hinted, the least instructive part of "her work which shows that the bad passions,-all that Vol"taire, in his rage or his pleasantry, attributes to priests and kings, actually raged in his own breast, and were limited "only by his power of vengeance whenever his personal vanity "or personal interests were affected."-The worthy pair were in use to open their visitor's letters.-(Conscientiousness!)-By this simple expedient having got at some correspondence of Madame Grafigny, they loaded her with the most ferocious abuse, continued for some hours in a joint irruption into her bedchamber in the night, with a false accusation of having stolen

66

The reader will find an analysis of this work in vol. XXIII. of the Quarterly Review, page 154.

Love of Approbation out of all bounds in the said idol.
Self-esteem, Destructiveness, and Wit.

and sent to a friend a canto of that profligate poem, “The "Pucelle d'Orleans," and then drove her from the house. We cannot withhold another passage in the Quarterly Review :"The latter half of the volume contains some unpublished let"ters of Voltaire's of no kind of interest. They are addressed "to the President de Hainault, M. de Richelieu, and M. d'Argental, in the same style of smart flummery which character"izes his letters to these persons which are already known. "We have not met in them a passage worth quoting. Voltaire "was a man of astonishing quickness, extent, and versatility of "talent; he had a great deal of worldly sense and of literary "acuteness; and in individual cases, where his personal vanity, "-his ruling passion,-was not compromised, he would some"times be friendly and generous; but his total want of all principle, moral or religious, his impudent audacity, his filthy sen"suality, his persecuting envy, his base adulation, his unwearied "treachery, his tyranny, his cruelty, his profligacy, his hypocrisy, will render him for ever the scorn, as his unbounded powers will the wonder, of mankind.”

Let any one, even moderately skilled in Phrenology, look at the bust now before us; and in the fearful development which it presents of the animal organs, with the lamentable deficiency of Conscientiousness, which best restrains from evil and prompts to good, added to one of the finest endowments of intellectual and communicative genius which a human being could possess, he will see the most irresistible of all proofs that that bust is a genuine cast from the head of Voltaire.

ARTICLE VII.

Phrenology in Connexion with the Study of Physiognomy, by G. Spurzheim, M. D. Part I. Characters; with thirtyfour Plates. 8vo. Treuttel, Wurtz, and Richter, London; Hill and Son, Edinburgh; Duffield, Bath; and Charles Archer, Dublin. 22s. boards.

"THE word Physiognomy," says Dr Spurzheim, " considered etymologically, signifies the knowledge of nature at large. "Sometimes, however, it is employed to designate the configu