LETTERS AND SCIENCE UNDER LOUIS XIV.

FEW men have ever practised deception with such eminent and uninterrupted success as Louis the Fourteenth of France. In the most ordinary matters, and concerning which error would seem to have been inexcusable, a universal mistake seems to have prevailed. No person, during the monarch's life-time, ever approximated to any just conception of his character; even his physical stature was over-estimated by those who saw him daily, and it was not till three-quarters of a century after his death, when his body was exhumed by infuriated revolutionists, that he was found to have been but five feet seven - less than the ordinary height of his countrymen. His success is the more remarkable, as he apparently resorted to none of those devices employed by others, who are experts in the arts of deception. The despots of Asia inspire awe by secluding themselves from society, as if too holy to breathe the atmosphere breathed by the common millions; and as deference usually increases, in the ratio in which familiarity diminishes, they are eminently successful; but Louis appeared to take extraordinary care to be seen by his subjects on all occasions, and the more he was seen the more he impressed the spectator.

When in a matter so palpable as height, he was enabled to deceive the closest observers, it is not surprising that he was successful in obtaining a reputation in other respects, which he never deserved. Orators have praised his devotion to religion, yet posterity has pronounced him, in all things, a hypocrite, and his license to the Gallican clergy, who devoted themselves to his person, very nearly resulted in the ruin of such of his subjects as royal clemency had spared. Historians have attributed to him all the qualities of a great statesman and military commander; but those who have studied more of his reign than has been transmitted by writers who subsisted upon his bounty, have readily discovered that his statesmanship consisted only in the ability to spread desolation among his people, and at the same time inspire them with an awe which caused them to honor the hand that crushed them; while all the triumphs of his arms were planned and executed by his subordinates, while he was luxuriating in his capital. By political economists he has been eulogized as the especial protector of commerce and manufactures, and his example was long cited as worthy of imitation; but his 'protection' paralyzed all that private enterprise accomplished, when under Henry the Fourth, Richelieu, and Mazarin it was left unrestrained; and another quarter of a century of his policy must have completed the work of annihilation.

But time has dispelled all these illusions respecting the Grand Monarch; and it will likewise efface the solitary one that yet remains in its full vigor, that he was the patron of science, philosophy and literature; so that men are almost willing to forgive the criminalities of a monarch, during whose reign Racine, Pascal, Gassendi, Descartes, Bayle and Fermat lived and wrote. But this opinion is as far removed from the truth as any one of those, the error of which

has been admitted, as a careful investigation of the facts will abundantly prove. It originated with those mercenary flatterers who wrote only to please their patron, who acknowledged no standard of merit but his approbation, and who placed a certain value upon every smile that beamed from the royal countenance; and it was favored by the extreme length of the reign of that monarch, so that those who have been careless of dates, have confounded with his era those brilliant authors who immediately preceded and succeeded it.

As we have already intimated, Louis conferred, even lavished bounties upon men who made pretensions to literature. Astronomers, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, tragedians, comedians and poets received many and substantial favors at his hands; but they were well aware that to merit them they must at once divest themselves of all independent manhood, and labor only to confer glory upon a monarch who valued every thing as it contributed to his fame. Hence, there was much that was beautiful and ornamental; but nothing that breathed a spirit of independence, nothing calculated to impress, no discoveries in the physical sciences, in the pure mathematics, in abstract philosophy, or political economy. The eye, the ear, the fancy were amused; but in all that was practical, all that had a direct influence in elevating the masses, the field of literature was a huge sahara. Nor is this strange. The fine arts have always flourished best in a despotism, for all other avenues to distinction being cut off, a greater number apply themselves to their study, and they pursue them with more ardor than where genius is left unhampered with the whole field of thought before it. There is nothing in the arts that can inculcate sedition, nothing that is necessarily heretical, and hence they are encouraged by despots, to divert the public mind and prevent it from comprehending its own degredation.

As the Celestial, having completed the wall which closed his country against the inroads of his enemies, desired to obliterate every anterior record and appropriate to himself all honor, so Louis would never have tolerated a man like Newton, lest he divide with him the homage of mankind, which he conceived due to himself alone.

Pascal, Descartes, Mersenne, Gassendi, and many more, it is true, lived and wrote after Louis the Fourteenth had inherited the crown; but he is entitled to as little credit for their genius, as if he had been Emperor of Russia, or Sultan of Turkey; indeed, all their greatness must be attributed to a system diametrically opposite to his own. Henry the Fourth, when he ascended the throne, clearly perceived that he could encourage science and philosophy only by leaving thought untrammelled; and allay religious animosities only by ignoring them. Hence, his great object was to confine the government within its proper sphere, and this he did, even at the expense of a portion of his own prerogative. Richelieu, who governed France in the name of Louis the Thirteenth, adopted the policy of Henry; and Mazarin, who was Prime Minister during the minority of Louis the Fourteenth, profited by the lessons inculcated by his enlightened predecessors. Such was the policy that prevailed in France for a long period prior to the year that Louis the Fourteenth assumed the

government; and it was that which produced an array of great thinkers and authors such as had never before risen in France.

Before proceeding further, it will be necessary to remind the reader that although Louis inherited the kingdom in 1643, he did not assume the regal duties until 1661, eighteen years afterward; that at the death of his predecessor, he was but five years old, and is not entitled to any credit for the administration of affairs during the succeeding eighteen years; the government being altogether conducted by Mazarin, who, though inferior to Henry the Fourth and Richelieu as an original thinker, had all the qualities of a successful imitator, and scrupulously carried out the policy they had inaugurated. Yet, it was during this period that nearly all the works which have shed lustre upon France during what is technically termed the 'reign of Louis the Fourteenth,' were produced; and as soon as the policy substituted by that monarch became firmly established, the French mind sunk into mediocrity. To demonstrate the assertions we have made, it is only necessary to examine the history of the literature of the seventeenth and the early portion of the eighteenth centuries.

Among all the French writers of that period, the preeminence must, without hesitation, be assigned to Descartes. He was to philosophy what Henry the Fourth and Richelieu were to government. He discarded tradition as far as it was possible for him to do so, and drew all his conclusions from reason. Many of his theories were, indeed, erroneous; but this must be attributed to causes over which he had no control. His chief excellencies, however, consisted not so much in his positive as his negative philosophy; he attacked error with unsparing hand, and when we consider the vast opposition he was compelled to encounter, we are not astonished that he frequently, in substituting, failed. He was the John Baptist of science and philosophy, and prepared the way for a better system. His boldness encouraged others, and his utter disregard of tradition established an entirely new method of inquiry, both in abstract philosophy and physical science.

But Descartes received neither protection nor encouragement from Louis; indeed it is doubtful if his existence was known to the monarch until after his labors had been closed by death. Eager to avail himself of greater advantages for acquiring knowledge than existed in his own country, he had taken occasion to visit all the most polished portions of Southern Europe; and his plans for the destruction of the old philosophy were conceived and matured, while he was residing in the town of Newburgh, on the banks of the Danube, in 1635, three years before Louis was born. His first great work, entitled 'Discours de la Method,' was published in 1637; his 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophiæ,' in 1641; his 'Principia Philosophiæ,' in 1644; and he died in 1650, when the great King was but twelve years of age.

The active labors of Bayle were, it is true, performed during the reign of le Grand Monarque; and his death did not occur till 1706, nine years before that of the King himself; but Bayle, never a protégé of government, was persecuted by it. His professorship in the college of Sedan was suppressed, in order to deprive him of his living, and he was compelled to take refuge in Rotterdam, where he held an important position in the university of that city. The

very circumstance that he was an ardent Protestant, must have rendered him odious to a monarch whose bigotry prompted him to revoke the edict of Nantes, and institute a disgraceful persecution against dissenters from the Church of Rome, in an age when medieval intolerance was rapidly subsiding. Nor was he permitted to remain in peace in Rotterdam. A rival, named Jurieu, whose defence of Protestantism fell unnoticed from the press, became so irritated at the success of a work on the same subject by Bayle, that he immediately determined to have revenge; and he was so far successful, that the great professor was again deprived of his position and thrown penniless upon the world. It was while thus persecuted on every side, that he prepared and published his great Biographical and Critical Dictionary, a work which while it was condemned, upon its first appearance, as containing matter that was heretical, has survived the attacks of its enemies, been translated into two or three modern languages, and is still regarded as of great value.

Corneille, whose productions have been eulogized in the most extravagant manner by the admirers of the drama, produced all his master-pieces before 1642; the ‘Cid,' probably the best of all his works, was written in 1638, the year in which Louis the Fourteenth was born; his 'Horace' in 1639, his 'Pompee' in 1641, and his last great production, 'Le Menteur,' in 1642, while Louis the Thirteenth was still upon the throne. During the remaining fortytwo years of his life he wrote much, but nothing which could with propriety be classed among standard French literature.

Gassendi, second only to Descartes as a philosopher, was born in 1592, and his death occurred in 1655, when le Grand Monarque was but seventeen years of age; and nearly all his works were written before 1650-his 'Exercitationes Paradoxicæ adversus Aristotelæos' as early as 1624. During his whole life he was persecuted rather than patronized, and his works were frequently condemned to the flames with inquisitorial solemnity by ecclesiastical magistrates, who could see nothing in them but the grossest heresy.

Pascal, one of the most precocious men that ever lived the author of the 'Provincial Letters '-wrote his treatise on the Conic Sections in 1639; made his experiments on the weight of the atmosphere in 1648, pursued his researches on the cycloid in 1658, and died in 1662, one year before Louis assumed the government of his estates. He was an ardent Jansenist, and could not, had he lived, have received any encouragement from Louis the Fourteenth.

But leaving the individualization of authors, we proceed to the individualization of subjects; and the result is, that we discover an almost entire absence of progress in every thing that was useful or practical, and calculated to add to the material happiness of the nation. There were famous rhetoricians Bossuet, whose eloquence charmed and whose imagery fascinated; but in all the productions of the great author of 'Oraisons Funébres' there is not one lesson in philosophy, one new truth in science, one liberal theory in government. The legendary stories of illiterate monks, the pastoral letters of bishops, the decrees of councils, and the bulls of popes, are received by him as infallible in matters of history, science and faith.

During the fifty years succeeding the death of Cardinal Mazarin, the study'

of the mathematics was almost wholly neglected; and no additional discovery was made in them, or in any of the sciences immediately dependent upon them; while much that had before been known fell into disrepute and was forgotten. Louis, extremely ignorant himself, but anxious to make others contribute to his own glory, conceived the idea, that to encourage astronomy would assist the one great object for which he lived and labored, and he invited to his court Cassini, an Italian, Römer, a Dane, and Huyghens, from Holland; but he early took occasion to intimate to them the requirements with which they must comply; that they must pursue their investigations with reference to the results upon himself; consequently, their labors were fruitless, barren; and if the effect of his policy was to paralyze those who were really learned, it is not surprising that it prevented tyros from becoming adepts, and that his reign produced no French astronomer worthy of note. Even the important discoveries of Newton, not only in that particular science, but in almost every branch of physics, were unknown to the savans of France, till adopted by Maupertuis in 1732; though they were made within two hundred miles of Paris, and were published to the world as early as 1685 and 1690. In 1738 Voltaire was compelled reluctantly to admit that France was the only country in Europe, where the theories of Newton in physics and Boerhaave in medicine were denied; and he added that there was no book of consequence extant, in the French language, on the subject of astronomy, unless the work of Rion be excepted, which was nothing more than a confused collection of some memoirs of the Academy. All astronomical and scientific instruments, as well as those employed in the practical business of life, were imported from England, Germany and Holland; and the only exceptions to this rule, were such as were manufactured by foreign artisans in Paris.

In machinery and the various branches of the mechanics, by which drudgery is lightened and labor saved, as well as every species of manufactures, there was a fearful retrogression. Their efficiency became gradually impaired under his regimen, and had not a different policy subsequently prevailed, commerce and manufactures must have been entirely obliterated.

In medicine, and those branches immediately pertaining to it anatomy, physiology and surgery there was a decline corresponding with that exhibited in every thing else. Before the accession of Louis to the throne, France had produced a number of men whose knowledge of the practice, as well as the speculative theories of medicine, was of a superior order, and contributed to spread abroad the reputation of the nation, until it became the centre of 'attraction to those desirous of investigating the hygenic sciences. In 1647 Picquet discovered the receptacle of the chyle, the knowledge of which is of secondary importance only to that of the circulation of the blood; the great works of Riolan were nearly all published while Louis was yet in his nursery, and the last in 1652, nine years before he took possession of the government, and he died in 1657. The same period, and the one immediately preceding, produced Fernel, Joubert, Baillon, Ambrose Paré, and many others, whose researches into the sciences of surgery, pathology, and the branches immediately connected with them, were of so important a nature that their works