This praise is unexaggerated.  What a career was run by this genius!  Discovering the science of geometry at twelve years of age,—­next inventing the arithmetical machine,—­discovering atmospheric pressure, while every philosopher was prating about “Nature’s horror of a vacuum,”—­inventing the wheelbarrow, to divert his mind from the pains of the toothache, and succeeding,—­inventing the theory of probabilities,—­establishing the first omnibuses that ever relieved the public,—­then writing the “Provinciales,”—­dying at thirty-three, leaving behind him two small volumes (you may carry them in your pocket) which are the unchallengeable title-deeds of his immortal fame, the favorite works of Gibbon, Voltaire, Macaulay, and Cousin!  Where else can so crowded and so short a career be found?

It is scarcely possible to repress a smile in reading this work and discovering the patient care with which M. Cousin avoids speaking of the “Provinciales.”  And it is strange to say (no contemptible proof of the influence exercised by the Church of Rome, even when checked as it is in France) that no decent edition of the “Provinciales” can be found in the French language.  While we possess M. Cousin’s “Etudes sur Pascal,” and M. Havet’s edition of “Les Pensees,” the only editions of “Les Provinciales” of recent date are the miserable publications of Charpentier and the Didots.  Editions of Voltaire and Rousseau are numerous, elaborate, and elegant; for atheism is pardoned much more easily than abhorrence of the Jesuits.

The volume named at the head of this article contains a great many valuable documents relating to Pascal and his family:  all of Pascal’s correspondence known to exist, including his celebrated letter on the death of Etienne Pascal, his father, which is usually printed in “Les Pensees,” being cut up into short sentences to fit it for that work, a large part of it being omitted; his singular essay on Love; curious details concerning the De Roanner family; an essay on the true text of the “Pensees”; a curious fac-simile of a page of that work; and a discussion (perhaps M. Cousin would say a refutation) of Pascal’s philosophy.  But we must protest against the easy manner in which M. Cousin wears his honors.  When a book has reached its fifth edition and is evidently destined to a good many more during the author’s lifetime, he lies under an obligation to place the new information he may have collected, and the additional thoughts which may have occurred to him, during the intervals between the different editions, in a form more convenient to the render than new prefaces and new notes.  To master the information contained in this work is no recreation, but a severe task, and one not to be accomplished except upon repeated perusals of the book.  This is the more inexcusable because M. Cousin is now free from all official and professional cares; and it would involve the less labor to him, as he never writes, but dictates all his compositions.