It is Mr. Pattison’s great misfortune that through obvious faults of temper he has missed the success which naturally might have seemed assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and dispassionate way.  Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the rest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continually forcing itself into his mind.  He tells, with great and pathetic force, the terrible story of the judicial murder of Calas at Toulouse, and of Voltaire’s noble and successful efforts to bring the truth to light, and to repair, as far as could be repaired, its infamous injustice.  It is a story which shows to what frightful lengths fanaticism may go in leading astray even the tribunals of justice.  But unhappily the story can be paralleled in all times of the world’s history; and though the Toulouse mob and Judges were Catholics, their wickedness is no more a proof against the Catholic revival than Titus Oates and the George Gordon riots are against Protestantism, or the Jacobin tribunals against Republican justice.  But Mr. Pattison cannot conclude his account without an application.  Here you have an example of what the Catholic revival does.  It first breaks Calas on the wheel; and then, because Voltaire took up his cause, it makes modern Frenchmen, if they are Catholics, believe that Calas deserved it:—­

It is part of that general Catholic revival which has been working for some years, and which like a fog is spreading over the face of opinion....  The memory of Calas had been vindicated by Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.  That was quite enough for the Catholics....  It is the characteristic of Catholicism that it supersedes reason, and prejudges all matters by the application of fixed principles.

    It is no use that M. Coquerel flatters himself that he has set the
    matter at rest.  He flatters himself in vain; he ought to know his
    Catholic countrymen better:—­

We have little doubt that as long as the Catholic religion shall last their little manuals of falsified history will continue to repeat that Jean Calas murdered his son because he had become a convert to the Catholic faith.

Are little manuals of falsified history confined only to one set of people?  Is not John Foxe still proof against the assaults of Dr. Maitland?  The habit of a priori judgments as to historical facts is, as Mr. Pattison truly says, “fatal to truth and integrity.”  It is most mischievous when it assumes a philosophic gravity and warps the criticism of a distinguished scholar.

This fixed habit of mind is the more provoking because, putting aside the obtrusive and impertinent injustice to which it leads, Mr. Pattison’s critical work is of so high a character.  His extensive and