ceeded two leagues, when, lo and behold, four other heroes, each of them six feet high, caught him up, bound him, and led him off to prison. He was brought before a court-martial, and asked whether he would prefer to be flogged thirty-six times by the whole regiment, or to receive at once a dozen bullets in his brain. It was of no use for him to protest that the will is free, and that he wished neither the one nor the other; he found himself obliged to make a choice, and he determined, in virtue of the divine gift called freedom, to run the gantlet thirty-six times. He tried it twice, and, the regiment consisting of two thousand men, this meant four thousand blows for him, which almost laid bare his muscles and nerves from the nape of the neck to the end of the spine. As they were going to give him a third course, Candide, unable to bear any more, entreated them to have the kindness to knock him on the head and finish him. This favor was granted, his eyes were bandaged, and he was made to kneel down. The King of the Bulgarians, happening to pass by that moment, made inquiry into the culprit's offense; and, as he was a man of discernment, and gathered, from all that Candide told him, that he was a young metaphysician and quite ignorant of the ways of the world, the king graciously vouchsafed him his pardon with a clemency that will be praised by all the papers and appreciated by posterity. A clever surgeon cured Candide's back in three weeks with the ointments prescribed by Dioscorides; and he had already a little fresh skin and was fit to march, when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the Avarians.

Never was seen a spectacle so fine, so smart, so splendid, as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made such harmony as never had a match in hell

itself. Cannon-balls swept off in the first instance nearly six thousand men on each side; then musket-bullets removed from this best of all possible worlds about nine or ten thousand worthless fellows that tainted its surface. Bayonets were also sufficient reasons for the death of some thousands of men. The total may have amounted to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled as any other philosopher would have done, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery. At last, while both kings were causing a Te Deum to be sung, each in his own camp, he made up his mind to go and reason upon causes and effects somewhere else. He passed over heaps of the dead and dying, and reached first of all a neighboring village; he found it laid in ashes. It was an Avarian village, which the Bulgarians had burned in accordance with the laws of nations. Here old men, covered with wounds, looked helplessly on while their wives were dying with their throats cut, and still holding their infants to their blood-stained breasts; there young girls, ripped open after having satisfied the natural wants of several heroes, were breathing forth their last sighs; while others again, half-roasted, cried out for some one to put them out of their agony. Brains were scattered over the ground, and legs and arms, cut off, lay beside them.“ Candide.”

How to Encourage Admirals

"АH! Pangloss, Pangloss! Ah! Martin, Martin! Ah! my dear Cunégonde! What kind of world is this?" said Candide, when he was safely on board the Dutch vessel. "A very mad one, and altogether abominable," answered Martin.

184

"You are acquainted with England. Are the people there as mad as in France?"

"Theirs is another sort of madness," said Martin. "You know the two nations are at war about a few acres of snow in the region of Canada, and that they are spending on that war more than all Canada is worth. To tell you precisely whether there are more people who ought to be shut up as lunatics in one country than in another is beyond my feeble capacity; I only know that, as a general rule, the people whom we are about to visit are exceedingly morose."

While conversing thus, they came in sight of Portsmouth; a multitude of people lined the shore, and had their gaze fixed attentively on a stout man, who was kneeling, with eyes blindfolded, on the deck of one of the men-of-war; four soldiers, stationed opposite this man, discharged three bullets each into his skull, in the calmest manner possible; and then all the crowd returned home, very well satisfied with what they had seen.

"What now is the meaning of all this?" said Candide, "and what demon holds sway everywhere?"

In answer to his inquiry, who that stout man was who had. just been put to death with so much ceremony, he was told that he was an admiral.

"And why do they kill an admiral?”

66

Because," said his informants, "he has not caused enough people to be slaughtered; he gave battle to a French admiral, and it has been found that he did not come to sufficiently close quarters."

66

"But," said Candide, "the French admiral must have been as far from the English admiral as he from the other!" "That cannot be disputed," was the reply; "but in this

country it is thought a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time in order to encourage the rest."—" Candide.”

The Church of England

"In my

ENGLAND is properly the country of sectarists. Father's house are many mansions." An Englishman, as one to whom liberty is natural, may go to heaven his own way.

Nevertheless, though every one is permitted to serve God in whatever mode or fashion he thinks proper, yet their true religion, that in which a man makes his fortune, is the sect of Episcopalians or Churchmen, called the Church of England, or simply the Church, by way of eminence. No person can hold an employment either in England or Ireland unless he be ranked among the faithful—that is, professes himself a member of the Church of England. This reason (which carries mathematical evidence with it) has converted such numbers of Dissenters of all persuasions, that not a twentieth part of the nation is out of the pale of the Established Church. The English clergy have retained a great number of the Romish ceremonies, and especially that of receiving, with a most scrupulous attention, their tithes. They also have the pious ambition to aim at superiority.

Moreover, they very religiously inspire their flock with a holy zeal against Dissenters of all denominations. This zeal was pretty violent under the Tories in the four last years of Queen Anne; but was productive of no greater mischief than the breaking the windows of some meeting-houses and the demolishing of a few of them. For religious rage

ceased in England with the civil wars, and was no more under Queen Anne than the hollow noise of a sea whose billows still heaved, though so long after the storm when the Whigs and Tories laid waste their native country in the same manner as the Guelfs and Ghibellines formerly did theirs. It was absolutely necessary for both parties to call in religion on this occasion. The Tories declared for Episcopacy, and the Whigs, as some imagined, were for abolishing it. However, after these had got the upper hand, they contented themselves with only abridging it.

At the time when the Earl of Oxford and Lord Bolingbroke used to drink healths to the Tories, the Church of England considered those noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges. The lower House of Convocation (a kind of House of Commons), composed wholly of the clergy, was in some credit at that time. At least the members of it had the liberty to meet, to dispute on ecclesiastical matters, to sentence impious books from time to time to the flamesthat is, books written against themselves. The ministry, which is now composed of Whigs, does not so much as allow those gentlemen to assemble, so that they are at this time reduced (in the obscurity of their respective parishes) to the melancholy occupation of praying for the prosperity of the government whose tranquillity they would willingly disturb. With regard to the bishops, who are twenty-six in all, they still have seats in the House of Lords in spite of the Whigs, because the ancient abuse of considering them as barons subsists to this day. There is a clause, however, in the oath which the government requires from these gentlemen, that puts their Christian patience to a very great trial, viz., that they shall be of the Church of England as by law established. There are few bishops, deans, or other