conclusions in favor of his own."

I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of his
judgment on the masterpieces of our language. There would be little
interest in the record of opinions now almost universally held, though
at that time, from the lips of a boy, they might seem remarkable.
Louis was capable of the highest flights. To give a notion of his
talents in a few words, he could have written _Zadig_ as wittily as
Voltaire; he could have thought out the dialogue between Sylla and
Eucrates as powerfully as Montesquieu. His rectitude of character made
him desire above all else in a work that it should bear the stamp of
utility; at the same time, his refined taste demanded novelty of
thought as well as of form. One of his most remarkable literary
observations, which will serve as a clue to all the others, and show
the lucidity of his judgment, is this, which has ever dwelt in my
memory, "The Apocalypse is written ecstasy." He regarded the Bible as
a part of the traditional history of the antediluvian nations which
had taken for its share the new humanity. He thought that the
mythology of the Greeks was borrowed both from the Hebrew Scriptures
and from the sacred Books of India, adapted after their own fashion by
the beauty-loving Hellenes.

"It is impossible," said he, "to doubt the priority of the Asiatic
Scriptures; they are earlier than our sacred books. The man who is
candid enough to admit this historical fact sees the whole world
expand before him. Was it not on the Asiatic highland that the few men
took refuge who were able to escape the catastrophe that ruined our
globe--if, indeed men had existed before that cataclysm or shock? A
serious query, the answer to which lies at the bottom of the sea. The
anthropogony of the Bible is merely a genealogy of a swarm escaping