truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbelieving French believe in
their Voltaire; and burst out round him into very curious Hero-worship, in
that last act of his life when they "stifle him under roses." It has
always seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire. Truly, if
Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, then we may find here
in Voltaireism one of the lowest! He whose life was that of a kind of
Antichrist, does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No people
ever were so little prone to admire at all as those French of Voltaire.
_Persiflage_ was the character of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a
place in it. Yet see! The old man of Ferney comes up to Paris; an old,
tottering, infirm man of eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a
kind of Hero; that he has spent his life in opposing error and injustice,
delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places;--in short that
_he_ too, though in a strange way, has fought like a valiant man. They
feel withal that, if _persiflage_ be the great thing, there never was such
a _persifleur_. He is the realized ideal of every one of them; the thing
they are all wanting to be; of all Frenchmen the most French. He is
properly their god,--such god as they are fit for. Accordingly all
persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis,
do they not worship him? People of quality disguise themselves as
tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his
Postilion, "_Va bon train_; thou art driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his
carriage is "the nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets." The
ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep it as a sacred relic.
There was nothing highest, beautifulest, noblest in all France, that did
not feel this man to be higher, beautifuler, nobler.

Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder of
Christianity to the withered Pontiff of Encyclopedism, in all times and
places, the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever be so. We all love