we may be sure, was soon forgotten, but the story shows how seriously in
one respect the man of letters in France was worse off than his brother
in England.

The world would have suffered no irreparable loss if the police had
thrown the Sceptic's Walk into the fire. It is an allegory designed to
contrast the life of religion, the life of philosophy, and the life of
sensual pleasure. Of all forms of composition, an allegory most depends
for its success upon the rapidity of the writer's eye for new
felicities. Accuracy, verisimilitude, sustention, count for nothing in
comparison with imaginative adroitness and variety. Bunyan had such an
eye, and so, with infinitely more vivacity, had Voltaire. Diderot had
not the deep sincerity or realism of conviction of the one; nor had he
the inimitable power of throwing himself into a fancy, that was
possessed by the other. He was the least agile, the least felicitous,
the least ready, of composers. His allegory of the avenue of thorns, the
avenue of chestnut-trees, and the avenue of flowers, is an allegory,
unskilful, obvious, poor, and not any more amusing than if it's matter
had been set forth without any attempt at fanciful decoration. The
blinded saints among the thorns, and the voluptuous sinners among the
flowers, are rather mechanical figures. The translation into the dialect
required by the allegorical situation, of a sceptic's aversion for gross
superstition on the one hand, and for gross hedonism on the other, is
forced and wooden. The most interesting of the three sections is the
second, containing a discussion in which the respective parts are taken
by a deist, a pantheist, a subjective idealist, a sceptic, and an
atheist. The allegory falls into the background, and we have a plain
statement of some of the objections that may be made by the sceptical
atheist both to revelation and to natural religion. A starry sky calls
forth the usual glorification of the maker of so much beauty. "That is