( 438 y 



THE MASS OF THE ATHEIST. 



Translated from the^' Chroiiique de Paris,'"ofthe "ird of January, ISSff^ 



B"X MISS MARGARET PATRICKSON. 



[In this number we give the conclusion of "The Proscribed," by Balzac, 

 which wa9 in our possession some time before the work was published in France. 

 We are also enabled to present our readers with " The Mass of the Atheist," by 

 the same distinguished individual. We are indebted for both to Miss Patrickson, a 

 lady whose knowledge of French literature is perhaps unequalled by that of any other 

 English lady of the present day.] 



A PHYSICIAN to whom science is indebted for a splendid physio- 

 logical theory, and who, though still young, is already ranked among 

 the celebrated members of the Ecole de Paris (that centre of intel- 

 ligence to which all the medical men of Europe render homage), 

 the Doctor Bianchon, had long practised surgery before devoting 

 himself to medicine. His first studies were directed and superin- 

 tended by one of the greatest surgeons of whom France can boast, 

 the illustrious Desplein, who passed as a meteor through the domain 

 of science. By the confession of his enemies themselves, the tomb 

 which closed over him buried, at the same moment, a skill and me- 

 thod incommunicable. Like all men of genius, he,was heirless: as he 

 brought all with him, so he carried all away. Surgeons, with re- 

 spect to their fame, bear a striking resemblance to actors : their 

 p-lory is equally evanescent; they live but the period of their actual 

 existence ; their address is no longer appreciated when themselves 

 have disappeared ; they are but the heroes of the day. Him. 

 especially, whose name already lives but in a few faithful memories, 

 and which will remain in his special science without passing its 

 boundaries, for it requires little less then a miracle to give to the son 

 of learning his immortal page in the great volume of human history. 

 Desplein carried in the very first glance of his eye a divine power 

 of seeing even to the source : he penetrated the invalid himself and 

 his malady by an intuition, either acquired or natural, which en- 

 abled him to embrace at once the diagnostics peculiar to the indivi- 

 dual — to determine the precise time, the hour, the minute, in which 

 an operation might most advantageously be performed, by his call- 

 ing to his aid the accidents of the atmosphere and the singularities 

 of the temperament. To enable himself to proceed thus in accord- 

 ance and intelligence with nature, had he then studied the inces- 

 sant conjunction of animated beings with" the alimentary substances 

 contained in the atmo.sphere, or furnished by the earth for the use 

 of man, who absorbs and prepares them, in order to extract from 

 thence a pecuhar expression ? or did he proceed by that power of 

 deduction and analogy to which is due the genius of Cuvier ? 

 However that may be, this man had rendered himself the confidant 

 of the flesh, and of matter, belaid his powerful grasp uponitinthe past 

 as in the future, by supporting himself on the present ; and it is im- 

 j)ossible to deny to so unwearied an observer of human chemistry, a 

 knowledge of the antique science of magic, as practised by the 

 Persian Magi ; that is to say, the knowledge of principles, while yet in 



