460 D'ALEMBERT. 



or amusing promiscuous audiences on those occasions, 

 cannot be doubted. The productions are of very ordi- 

 nary merit. The two dialogues just referred to contain 

 in their more solid portions nothing at all original or 

 felicitous ; and as jeux d'esprit, they may justly be said 

 to have little of either playfulness or wit. The one in 

 which Christina is a prolocutor, was delivered on the 

 reception of Gustavus III. as a visitor, and it contains 

 some singularly unmerited compliments""" to that worth- 

 less and profligate prince, nowise distinguished either 

 for their happy turn or the cautious procedure ever to be 

 used in noting the merits of sovereigns too young to 

 have shewn how far taking them on trust is safe. Another 

 jeu d'esprit, the ' Apology for Study,' is admitted among 

 the warmest of D'Alembert's admirers to be a signal 

 failure. 



Another work of D'Alembert's, though not on a 

 scientific subject, falls not within the remarks now made, 

 his ' History of the Destruction of the Jesuits/ an im- 

 portant measure which had been finally accomplished by 

 the Edict of the 6th of August, 1762, after their com- 

 mercial speculations in Martinico had involved them in 

 bankruptcy even priorto the capture of the island ; and they 

 had lost important law-suits with the mercantile interest 

 in the Parliament of Paris. The Edict of 1762 was 

 found insufficient to prevent the Society's subtle intrigues ; 

 and it was followed by several others, which dispersed 



* " Sa modestie, ou plutot, et ce qui vaut bien mieux encore., sa 

 simplicite, car la modestie est quclquefois hypocrite, et la sim- 

 plicite ne 1'est jamais." (IV. 82.) It would certainly have been 

 difficult to find a word less applicable than simjilicite to the subject 

 of this flattery. 



