VOLTAIRE AMONG ENGLISH “ROUGHS.”

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 1011, 19 March 1883, Page 3

VOLTAIRE AMONG ENGLISH “ROUGHS.”

It was probably during Voltaire’s sojourn either in Maiden Lane or in Billiter Square that his. adroitness and fluent mastery over our language saved him from what might otherwise -have been an unpleasant adventure. He chanced one day to be strolling along the streets when his peculiar appearance attracted attention. A crowd collected, and some ribald fellows began with jeers and hoots to taunt him with his

scanty excited as the passions of a rabble, and the passions bfo a rabble,s when their victim is defenceless, rarely exhaust themselves in words. / The miscreants were already preparing to pelt him with mndj have been followed with missiles of a more formidable ,ykind. i ; But Voltaire was equal to the crisis. l .Boldly confronting bis. ;assailants7 i; he. mounted?fon Ja stone which bappened to be at hand, and began an oration of 1 which the first sentence only has been preserved. “ Brave Engbe cried,(“am I not sufficiently unhappy in not having‘ beem born among you ?” How he proceeded we know not, but his harangue was, if we aVe td believe Wagniere, so effective that the crowd was not merely appeased, but eager .to harry him on their.shoulders in triumph to his ' This was not the only occasion on which he experienced the rudeness with which the vulgar Were in those days accustomed to treat his countrymen. He happened ,to be taking the air on the river when one of the men in charge of .the boat, perceiving that his passenger.-. was a'.Frenchirian, began to boaaVpf the superior privileges,enjoyed said, not to a land, of. slaves but to a land of freemen. Warming with.his theme, the fellow concluded his offensive remarks by exclaiming, with: an oath that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an Archbishop in France. ; The sequel of the story, is amusing. Within a few hours the man was seized by a press-gang, and the next day Voltaire saw him at the window of a prison with his legs manacled arid his hand stretched through the bars, craving alms. “ What think you now of a French Archbishop ?” be cried. ** Ah, sir,” replied The captive, “ the abominable Government have forced me away from my wife and children to serve in a king’s ship, and have thrown me in a prison and chained my feet for fear 1 I should escape ’ before the ship sails.” A French gentleman who was with Voltaire at the time owned that he felt a' malicious pleasure at seeing that the English, who were so fond of taunting their neighbours with servitude, were in truth quite as much slaves themselves. “ But I,” adds Voltaire in one of those noble reflections which so of often flash across his pages, “ felt a sentiment more humane; I was grieved to think that there l was so little liberty on the earth.”— Cornhill Magazine.