provoked his indignation, and prepared the way for the merciless war which he subsequently carried on against them, with such infinite art and success.

But Pascal was destined to experience another and still more painful attempt to deprive him of the glory of his scientific researches. This attempt proceeded from no less distinguished a person than Descartes, who himself preferred a claim to be the original author of the suggestion of the experiment that was made on the Puy-de-Dome. In a letter to Careavi, of the 11th June, 1649, he put forward this claim. This letter Careavi immediately communicated to Pascal, who was one of his intimate friends; but from whatever cause, Pascal never condescended to notice it. It is supposed that his feelings were too much wounded by the assertion of Descartes to permit his making any reply. In the letter to which we have already alluded, wherein he detailed the whole course of his proceedings, he had distinctly claimed for himself the sole suggestion of the experiment on the Puy-de-Dome, while attributing to Toricelli all the merit of the previous discoveries. And it is utterly inconceivable that Pascal-who was the very soul of honour,' -should have so specially claimed the conception of this experiment if he had received any hint of it from Descartes. The pretensions of Descartes, which are entirely unsupported, have been generally pronounced by subsequent philosophers to be groundless.

In spite of these obstructions, Pascal continued with avidity his physical researches, in the course of which he was led to the examination of the general laws of the equilibrium of fluids. It had been already long ago discovered by Archimedes that a solid body immersed in a fluid loses a proportion of its weight corresponding to its mass and figure. It had been farther ascertained that the pressure of a fluid upon its base is as the product of that base by the height of the fluid, and finally, that liquors pressed on all sides of the vessel containing them; but it still remained to determine the exact measure of this pressure before the general conditions of the equilibrium of fluids could be deduced. This Pascal successfully accomplished, by an experiment of making two unequal apertures in a vessel filled with a fluid and closed on all sides, and applying two portions pressed by forces respectively corresponding to the size of the apertures. The result he found, by two methods no less ingenious than convincing, to be that the fluid remained in equilibrio. He had thus the general principle that a fluid in equilibrio presses equally in all directions; and from this principle the different causes of the equilibrium of fluids were easily deduced.

His conclusion on this subject Pascal embodied in a treatise, intitled, ' De l'Equilibre des Liqueurs,' composed in 1563; but not published till after his death. He also left behind him another treatise on 'The Weight of the Column of Air,' which has been pronounced to form the basis of the modern science of Pneumatics.

The most important of the remaining scientific labours of Pascal was his invention of the famous arithmetical triangle, in the course of the researches connected with which he was also conducted to the doctrine of Probabilities-a branch of mathematical science which has subsequently, at the abler hands of Laplace and Poisson, received such important extension and improvement.

We have already remarked the injury that Pascal's constitution sustained from the intense devotion of his early studies. When only eighteen, his health had received a shock from which it never recovered. Henceforth it is said 'he never lived a day without pain.' In his twenty-fourth year he was attacked with paralysis, which, during three months, almost deprived him of the use of his legs. Shortly after this, he returned to Paris with his father and his sister Jaqueline, and there once more took up his residence. Moved by the solicitudes of his family he gave himself some relaxation from his severer studies, and made several journeys into Auvergne and other provinces. In 1651, however, he had the misfortune to lose his father; and his younger sister, who had long meditated the intention of consecrating herself entirely to the service of religion, carried her design into effect in 1653, and became a nun in the famed convent of Port Royal des Champs. Thus withdrawn from the rest of his family, he returned with a fatal enthusiasm to his mathematical labours. His health was anew shattered; and the worst effects would speedily have followed, had not the actual failure of his powers, operating more convincingly than the counsels of his physician, forced him to abandon for awhile all study.

There was little previously known concerning the life upon which Pascal now entered for a brief period before his ultimate retirement from the world. Bossut only tells us in the most general manner that for the meditation of the closet he now substituted the promenade, and other similar exercises of a pleasing and salutary nature. He saw the world, and although always bearing a slight tinge of melancholy on his disposition, he there captivated by the power of a superior mind and his graceful accommodation to the learning of those whom he addressed.' Some have not hesitated to express the opinion that the thought-worn recluse now plunged, somewhat heedlessly,

into the current of mere worldly pleasures. All seem agreed that he gradually acquired a strong relish for the agreeable society in which he mingled, and that he had begun to dream of marriage. The following seems to be the true representation of this period of his life, according to the light which the labours of M. Faugères have thrown upon it.

His most intimate friend at this time was the Duke de Roannez, subsequently associated with his other friends in the publication of his Thoughts.' Captivated by his genius and devoted to his person, the duke, according to the expression of Margaret Perier, 'could not lose sight of him.' An apartment was reserved for him in his hotel, where he would sometimes remain for days, although possessing a house of his own in Paris. Here Pascal would seem occasionally to have mingled in the light and careless society in which the youth of Paris then moved. We cannot, however, imagine that such society in itself attracted his interest. It was more a study for him, serving to originate some of those trains of reflection which he afterwards pursued with such profit in the seclusion of Port Royal. As he listened to the conversational frivolities of a Chevalier de Méré, or the cynical sentiments of a Miton or Desbarreau, the first conceptions of his great vindication of morality and religion probably arose within him. He touched for a moment with his feet,' says M. Faugères, 'the impurities of this corrupt society, but his divine wings were never soiled.' The blandishment which now filled Pascal with delighted distraction was something very different. Charlotte Gonffier de Roannez, the sister of his noble friend, then lived with him. About sixteen years of age, she possessed a captivating form and manner, while a sweet intelligence gave brightness and animation to her mere external graces. Pascal was constantly thrown in her company, and what so natural,' M. Faugères asks, as that he should love; and overlooking their disparity of rank, secretly aspire to a union with the possessor of charms so irresistible? There can now, indeed, exist no doubt that he had ventured to cherish such feelings. Apart from the letters which he addressed to her at a later period, now published for the first time by M. Faugères, and so obviously revealing, under all the pious gravity of their style, a depth of tender solicitude which mere Christian interest will hardly explain, this fact is clearly established by the discovery of the fine fragment, entitled 'Discours sur les passions de l'Amour.*

*This fragment was brought to light by M. Cousin, and so highly did he value it that he considered it a sufficient reward of all his labours upon Pascal; labours to which we shall presently allude.

Here the evidence of a pure and fervid passion unmistakably manifests itself. None but one,' it has been truly said, 'who had himself deeply drank the sweet poison of love's intoxication, could have ever penned this beautiful fragment, pervaded by so intense and glowing an ardour and yet so delicate and refined a susceptibility, by such a beating and wildly glad emotion and yet so touching and profound a melancholy, by such a rapture and yet such a pathos.' With what a fine and exquisite hand does he portray the passion in all its varying moods, now roseate and flushed with joy, now drooping and pensive with tears, and now wild with anxiety. It is everywhere the touch of one who has himself owned all its mastery. There is besides a specialty of allusion to his own. circumstances which leaves his cherished secret in no doubt. 'Man in solitude,' he says, 'is an incomplete being; he needs companionship for happiness. He seeks this most commonly in a condition on an equality with his own, because liberty of choice and opportunities are favourable in such a state to his views. But sometimes he fixes his affections on an object far beyond his rank; and the flame burns more intensely as he is forced to conceal it in his own bosom. When love is conceived for one of elevated condition, ambition may at first co-exist with passion; but the latter soon obtains the mastery. It is a tyrant which admits of no equality; it must reign alone; every other emotion must subserve and obey its dictates.'

We naturally ask with M. Faugères, did Pascal find his love returned by the sister of his noble friend? There is reason to believe so, when we see a correspondence established between them, implying the highest degree of esteem and confidence. But it is to be regretted that we know nothing of the letters of Mademoiselle de Roannez, and it is, in fact, only fragments of those of Pascal that have been preserved. The rigidity of the Jansenist copyists have left us only such passages as they thought might minister to edification.

But whether or not Pascal's passion was shared, circumstances did not favour it. He had then acquired but little of the celebrity which afterwards awaited him. His position was not a promising one, and his rank greatly inferior to that of the object of his attachment. Awakening from his brief enchantment, he no doubt deeply felt all this. He saw the vanity of the delicious dreams in which he had for awhile forgotten himself. An alarming incident, which had nearly proved fatal to him, co-operated strongly to rouse him from the soft indulgences which were weaving their spell around him. In the month of October, 1654, while taking his usual drive along the bridge of Neuilly in a carriage with four horses, the two

leaders become restive at a part where there was no parapet, and precipitated themselves into the Seine. Happily, the sudden violence of their leap broke the traces which yoked them to the pole, and the carriage remained on the verge of the precipice. The effects of such a shock upon the feeble and impaired frame of Pascal may be easily imagined. With difficulty he recovered from the swoon into which he had fallen; but so shattered were his nerves, that for long afterwards, during his sleepless nights and moments of depression, he constantly saw a precipice at his side, over which he seemed in danger of falling.

This striking incident has commonly been regarded as the sole cause which led to Pascal's retirement from the world. The probable truth would seem to be, however, that it only combined with his sense of the apparent hopelessness of his passion to make him seek a refuge from disappointment, and a nobler source of enjoyment, in the sublime meditations and devout observances of religion. His sister Jaqueline had already prepared the way for this. We are told by Madame Perier that she had contemplated with great anxiety the manner in which her brother was mingling so freely with the world, and earnestly besought him to quit it. And with his mind now awed by so narrow an escape from death, and his heart cherishing a secret affection of which he dared not anticipate the fulfilment, her entreaties readily prevailed with him, and he finally withdrew into the pious seclusion of Port Royal des Champs, and became the associate of the holy men who have given to this spot so undying a name.

The Abbey of Port Royal, after a long period of relaxed discipline, during which many abuses had crept into it, had at length attained a high renown for sanctity, under the strict and vigorous rule of the Mère Angelique Arnaud. Appointed to her high office, when only eleven years old, through a deceit practised upon the pope, she very soon began to manifest that she would be no party to the motives which had induced her election at so premature an age. An accidental sermon preached in the convent, when she had reached her sixteenth year, by a wandering Capuchin monk, left an impression upon her which was never effaced; and she set herself immediately to reform her establishment, and carried her measures into effect with a zeal and determination betokening that peculiar firmness of character which was destined to be so severely tried.

At this time the papal church in France was divided into the two great parties of the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The Abbey of Port Royal favoured the latter, and had, indeed, under the