to the Gobelins, which have been so frequently and so well described, and then to the ancient church of St. Medard. There is no art perhaps, in which the first rude essays are more remote from subsequent perfection than that of tapestry. The veteran of the fish-market, with a face marked by bruises, and in all the glow of habitual intemperance, is not more removed in appearance from the elegante, who shivers at a breeze, than the hangings we sometimes meet with under the name of tapestry, are from the production of the Gobelins. Their performance is always a copy from some picture, and their mode of working resembles weaving rather than embroidery; the threads are perpendicular. These they intermingle in all the infinite variety of colours that the subject requires, working on the wrong side, reversing every thing, consequently, as an engraver does, when he works without the assistance of a mirror, and unable, but in imagination to trace the progress of their work; they sometimes rise, indeed, and go round the frame to observe the resemblance to the original, and occasionally undo a part of what they had completed. The workmen are in the employment of government, and receive less wages than a negro man does for sawing wood in America. They are, as you may suppose, with such wages, rather meanly dressed, and have a squalid unwholesome appearance, from being so continually confined to a sitting posture. To approach one of these persons at work, and to behold what rises under his forming hands, is to have an idea of

something like creation-Zeuxis, selecting from the assembled beauty of Greece those traits, which might best become the goddess of love; the bold approach of some, the reluctance of others, the bashfulness which hides itself behind a companion, and the perfection of the human form in every limb and feature are, I might almost say, divinely expressed; other copies of a great variety of the best pictures are to be seen here; but I was principally struck with that of Zeuxis painting Venus, and that of admiral Coligni, who meets his murderer at the door, and seems to say to him-Young man, respect these grey hairs.

LETTER LXV.

MY DEAR E

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THERE is nothing in the ancient church of St. Medard that would be thought deserving the attention of a stranger; there are no Corinthian columns, no pictures by eminent masters, no superb altar-piece, nor any dome suspended as it were by magick, in the air; it is a simple and oldfashioned place of worship, recommended only by its intrinsick sanctity, and by the memory of the Abbe Paris. You will have seen an account of this celebrated Abbe in Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV. of the miracles that were operated at his tomb, and of the measures taken by the government to put

an end to the confluence of people there from all parts of the kingdom. As the sacristan was absent, his wife accompanied me about the church, and I soon perceived, that she was a firm believer in the Abbe. The world, she said, was become sadly incredulous, and except a sick lady from Lyons, I was the only stranger who for several months had visited their church, and yet who could doubt the powerful intercession of the Abbe in Heaven, for, laying aside the numbers of miraculous cures performed in the last century, was not his influence apparent in the preservation of their church, not the slightest ornament of which had been carried away or injured during the whole of the revolution? She wished me also to take notice by climbing up into a window, that though we were now in the dead of winter, the tomb of the Abbe was green with vegetation, and assured me, that if I returned at another hour, her husband would find means to get access for me within the enclosure that is still walled up, and that I might procure some of the earth from about the grave, or a piece of the tombstone in case of sickness in my family hereafter. There are some subjects upon which the reason that Providence has given us, must embolden us to reject all human testimony. The firm persuasion of the witness, and even of the person who has been miraculously operated upon, are to no purpose; it is still more probable that they are both deluded by appearances, or misled by their own prejudices and passions, than that the Almighty should have suspended the laws

of nature. If human testimony were to prevail, there would be no end of miracles. Racine, the

most polished scholar, and one of the most amiable and upright men of the age, and Pascal, a genius of still superiour order, were both firmly persuaded of the truth of the miraculous cure which took place at Port Royal,* and I have seen two thick volumes of those performed at the tomb of the Abbe. They were published by a Mr. Carre de Montgeron, a counsellor of the Parliament of Paris, who was converted from infidelity by what he saw, and was therefore convinced of: he had been a man of very irregular life, and tells us in the preface, how his attention was first awakened to the spiritual dangers of his situation. He had disguised himself in a female dress, and was on his way towards a convent, where he was

* A Mr. de la Potterie had brought with him from Venice a thorn of the identical crown, which the Jews once placed in cruel mockery upon the head of our Saviour, and this, after suffering it to be adored for a time on the altars of the principal churches in Paris, he had presented to the Sisterhood of Port Royal, where the Novices having been admitted to adore it; one of them who had long suffered from the effects of a cancerous ulcer in the face, was instantaneously cured. She was the niece of the celebrated Pascal, one of the most scient fick, as well as the most pious men of the times, and he bore testimony to the fact; as did Felix, the famous surgeon, who certified, that the disorder had baffled all his skill, and that it had disappeared in a way which he could not but suppose supernatural. Racine was also persuaded of the truth of this wonderful occurrence, and the relation which he published upon the occasion is one of the most elegant historical compositions in the French language.

Voltaire, who does not venture to assert that such respectable persons would lend their countenance to a deception, supposes that a twin Sister was substituted in the place of the person afflicted.

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to be introduced by a lady, who had lent her assistance to the plot, and was already flattering his imagination with an idea of the opportunities he should have of pursuing his projects against a young person, who had fled for shelter there from his pursuits, when the horses took fright, the carriage was broken to pieces, and he and his companions very narrowly escaped with their lives. But to return to the subject of miraculous cures, I have no doubt, in many instances, either of the veracity of the persons' relating, nor of the cure performed, but I doubt the intervention of Providence; and yet I confess myself at a loss how to explain the difficulty. Hope and fear, and all the forms which the human imagination can be made to take, are powerful agents in the hands of skilful men; they are frequently also applied unconsciously by man himself to his own use; but there are cases in which this solution would be of no avail. The tractors of Perkins have been applied, and with great success (in cases where there was no room for, no possibility of imagination) to infants, to persons asleep, and to brutes. Nor can our reason take shelter in any hypothesis connected with electricity, for the same cures have been performed by fictitious tractors made of wood, or of slate, as by those which were from the manufactory of Perkins himself. Leaving, therefore, the miracles performed at St. Medard, and at Port Royal, to be attributed to the imagination of the patient, or the effect of that deep impression of supernatural truth, which is denominat