CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’

his way through the successive accusations, and the monotonous train of evil principles which underlies them all, more or less. He may wish that Pascal had gone to the roots of the system more completely, and had laid bare its germinal falsehood, instead of heaping detail upon detail, and always adding a darker hue to the picture which he draws. But any such mode of treatment would not half so well have served his purpose. His audience were not prepared for any philosophy of exposure, still less for any attack upon the essential principles of the Church; he himself did not see how the successive laxities which he fixes with his poignant satire, or sets in the light of his withering scorn, spring from a vicious conception of Christianity and of the office of the Church. He does what he does, however, with exquisite effect; and the Jesuit Order, many and powerful as have been its opponents, never before nor since felt itself more keenly and