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CHAPTER XXII.
GOLDSMITH AND VOLTAIRE.
Finding that there was no hope of permission to live in Paris, he bought, in 1754, a pretty country house near Geneva, which he called "The Delights," from the beauty of the grounds and the prospects—and, shortly after, he purchased Monrion, near Lausanne, and also a house in that town. His constantly increasing fame had made him a great power in the State; the senseless dislike of the king had made him a hostile power; and it was rather as a formidable rival than as an exiled subject that he now forged and sent forth his literary bolts from the frontiers of the monarchy. A more sagacious policy might have endeavoured to conciliate so active a foe, but that was not the way of those who ruled France. To live a gay, easy, irresponsible life; to consider taxation as the one function of government, the one purpose for which the people existed; to clap into the Bastille anybody whose notions tended to cast a doubt on the excellence of this kind of administration; to contemplate, as possible, the coming of the deluge, but to think it of no great consequence so that it did not come in their time,—such was, and had long been, the policy of those who
