He was the
pleasantest and most conversable member of the diplomatic corps while I
was there; a man of good fancy, acuteness, irony, cunning, and egoism.
No heart, not much of any science, yet enough of every one to speak
its language: his forte was Belles-lettres, painting, and sculpture.
In these he was the oracle of the society, and as such, was the
Empress Catharine's private correspondent and factor, in all things not
diplomatic. It was through him I got her permission for poor Ledyard to
go to Kamschatka, and cross over thence to the western coast of America,
in order to penetrate across our continent in the opposite direction
to that afterwards adopted for Lewis and Clarke: which permission she
withdrew after he had got within two hundred miles of Kamschatka, had
him seized, brought back, and set down in Poland. Although I never heard
Grimm express the opinion directly, yet I always supposed him to be
of the school of Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach; the first of whom
committed his system of atheism to writing in '_Le Bon Sens_,' and the
last in his '_Systeme de la Nature_? It was a numerous school in
the Catholic countries, while the infidelity of the Protestant took
generally the form of theism. The former always insisted that it was
a mere question of definition between them, the hypostasis of which on
both sides, was '_Nature_,' or 'the _Universe_': that both agreed in the
order of the existing system, but the one supposed it from eternity,
the other as having begun in time.
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