Boulanger, Nicholas Anthony

, one of the earliest French infidels, who assumed the name of philosophers was born at Paris in 1722, and died therein 1759, aged | only thirty -seven. During his education, he is said to have come out of the college of Beauvais almost as ignorant as he went in; hut, struggling hard against his inaptitude to study, he at length overcame it. At seventeen years of age he began to apply himself to mathematics and architecture; and,n three or lour years made such progress as to be usefrl to the baron of Thiers, whom he accompanied to thearmy in quality of engineer. Afterwards he had the supervision of the highways and bridges, and executed severa public works in Champagne, Burgundy, and Lorrain. Ii cutting through mountains, directing and changing tie courses of rivers, and in breaking up and turning ov<r the strata of the earth, he saw a multitude of different substances, which (he thought) evinced the great antiquity of it, and a long series of revolutions which it must hav undergone. From the revolutions in the globe, he passei to the changes that must have happened in the manner?of men, in societies, in governments, in religion and fomed many conjectures upon all these. To be farther saisfied, he wanted to know what, in the history of ages, lad been said upon these particulars; and, that he might be informed from the fountain-head, he learned first latin, and then Greek. Not yet content, he plunged into clebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Arabic and from these studies accumulated a vast mass of singular and paradoxical opinions which he conveyed to the public in the followng works: 1. “Traite du Despotisme Oriental,” 2 vols. 2mo, 2. “L’antiquite devoile, par ses usages,” 3 vols. 12mo. This was posthumous. 3. Another work, entitle! “Le Christianisme demasqu6,” 8vo, is attributed to Hm, but it is not certain that he was the author of it. 4. le furnished to the Encyclopedic the articles Deluge, C-rvde, and Societe. 5. A dissertation on Elisha and Eioch. 6. He left behind him in ms. a dictionary, which my be regarded as a concordance in antient and modern Jjnguages. Voltaire, the baron D’Holbach, and other disgminators of infidelity, made much use of Boulanger’s works, and more of his name, which, it is supposed, they prefixed to some of their own compositions. Barruel gives some reason for thinking that Boulanger retracted his opinions before his death. His name, however, still remained of consequence to the party; and as late as 1791, an edition of his works, entitled the Philosophical | Library, was published at the philosophic press in Swisserland. ¹