depths of hell, to proclaim the nothingness of his glory, and to sing the release of the nations which had groaned beneath his yoke. From Augustine to Bossuet,-from Jerome to Dr. Lowth, from Sidonius to the two Racines, the world has had but one voice to admire this chapter;—and where is even the infidel,— if he still retain an appreciation of the beautiful and poetical,— who will refuse to join the chorus?

Bossuet

It is vexatious that Bossuet's Commentaries on the Old Testament, although for the most part prepared and written down subsequently to these conversations, should give us but a very imperfect idea of what was said. Do not, in these notes, expect either poetry or eloquence. You will scarcely find a few words, here and there, from which you may conjecture, that the sublimity of the text has not escaped the commentator. They are Commentaries, in the strictest sense of the word, and the author even seems to have confined himself to commenting as a philologist rather than a theologian. We wish that it could be truly said, that these notes are of great value in a philological point of view; but unfortunately this is not the case. did not understand Hebrew; he studied it subsequently,—but scarcely went beyond the first elements. The Abbé Renaudot, whom he familiarly called his lexicon,-knew just as much of it as the other scholars of the day,-that is to say-little enough in comparison with what has since been known; the study of the oriental languages being then almost as much in its infancy as that of the natural sciences. Thus, Bossuet generally confined himself to the Latin text and the Septuagint. What really solid structure could be raised on a basis of knowledge which would not in our day content the humblest German scholar? He is, accordingly, but rarely quoted by the commentators of the present day. However, if these notes contain but little true learning, they also contain fewer errors than might be imagined.

There was a certain depth of logic and reason in the author's mind, which supplied his want of learning. This can be most convincingly seen, for instance, in a little treatise on anatomy, which he wrote for the education of the Dauphin. There are many things lacking in this, which Bossuet did not know,which were not known at all then; yet there is nothing, or scarcely anything, which does not agree more or less with subsequent discoveries.

The accusation of dryness may remain then. But in these conversations, where he did not consider himself obliged to be learned,—at least not to be learned only, the commentator was merged in the poet, and the learned man in the man of genius. He followed frequently in the footsteps of the prophets, to a height, which it seemed as if none other excepting them had ever yet reached.

In the meantime our two friends continued to approach the group. At the end of the avenue they joined it, and after the first salutations the Marquis said :—

"Continue, gentlemen, I beg. But perhaps I have no righta layman-"

"A layman," said Bossuet, "to whom we could wish that all priests should bear a resemblance. Besides, you are not the only

one; here is M. Pélisson-"

The Marquis bowed, but very coldly.

He had at first rejoiced, like all the Roman Catholics of France, at the conversion (in 1670,) of so distinguished a man; but when he saw him become the enemy of his former brethren, and receive without the least shame, the price of his zeal against them, he ceased to esteem him. Some one remarking one day in his presence, that God had showed great mercy to Pélisson in wresting him from the dominion of error;-" A very great mercy," replied M. de Fénélon, "since he was so fortunate as

to open his eyes precisely at the time when his conversion would confer upon him the greatest amount of favor and money." It was a little like the history of Henry IV., enlightened in like manner, at the very moment when it was the most his interest to be so. Another thing which M. de Fénélon could not forgive him, was the species of adoration which he had since bestowed upon the king. After having, by his courageous defence of Fouquet, attracted the admiration of France and Europe, he gradually became one of the most servile courtiers of this monarch, to whom one might have believed that he would never say anything but the boldest truths. As early as 1671, in a discourse delivered at the Academy on the occasion of the reception of Archbishop de Harlay, he had, in praise of the king, exhausted all the refinements of rhetoric and adulation. The king himself, it was asserted, had been put out of countenance; and truly it was not a little thing, in the way of praise, which could embarrass him. The orator asks,-'Was there then, some extraordinary revolution in the heavens, at the birth of Louis XIV., some new conjunction or constellation,*—since,' he adds, it is certain and indisputable, that kings are our stars, and

* He could have ascertained this fact, had he been anxious,-for there exists an engraving of 1638, representing "The solar system at the moment of the birth of the Dauphin, the 5th of Sept., at twenty minutes after eleven in the evening." The littleness of men! It would, however, be true to say, that the birth of Louis XIV. was received, if not by the stars, at least by Europe, as something great and providential. Louis XIII. was dying, the race of the Bourbons was about to become extinct. When it was known, that after having been married twenty years, without children, the queen was about to present the nation with a sovereign, the nations said,

"A great man is to be born!"

as in Victor Hugo's ode on the birth of the King of Rome. These recollections were not without their influence upon the glory of Louis XIV.: teign.

their looks our influences.' And his friend had been in prison ten years! And the king whom he thus flattered, was not yet surrounded by all the glory, real or fictitious, which his subsequent flatterers were able to allege as an excuse for their baseness. It will be seen, that this was more than enough to deprive him of the esteem of M. de Fénélon.

“M. Pélisson,” continued Bossuet, "often does us the honor to join us."

"And the presence of a layman, in a religious discussion, is no disadvantage," said the Abbé de la Broue. "We churchmen are all more or less inclined to look only on the theological side of things; a layman is less in danger of forgetting their practical side, and the very idea that he listens to us, forces us to remember it also."

"Yes," said the Abbé Fleury, "it reminds us that theology is a means, not an end; that the doctors are for the church, not the church for the doctors. It is vexatious that so many preachers forget this. And yet laymen are present when we are preaching; we are even supposed to preach only at and for them. In spite of that, how many theological sermons we hear! And even among those which are not so much so as to dishearten the hearers, still how many are the discourses where there is still great room for improvement on this point."

"It would not suffice to change the main point," resumed the Abbé de la Broue, "if the form be not changed as well. In vain you would banish all scholastic ideas,—if you have the unlucky faculty of giving a scholastic air to the simplest things, it is all the same to the mass of hearers; you will either not be under stood, or you wil. De listened to by the head alone, while the heart will remain closed. If our orators employed all the time in seeking for good ideas, which they lose in arranging and often in spoiling the few they have,-what a change, what an im

provement there would be! I do not know whether I may venture to say so, but it seems to me, that Father Bourdaloue-"

"Here is something for you, nephew," said the marquis in a low voice.

"Or rather for you, uncle," replied Fénélon.

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-that Father Bourdaloue," continued the abbé, "is not a model in this respect-"

“That man will always be our superior in all things," interrupted Bossuet.

Was he sincere? Could he seriously believe himself inferior to the man for whom he had paved the way?* We cannot tell; but he had already expressed himself in this manner several times in regard to him; it is even asserted, that he said as much ten years afterwards, on the occasion of the funeral oration of the Prince de Condé delivered by Bourdaloue, and so inferior to the one which he himself delivered some days after.

"No offence to the modesty of M. de Condom," said the Abbé Renaudot, "but I am of your opinion, M. de la Broue. Not that I have any difficulty in following M. Bourdaloue through the ingenious labyrinth into which it pleases him to plunge. Besides, if I should happen for an instant to lose the thread, it is so certain that he will hold fast to it, and will not lose it, that I could still with pleasure close my eyes, and abandon myself to the torrent of ideas. Shall I confess it? I am entertained by it; but when I remind myself, that I am not there to be entertained, I go away saddened;-I pity those poor people who, less accus

* There is no commoner literary error, nor yet one more palpable, than that which makes Mascaron and Bourdaloue anterior to Bossuet. The latter was five years older than Bourdaloue, and seven years older than Mascaron; and besides having commenced his career very young, he was known at least ten years before they were. It is upon the authority of Voltaire and Thomas, that this singular anachronism has crept even into very recent works.