s who surrounded the throne of Louis,--Bossuet and
Fenelon, as well as Colbert and Louvois; Racine and Moliere, as well as
Conde and Turenne. Especially the nobility of the realm looked up to the
king as the source and centre of their own honors and privileges. Even
the people were proud to recognize in him a sort of divinity, and all
persons stood awe-struck in the presence of royalty. All this reverence
was based on ideas which have ever moved the world,--such as sustained
popes in the Middle Ages, and emperors in ancient Borne, and patriarchal
rule among early Oriental peoples. Religion, as well as law and
patriotism, invested monarchs with this sacred and inalienable
authority, never greater than when Louis XIV. began to reign.

But with all his grandeur Louis XIV. did not know how to avail himself
of the advantages which fortune and accident placed in his way. He was
simply magnificent, like Xerxes,--like a man who had entered into a
vast inheritance which he did not know what to do with. He had no
profound views of statesmanship, like Augustus or Tiberius. He had no
conception of what the true greatness of a country consisted in. Hence
his vast treasures were spent in useless wars, silly pomps, and
inglorious pleasures. His grand court became the scene of cabals and
rivalries, scandals and follies. His wars, from which he expected glory,
ended only in shame; his great generals passed away without any to take
their place; his people, instead of being enriched by a development of
national resources, became poor and discontented; while his persecutions
decimated his subjects and sowed the seeds of future calamities. Even
the learned men who shed lustre around his throne prostituted their
talents to nurse his egotism, and did but little to elevate the national
character. Neither Pascal with his intense hostility to spiritual
despotism, nor Racine with the severe taste which marked the classic
authors of Greece and Rome, nor Fenelon with his patriotic enthusiasm
and clear perception of the moral strength of empires, dared to give
full scope to his genius, but all were obliged to veil their sentiments
in vague panegyrics of ancient heroes. At the close of the seventeenth
century the great intellectual lights had disappeared under the
withering influences of despotism,--as in ancient Rome under the
emperors all manly independence had fled,--and literature went through
an eclipse. That absorbing egotism which made Louis XI